 Okay. Okay. So I'll start again then. Sorry. The recording did not start when we thought it did. So this is the Amherst energy and climate action committee. August 16th meeting. And the first order of business is to find a note taker Steve roof has volunteered to be note taker for this week. And so I'm going to share my screen from the minutes from last week. Share screen. Share. You guys back where I can see you. All right. And let's have a quick look at the minutes from last week. Are there any comments? Does everyone looked at them or should I go slowly through them? I've looked at them. They look reasonable to me, but I wasn't there. I'm sorry, I'm not here this week. And heard there any comments or questions or. Changes I see one typo here, which I will fix right now. So someone want to. Move to accept the minutes. I moved to accept the minutes. You hear a second. I'll second them. On seconds. And I guess I need to do a roll call. So Steve. Abstain since I was not at the meeting. Yes. Jesse. Yes. Stella. Yes. Don. Yes. And I'm a yes. So. And now onward to our. Make the next thing is always public comment, Martha. Do you have a comment for us or is there another? Let me stop sharing my screen first. If you have a comment, go ahead and raise your hand. And I'll figure out how to get you into the. Meeting. Excuse me. If not, let's just go ahead onto. Updates. So Don. Can I jump in? Sure. Go ahead, Jesse. I don't know if you got my email. Yes. You have to. Early and you have an important update that we want to hear. So, yeah. And I believe I can leave given that there are five of you. Yeah. And I apologize. If it would be okay. We'll do one member update now to accommodate Jesse. And then Don will come back to you. So go ahead, Jesse. I thank you very much. I have wonderful meeting. With the CRC, the community resource committee. Just like they were awesome. Super. It was really productive. They run a great meeting. It was super fun to be there. We went through a lot of. Basically the ideas we're trying to put together. So Anna and I are going to put together. Like a kind of a FAQ on the specialized code and to try to create, like, anticipate all the questions and concerns. About this topic and give good answers. I think we have a ton of buzz around this right now and a lot of information. We had originally hoped to have that already for the September seventh meeting, but I think it's going to be pushed to their next meeting. But what I'd like to do, my ask of this group is I'm going to, I'd like to forward to Stephanie and Lori. The. The list that was generated. I'm going to take a look at it. I think we've got that meeting of. Kind of questions to answer. And. If you have time, I think I feel very on top of this. And like, I have a lot of resources, but if. Take a look at it. If there's questions. That you want posed or answers that, or resources, you're welcome to. I think, I think you're allowed to just. Give that. Send that back to me without, you know, so that is my, I'm not going to ask. There's not a huge rush. I've given, I've asked to postpone it by one meeting. So our late August deadlines. No longer because I won't be able to make it myself. So that's my update. I'm going to send you a list of questions that was generated at that meeting. The next step will be to present that. Through the CRC and have that be kind of a. A grounding document for this whole conversation. That's great. So, so this meeting was mostly about getting the questions together and then in two meetings time, you'll come back with a bunch of answers and an FAQ that maybe we could even post. Yeah, I think it'll be a, I think it'll be a pretty useful document. I'm pulling off of all of these conversations. Lori's given me some good resources and whatnot. That was the intent. I, we did answer some clarifying questions. So the CRC. I think we're going to focus on generating questions, not giving answers. Right. So that's my report. And I'll stick around for a little bit, but I have to hop off shortly. Okay. Thank you very much, Jesse. Appreciate that. Yeah, thank you all. Sorry for disrupting me agenda. I think there's going to be a fair number of updates today. Actually, I have, I have one or two myself. So I'll come back to those later. So. All right. Let's go to. Don then back to Don any news on pace? Probably. Nope. There's no news yet on the. On the new guidelines. But Stephanie is Stephanie back next week? Do we know? Yeah. I'll check in with her on Monday to see if she's heard anything from her. Contacts there at the. The agency. Okay. Thanks. All right. Stella. You have a visitor perhaps next time. Yeah. So hopefully next time Kathy. Shane is going to come. To present on. Active transit plans for the new school. It sounds like there aren't any yet. But she has some thoughts on barriers. To that. There's actually like a lot of stuff going on with transportation right now. That's probably the biggest as far as we're concerned. I'm also on a mailing list, like a parent mailing list. Where somebody raised the issue of lowering speed limits around the schools. And I guess this person had reached out to the town and had been told that it was the state's responsibility, but then they reached out to the state and was told that actually the town does have that power. So there's kind of a grassroots effort to lower speed limits around the schools. At the same time, I don't know if you all have been following this. There's been a bunch of articles kind of. In the Boston globe, there was an article about how kind of building up with Laura brought up at the RMI report. About how Massachusetts isn't doing enough. Like, or isn't doing kind of anything compared to like other states. With respect to reducing. Like. Single occupancy vehicles compared to like. Shifting transit modes. So there's a big article in the Boston globe. And then. If anybody reads the Hanford County Gazette, it sounds like there's a bunch of funding. Becoming available for transit in the state. So. That. That I'm sorry, there's like two meetings going on simultaneously here. So I'm going to. Yeah. I'm also in a two meeting household that we have. We have walled off our. Yeah. So. Where was I? Oh, the funding. So there's. I need to look into all of this some more. Hopefully by the time by next, next meeting. But there's the safe routes to schools program, which could help with some of this if there is interest in pursuing it. And then there's also this, I think it's like. Chapter 90 or title 90 funding. That's becoming available. So. That's the transit report. If anybody is interested in the globe article or the Gazette article and didn't see those. I can send them to Stephanie or Lori to send around. Why don't you go ahead and do that? It's always worth doing. At least that's my opinion. If anybody doesn't want to receive. Links like that. Let me know. It's interesting about the run around on the speed. Speed limit. That's a great thing because I know in my neighborhood, there's been over the years we have asked many times for the speed limit on one particular road to be reduced. And we have been told repeatedly. That