 Welcome, everybody, to the Burlington Board of Electric Commissioners Monthly Meeting. Today is December 8th. It's 5.30 p.m. and we are holding this via hybrid approach both in person at the Pine Street location as well as via Teams. First up on the agenda is the agenda itself. Are there any modifications or changes that should be mentioned? Okay, hearing none. Next up we have a review approval of two sets of minutes. The first set of minutes is from the October 27th, 2021 special meeting. And then the second set is from our typical monthly November meeting from November 10th, 2021. And we will take these one at a time. Wondering if commissioners have identified any substantive or content specific changes or edits that they feel should be made pertaining to the October 27th meeting? No, I'll say. Okay, so is the commission ready to have someone make a motion to approve them? Yeah, I'll make a motion to approve the October 27th, 2021 special meeting. Second. Got to be you, Bethany. Second. Yeah, second. Commissioner Shagman. Commissioner Herringding. You're abstaining. I was absent. Right, but Commissioner Moody is not on. Commissioner Stebbins. Hi. Commissioner Whitaker. Hi. Thank you. Thank you. And same process for the minutes of the November 10th meeting. If there are any substantive edits or corrections to be made, now is a great time to raise them. If there are just sort of typo edits, great to have you send them to the clerk separately via email. Any edits or changes needed? So if someone would like to make a first and a second. I hope we accept the minutes of the November 10 meeting. I'm a second. Second. Thank you. Commissioner Shagman. I was absent for that meeting. Oh, that's true. Thank you. Commissioner Herringding. Hi. Commissioner Stebbins. Hi. Commissioner Whitaker. Hi. Thank you. Thank you. And Commissioner Whitaker, I understand you're traveling, you're on route. So if you have to go jump on a plane, I hope you do so safely. Otherwise, feel free to join us for as long as you can. But otherwise, we'll move on to item number three, public forum. Is there anyone from the public either online, Lori, or in the Pine Street office today? I do see someone on. Kathy, I'm not even going to try the last name. It's Z-H-O-U. So I think Kathy is here along with actually in the room here, Thomas Maloney as our bond counsel for the revenue bond item. And I can report, other than myself, Emily and Thomas Maloney, there is no one at the Pine Street offices. Okay. Thank you. Welcome, Scott. So while they are members of the public, they're here for a specific purpose. And so just for anyone who might be viewing this at a later hour, please know that you can always reach out to Burlington Electric via our customer care team or to any of the five commissioners or the general manager. Our contact information is up on the website. And we do encourage hearing from you. We really appreciate it. It helps us to understand what the community would like to see from us. And so we'll move on to the next agenda item, which is the commissioner corner. So this is an opportunity for commission members to raise a question or say a thank you or raise a concern they may have heard from a neighbor that may not fit into other parts of the agenda. If anyone has anything to raise, feel free. Victory lap. Congratulations, everybody. Yeah, congratulations. Yeah, second that. Congratulations. So here, yeah, kind of crazy how one went down in flames and the other would get such a good response. We're not surprised. No, it was a lot of hard work on our side, but our side. Thank you, team. Thank you very much. Yeah, good job. Onward and forward, right? Yeah, now you guys get to really get to work. Anything else? Okay. Well, General Manager Springer, I'm guessing you have some good news to start us off with your update. Yes, so thank you for the for the congrats and just we're very proud of the result with the Net Zero Energy Revenue Bond. I think it's a testament to the entire BED team and organization that there is continued confidence in the community and the investments that were proposed. We're certainly grateful to the community for the support. So obviously item one of the items in my update is on that and we will have further business to attend to relative to the revenue bond this evening to advance a resolution that will then go to the Board of Finance and City Council to allow us essentially to reimburse projects that would happen between now and when we go to issue the revenue bond in the spring and allow those capital projects that were contemplated in our approved FY22 budget to be reimbursed from the proceeds of the revenue bond when it's issued. And that's important for keeping us on track with our budget and it was part of our proposal relative to the rate case that we offered and the budget that we offered. So it's excellent news that we are able to advance all of these projects in FY22 and over the next three years to support the different pieces that the revenue bond had, the electric grid, the technology systems with IT Forward, maintenance of our plants, investments in new EV, charging infrastructure and unlocking the liquidity to support the additional incentives that we'll be offering to the community for electrification as part of the Net Zero Energy Initiative. So we'll get to that item a little later. I had mentioned in the update that we had participated in a public information session on December 1st and obviously we had a good result last night. Other non-revenue bond items, we had a, we participated myself and Jen Green today with V-Lite which if folks remember V-Lite is an organization that came out of the merger of GMP and CVPS a number of years back and is able to use Velco equity to support the state's energy goals and support low and moderate-income customers and so there is an opportunity for us which we've applied for to receive grant funding to support partnership with Car Share Vermont and with the Champlain Housing Trust. We've proposed that we would help add two new Chevy Bolt EVs to the Car Share fleet. I believe they have nine electric or plug-in vehicles now which we've supported through our incentives and they're continuing to move down the path of electrification of their fleet and we would be able to locate some new charging infrastructure downtown and in the Old North End at the Champlain Housing Trust parking lot near the family room in the Old North End we would be able to have a Car Share EV and a dedicated charger as well as a new public charger that would be available for residents of the building during the day and to the broader community in off hours and that would be a welcome addition. We've