 All right, it is 5.30, and I'll call this meeting to order. This is the April meeting of the Burlington Board of Electric Commissioners, and we meet every second Wednesday of the month at 585 Pine Street, hopefully here in the future, and online, so anybody who might be joining us this evening or we'll see this later on Channel 17, don't feel free to join us either online or hopefully eventually down at the, at 585 Pine, we always encourage and welcome the input of Burlington Electric Ratepayers. So please, you know, your concerns, your praise, whatever, whatever, whatever can match it, please join us, join in the conversation and help improve your electric utility. All right, that being said, we'll start off with the agenda. Are there any changes or additions to this evening's agenda? Going once, going twice. All right, hearing none. We'll move on to item number two, the minutes of the March 9, 2022 meeting. Are there any additions or anything, any substantial changes that, other than clerical that need to be brought up from those minutes? Nope. I'll do it again. Okay, I'll do it again. Okay, I'll do it again. Leave well enough alone. All right, we'll let him come back before we take a motion. Let's just take him just a second now. Just gonna let Bob come back here real quick before we do this. So easy. All right, so now no touch. All right, so hearing no changes to the minutes, I'll entertain a motion. Make the motion to approve the minutes of March 9, 2022. Second. Second. Motion is second. All in favor, we'll take a roll call. Commissioner Shagman. Aye. Commissioner Herendine. Aye. Commissioner Moody. Aye. Commissioner Whitaker. Aye. Thank you. The ayes have it. The minutes are approved. We'll move on to item number three on the agenda today, which is the public forum. This is a chance for anyone in the public, whether you're on the phone or you're in here in the Zoom, maybe possibly even a 585 pine to speak up. Do we have anybody in the public that is here that would like to make any? Okay, great. Well, as I mentioned earlier folks that are going to see this later on channel 17, the commission always appreciates your input as does the the Burlington Electric and anything, you know, whenever you're always welcome here to bring in your voice to the conversation anytime. Second Wednesday of the month, 530. All right, we'll move on to commission corner. This is an opportunity for commissioners to say what's on their mind if they've got any concerns or questions or things possibly not related to or were likely not related to the agenda, experiences, whatever, kind of a free, you know, have at it. But does anybody has anything for the commissioner corner? I wanted to compliment the mayor for bringing Dr. Sturman from MIT to do a run through of their model for predicting greenhouse gas emissions as a function of various inputs that was presented to the community an hour long webinar was excellent. And thank you very much. Any other commissioner corner items for anybody? Going once, going twice, sold. All right, we'll move on to item number five on our agenda and that's the general manager's update. Now you will turn the floor over to a general manager Springer and just let you know that our chair is on the way and she should be coming in momentarily. She's coming in from up here. So all yours. Thank you, commissioner Moody. Good evening to the commission. I know we have quite a bit on our agenda for you this evening. So appreciate it in advance although all the work we're gonna be doing tonight. One thing that I did wanna flag and maybe it's something that you all might wanna discuss in the commissioners check-in at the end of the meeting perhaps given that the chair isn't here at the moment is that we from the staff are prepared to resume in-person meetings or at least hybrid meetings with an in-person component for those who are able to join starting in the May timeframe with the May meeting so that we would have a presence at 585 Pine Street but also a team's option for those who may need one and of course we can't anticipate fully what the public health situations will be at that time but a number of us are within the hybrid environment spending more time within the office and a number of other city meetings are happening either in-person or hybrid. So I wanted to at least tee that up for the commission to discuss. Again, perhaps it can be an item towards the end of the agenda through the check-in. I wanted the commission to be aware as noted in the report, we have successfully applied over one million in ARFA funds to residential customers who had an arrearage as of late March and this will help to clear the backlog of overdue balances prior to our resuming the normal policy of disconnection for non-payment communications which would start in May. Nobody would be disconnected for non-payment in May. Customers would simply start to receive a notice then if they were having an overdue bill at that point in time and we will still and are continuing to provide arrearage assistance through the state programs connecting customers with those. We've had particular success with the emergency rental assistance program getting a number of customers support through that program. There's also a newer program which we've had more limited exposure to which is for income qualified homeowners as opposed to renters. So they're called V-Rap and V-Hap are the acronyms with one being for renters and one being for homeowners. We'll continue that effort and we're continuing to support commercial customers who express that they have a hardship and need assistance but we're asking them, those that are able to pay their past due balances now as well. I see commissioner Whitaker may have a question so I'll pause there. Yeah, I just wanted to, I was a little bit confused about a couple of things. So this program, is it automatic? Like if people are in arrearage, you send them a note saying we're clearing your balance. And then are we also encouraging them to sign up for the low income program that James talked about last time we had the commission meeting? Good questions. So with the residential customers, we've sent a communication to them letting them know we have automatically applied the ARPA