that requires a study that we can't afford. That seems to be misinformation. And I believe I can find the email. I believe that comes from. A state senator. Saying that actually towns do have the. That would be, if you have that email, I'd be interested in seeing that too. More for, for personal reasons as well as. For the committee. I'd like to write a response to. To maybe to Paul, perhaps about that, because I think that came from him. That it would require a study. I'm not sure of that. Might have been the facilities guy whose name I can't think of right now. So I just pulled up the email and according it's yeah, it was according to state senator Joe Comerford. Her office was told by mass dot that towns have the ability to establish safety zone speed limits of 20 miles per hour. On roads under their control per MGL chapter 90 section 18 B. That doesn't seem to suggest that there's any study necessarily, but I haven't read. Yeah, no. Um, I'm going to read what it says. Um, MGL chapter 90 section 18 B. Interesting. Okay. Anything else on transportation. Go ahead. The person you spoke with Kathy there with the transportation advisory. Committee. He is the town council are responsible for. I forget Stephanie would know. Yeah, she's on the, the, the build, she's on the school building committee. You're talking about Kathy shown. Oh, okay. Okay. So next week, there's a very good chance I will not be able to be here. I have a prior commitment that is the one thing I can't get out of. In the year. So I might miss this, but if I do, I will watch the. Video I will watch the recording. Is there anyone else? How are we doing for a quorum next week? Next week or two weeks, two weeks, two weeks. I should be present. Two weeks. So 20 30th, the 30th, I think. I will not be present. Who's that Don. Yeah, I'm going to be on a plane heading to London. I'll be at home getting ready for the semester. I have a student orientation. But I usually lead on that Wednesday. I was going to reach out to see if I can get one of my colleagues to do it this year, but it really is my. Per view. So. I think that's the first day of school for Amherst public schools. It is. Yep. Yeah. I got it. I can, I, Lori, I can, as the chair, I think I can, I would be the air to the throne of running that meeting. More than happy to do it. Okay. But as you know. Yep. I wheeled the power. Impressively. So we'll see what happens. I need a, I need a gavel. Definitely going to get a gavel. All right. So the next thing on the list was Laura Drucker's solar outreach. I redirect pay outreach. Proposal. Which since she's not here, I'll just say a few words about, and I might share the document in its current state. If I can find it. I just had it up a few minutes ago. I'm just not sure I can find it again. There it is. This is interesting because I was at a. LEA, I couldn't stay for the whole meeting. It was yesterday. The local energy advocates have a once a month meeting. And their meeting was yesterday and they had a woman who is the. Energy coach. I think that's her title. In Newton, Massachusetts speaking about. Their program and how. Their, you know, their energy program, not just heat pumps, but weatherization and everything else is really starts with outreach. And a lot of her talk was about the sort of outreach they do and how they get the word out. She gave some data about, you know, how many, how many people who responded to a survey found out about the energy coach program through, for example, you know, the mayor's newsletter or something, you know, some other local, local information source. So anyway, it was, it was interesting and there was a lot of. Talk about outreach. So this is the sort of thing that. I think doing outreach of this sort is important. Let me, let me share this document. Just to ask for your input one more time. I will share this. I think this is the link. Let me see if I can find the link. I'm not going to be able to find the link right now, but I will just share it and I'll send the link again later. Where's the share screen? Share. Okay. Right. So you should have that now that the solar and electrification outreach campaign idea, right? Well, that's interesting. That's the first time I've ever shared my screen in zoom when you all didn't get real small and pop into the right corner. I wonder what changed. Anyway, that's nice that that didn't happen. So I can still see you all anyway, this, I think. Doing these sorts of outreach is a, is a fair amount of work. And I think what Laura was asking for here. You know, this again, just to remind you is about this, this Ira. The reason it's in here that previously it wasn't possible for non-tax paying entities to access tax credits for renewables for climate and energy savings projects. Right. So they either had to be in a public-private partnership or they just didn't do them. So now this has become a, with the inflation reduction act, this has become a direct payment through the IRS. But people don't know about it or maybe don't know how to access it or maybe just haven't been thinking about it. So the idea is to get the word out and get people interested and then, you know, point them in the right direction. So I think what Laura was asking for here. I was thinking she wanted one of us is who's going to contact these groups, but no, I think she wants the name of whoever, the email of whoever the person who runs the group is. So I had penciled my name in here at one point. And then I realized, no, wait a minute, Darcy Dumont runs local energy advocates. So if you know who is, you know, the head of each of these groups, this is the start of a mailing list, I think, a distribution list to get the word out. So I was, nobody has been filling this thing out. So I ask if you have a contact at any of these places and know what the best email is, please go into this document and just fill it in. And there was also a note here that Duane was going to add a list of experts that we could maybe call on for different parts of this, to answer different questions, I guess they come in as parts of this. So I think this is a good idea. It's a simple way, you know, outreach is a big deal and a lot of work, but just pulling together an email list seems like a good place to start, right? And then maybe drafting a letter and sending it out. We might consider doing something similar with paste on when we finally get a something to send out. So go ahead, Duane. Yeah, I would just add that. There may be sort of a need to phase this in a bit. One, all the rules aren't written yet. In terms of how you actually access that direct payment, but that's coming, right? But also, I think we should marry the outreach. I mean, the good news is that. Yes, now nonprofits can get the 30% back. Just like the profitable wealthy, wealthy or tax paying entities. But you, you know, an organization like. You have listed there that might have a facility. Like a faith based. Building or something they still need to come up with say 30, $50,000. To a fine, you know, capital to build the project. And. And so I think marrying, which is, you know, really can be tough for non-profit