certainly heard from some folks in the Old North End about a desire for additional charging and so this is a great opportunity. The Revenue Bond will also unlock some opportunities to invest in charging all around the community but I wanted to highlight that. We will hopefully hear in the near future if we're successful with the grant application. We'll keep the commission informed about that. The second update, District Energy. We continue to have a number of different discussions ongoing around District Energy. We've completed the work that we needed to do with the McNeil Joint Owners and reached an agreement in principle for a term sheet with the McNeil Joint Owners on how we would structure the McNeil portion of the District Energy arrangement and we've had third-party engineering review of the system design that would connect McNeil to the different customers, UVM Medical, UVM and others and we're in the process of setting up meetings over the course of the next month with the key potential customer participants, UVM Medical, UVM in particular and hopeful that we'll be able to wrap up Phase 3 work sometime in early 2022 and be able to report out on that and offer a potential structure for taking District Energy to the next step which would be permitting and construction pending all the relevant approvals. The one thing I would mention is we are still in a holding pattern to some extent at the federal level on the funding that Senator Leahy had put into federal appropriations legislation to support District Energy. The Congress has not yet voted on an actual fiscal year appropriations bill. I think they've had several continuing resolutions and they'll need to take up the appropriations legislation in order for that funding to pass so we'll be waiting on that and depending on the timing any potential District Energy agreement would likely be contingent on that coming to fruition and so we'll have to see how the timing of Phase 3 wrap up coincides with the federal budget process and where things are in early 2022 relative to that but continued good work and good progress there with all of our partners Evergreen and BGS and others. And then related to some extent to District Energy the item on McNeil and the Climate Council as commissioners likely know the Climate Council which was formed out of the Global Warming Solutions Act in Vermont had offered its initial set of recommendations I believe it's a 273 page report it's lengthy and detailed at one point kind of late in the process we were made aware that one of the subcommittees that focused primarily on agriculture recommended language wasn't consensus language within the subcommittee but it would it was advanced to the full Climate Council that had it been enacted would have prohibited us essentially from moving forward with District Energy at McNeil and would have created criteria that could have forced shutdowns of McNeil and the other biomass generating facility in the region in Vermont which is Rigate. We thought that was very ill-considered from a process and a substantive standpoint and the various joint owners of McNeil, BED, GMP and VEPSA along with the leadership of the IBEW Local 300 which represents the workforce here at BED and at McNeil sent a letter which we've included in the packet to the entire Climate Council outlining our concerns the Council had a straw poll on the language and did not accept it and instead tabled the issue and is going to work with its cross sector mitigation subcommittee which I believe has deeper expertise on the energy sector will work with the Agriculture Subcommittee to try to determine what language if any might advance on biomass issues. Certainly we want to make sure that we're being responsive we'll continue to engage with the Council as needed. We think that the Council really ought to be supporting and encouraging District Energy as a potential avenue to reducing emissions consistent with our net zero energy strategy in Burlington and we also think that there needs to be accurate accounting around the carbon impacts and benefits of McNeil given our focus on sustainable forestry at the plant which we've had many conversations around that issue with the Commission as well so we'll continue to engage and monitor that. I did want to note that relative to McNeil there was also just recently this week on Monday a statement by ISO New England that highlighted concerns around winter fuel supply and you know every year they do a outlook for the winter looking at winter fuel and reliability. In the region there is a heavy reliance as the Commission knows on natural gas. Natural gas in the wintertime is constrained and is diverted in many cases to more firm contracts for home heating and other heating purposes so we see some constraints with natural gas in the region often there's some reliance on oil fire generation in the region during the wintertime and to us it certainly highlights the importance of plants like McNeil that are renewable and dispatchable in the wintertime and can store fuel for a number of months on site to be able to dispatch and support regional reliability and do so in a way that that is from a renewable energy standpoint as opposed to using fossil fuels like natural gas and oil so that's another perspective that we're hopeful that folks on the Climate Council and policy makers will keep in mind as these types of recommendations advance. Those were the items that I had for the report. Glad to answer any questions commissioners may have. Any questions? It's good that you caught that. You know that the Commission has been or rather the Climate Council has been moving really really quickly and there are a lot of different moving parts different people with different meetings so that would have certainly been challenging to not even see where the opportunities for district heating could go. I note that you have several comments in the department highlights about various interviews and I'm just wondering if you could provide any sense of like potential end dates. It looks like you guys are making progress but just wondering when the staff who's currently at BED might get some relief. Well I can mention that we have made a successful offer to bring on a finance director who we anticipate will be starting in mid-January. We're not at liberty yet to announce the individual who's been hired for that position but that was good news recently in that search process and Emily has been leading a number of search processes related to particularly our IT team. Those are active and in real time we are working to make potentially several offers to folks to come on board for IT positions that are open. So