funds to clear their past due balance. They didn't have to do anything further to get that support. For commercial customers, we sent a communication letting them know that we're asking them to pay their past due balance but giving them an option to certify the need for a hardship exemption that would enable them to potentially receive ARPA assistance as well. Currently we have the temporary energy assistance program operating in fiscal year 22. We've had a little less than 60 customers, I think who have completed the application process and maybe around 90 who have applied with, I think 28 to 30 who are in the process. Our hope is, is that if the low income pilot rate that James is gonna present in a final form this evening and which if you all recommend it, would go to the city council and the board of finance for approvals on the 25th of April. Our goal would be to transfer all eligible customers who are already signed up for the temporary assistance program automatically to the new low income pilot rate and then we'll make an effort further to encourage customers to sign up for that rate which would be available in fiscal year 23. Okay, that helps. Cause I was trying to connect the dots between those things and I was curious cause one had such a low participation rate but clearly there's a lot of people in need but that helps and then we're gonna talk about it later. So sorry to interrupt, yeah. That was a great questions. Appreciate it. So just a huge thank you to our in particular, our customer care teams, our finance teams that worked on the arrear assistance effort. It was NRIT team as well. It was quite a team effort to pull together all the appropriate information and make sure that that could get applied so the customers are getting the support that they need. We will, I'll just mention briefly, we do anticipate having at least some portion, a smaller portion of the 1.3 million that was originally allocated potentially available and what we plan to do with that is to request permission from the city council to extend that for another period of time in order to support the low income pilot rate as it gets enacted hopefully in fiscal year 23. So I just wanted to flag that as well as that'll be part of the later conversation. So moving over to some other items, district energy, we're having regular meetings on a pretty good frequency now with UVM Medical Center and UVM in an effort to wrap up phase three. The funding from Senator Lay, he's been finalized. We're hoping to, we've presented a number of different key kind of economic and other terms with our potential customers that we're working through now. We're getting updated construction pricing given the impacts that inflation and other impacts are having on prices for everything. We're getting updated construction pricing from our previous bidders. And we hope to have a substantive conclusion to phase three of district energy in the very near future. We're working as rapidly as we can to bring that to conclusion. Good timing, I see Chair Stebbins. I was gonna mention my next item is, that the two of us are in a radio ad together along with the mayor on Star 92.9 and WVMT. I've heard it anecdotally myself, I think five or six times mainly because my kids listen to Star 92.9 and if it ever comes on the radio, they yell to me to come up to listen to it. We're certainly interested in a variety of strategies to reach out to our customers and engage them. So this is one kind of experiment that we're doing along with others, digital ads and other things that we're working on. And we also have a bill insert that'll be going out in the next round of bills, focusing on heat pump water heaters and encouraging folks with older water heaters to consider replacing it with a heat pump water heater even before it might break because if you have a conventional water heater and your water heater breaks, you're likely going to consider in an emergency replacing it with the same type of equipment you already have. Whereas putting in a heat pump water heater, for example, might require a little bit of additional work, perhaps a little bit of work on the electric panel, et cetera. And so we're going to encourage customers who have an older water heater to look at the different rebates that we're offering, consider making a replacement decision a little bit ahead of when it might break so that they can switch from fossil fuels to clean technology. And so a variety of outreach strategies, we appreciate the opportunity to test some of those and refine them as we go. There was a great update from Emily Stebbins-Wiloch in the Center for Innovation section, but suffice to say the net zero energy revenue bond was issued. We received, I think, a pretty good interest rate, all things considered. It would have been a little lower if we'd been able to issue last year potentially, but on the other hand, a very low rate compared to historic numbers and that'll benefit us and our A3 rating from Moody's, which we worked to maintain, benefited us as well in that and the lower interest costs will benefit our customers in the years to come as we make payments on that revenue bond and much appreciation to the team that worked on that, both at BED and folks that we worked with at the city and others who made that happen. In addition, a couple other items, I just wanted to mention, we have a mandatory cybersecurity training that all of our staff are going through and we have had a lot of great engagement from our new IT director from Erica and her team on taking a number of steps proactively around cybersecurity. I'm sure you've all read in the news a number of different concerns that have been raised around these issues. Just wanted the commission to know that we're taking that. Seriously, as we should, and with our revitalized IT team, we're taking a number of steps to support strong cybersecurity protocols at BED. And then the last item, legislative item, our thermal energy charter change that the commission's aware of that was moving through the legislature has passed in both the house and the Senate is headed to the governor for his action on it. And obviously we're hopeful that that will ultimately be approved and that we'll have an opportunity with