nonprofits or anybody. So I think we can work with Laura on this of, you know, marrying the discussion and the. You know, news about direct payment and so forth with some opportunities for financing. That they can access. And I'm thinking. One UMass five, for example, is very active in this space. But then also. It doesn't hurt to start planning now because it can take a year to start planning. And there's also this really exciting solar for all. Money that is. Likely to come to Massachusetts and all the states pending a application from the state that is now being worked on. And as folks may have seen, there's a opportunity to. Provide comments on their, the state's. Provide comments on what they would put forward to the federal government. This is EPA. I believe it is. That sounds really interesting. And I don't think I've seen that. Four hundred million dollars. They're going for. And that's all for. Be particularly allocated to. Not necessarily any nonprofit. But entities that meet certain criteria. With regard to minority low income. Energy burdens and so forth. So it's a real equity focused. Fund that the state. Will. Will is getting geared up. To. To work on. So marrying that. With. The 30% back. Might be might be. Even more interesting in terms of outreach, even though the solar for all is going to be a proposal. It'll be a while before the state knows whether they are in receipt. And then. A while longer before. The programs can get kicked in. But in the frame in the timeframe of solar development for this type of development, it's probably time for people to be start getting aware of that. Right. Yeah, that's interesting. One thing that also came up at this lea discussion yesterday about this energy coach. Was that someone asked the question. What were lessons learned about the way you implemented this program that you have in Newton. And it's a pretty extensive program. It's got a lot of pieces, right? Lots of things, lots of things are included in it. And she didn't really have a lessons learned, but she had a comment that one of the things they struggle with is how much do you want to wait until you've got the whole thing packaged nicely and you've got a big program and you just put it out there as a, as a done, you know, this is the program. Or how much do you want to dribble out stuff that, that you know, this is right now. But the rules are, you know, the rules might change, which one thing you pointed out, the rules are still changing on the IRS. So do we want to wait or do we want to. Start getting, getting information out right away, right? It's, it's a bit of a balancing act. Which one you're going to do. So it's, it's, it's hard to say. What the right way to do that is I think I, I opt for getting something out sooner. Even if it means we have to put more information out later. Right. And to the same people. Yeah. I was, and I wasn't sure if I was going to do that. I was going to do that later, right? To the same people. I was, and I wasn't suggesting we delay. I just think. Marying, marrying it with. Some guidance on, on, on how, how, on the solar for all and the financing. That would be, would be helpful. Yeah. Yeah. Other comments on. This outreach. I'll just, just say when I read the minutes from the last meeting, this sounded really exciting. And I think it would be a great thing for you, and I think it would be a great thing for you to do. For the, for the other countries. And, and I think it would be, it would be a great thing for you to do. And I think that it would be a great thing for the AC to help develop and sort of help connect the different experts to the nonprofits that might be of interest. So I look. Look forward to further developments on this. And I had a question to EPA solar for all. I had some email messages from the state. Asking for feedback. Massachusetts would be submitting to the EPA for that solar for all. Is that anything that ECAC should talk about, consider and weigh in on? Or should we just do that individually? Does anybody have insight on to that? Certainly individually. So that's the same link I was saying, if you have that link forward, it sounds familiar, but I, it wasn't, if it came through my email, I didn't pay attention to it. So I wouldn't mind having it again. So, you know, if you forward that, I can forward it to everyone or just forward it to everyone, but nobody answered back. No conversation as usual. I can forward it to you, Laurie. Okay, great. And I'll get it out to everyone. Yeah, that's coming. I've got it up here. It's a solar for all applications straw proposal from DOER. And I believe it outlines the idea that Massachusetts has to apply for the CPA money. And they are seeking feedback from residents in the state on that draft proposal. I think there's yeah, a link to it there. Okay, anything more on this topic? If not, there are actually two things coming up. Oh, so I want more, Jesse. Jesse, go ahead. Have a good week, everybody. Thank you all. Thanks. Take care. Okay, so there are two things coming up. Not just the block party. I'm going to use this. I was going to do this as a update, but I realized that I might as well talk about it now. There are two things coming up. There's the block party in September, and there's also an open house at the Hitchcock Center on August 26. And Stephanie wrote me a few days ago that they would love for ECAC to table about heat pumps. She asked if I'd be willing to bring this up at the meeting in terms of member updates. But since we're doing the block party, I thought I'd mention this too. I can't do this right now because I'm in between moving my mom into assisted living and orientation at UMass, which I run for the graduate students in physics. So there's no way I'm going to be able to do this, but it only runs from 10am to noon. So it's not a big time commitment. So if anybody is available on August 26 from 10am to noon for the Hitchcock Center, might be nice to participate there in their open house. And the other thing is the block party, which is number five on our list on the agenda list for today, that there is a block party coming up. Let me find that information. Yes, block parties being held September 21st from five to 9pm. So just in the evening, four hours. Town tables will be together in front of the fire station. And the question is, does ECAC want its own table or do you want to share a table? She wants us to decide at this meeting. So why don't we start with that one? Since that's the actual agenda item, and we'll circle around back to the Hitchcock thing. What do you guys think about doing something like last year again at the and like we did it, it's similar to what we did at the sustainability festival. But at the block party and that Jesse, I think Jesse was leading it last year, right at the who else went to the block party last year? I know I couldn't do that one. I was there for a while. Not the not the weeks kind of had shifts. Yeah, yeah. So block parties coming up September 21. So what day is that a Saturday? What day is that? I'm just checking the first is the Thursday. Oh, okay. So that makes it a little easier. So I did say