certainly there's been you know and this is not unique to BED. There have been some challenges from a workforce standpoint during the last several months. We've had some turnover in certain areas. We also have had opportunities to bring folks in. People are in some cases considering moving to Vermont from other states which wasn't necessarily always the case when we were recruiting and is of interest. The city is currently actively considering a long-term remote work policy which may help support us in recruitment and retention and I just want to again commend Emily's work with the finance team and the IT team in the interim and we're hopeful certainly come January, February. We'll have some additional folks on board and have some new introductions to make perhaps at the next commission meeting or the one after that. That's great news. Thank you Emily for just continuing on continuing on. I did want to note it's it's it's good to see that the arerages are starting to come down. I mean it's still over a million and wondering if you're seeing pretty good uptake with the VCAP and VRAP and if there's anything we can do to try and close that gap more by helping connect you know bill payers with the opportunities that are out there due to COVID. Yes so I think we've had around 500,000 total of assistance that's been provided through VCAP 2.0 as we've been calling it and then the VRAP program which is supporting renters with income qualifications. The VCAP 2.0 program has closed although we have a few lingering applications in process where we may have some reimbursement further coming in to BED from that program. VRAP as I understand is going to continue likely through the fiscal year if not perhaps even longer depending on funding and then I'm aware that there may be some additional assistance for income qualified homeowners as opposed to renters perhaps through a VHFA program that may be coming soon so I know that our team particularly in customer care is working very hard to move customers through the process with those various state programs. The other piece that we have that's somewhat unique is because we were able to propose and successfully achieve the ARPA funding allocation from the city we do have that funding in reserve and as we move through the state programs our hope is to apply the ARPA funding sometime prior to the end of fiscal year 22 to help clear what remains of arrearages at that point help every customer who is behind because of the pandemic catch up and then likely in the spring or certainly by the end of fiscal 22 if not by spring we'll be looking to reinstate our typical disconnect for non-payment having helped those customers catch up and keeping in place the various payment plans and budget payment assistance that we offer. The other thing I would just note is for customers who may be watching or for commissioners to continue to talk about with potential applicants as we have our energy assistance program open we do have I believe around 60 folks who are currently enrolled in the energy assistance program which just as a reminder provides a bill credit to offset the entirety of the rate increase during FY 22 to income qualified customers we've been working with organizations like CBOEO to help get customers qualified. Our long-term hope is to have a low income rate that is permanent and an offering that we can provide a year after year and we're going through a PUC docket where we're looking at that exact issue and we have some further process on that in the coming months. Thank you. It's good to hear the like long-term plan because it you know at some point at some point federal support will shift in response to whatever is going on epidemiologically. I did have two other questions one is you know I see this little note that there was a discussion with vehicle to grid technology vendors and you know that caught my eye because it's such a huge potential for really creative use of you know the electricity that's sitting in an electric vehicle in the form of a battery on the other hand my my understanding is it's still sort of a little bit far out there so if you have any like quick updates on that my other question was it's it's great to see that you're having bi-monthly meetings regarding the rental ordinance progress with the permitting department and just wondering I don't recall if there was a deadline for when that needs to roll out and but just a little bit of background on that would be great. I'll take the rental weatherization ordinance question and then I'll ask if James wants to cover the vehicle to grid item so let me start with the rental weatherization. We've been working our team in particular on energy services with VGS to identify from a data standpoint which customers of ours and VGS would be buildings that would need to comply with the ordinance as it was passed and the ordinance as it was passed focused on creating tranches based on the highest energy use buildings and then sort of ramping through over a period of years to get to all of the buildings that benefit from additional weatherization. There's a group of buildings that are below a certain energy use threshold that don't are not likely to be subject to the ordinance so we started with the buildings that are the highest energy users. What's happening is is our team and the permitting team have identified those buildings and are going to be communicating with those customers to let them know that they would be subject to the ordinance and that they should get into the queue for weatherization assistance services and incentives that may be available through the programs that we or VGS offer. We've also let the ordinance committee know and the city attorney's office that we have a proposed schedule for the remaining buildings over the next several years in terms of having relatively equal tranches each year that would go through until we get to the point that all the buildings that could benefit from weatherization have done so. We've sent that memo to the ordinance committee. The ordinance committee is interested in getting draft ordinance language to consider and having the permitting and BED teams come back to present on that likely in I'm assuming in 2022 early 2022. My understanding is there's quite a backlog for weatherization services so the time that it's taken us to do this identification work hasn't actually slowed our progress because really we're trying to get folks into a queue that's going to take months or perhaps even years to fulfill. So we're trying to take a measured approach where each tranche each cohort is relatively equal and we're not overloading programs and queues in any particular year. So