the city to consider additional policy development in the coming months and years with that authority in place. We've also been testifying in support of the clean heat standard legislation which has moved through the house and is pending in the Senate as well. And just for chair seven's benefit, I had mentioned that the BED team is prepared to resume in-person meetings in May, perhaps with a hybrid component for those who are interested in joining remotely, but with an option to join in person. And certainly welcome the commission's input on that either now if it's warranted or maybe as part of the commissioner check-in at the end of the meeting. And I will stop there. Thank you. You're still chair, chair. I gladly relinquish command. The gavel is yours. Okay. Thank you for pinch hitting once again. I really appreciate it, Scott. Sorry, it's just I'm trying not to speed too much home from Montpelier. So I apologize. In a way it's been really helpful that we've been remote because it enables me to get home in time. So May might just about work for in-person on my end. But yes, Darren, let's plan on having that discussion at the tail end. So that we just can keep in the flow of all the other items because with the financials and all the fiscal pieces, I wanna make sure that we do have enough time to really dig into that. So thank you for that update. Any questions or comments to the general manager at this point regarding what was in the packet or his general update? No, okay. So then next up we'll move to the financials. This is Emily. We have so many Emily's now and multiple Stebens's. And a lot of Mike's just for the record as well. A lot of Mike's. I was gonna say more Mike's than Emily's still. So. Some extra Jim's. Jim's. So I will, I'll share my screen and jump right in since we've got a lot of financial stuff to cover jump right into the financials. Can everyone see this? Yes. Great. Just make it a little bit bigger for old man eyes. Sure. How's that? Little more, okay. There you go. Well, all right. So I'll jump right in as Darren alluded to last month, February was another good month for BED on the financial side. We had a net income. This year so far we are at 1.3 million for the month as compared to a budget of 1.07. So 294,000 better than what we had anticipated for the month for the year to date were 991,000 ahead of budget. And some sort of highlights for the how the current month performed on the revenue side the sales to customer were down about $69,000. The residential was up 193 but commercial was down 209. So we're still sort of seeing that COVID impact of additional residential use than anticipated but lower commercial. Other revenues were down $315,000, $885,000 that was related to the EU. We'll see the EU side. The big down was on the power supply side on rec revenue. It's primarily due to lower wind and hydro production at the beginning of this year. We anticipated this and we anticipate that may rec revenue will be down for the same reasons. Later this spring when we have another rec revenue month on the expense side, it was very favorable to the extent that the revenue was down compared to budget. The expenses were down more than the revenues were down. So that's why we're ahead for the month. Power supply costs were down $266,000. Our total transmission fees were over budget. ISO was higher due to the January peak load, NIPA was over budget and Velco was under budget. But the net benefit from the production at McNeil in February was very beneficial. The winter energy prices were up as well as the generation was up. This was partially off. We didn't have higher fuel costs, fuel notes sort of in the, as a result of just general inflationary pressures, fuel costs are up kind of everywhere. Additionally, our operating expenses were down $252,000 compared to budget last month, primarily due to lower labor expenses and just timing of various projects. As we've talked about in every other month or as you've talked about with others every other month the pilot expenses down due to the reappraisal last year. And our other income was up this past month due to some additional grant receipts. For the year at a high level, sales to customer is down about $22,000, which is pretty spot on for the year. Same deal, residential is up, non-residential is down. We're down on other revenue due to customer billings down and also the demand side management, the EEU billing or the EEU receipts. We're under budget on power supply, about $49,000 for the year as the result of the REC production coming in lower than it was anticipated in power supply. In total is about $1.5 million below budget, which is about 7%. Purchase power costs are down, transmission costs are down, fuel costs are lower than budget despite sort of increased inflationary pressures. Operating expenses are also down for the year, about $1.2 million. Similar to the month expenses, sort of a variety of things. Labor is down, outside services, materials, et cetera. And our other income is down for the year as we've talked about prior, mostly due to the ARPA assumptions that were in the original budget and our customer contributions have not come in as we anticipated in the budget. That's a sort of quick high-level overview of the month and year to date. I'll pause for questions before jumping over to the capital side and the cash report. All right, March ahead. So on the capital side, if you look at this chart, it shows that we've only spent about 37% of budget to date. A lot of that is due to the timing of the projects. However, if you'll read through the notes, there are a few things that we anticipated doing when we built the budget that we're not gonna do this year. So there was a $1.15 million of anticipated belt-goat spending that we were gonna do this year. Some of the IT Forward project expenses aren't gonna happen until FY23. There was a bucket truck that was budgeted in FY22 that won't be purchased until later. So if you kind of take all of those expenses into account that we know aren't gonna happen, our total projected capital spending for the year is really gonna be at about $6.8 million. So if you compare that to what we've spent year to date, that's about 43% of the anticipated capital budget