the 21st right September 21 from five to nine. Right. So I have nothing on my calendar at that time. So I could conceivably commit to being there. Was anyone else want to, you know, I could do an hour or two if someone also do an hour or two. I'm happy to do an hour or two. Okay. So let me make a note here. I think we'll do the same sort of thing again, just maybe maybe some variations on it. Maybe we can actually have some outreach around, you know, around this IRA, some sort of a little we had some flyers and little I don't think a lot of people use them. But maybe find some way to keep track of who actually uses the QR codes that we put together for these different things. Or maybe just make a little flyer up and just post it for people who are interested on the outreach project that Laura's been working on that we just talked about. Yeah, I think it would be nice if we had something fairly specific and focused to tell people about and catch their attention and encourage them to follow up in some way with more information via QR code or something nice doing it is we had I think in the last time we had a big sheet where we asked people to put stickers and different questions, agreement levels. I think that's good. But it's also really nice if we have something to share something specific to to give to residents. So what do we want to focus on is any any I think if we had do we have a flyer from the workshop on heat pumps? We do. And I have a QR code for that and everything because that was on I have that we can focus on heat pumps. But if we're going to do that, we probably also ought to do weatherization or something like that, which is also what we did at the at the sustainability festival. That's something that maybe focusing since this is an Amherst block party and we have such an enormous rental population, maybe something focusing on what renters can do in the way of weatherization and saving money. Oh, you know what else? I know something that came up the other day. I don't think a lot of a lot of our new students or old students realize that they can change their electric provider and save some money that way. So save energy, save money for renters. Yeah, that may might ask Stephanie about that. That sounds good. I'm just wondering if it has it has some implications on the Valley Green Energy. Oh, right. They're not there yet. But that would be something also to I'm sure Valley Green Energy will probably be at the block party. If they're not, they should be. If we there was a question about sharing a table, that would be one group we could share a table with. Seems like if that's a town, is that a town or is that independent from the town? That's independent from the both. It's it's a multi town effort. So it's not independent from the town, but it's it's outside of the town. It's it's three towns. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But is it the Valley Green Energy itself is kind of a quasi government thing or? Yeah. Yeah, I think it's considered a municipal electric, right? Yeah. Municipal energy company. So yeah, I think that would be especially it's probably going to be a while before people can choose Valley Green Energy or can opt in. Yeah, that's they should know it's coming. Isn't it an opt out or an opt out? Yeah, I think it's an that's where I'm a little bit unsure if you're if you're if you have opted in with a competitive supplier, you may not be automatically enrolled in Valley Green Energy. It may be only if you're on basic service. The basic service is often the most expensive one or has been in the past. I don't know if it still is because I went off it when it was tripling my energy bills. When they when we first started having choice, the basic service through Eversource was outrageous. So a lot of people I think switched at that point and have been switching ever since because once you switch once, there's nothing to keep you from doing it again. Once you figure it out. So that's interesting. I don't know what the rules are there. So I will check in with Stephanie on that. But that's you know, if we're asking about this, then it sounds like a great topic for an outreach table. Yeah, I would just yeah, I guess I would just stress to the extent that we're trying to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is really stress, right, the opportunity to switch and up up for greater greater renewable energy portion in your energy mix. Yep, and almost certainly save yourself some money if you're in the basic service. Yeah, maybe if you opt up for more renewables, maybe. Hard to tell. Okay, that's definitely a checklist Stephanie first. All right, so Steve and I are doing it, but if anybody else wants to do that, so what about while we're on this topic? Excuse me. While we're on this topic, rat terriers like to climb. While we're on this topic, what about the Hitchcock Center? It's only it's 10 days away. I'm a strong supporter of the Hitchcock Center, but I'm awake. It's a weekend and I'm away. Yeah, I think it's a bad time of year for a lot of us. Yeah, maybe a way I think if I coming back either the day before that day, so that might be a little bit challenging. What's the event? It's a Hitchcock Center open house. Yeah, I've not been there before. So I don't know much about it, but I'll read you this email again. Let's see. Where's the email? Hang on a minute. Oh, I had it in my notes. I actually put it right in my notes for today. Okay, open house C below. So there's a lot more information here. Let me find this email in a second. There we go. So this email came from Colleen Kelly at the Hitchcock Center. There's a flyer should have been in our packet. Oh, dear, I'll send it to everybody, but it's a community sustainability open house, strength building through energy efficiency and resilience. It's at the Hitchcock Center. Come learn about community resources that can help you save money, beat the heat and breathe cleaner air in your home. Go on a tour of the living building with a scavenger hunt for kids to see sustainability in action and learn about how your family can access the visitor center, discovery yard and gardens. Meet the Crest team. I don't know what C-R-E-S-S, do you know what that is Dwayne from Amherst? That's the de-escalation like the police alternative. Yeah. Oh, excellent. Okay. Team from Amherst, learn from CET about energy retrofits for your home and learn from the town about installing heat pumps. Oh, I guess we're there. We'll have snacks, prizes, mini cupcakes and from care free catering, cakeery and take home actions. So it really does seem like one of us ought to be there. This did that last part seem to imply that maybe Stephanie is Stephanie, I think is going to be there. Or she's already signed us up. Let me see what she had to say about it. Hang on a minute. Stephanie. Let me just find this again. Hang on a minute. Hitchcock. See if there was anything else. Table at the Hitchcock. It's having a workshop. They wondered if eCAC would want to table. I suggested you might consider providing information about heat pumps. Oh, that's how come we're on that? So this would only be from 10am to noon. So yeah, she asked that originally back in July. And I guess we forgot about it. She sent us a note on July 20th all of us. And then emailed me again more recently, five days ago, circling back to it because we kept forgetting about it. So 26th, 10th, noon. I'm going to be a basket case. Yeah, and I just, I mean, I would love to do that. I'd love hanging out with the Hitchcock Center folks. And it sounds like a great community event. I just, we may be coming back from our vacation on that day. I will check and let you know if I can attend the event. Okay. Yeah, it's just coming in off the bad time. Alright, I'll put a note there. I'll also reach out. So someone's put in the minutes, please, that Lori will reach out to Jesse and Laura to see if either of them is available. Who else isn't here today? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. I think that's it because we're usually nine and we're short two at the moment. So yeah, I'll reach out to, okay, and I'm making a note for myself as well. Okay, next thing on the agenda, if there's no more discussion about the block party. We had some good suggestions. Yes, the rental disclosure bylaw discussion. Okay, so this is a new sort of thing that I wanted to start. And that I think there was some interest in starting. This is mostly brainstorming at this point. So last year, there was this effort to include. So who is who is who is leading that the rental bylaw? Okay, Steve, why don't you remind us what transpired and where we left it? And the question is, where do we go from here? What's the best strategy for getting this topic out there again, and figuring out a way to get the information that we need? So we did we had a couple of us working with a coach sponsored by the RMI. And that was the the BEA group. And we this was quite a while ago, maybe two years ago. Now, we did we were working on sort of getting more better understanding of the rental housing stock in Amherst. And one of the things we did do was to get that empower grant that Stephanie has described to us several times, which is getting going, it took a long time to get the grant and finalize things. And that is providing support for renters to organize and survey other renters to find out sort of what would they like and what would they need in terms of energy efficiency in their rental units. So that's ongoing. It's getting started. We then the opportunity came up when the Amherst council was began revising the rental registration bylaw to potentially put in some new criteria for improving energy efficiency. I guess there's two things that potentially get in some new criteria for energy efficiency, but also as part of the permitting process, the permit application specifically to ask additional information about rental properties that wasn't available from the property cards or in the town's database. So that was probably this past year. I worked a lot with that. We put some language in there. We had a list of questions about the building stock that the for the permits, how old is the building, what kind of insulation is present, how old is the heating system and various things. And and we had proposed some provisions for requiring mass save inspections every five years. Most of that ended up getting cut out. There wasn't much support for it. So while the CRC was considering and revising their drafts, at least the energy efficiency components got dropped from it. And they felt like that was didn't quite align with the purposes of the rental registration bylaw, and that it was complicated enough that it could perhaps be its own thing. I don't know if they are keeping some of our suggested sort of information gathering questions in part of the rental permit, I'll have to ask. So maybe if we're lucky, they will still be asking some of those questions about energy use, or at least the nature of the building, how much insulation it is, how old the heating system is that sort of thing, that may become more available and give us more information about the housing stock. Yeah, so that's this transpired this past winter and spring. And I have not myself picked it back up to think I haven't had a chance to think too much about how to resurrect it. But I think it would be a great thing to resurrect. Yeah, I think this is really important, because having, you know, on one hand, you don't want the town to be going and people we already have reputation in this town for having an awful lot of rules and regulations, but you want to find the easiest possible way to get this information because you really do need it to figure out how you're doing, you know, who you're reaching, who you're not reaching. So you know what to do next, right, you know, you know where the low hanging fruit are, and you know where to go and where to reach out to. So this is in my mind pretty important. So the question is, how do we proceed? What's the best way to get this sort of information that is the easiest for landlords and renters and folks in general? There's several different strategies that other communities have been using. See if I can remember them now. The one is requiring a energy disclosure, energy use disclosure of some sort when a building is sold, when a property is sold, there's a requirement to have kind of an energy rating of the building included as part of the listing and sort of public information during that time of sale. And so some communities have adopted that. Others, I believe have adopted something similar, but every time a rental unit goes up for rent, there's a requirement that the estimated utility costs have to be provided, or perhaps a score from one of the building energy score systems has to be posted as part of the rental information. Those are two strategies that have been adopted in some places. Other communities in Massachusetts and elsewhere are putting energy efficiency requirements on larger buildings, not necessarily rental units, but larger commercial buildings or buildings over a certain square footage. So Cambridge, I believe has such regulations. It's tricky. One of the things that we can't do in a community is we can't make any requirements that conflict with the statewide building codes. We can't say no, no community can make a rule that says you have to have more insulation than is required by building code. However, it was thought to be perhaps possible if you have some kind of a energy efficiency goal and there are multiple pathways to achieve that goal without the community, government or prescribing specific things, that that might work. Although I don't know whether that's actually been tested in Massachusetts. I could go through my notes and pull together a little bit more coherent summary of those different strategies. And, and we could talk about those in a future meeting is one option. But I think I think that would be a great thing to do, Steve. And if anyone has any other thoughts, I mean, my goal tonight was just to get a conversation started and get us thinking about it again. So if there's any other that's very useful. I hadn't I hadn't realized the whole trajectory of this from the, from working with