good progress there. We appreciate the collaborative work with our partners at VGS on that in particular and James I'll turn it to you for a quick summary on the vehicle to grid item. I don't have much update to offer on that. I would have to get more detail from Freddie and Casey as you can point it out. The primary barrier remains this whole problem of the impact on the car and the car warranty of using it in ways to back up the grid and certainly anybody who's seen the new Ford truck commercial knows that all you got to do is roll up and plug it into your house. I suspect there's more hardware involved than that. So if you want I can ping those guys but I don't have anything much more detailed other than obviously we remain interested in it. It's an awful lot of battery capability you know that's lurking out there but using it in such a way as to not you know imperil somebody's car warranty is going to be the critical thing and not to mention of course their ability to use the car as a car. So I believe you need an 80 amp home charger to be able to bi-directionally charge with that Ford F-150 Lightning which is much larger than the typical 32 or 40 amp home charger and I would be might not fit on my many service entrances I don't know. That reminded me though just for the commission's benefit that we do have our new Net Zero Energy 22 calendars from our fourth graders who have done public art for us on the calendars and there the cover as you'll see is a very nice EED logoed electric truck that seems to resemble perhaps something like the lightning that's coming out. So we'd love to get you all copies of that in the near future. I know Mike has a number of copies available. Thank you both. James no need to ping Freddy or that's fine. I was just curious. Okay. So commissioners I've been asking the bulk of the questions. Does anyone have anything else they'd want to ask? I guess I was just curious with regards to arrearages where you said you know how they had to sort of get us back to square one and I'm wondering what that means because traditionally we've had you know X number of hundreds of thousands of arrearages anyway and I'm wondering how do you tease out what's eligible to be reimbursed back to the department and what's not and then where does that leave us you know quarter left hole in the end? You're correct Commissioner Moody. We typically will have a six figure arrearage level a low six figure arrearage level during the course of regular business and obviously in some cases we have customers who don't end up paying those arrearages and we have policies related to that. What the different state programs have are various requirements for how to ensure that those arrearages are related to the pandemic for the purposes of utilizing what is what is federal funding in that case through the state. There also will be this effort through using the city ARPA funds that may be more flexible in some cases than what the state funding has been and our hope is is that you know by utilizing the state funds first and making sure we take full advantage of those programs and then applying the city funds sometimes prior to FY 22 ending probably in the spring we'll be able to get arrearages for customers who are affected by the pandemic essentially cleared doesn't mean we won't end up having some level of arrearage just through the normal course of business but we'll be able to handle the pandemic related arrearages and go from having this million three to million five level back down to a very low six figure level and that that's our goal for the springtime. Thank you that was kind of where I was going with that I didn't I didn't expect it to go down to zero which it wouldn't I mean realistically be in it but if at least it came down to where you know we've we've been here historically pre pre COVID then that's that that to me is at least you know being made whole if you will you know at least back you know back that would be square one so that that that feels good thank you that's our goal absolutely anything from you Commissioner Herrington okay so we'll move on thank you thank you Darren we'll move on to agenda item number six this is the financials fiscal year 2022 October discussion with Emily apologies for the background hi everybody good evening can you share my screen okay so I'm going to give you first an update on kind of our analysis of the deviation of sales to customers compared to pre COVID levels again there may be some underlying load growth or decline here that's hard to see but I think I last gave you an update on this in October which was through August so we're now able to see here September and October where overall system loads were down or sales to customers were down about two percent again consistent with throughout the pandemic residential sales above kind of pre COVID levels by about three percent commercial down about three percent the aggregate down about two percent so definitely a change this fall well at least through October compared to where we were over the summer which is overall good news but just wanted to share that update I'm going to switch now to the financials just give me a moment hopefully that was successful you can now see the PDF with the summary income statement so for October we had a net loss of 717,000 compared to the budget and net loss of about 600 608,000 so we were worse than budget by 109,000 the delta here made up of sales to customers being below budget as we just discussed residential was 57,000 better than budget commercial $99,000 worse than budget and while we're talking about sales to customers for a moment I want to call your attention to an enhanced feature of the packet where we have substituted the previous average monthly temperature graphs that you've previously seen with two new graphs one showing cooling degree days actual versus budget and the other showing heating degree days actual versus budget which are our load forecasting and financial analysis staff felt gave a more nuanced picture of the weather that we predicted versus the weather we saw and how that relates to electric sales so I just wanted to call your attention in case you hadn't noticed that change other revenues primarily EU reimbursements were also down versus budget for October by $26,000 it was not a wreck delivery month so we had no deviation on power supply revenues Emily on the expense side overall net power supply was $156,000 favorable to budget that was a result of purchase power savings of $564,000 offsetting unfavorable results in fuel which was $360,000 over budget and transmission $50,000 over budget the rest of the operating expenses were fairly well in line just a $9,000 deviation taxes again the pilot produced a variance from budget positive we'll see that throughout the year as I've mentioned before and then other income here pretty significantly below budget by a quarter almost a quarter million dollars that is due to fewer than budgeted customer contributions to capital projects so for the year overall we are adding net income of $1.1 million compared to budget of $1.7 so a $617,000 variance from budget I also want to just note you got a is your volume up on your sound uh no I think yours is off mine's off oh sorry sorry Emily there there was a question a little bit of go from Commissioner Heron Dean and I see that you have your little headphones on and I'm guessing it's so you don't have reverb in the same space but uh sorry Commissioner Heron Dean did you want to did you want to ask a clarifying question uh let's go to the end of the statement then I'll come back in okay sorry Emily thank you no no I apologize um Darren was using the sound on his computer and then when I presented we switched and I failed to turn my volume up so I wasn't we had no incoming sound from the commission I apologize for that um and Darren saw that all right where was I so on year to date overall that income results um I just wanted to let you know about an error that we made in September when we reported to you we reported that September sales were a lot better than budget um we hadn't concluded all of our external financial reporting at that time um and through the process of that reporting we found our mistake so um September sales were not as good by about six hundred thousand dollars was a pretty significant mistake and it was in the estimation of unbilled revenue that we do on a monthly basis every month we know what we build but then we know there's a portion of electricity that we've delivered that we haven't actually billed yet for that month depending on where the billing cycle falls against the close of the fiscal period um so that was the source of that error so um for those of you who are keeping careful note the delta to budget is not as good as it might seem given where we ended and where I reported to you in September so that concludes my piece on the operating um and the income statement and Commissioner Herndon would be happy to take a question at this time well okay it's um it's about the um heating degree day um display which I think is great but then I also ask myself gee what's the temperature so uh I would propose you just put in the fine print uh what the reference temperatures are for those I think it's 65 for heating and I'm not sure what it is for cooling I see yes happy to do that okay thanks regarding the 600 000 discrepancy um so it sounds like part of that is a timing issue in terms of when when you sent the electricity and then received the bills am I understanding that correctly and if so how why doesn't that happen more often or what are the mechanisms put in place to not have it happen in the future um it is a timing issue in that the estimate can vary but there is always an estimate estimate that we make because the billing cycle never completely aligns with when the period the month ends right so um and really the the way that we catch it is in the way that we did right which is comparing you know comparing um the unbilled estimate from the month before and it's always within a certain range and like when we saw it we knew that that was off because it was way out of the range of normal um it's it so it is timing in that respect it's not timing in the sense that we will make it up in some way by the end of the year that makes sense I was sorry I know we've got a coordinate sound um I just wanted to note on the operating income and net income I don't know we touched on this but the assumption I think in the budget relative to other income was that there would be some of the arrearage funding was essentially captured in the other income category when we budgeted it's not treated as other income as we're going through the year and so the delta with other income in addition to customer capital projects being reduced as Emily mentioned is also going to reflect throughout the year that the arrearage funding that's coming in even though as we apply it it will eventually have a positive relative to our cash balance it's not really treated as income because those are sales that have been made that are now being covered with cash so you'll see this delta throughout the year with other income what it actually means though is if you look at the operating income we have a positive variance of over 700,000 year to date which means we're actually performing better than we had expected on operating income including on on sales and as you'll see reflected later in the presentation that's having a positive impact on some of our ratings metrics just wanted to call the commission's attention to that yeah thank you Darren this is an important clarification certainly this month it was the customer contribution that variance but overall for the year to date that's exactly right that there was some other income that was not customer contribution assumed that so that will be a variance to capital spending now through October we were about 18 percent spent on the capital budget mostly due to the timing of various projects which are noted here oh I will also make a note I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before we had budgeted for transmission equity purchase of $1.1 million as a capital item we received we requested and received approval from the Velco CFO forum yesterday to defer that purchase into FY 23 when we prepared the budget we were actually proposing we were planning to bond for that equity contribution which we have done so in the past that would be a taxable bond issuance however and it's a relatively small amount of a bond issuance and so doesn't market particularly well as I've been advised so we've decided in terms of managing cash flow we have the ability to defer equity purchases for up to two years under the terms of the Velco owners agreement we've exercised that option we will be taking a portion of our equity using cash that would have otherwise been returned to us for a specific facility buyback and then deferring the rest until FY 23 when we will include it in the FY 23 capital budget so that variance you see here in transmission will remain throughout the fiscal year so the benefit of that approach is a cash flow benefit for this year what does it mean for next year in terms of any potential impact I think for next year we now know we have revenue bond approved right and so our overall financing plan you know we have we have now all of