spent through the year. The McNeil overhaul is gonna occur in the next month or so, so there'll be some significant spending there. So you will see that sort of capital spent to date jump up in the next couple of months and be closer to what budget was. On the cash side, we had another- That's the question. Yeah. The Wynuski one bearing replacement, is there any, I mean, dams are like McNeil. They require such ongoing maintenance. Is there any concern or risk to postponing that? I mean, I would guess not, otherwise you wouldn't be doing it, but I'm just... I think we have Dave on Dave McDonnell or Maneer, either of whom might be able to speak to that. Yeah, no, we have the OEM come every year in the fall. And after examination of it, we didn't need to do that. So that's not on our document right now. Okay, so it was actually that it sort of planned maintenance wasn't really critical after all. It wasn't needed. We have three units over there. We kind of base things on run hours and it just didn't need it, it didn't warn us to do the job. And this is kind of a digression, but I'm guessing we had a couple of really great months with McNeil. I'm guessing with all this rain we might have a couple of really good Winooski one months. I'm just guessing. Yeah, John Clark, I mean, operate over there, sends out how much he expects us to produce each day. The most we can produce is 7.5 megawatts per hour. We're always, I'm always seeing numbers around the high sixes to low sixes, so far so good. I was there yesterday and I can confirm it was cranking at the high six, low seven range with lots of water available. Yeah, that makes perfect sense as I was driving over the bridge today that the river was roaring. So I'm sure we were making some energy for sure. So just an interesting side note, which is that you can actually have too much water and at some point the excess water actually drives your production down. Just so sometimes when you see the water pouring over the dam, the tail pressure is actually climbing. Effective head height of the dam is going down and you see production start to fall off again. So that was an eye-opener for me when I learned it back in the day. Yeah, and the flip side is the last few summers we've had such drought conditions that we're worrying on the flip side about whether or not we have enough aquifer underneath McNeil for fire safety concerns. And so we'll see. Hard to predict. A little dull moment. What's that? It's hard to predict the weather. It's getting harder too, right? Yes. All right, thanks. Just curious about why we were able to push back that bearing replacement. So thanks for the details. Yep. Sorry, Emily. No, no, no worries. It's always fun to learn these things, right? I'll keep going on until we're down to cash. So again, just because we had a great month, as of February 28th, we had $11.9 million in cash and investments compared to $10.59 at the end of January. So about a million and a half, right? Yeah, better. Our credit rating factors have improved slightly since last month compared to how we did in January. So our debt service coverage ratio is up to 5.26, up from 5.15. Our adjusted debt service coverage ratio is 1.43, up from 1.39 in January. And our days cash on hand is up to 145 days. We were at 142 days at the end of January. And I just want to take a moment again to caution. These numbers are extraordinarily good compared to the three-year averages. I think the metrics and I think that that's a good trend and we're hopeful it'll continue. I don't think we're projecting currently that we're going to end the year with the numbers looking exactly like that. We're really benefiting from a couple of incredibly strong months, particularly from McNeil in terms of financial performance during a really expensive winter. So we're expecting at least some moderation. We still expect to end the year with strong metrics, but these are our, these may represent a high water mark for fiscal year 22 in all likelihood in terms of the, particularly the adjusted debt service coverage ratio. And on the other hand with cash, I think you'll see potentially next month or the month after as the ARPA funds are applied, you may see cash get a boost relative to that particular program coming into effect. But just wanted to share those thoughts as we're looking at these numbers. Are there any questions on the FY 22 through February? Financials? But wait a minute. This is Bob also a tangent, but yes, the prices of fuel are going up. I noticed that, especially for wood, but there was also a comment somewhere in our stuff that the wood quality was an issue. Are these related somehow? Are we having a problem getting wood because there's not wood out there and it's not as good as it was and we have to pay more for it? And Dave might want to jump back in on this, but I think we are, I think we may have distinct issues there in a sense that there is upward pressure on wood prices due to upward pressure on fuel costs related to procuring and transporting the wood. I think we had an extraordinary season at McNeil in terms of procurement running from December through March, essentially nonstop for the most part. So we didn't have a problem getting wood for the winter. I think we have, as we do, typically in the shoulder season and the mud season, there may be some challenges getting wood at this exact moment. We're working to build the pile, but I don't know, Dave, if you have some thoughts on that. Yeah, no, what happened? We did have to come offline. It was in March. We just got a few buckets of really extremely wet wood because it kind of put out fire out. It's rare it happens, but it did happen that day. It's poor fuel quality. We were at the end of our line for wood supply. We are building supply right now for the summer months, July and August. But that's what happened when it took us offline. Okay, thanks. Yep. Emily, you're done with everything. Okay. For some reason, I was thinking, I think I was looking at the, that's why. Okay, so I'm jumping already to agenda seven. Any questions or comments on our usual monthly update? No, okay. But thanks for the forewarning. That's probably the high watermark. So good to know. Because we're also just kind of like right