RMI, I didn't even realize that part of it to do the rental bylaw disclosure bylaw. So that's interesting. So the question is, how do we regroup and come at it again? And what's the best way to do that? That maybe leverages something else that's already there, like like a sale, I mean, sale seems to be a soft target, right? There's so many so much paperwork you have to do for a sale anyway. It just makes sense that there should be an energy disclosure. There's already the requirement, the requirement or is just most people do it. It seems to me that every time I've been on the market for a house or been selling a house, which has only happened three times. I've either I've gotten the list of the bills in the last year, and I've also provided it. So I don't know if that's law or just, or just, yeah, I think it's just done anyway. Don't think it's law. You can, yeah, certainly buyers can request that information and sellers can provide it. Formalizing that. Yeah. Well, and traditionally, it's the real estate industry that has opposed that quite strongly whenever those proposals come up. They, they're not at all interested in that. Of course. It is a soft target is also a rather sort of infrequent target because it's the it's relatively rare that the units go on sale. They go up for rent every year. But the sale the frequency of sales is pretty low. Right. There is an effort in Massachusetts to develop some statewide energy efficiency standards for large buildings that came out of last year's statewide act to improve solar and everything else. That's a study, I think that's going forward and it might be another year or two before they adopt or propose anything specific. And that would probably be along the lines of requiring larger buildings to report their energy use through the energy, the EPA's energy star, what's it called? There's a monitoring platform that energy stars put together that I don't know about it. Blanking on the name of it. It's fairly widely used for larger building complexes and utilities in many cases can provide the data directly to the platform so that building owners or managers don't have to sit there and tap in energy information directly. That would be the obvious thing, wouldn't it? Would that be the hers rating? No, not that specifically. I could look at my notes. It's a program energy. It's quite a neat platform. I've played around with it a little bit. You enter in as many details about your building as you wish. It can get very detailed in terms of adding our values for walls and a number of windows. You can do some modeling in it, but one fairly straightforward thing is basically just compiling the energy use and you get, I think it does become a energy per unit area kind of rating, which Jesse has talked about in the past. It's energy use per square foot rating. So that's interesting. This is a voluntary, I'm confused as to what this is. Is this a voluntary database or is there a It's a voluntary database for most places. However, some communities are using it as a requirement now using that platform. I'm looking through my notes here to see if I can remember the name. That would be helpful. And using that software platform, that online platform to report energy use. I think Cambridge may be using it since it's a pretty well-established program. Goodness. Where would that be? This dog knows it's dinner time. I think that's what's going on here. I might need to deal with this if he doesn't stop bouncing around anyway. I think as far as that, that's getting the thing that it's separate from rental properties, it's big buildings. And I think that's going to be coming down at a statewide level. So I would suggest we don't need to develop our own thing in Amherst because there should be a statewide program coming in a couple of years on that. Okay. So this database thing is big buildings only, not smaller structures. That's right. Okay. So it's good for something. Someone has a lot of rental units for landlord. So this sounds great. I would love to know if you remember the name of that or the link to it, just please again send it. Yeah. You don't have to do it right now. Let me, sorry. Hang on a minute. Let me see if I can get this guy some food. I'll be back in two seconds. Okay. What is that called? It's called Portfolio Manager. EPA Portfolio Manager. Excellent. And it's free to use. To get started, you do need to go in. Someone needs to go in and enter information about buildings, like the square footage and at least some estimates about the type of construction and the insulation. And then you can create links. So when I did it, I was able to create links. So data from Eversource for that property was eventually would float in automatically from Eversource into the Portfolio Manager. That's fantastic. So the energy companies already have the ability to do this, to feed data to wherever they get a request from. They do accept for not Berkshire Gas. Berkshire Gas is like 50 years behind the times and barely even has a website. So I believe they did not have, they're not participating in that program. So that was one that I had to tap in, type in the monthly usage values. But then the Portfolio Manager provides tools to give those energy usages and compares that I believe with buildings in the same region. Similar buildings in a similar climate region and provides some other support and help for, I think for helping building managers find ways to reduce energy use. All right, so that's interesting to know about too. So let's keep this on the agenda, maybe not next time, but the time after, you know, sort of every other week until we have some plan. Yeah, in fact that just reminds me, Laura Drucker just sent out something before this meeting and it about a looking for you here in my e-box. Maybe it came out. Energy, yeah here it is. Laura, you forwarded it to us. Laura started it. It's from Cora Weisbord, who is our coach in the electrifyingbuildings.org. So I've worked with her quite a bit and it's an event, slides and recordings, energy, efficiency and electrification for renters. So that event was sometime previous, but the slides and recording of the event are available. Yeah, I mean, I haven't had time to watch it, but that's on my list of things to do. Yeah, there's some good organizations out there, the ACEEE, which I can't remember exactly what that stands for, American, something something for energy efficiency or electrical energy efficiency. The Green Energy Consumers Alliance, there's a couple of other programs that are helping with sort of the electrification and energy efficiency strategies. Yeah, yeah. We wouldn't have to go it alone and event something all fresh. There's lots of ways to get started on that. So I would encourage, I guess, other ECAC members to look at that that that came out August 2nd is when Lori sent it to us and it has energy efficiency and electrification for renters as part of the subject line. Right, all right. So anything else on that topic or shall we move on? Okay, we're going to move on next our staff updates, but there are no staff here. So I think we can probably skip that unless anyone knows