the elements in place right for the three that's where I thought you were going you just didn't say it exactly okay right I mean there is a there is it's not hugely significant but another we also budgeted for dividend income right from that equity investment since we're only making half of what we planned and we're deferring half of it for six months we'll be taking a dip on our dividend income but overall the deferral is more helpful from a cash balance than the loss of the dividend income so now coming down to cash we are as of October we had 9.2 million dollars cash on hand that's 1.2 million worse than budget most of that variance due to the timing of the general obligation bond or sorry excuse me the bond anticipation no issuance which occurred in November we will see that in next month's results we had budgeted or estimated that that would plant would happen in August so it's arrival of that cash was a bit delayed and here are the credit rating factors 4.29 for the debt service coverage ratio 1.10 for our adjusted debt and 108 days cash on hand happy to take questions commissioners no questions no all set any forecasts in terms of what you expect to see I mean it's it's been a mild winter thus far which is I think partially why you provided the heating degree day comparison to budget any thoughts in terms of what we're likely to see over the next four months with regards to how we compared to last year with COVID revenue compared to like typical year you know because you have a crystal ball I mean I would say no yeah I dare not predict sales to customers and will not do so I'm just happy that the fall has been a more typical in terms of the fall in terms of the particularly the institutional activity that's such an important source of revenue from our commercial customers I can just say in terms of forecast our last meeting on this just earlier this week is that we're essentially tracking to budget at this point in terms of where we think we'll be able to end the year okay thank you and thanks to your team next up we have the revenue bond reimbursement resolution this is a discussion and a vote and I believe you're Emily you're also team this up but with participation yes I will make the briefest of introductory remarks and then turn it over to Thomas Maloney our bond council who is currently vertical hold my phone yeah we as Darren mentioned in the outset in the general manager's update with the voter's approval of the revenue bond we will now work with Thomas his team in the city finance team to issue the bonds that won't occur for several months however the resolution that's before you will enable as I understand it BED to begin working on capital projects that will be funded with bond proceeds in advance of the bonds being issued and be able to reimburse ourselves from those funds after issuance and with that thank you Mr. Maloney good evening first congratulations I think having the voters by over a two-thirds vote approved the the the bond vote I think is an affirmation of of the vision and the goal set by management and this and the board of electric commissioners for the city so congratulations on on that the resolution that's that's been prepared and is submitted for your consideration is to comply with federal tax law that allows the electric department to expend funds on hand now for the capital projects with an expectation that it will be reimbursed when it issues the tax exam bond and this expected to be in the spring of 2022 it's a requirement under the tax regulations that the issuer declare what's called an official intent that it is expecting to reimburse itself and and basically this was a rule imposed by the Internal Revenue Service to prevent a municipality or a state or local government issuing bonds today for some project that was completed and years ago you know using using cash on hand for example you couldn't issue a bond a tax exempt bond today to reimburse the electric department for expenditures building the Moran plant back whenever it was built in you know decades ago so that's that's what's before you it doesn't obligate the electric department to spend the money you know the the actual expenditures for the capital projects are through your normal budgeting process and and approval process as as if this resolution was not adopted so it really is a compliance issue it also presents you know sort of the two-step process that the the board of electric commissioners and the city council play in issuing the revenue bonds charter requires any occurrence of indebtedness to be approved by the city council the board of electric commissioners historically has also a significant role obviously in terms of the management of the of the whole electric system and also the the the setting of rates and the setting of reserves and the overall management of the electric department so this is the one step for the electric department board of commissioners to to act upon to express its indication official intent that it can spend up to 2.6 million with that expectation that when taxes and bonds are issued in the future it will reimburse its its capital funds with proceeds from the bonds it is expected that this will then be in front of the city council on December 13th board of finance first and then the city council on December 13th because they they ultimately have approval for incurrence of indebtedness so we thought it best to again follow that two-step process the board of electric commissioners has their vote and then subsequent vote of the city council certainly happy to answer any any questions any of the commissioners may have well thank you i have several uh where does the money come from could you repeat that please commissioner herondine yes what's the source of the money the source of the money to um beings that would be spent now would be your your own funds um funds on on hands that are earmarked for for capital capital expenditures okay seconds how big can this number be for the number can be what you feel you expect us to spend um prior to the actual issuance it's a test of reasonableness um it's unlikely that between now and the time you issue you'd spend a full 20 million um but it can certainly be higher than 2.6 there's there's it's it's a reasonable expectation um and and and certainly the intent can be the number can be increased in in the future if you think that there's going to be a delay in in the bond issuance um or that additional capital expenditures is expected to be financed through taxes and bonds if they're needed earlier the number can also be increased okay thank you my last question how much time do we actually buy by doing this i was just going to mention