keeping it budget. So next we have the fiscal year 23 draft budget. This is a discussion, also an expected executive session. And this is Emily again. And before we dig into this, can you, if I recall correctly, usually what we do is we have this run, you know, a drive by this month. We have a tune up next month that we need to vote on so that it's queued up and ready to go for June. That's correct. Darren, I don't know if you want to jump it and say anything before I put a PowerPoint together with some sort of summary points to walk through the general budget stuff, but I'll let Darren chime in or Emily before diving into that. Yeah, thanks, Emily. I think just a little different this year. In that we are, I think we'll walk through the PowerPoint and answer questions from the commission and open session. We'd like then to have an opportunity to go to executive session to discuss some more sensitive market based pieces of the budget with the commission and give you some insights into those. But we would be potentially prejudicing ourselves if we were to discuss those in open session. So the budget as you're going to see it, and I think it's an interesting juxtaposition with the numbers we just saw, we had an adjusted debt service coverage ratio that's higher than I think we've seen in several years certainly, really strong cash position, you know, BEDs performing well in fiscal year 22. I just want to reset the context that last year we really had I think a 12.5% rate need in fiscal 22, but we only went for seven and a half in balancing, you know, the impacts on our customers with the financial need. So, you know, we're looking at the potential remainder of that being necessary in fiscal year 23. And I think given the strong metrics that we have now, we're still seeing some significant potential headwinds as we head into FY23. So as much as we want to close 22 in a very strong fashion, I think we're seeing some, you know, challenges as we head into 23, those will be reflected in what Emily presents to you and we have as always some potential solutions to those challenges, but we'll get into those more and those will be, I think, reflected in the final budget that we bring to you in May. And just lastly in my own mind at least, even though they're not the same agenda item, the low income pilot rate and the budget presentation are very much aligned I think in that we understand that upward pressure on rates has an impact particularly for our lowest income customers who may have challenges being able to afford that. And so the pilot low income rate that we're developing has been developed very much with the rate pressure from this year and last year in mind. So I guess with that, I don't know if Emily Sevens-Wheelach has any initial comments, otherwise we'd turn it over to Emily Byrne. Thanks, Darren. I will share my screen. Let me know if it needs to be bigger. Should be better since it's a PowerPoint. That's good. I will jump right in. So to start off with, we just wanted to give a high level overview of some of the assumptions that are built into the budget that were, this preliminary budget that we're providing today for sort of where we're at. This does include a 4.9% rate increase, which is what we spoke about I believe a year ago in terms of what, or not a year ago, earlier this summer in terms of what was likely needed, given where projections were. It includes an assumption for cost of living increases. So the IBEW contract expires at the end of the month, or sorry, not at the end of the month, at the end of the fiscal year. So we've put in some assumptions based on where that may end up. There's a similar level of capital investment as, as in prior years. So it includes investments using the proceeds of the revenue bond. Additionally, we've been assumed that annual $3 million from the general obligation bond of the city. And we've accounted for some, you know, continued COVID-19 impacts to the extent we're not really out of the woods. We assume there will be sort of a phase, phase out as commercial businesses reopen, people return to the office with some long-term residential you should's growth has still assumed in the sales to customer projections. The, can I ask you some questions? Yeah, sure. So just wondering. I mean, we worked pretty hard to communicate with Berlin Tonians about the rate increase that we just did. It was along the same time as, you know, our first reappraisal of properties in, you know, over a decade. Just curious, besides the sort of larger commercial rate pairs that came to some of our meetings, have you heard much since then in terms of, you know, Berlin Tonians being able to pay their bills, any feedback about how people experienced that, that rate increase that we just did. I'm just trying to get a sense of, you know, how things are feeling. I know folks are still experiencing, you know, the property tax changes, et cetera. Yeah, I think I could speak to that. I think that other than we had heard from, I think University of Vermont, University of Vermont Medical Center during the previous process, we didn't really have any customers who participated in the rate case itself or the public forum from the PUC or communicated with us directly about the 7.5% change. I guess it's a good moment to say that we've been in regular contact myself and Emily Stebens-Wilach with UVM and UVM Medical Center throughout the course of the last half a year and have consistently cited this number, the 4.9% as being the likely number for fiscal year 23 just so that they could have it for their budget planning processes, which hopefully will, we've improved our communications there. I also want the commission to know that I'm planning to send a note to the city council tomorrow morning following this meeting, letting them know that this is the percentage that we're looking at for fiscal 23, because I think they had expressed as well a desire to have more heads up earlier in the process and not hear about it in late May when we present to the Board of Finance. But other than the pandemic related impacts, which I mentioned earlier that we've helped to clear all of the backlog in residential customer rearages as of late March through the ARPA funding. We haven't