of a staff update that we should know about. And then ECAC member updates, we had a discussion with Jesse earlier and I also brought up the Hitchcock Center thing that we keep forgetting about and that if I have to I'll try to go but I'll reach out to Laura and Jesse about that to see if they're willing to do that. In other news, I have a I'm going to be teaching this semester Monday and Wednesday until 4.15. So starting a meeting at 4.30 is going to be a little difficult. We can talk about this, well I won't be at the next one so we can't talk about the next one, but I was going to figure out I think most of the time I think what we can do can be done in an hour and a half. So I wonder if it wouldn't be worth just starting at five and trying to just go to 6.30. It'd just be easier for me. It's going to be the next six or seven meetings. I'm going to have this problem of of if I have to be there at 4.30 I can. I've run to my office and I do this meeting for my office at work but I would rather have time to go home. So something I just wanted to mention that I didn't realize I thought the class ended at four but it ends it it's a lab and it ends at 4.15. So this will be for the fall semester? For the fall semester. So I'm wondering if we can go from five to six thirty. I'll discuss with Stephanie too but does anybody have anybody dying to keep meeting two hours? Do you think we need the full two hours more than once in a while? Because there are times when we need two hours I think but I don't think every meeting we need two hours. That would be fine with me. I think in some of the meetings of the past where we've had presenters having an hour for our business and an hour for the presenters felt a little bit rushed. Yeah and maybe we can if we do that this time around yeah having just an hour for our work seemed a little rushed but if we did want to have a presenter then I would have no objection to doing a 4.30 meeting on those days. So starting a little earlier for the presenter to give them time and then doing our business in the second half. So yeah I have no issue with that. It gets tricky if it goes later than six thirty but as long as it ends at six thirty. I think if we know we have an issue that is going to take a little more time then again I could start at 4.30. I just have to rush or maybe I could ask Jesse to chair the meeting for the first few minutes until I get there. That's another possibility. So I'll talk to Stephanie about that and see what she thinks. Yeah I have no problem at all. I'm starting at five and then trying on normal days trying to do an hour and a half sounds fine with me. I would just also ask Stephanie if there's a real problem or a perceived problem of having different start times just in terms of confusing the public on any given time when we're meeting it. It's all noticed correctly but people never know for starting at 4.30 or 5. That's a good point. It's nice to have a regular time. Lori I don't have a problem either with starting at five. All right but keeping in mind that going past 6.30 is a problem for for some. So all right so with that what did we have for our next agenda and oh are there any other sorry any other member updates? I'll just provide an update since the word's getting out a bit more publicly that we the my day job the clean energy extension we are announcing our solar forum western mass solar forum. It's going to take place over four Tuesdays in September and I feel badly the words getting out because already from some of the outreach that others are doing but we we have not quite sent out widespread outreach yet of which this committee and my solar bylaw working group will be on an email from from that I'd be sending out but the words getting out there so so expect an email probably from me or somebody from the clean energy extension about that but you may see something out there but for Tuesdays starting each one starting at noon in September covering different topics with regard to solar sighting solar equity different perspectives conversation discussions a number of different speakers state state speakers local speakers a couple national speakers and really meant to sort of help to bring some understanding and understanding of different perspectives on this and sort of elevate the conversation and educate folks on what's going on and what the issues are with solar and sighting so I'll get more information out about that but that's happening it's it's all hands on deck in my group pulling this off okay cool um so that that that sounds really interesting I didn't know anything about that Dwayne so I think Tuesdays I might actually be able to make it too so um all right any other updates if not I think we are at our public comment period again let's see um and we have Martha any oh Martha has her hand up allow to talk there you go go ahead Martha oh really more to more to say hello and you know you're doing variety of interesting things and it seems to me that this coming nine months is going to be the most critical time for a lot of projects that the state funding or the federal funding to get them underway because we just don't know what's going to happen to funding in the future you know if we have a federal regime change we kind of can anticipate which way the funding would go but you know so a lot a lot of these projects sound great and it's maybe a matter of deciding on priorities and and how to really push them and maybe involve some outside groups to to help too um I think as you know I'm on the solid by the working group at the moment but I think that's going to have an end Dwayne we're counting on it yes and um I I would say uh the announcement about transportation funding I saw the article in the Gazette and the Pioneer Valley Transit Authority is apparently going to get some funding and you know might want to be thinking of whether to recommend any particular usage I know some of the people in Amherst who are you know low-income people say feel that the PVTA schedule is really organized around students and you know even your the carb report noted that there wasn't any simple way to get from say the East Hadley apartment complexes to a shopping center and so that might be under under transportation it might be something to to consider given that they have funding so okay well thank you thank you Martha I'm sorry about the puppy interruption I'll just build on Martha's an announcement um also um and there's no other public except Martha so she knows about this but the rest of the act we do have the solar bylaw working group is meeting as we usually do this Friday 11 30 the key thing on the agenda is a discussion about how we're going to approach solar siting and zoning and force uh and so um if if you're interested you can participate in that listen in and make comment at appropriate times and would look forward to that and if we can't be there I really look forward to getting an update next time going yeah I know just for the minutes did you repeat the focus of the upcoming meeting uh well normal business but the the prime time the one we're uh dedicate most a good part of our meeting now on