that i think the the idea behind it isn't so much to buy the time but to ensure that some of the projects that are budgeted for in f y 22 that we had assumed would be financed by the revenue bond can in fact go forward now and be reimbursed from the revenue bond as opposed to either holding them at which point we may not get them done during f y 22 because the bond's not going to be issued till the spring or having them go forward and have to be funded by cash and then not having them be a part of the revenue bond which ultimately they were as part of the vote so it's really to align the timing of our f y 22 budget planned capital projects that we had assumed would be in the revenue bond with the issuance of the bond there's this roughly three to four month gap before the proceeds would come in and this allows those projects during that period of time to count towards the bond as opposed to having to be funded from general cash okay well let me make sure i understand you can't just spend it out of our cash fund so the money comes from still from internal funds we're not going to borrow money to fund this until we get the bond or are we we are not going to borrow we're going to use our cash on hand to fund them and then we'll have it reimbursed from the bond so there's no there's no borrowing beyond the revenue bond itself right we it's just allowing us to front up to 2.7 million of our own cash towards the eventual payment that's all okay thank you got it and and so uh you know we currently have cash on hand 108 days per emily's report and we also just you know had part of the report say that there's a um you know we're slightly lower than budget because we're still waiting for a bond to come through um i guess my question is you know what are the risks potentially in terms of balancing the cash on hand um and when the you know bond might actually kick in in the spring yeah i would say that um we have received the three million dollars from the bond anticipation note that was issued in november so the next report i give to you in january on november's cash balance we'll show that addition right so the timing of it was off but we have received it in our bank account now so we have an additional three million dollar influx from the general obligation borrowing as budgeted um so that reduces sort of you know we're at the lowest point right october results were the lowest point for cash right um and then um sorry your other question right so um i think the risk that um i think given the supply chain delays and equipment delays and materials delays we've been experiencing the risk that we will over spend more than we budgeted on these capital projects that they will somehow advance more quickly then we had anticipated is quite low and in fact i'd say you know the likelihood is that we may not spend the 2.6 million that we've budgeted and that things will be maybe need to be pushed into fy 23 um i'd also point out that the cash flow we're proposing here where we begin expenditures on projects using revenue bond funds in anticipation of the bonds being issued is was the cash flow that was presented to the commission as part of our budget and was approved so we budgeted for the timing of these inflows to match the timing of the capital expenditures sort of having this plan in mind right that the bond vote would occur and we thought in november but it turned out december right and that we would seek this a resolution this approval of this resolution that would allow us to begin spending earlier so we're not we're sort of sticking to our budgeted capital spending plan and just curious the specific projects that you're thinking of to to kick off with um there is a full list available i believe on the mayor's website related to the revenue bond the specific ones like first up in line i believe are in distribution mostly don't know if monnier is on the line and you and if you want more detail on particularly which you know lines switches or transformers are being replaced but those are the ones that yeah we're meeting on and we would begin immediately thank you emily other questions from commissioners i'm not hearing any uh our commissioners uh wanting to and and ready to vote on this because this is uh both a discussion and a vote i'm prepared to vote okay can someone make a motion please okay well i uh moved that we approve the this resolution which relates to the authorization for reimbursement from revenue bonds for electric department capital improvements second second commissioner shagman hi commissioner herondine right commissioner moody hi commissioner stephens hi and i'm not sure is commissioner whittaker still on i don't believe so okay thank you motion passes thank you thank you and thank you tom thomas muted thomas sorry i was muted uh thank you um kathy zoe who is on the line is my colleague at paul frank collins and we look forward to being before you again uh as this bond vote proceeds or the bond issuance uh proceeds so again congratulations and we'll see you again thanks thanks thank you thomas have a good night next we have agenda item number eight this is mcneil station 2022 calendar budget this is also a discussion and a vote and welcome dave mcdonnell yep good evening everyone uh mcneil operates under two budgets a fiscal year budget for bd and a calendar year budget for the mcneil joint owners the mcneil joint owners approved this calendar 22 budget on monday uh december 6 the draft calendar year 22 expense budget is 28.5 million as compared to 27.1 million for calendar year 21 the calendar year 22 budget is approximately 1.3 million more than the approved calendar 21 budget the increase can be explained by an increase in the fuel expense budget of 584 000 in calendar year 21 the wood tons were budgeted for 419 000 ton and the price per ton was 27 and 85 cents per ton for an annual average for an annual average in calendar year 22 we have budgeted 420 000 ton and the price per ton is 28 per ton to accommodate the current wood chip market the remaining expense budget increase of 781 000 is due to the rising costs of material labor clean calendar year 22 annual overhaul and rising property tax the capital budget for calendar year 22 is 2 million as compared to calendar year 21 which was 1.5 million for a difference of 500 000 the main reason for the increase of our capital budget is we did not have an annual overhaul in calendar year 21 due to covid we last had an overhaul in september of 2020 our next overhaul is approved by iso and starts on april 23 2022 are there any questions i'm seeking the berlington electric commission approval of the calendar year 22 budget for the mcneil plan uh this is a general