heard directly from customers a whole lot about the 7.5%. And two follow-up questions. I guess one thing that I'd love if you could check in with the mayor on and the team at perhaps one of your, you know, STAT meetings or whatnot. You know, one of the things that we learned as we were talking about our rate increase was that there was also going to be a water increase. And just wondering how we can be really, and maybe you already are aware of what other departments might be proposing. So what the full experience ends up being for Burlingtonians. So I'm not sure, are you aware of other departments planning on increases or? Well, I did mention the 4.9%. We had a department head meeting this morning. And so I've mentioned it to all of my colleagues and the mayor that this is the number that we are looking at and that we would present this evening. I'm not aware of what the water department's plans are. I know they made changes to their structure to try to moderate their rate increases as well. So I don't have a specific number that I'm aware of for the water department in terms of what they might propose. Obviously there was a general fund tax increase that was proposed but not approved by. So that won't be taking effect as far as I know. And that would be for the city general fund, which is the majority of departments. But I don't have any insight into what the water department may be proposing at this point. So we certainly could follow up. I know Mike Kannerick has been in touch with the water department relative to our rearage assistance and our resumption of disconnect policy. So I don't know, Mike, if you're on and could confirm if you can maybe follow up and we can share that information with the commission at the next meeting. I am here and I definitely can. Yeah, we had been keeping the water department informed of our rearage plans. And I can definitely be in touch with them about this. Thanks. Just so that we really know, you know, for the person paying the bills, what the total experience might be. And to that point, two follow-ups. First, if you can give a sense for anyone who might watch this at 2 a.m. What, you know, if someone's got an $80 bill or $40 or $120 bill, what did the 7.5% increase really mean on their bill and what would this 4.9% rate increase really mean? Because rate increase is our logo or lingo, but it's not really what people experience. So that's my first question. And Rough Ball Park is fine. My second question is I remember with the previous general manager, we often had conversation as to, you know, what is better? Is it better to have one large increase or is it better to have a series of, you know, step increases? And just wondering what your thoughts are. You know, we had 7.5 last year. The budget that you're looking at right now has a 4.9. Any thoughts in terms of, you know, is there a thought that, you know, further increase would be needed next year, the next year, the next year, just trying to get a sense of, you know, how we discuss this with our neighbors and our community. Sure. I think we don't have bill impacts prepared for this evening. We'll have those certainly for the meeting in May. We presented bill impacts for the 7.5 last year, so we can pull that data back up in terms of what it meant on the average bill. And we can have it for the 4.9. And we'll have as well like we did last year, a comparison in terms of Burlington electrics rates compared to other utilities compared to New England. I think after the 7.5, we remained incredibly strong, particularly on the residential rates in terms of our costs relative to other utilities in Vermont and certainly the rest of New England. And I think on commercial, we were pretty much in line with the average Vermont cost. So we'll prepare all of that in advance of the May meeting. In terms of the rate trajectory, and I think we discussed this some last year and it's still our plan very much. Although I want to note that there are some uncertainties that have presented between last year and this year that we're grappling with, not the least of which is that inflation was running at 8.5% the last month and is at an extraordinary high. Our goal was that the 7.5% over a five-year planning horizon would be the high water mark for the increase. However, that we would have more frequent, possibly annual adjustments that would have declining number over time. And so I think with the 4.9, we're meeting that goal and our hope would be that we're able to do something next year that would be less than the 4.9 and something the year after that would be less than that and that we have a more frequent adjustment instead of having a significant shock in a single year where somebody would have a double-digit increase, which is what happened back in the earlier part of the current century. And our goal would be to get to a point where we're able to do that. I think in the current environment with costs rising the way they are, which is going to affect us potentially in terms of labor costs and in terms of a variety of supply costs, the 4.9 is potentially going to be maybe significantly lower than inflation. We'll see what the numbers line up for over a period of time. And I know from my prior work as a utility regulator, we often wanted to see rates that were being adjusted at levels that were lower than inflation. I think inflation is extraordinarily high. All of that said, I think, I hope the commission knows, this is not something we relish doing. We would love to present a budget without any rate increase whatsoever. We've definitely made cuts as we can talk about in terms of proposals. We've tried to defer things where we can. We've tried to make the investments, though, that we need in terms of our net zero goals and in terms of reliability, in terms of our financial metrics. And we think the 4.9 is both reasonable and necessary, I would say, in the current fiscal environment. But we'll certainly have in advance for the main meeting the bill impacts numbers and comparisons like we had last year. This is Bob. I think there's sort of another elevator question one could ask here, which is if we take 2030 as our target when we're heavily electrified, what do we think electricity will cost at that