the actual bylaw uh and writing is is uh working through sort of a framework um not not diving right into the language but a framework of how we want to think about solar zoning uh and uh in in force and what set of of um potential restrictions we might want to place on that 11 30 all right so if they're thank you again Martha always appreciate it I'll also make a public service announcement there was a few who were um followed uh sort of legal issues with regard to climate um and uh and particularly with regard to um ethics and and uh constitutional law Don um really um milestone uh uh ruling out of Montana uh earlier this week I think it was uh if not it's not early this week um uh that you know for the first time uh a ruling of from a legal jurisdiction uh finding that indeed uh the rights of our young people are being infringed upon by not properly addressing climate uh or more so maybe having states not address climate in their um permitting and and and uh funding opportunities so and keep in mind this this forms of this lawsuit have been going on for a decade um at the federal level a bit stalled at the federal level uh but um this and they've been working with a number of different states this is uh our children's trust um but they had a breakthrough in Montana uh a little bit unusual in Montana because there's actually language in their constitution that protects or guarantees the rights and inalienable right of um to a to a clean and healthy environment uh so they really pitched it on that uh but um it's really about um the rights liberty pursuit of happiness uh that's enshrined in our own in the federal constitution as well that they were uh that they're really driving at so it's really um it's really um not only interesting I I have a segment on this in my class uh and so I'm gonna really dig into what happened in Montana um uh because it's really about you know ethics and and morality and and constitutional law and um and intergenerational uh equity issues um yep and sorry Martha had another comment and Martha I'm sorry I accidentally muted you I think I was trying to unmute myself oh no I was just going to comment on what what Dwayne just said because it seems to by now you know the climate issue is really two parts in the sense of you know getting our act together to reduce emissions just as fast as we possibly can but also by now the other part of it is what might call climate resilience or you know coping with the fact that we have now these extreme events and there is a need for you know policies that help protect people from you know extremes of flooding or droughting or whatever and you know it's now by now a two-part package deal I would say that I see in terms of protecting the rights of the next generation just a philosophical point here and Dwayne since you know about this more than I do the Montana was unique in that the Constitution had that provision about the the rights for a clean environment but wasn't also the target another state law that prohibited state agencies from considering global warming for permitting for permitting exactly and that yeah yeah so they were going after that um that's um well it's interesting they were using the Constitution to say this law is illegal constitutionally uh illegal non unconstitutional because it it doesn't provide that protection yeah and so there was a rule uh in Montana that despite efforts uh the legislature declined or disallowed the carbon accounting in any uh permitting decisions on whether to move forward with projects or not Don you probably know the nuances but always in these cases it's finding it's finding the right and that's what makes Mont that that's why so many of the cases have not not gone anywhere um and that the Montana case did because of the language of their Constitution and that's always the hard part is is finding an enforceable right um and while we all philosophically agree in in in lawyer terms if there's not a if there's not an enforceable right somewhere in the state laws or the Constitution it's very very difficult very very difficult yeah and that state right was added to their Constitution in Montana was in the 70s relatively recently maybe even the 80s I think I heard that as well yeah yeah so it's it's it's not impossible to add that to as those folks are taking themselves in the back now you could definitely I mean I mean look we could take a page from um the um uh you know the abortion movement um and gather signatures in various you know states to have enshrined in their state Constitution um this kind of a right yeah I mean that's what's going on in you know all over the country now with you know post um Dobbs I wrote the name um post post Dobbs is is running around getting rights enshrined so that they are Hawaii was the case yeah right yeah yeah and I think I mean and I want to go too far philosophically here but it seems like I mean compared to 10 years ago when the outjurgeons trust started with the federal charge I mean I think there's two things what in terms of the rights I mean that you know the US Constitution does provide the rights to a life liberty in the pursuit of happiness and with the impacts of climate over the particularly becoming prevalent over the last 10 years I think it's they have a little bit more to latch on to and then second I think they also have to show that there is some remedy to to uh that the government can take to improve the situation I think with um so much advancement of of clean energy now um and and demonstration that that's economically viable and even beneficial I think they they're in better shape to demonstrate that as well so it'll be interesting but um the other thing I find fascinating about is that you know just like in in the rest of politics the legislators and the politicians can say anything that they want they don't have to abide by facts and they don't but in a court of law and we're going to see this in other areas of our politics shortly um you have to stick to facts um and facts tend to win uh or at least uh be a lot more um convincing so um it's really good to see pardon me if I don't have confidence in our supreme court interpreting life liberty in the pursuit of happiness as entitling uh you know I'm not real optimistic on that interpretation removal air and renewable temperatures yeah yeah this is um yeah we could go on all night about this but maybe we should maybe we should wrap it up um but I I agree Martha that these next few months this is this next year year and a half it's going to be critical in so many different ways um not only for the money that's available but for the attention finally that climate change is getting because of really obvious and terrific you know uh events all over the world um happening as a result of it so all right and with that happy thought to life um the happiness yep okay we have a move to adjourn here here all right oh in favor my in that case we'll see you all um in two weeks and um I may not be here but but Jesse will be running the meeting if not hopefully we'll have a guest and a quorum super right right thanks take care that was good take care everybody bye