question but when i looked at this i went through some detail and then i once again ask myself now what's the prognosis for mcneil and its golden years the prognosis is we we keep moving forward we keep updating equipment for their capital uh upgrades this cut calendar year of 2022 we have to upgrade our stack monitoring system we're updating our turbine controls that due to you know the age of the turbine controls we're finding it harder to get parts you know like anything we keep replacing things as needed we keep prioritizing different parts of the uh plant i know i can't really ask you for a number but i do think about it when we think about how you've made it a strong case darin and others about how necessary this plan is to new england today uh and of course it's uh crucial for uh district heating so i just naturally wonder when i see large uh pieces that have to be fixed replaced and so on um that may not be it's a question that may not have an answer right now but um i've posed it anyway i guess just one thing i would offer further on is in terms of mcneil there's the there's the benefit i think of being a winter uh producing renewable plant which clearly has its benefits now um i would also say that the economics if we look at this winner for example um with prices in the region for electricity being relatively high or projected to be relatively high having a winter producing asset as a utility is a potential positive for us um so i think you know we have to balance the need to continue to invest in the plant so that it can operate uh efficiently and and productively uh with the economics i think we saw during covet the economics of the plant were maybe as challenging as they've been at any time certainly that i've been involved um in terms of uh we had relatively low demand low prices in the region and all sorts of challenges uh with um supply chain uh so this may have been uh that the previous year may have been one of most challenging economic years for the plant uh that i'm aware of on the other hand we're seeing now with the financials that we just discussed at the joint owners meeting on monday things coming much back into balance and uh they're even being quite a positive economic case for the plant kind of now and going forward in the immediate future so it's always a balancing uh discussion i think commissioner heron dean and um you know i think the plant could have a long run of productive benefit particularly if we're able to add district energy and if we're able to provide an important reliability benefit for the region um but we'll have to keep an eye on all the financials obviously and i make sure things are lining up appropriately actually i'll sort of apologize it probably has uh some reference to my own personal state it's not so much that the income is going down it's that the costs are going up happens in old age and that's what i'm asking about but i end with things no there's no good answer for that scott i think i heard you trying to ask a question is that correct no i'm good okay um so i see the the fuel costs have increased a little bit um can you touch upon that because i know that that's been an area that betsy's really worked hard on just um any any feedback on that yeah i just do want to mention that fuel cost is not just the uh cost of the wood that uh the fuel budget has to do with the uh the natural gas that we use for startup has to do with the repair on the loaders it has to deal with the train there's a lot more you know i did reference the uh the price per ton in that in my uh narrative here but there's more to the fuel budget than just the price per ton which is you know i like everything the loaders are very expensive for us you know along with the train and ash removal all that stuff i hear uh commissioner haran dean's question i always wanted the same thing um you know from the 80s and here we are in 2021 i i kind of view it the other way i'm like yes please do keep repairing it um because that's how you make it so it keeps working but i do hear in the back of my mind you know um there's a finite time period for for every plant um so just thank you for for keeping this one um healthy and productive okay thanks any other questions for the commissioners uh do folks feel ready to place a vote on this budget understanding that it was approved on Monday by the joint owners and will be probably most likely going to finance committee next uh no it ends with you guys uh okay for this for the calendar budget okay yes ready okay can i make a motion i move that we accept the budget for mcneal as proposed the second second commissioner shagman i commissioner haran dean hi mr moody hi commissioner stevens hi thank you thanks thanks very much last on the agenda we have the uh commissioners check-in um wondering if anyone has anything they want to raise um i just personally i just want to say thank you again to the team for the hard work um for the revenue bond uh congrats um because i um we'd be in a very different place if the vote had not come through the way it had in terms of um many of the goals for not just net zero but um broader as as a utility so if i could just say thank you as well to the commission for your support of not only the revenue bond but the strategy behind it and all of your work to share thoughts about it with with your neighbors we very much appreciate and i also just looking forward to our next meeting in january wanted to highlight for the commission that we've talked i believe in executive session previously about the moran frame project and and bed's potential involvement there and i will uh likely include an item for consideration on the agenda in january on that we haven't had that discussion a follow-up to that discussion in a long period of time um i just wanted to flag for you that i expect we'll return to that in january and give you a heads up anything else from commissioners not that you're commissioner taren well okay i just again but thank christ and other people for starting to stick in the question of what kind of energy is being saved when i read those really great descriptions of efficiency activities so thank you i ask for it and you're doing it thank you and that's by the way inspirational reading it's really great i think that everybody else is quiet so we could have a motion to adjourn i'll start just by saying i hope you all have a um a lovely holiday however you celebrate um and be safe be healthy second that emotion move to adjourn second commissioner shabman hi miss you herondine hi commissioner moody hi commissioner stevens hi thank you we adjourn at 642 wow thank you everybody all right be well everyone thank you thank you