point? I realize the answer to that is extremely difficult, but it's just occurred to me. It's a great question. And we're going to have the net zero roadmap update this evening as well. And we can dig in more there. I think with strategic electrification, I would say that we are not yet seeing the impacts of that get large enough to come out of the variability that happens each year due to things like weather and pandemic impacts and other things. If we are at a level of strategic electrification that is in the direction of the net zero roadmap or even half of the direction of the net zero roadmap in 2030, that will likely have, based on the analysis we've done in previous documents like the IRP from 2020, that should have a beneficial impact in terms of all things equal on rates because you're using the system more efficiently at that point. You're adding load in ways that are strategic and beneficial in terms of your finances. So we would welcome the challenge of managing those additional loads, especially from a carbon standpoint, which is critical. But from a financial standpoint, that would have a moderating impact on rates, which would be welcome as well. Okay, keep going. Thank you. We'll do. So at a high level, just some sort of, some pressures that we're trying to manage within the budget as well as some, like to call them savings with sort of downward pressures as well. We do have a pretty large REC purchase addition, and this is as compared to the FY22 budget. So there's an increase in REC purchases of over a million dollars that will need to meet compliance. Our transmission expenses are looking at about $869,000 over prior year budget. The labor overhead with estimates for colas, but also including merit increases in the impact of labor overhead costs, so retirement, healthcare, et cetera, is approximately a million dollar increase in the budget as we've currently constructed. Also included our $134,000 increase in the city allocations. So costs that are sort of shared across all departments in the city are up the big sort of driver. Coming from the city is the addition of the diversity, equity, inclusion staff in this mayor's office. That's sort of driving across the entire city budget. This year in FY23 will be the first payment to the city for the Moran plan, and we talked about at a prior commission meeting, so that is in the budget. We do have some savings, if you will, associated with taxes. So to the reappraisal that took place was not contemplated in the FY22 budget, even though we've been realizing the savings throughout FY22, so there's an adjustment to the sort of ongoing base budget, and FY23 reflecting the updated property tax is. Our capital contributions as compared to the prior year are down. A big chunk of that is the assumption of the ARPA funds that were in the FY22 budget at $175,000. Additionally, we're just anticipating a decrease in customer contributions based on the projects that we know are in the pipeline in 2023. Additionally, our interest expense is up in FY23. This is primarily driven by the revenue bond that we took out. Additionally, a couple other pieces that I didn't put on the slide but wanted to mention. So we are assuming an increase in sales to customers due to the increase in rates and our assumptions related to how residential and commercial consumption will change over the next year. Our operating expenses are up about 7%. The base budget does include the IEBW settlement payment that's been talked about previously. Our contribution for that, that was in the FY22 budget and will be in the budget for the next couple of years. And that's generally an update on some budget pressures. I don't know if there's any questions or if I should keep moving on. Yes, sorry. Maybe I was sleeping at the switch. Wouldn't be the first time. REC purchases are going up because of competition for those RECs. That's a question. Can I let James jump in there? If you'd like. Yeah. And unexpected competition. At least, I mean, again, the market is not liquid and it's not very transparent. It appears that we have competition from non-compliance buyers, which is companies voluntarily purchasing the RECs for their own purposes, which is a very interesting math because we tend to think of being limited to the alternative compliance penalty payment. A company making a purchase for its own reasons isn't necessarily exposed to that, but maybe one to pay more. We have had the Vermont Tier 1 RECs, which are RECs we use for 100% reliability, exceed the $10 ACP for Vermont. So yes, it's competition from other buyers. But it may not be other Vermont utilities necessarily. And those prices moved up ludicrously quickly. They moved up from the time of the last budget when I think they were in the $150 to $2 range to somewhere in August of last year, September of last year where they moved up to 10. Does that answer your question, Bob? Yes, thank you. Thanks. I'll keep going. Next slide. This is just sort of a general, as Darren mentioned in talking about sort of what's going on generally this year, wanted to just put out there that there are a lot of unknowns that we're continually trying to manage, including sort of current energy prices. I think James can speak to this if we want to go into it in more depth, but they are sort of at unprecedented levels trying to manage what should go into the budget has been an ongoing challenge. Additionally, inflation, again Darren alluded, it's higher than it's been in a long time. And we are not immune to those inflationary pressures both in our capital investments as well as labor, et cetera. Additionally, the cost of fuel puts additional pressure on the budget and trying to anticipate where that's going to be for the next 12 months is a challenge. I have another question about that. It seems like one of the advantages of Burlington Electric, going into this environment, which I agree, there's a lot of uncertainty, there's a lot of pressure on energy prices, there's a lot of inflation, but because BED is so oriented around renewables, shouldn't we be protected from some of these energy price increases and how does inflation track with, especially if we have contracts for energy already in place, shouldn't we be a little bit protected from some of the inflationary pressures? Well, I don't, sorry, Darren, do you not want me to take that? Oh, I was just going to make a comment, and James, you know, add on to it. I generally think there is validity to the point that you just made, Commissioner Whitaker, I think we are protected in certain respects. And on the other hand, if you think of something like wood chips, which is our renewable fuel for McNeil, the ability to get those wood chips, to transport them to the plant, does involve the use of some diesel fuel, for example. And the increase in fuel, as I understand the current inflation environment, fuel and food are seeing the biggest spikes. And so that fuel impact can potentially impact our price for wood chips in a, you know, a six-figure level, and maybe in the extreme, it could be even more than that. And that's one of the types of variables where we're not fully insulated from the impacts of inflation or fuel price spikes, even though we are 100% renewable in our generation. James may have more to add. Yeah, and we're going to talk about this, I think, in executive session. Don't read that as a significant budget upward pressure. Read that as a significant unknown. We are insulated against fossil fuel price increases, but we do still have interactions with the market that can go either direction. And so, in any given hour, we are a buyer or a seller. But I want to be very cautious about saying much more than that in this context. Yeah, I'm just thinking about the voter who is going to say, we've invested in renewable energy so that we're not vulnerable to these kind of pressures. Well, let me, I'll just throw this out then, which is that when we did the budget last year in March of last year, they're not projected energy prices. They're called forward energy prices, and they're probably someone who's offering to sell power for the next winter, January and February. We're about $65 a megawatt hour or six and a half cents a kilowatt hour. Now they're trading at around $220 a megawatt hour. If we weren't well insulated against that, that would be a three-fold increase in our power supply costs. You're not hearing us talk about anything like that, right? But it still will move our power costs of high costs to some extent when you have a 300% change in a key variable. And we've never had that kind of, I mean, I used to test sensitivity and power supply budgets by moving natural gas prices up or down 10 or 20%, not 300%. So it is, and that's all happened in less than a year. So again, we are seeing massive movements in some key variables. They will not hit us one-to-one by any stretch of the imagination. Right? I think it's just an interesting dilemma to communicate with ratepayers, right? Because we've invested in certain systems and structures and fuels in order to protect ourselves from fossil fuels. Now fossil fuels are going up. We're also asking. And maybe it makes sense. Maybe we're asking for 5% instead of 25%. But people don't always perceive things in that way. Well, it is possible depending on how the actual data turns out. That we may be, you know, like you say, asking for 5% less appointment, but we may actually be asking for less because of the strength of our power supply even still. Not just it would have been worse, but it may actually be depressing the rate case too. Well, I just want to add for context, because we talked about this with the net zero revenue bond. And I want commissioners to have this in mind kind of exactly to your question. I believe we ran some analysis on what this budget year would look like without the revenue bond, if we were still trying to do all of the projects that we're trying to do. And instead of a 4.9, we would be here asking for a 16-something percent increase. So to the extent, not that that's realistic or something we would want to ask for, obviously, but to the extent that you're having conversations and somebody says, well, I thought the revenue bond and these investments would have a moderating effect they have. They're allowing us to do all the things we're trying to do and ask for a 4.9 instead of a 16 percent, for example, just for context. Yeah. No, and I think that that we have to balance that, right? Like, here's the investments we made are saving you money now. Like, that's a really important and compelling story. And even though we still have to ask for a little bit of an increase, it could be much worse. There is an important story there, I think that we need to share. That's a great point. Thank you, Commissioner Whitaker. And I trust that Mike and his team will make sure that we have those talking points and that framing because that's going to be really important. I think no matter what, people are going to say, wait, you promised revenue bond. No, you didn't need anything. And then like, yeah. So the folks are not going to remember the details, which is why it's important to bring up that bigger picture and the history as well. Thanks, Mike. It is nuts. I mean, 68 bucks to over 200. It's like, I don't even know how you budget. All I remember is Ken Nolan used to budget incredibly conservatively. And I think that that was the approach, you know, from, yeah, a long time ago. So. Well, that is going to be the question too. And then what is conservative depends too. So. All right. I'll keep marching along. So at a high level, sort of with all of those assumptions, all of those ups and downs that we talked about taken into account are projected net operating loss with a sort of preliminary FY23 budget is a negative 3 million, 3.5 million dollars, 3.6, which is about $200,000 below where the FY22 budget was passed. The net income, which is a net loss as we're projecting right now is about $1.4 million. Follow the assumptions and we've got an ending cash balance in June 30 of about 6.5 million. The cash position at the end of FY23 based on our current assumption is in a pretty good place as compared to sort of 21 actuals and 22 for two reasons. Just want to point out so the revenue bond plays a big role in sort of where our cash position will be at the end of FY23 based on all the assumptions that we've talked through. And additionally, given the good performance that's happening in FY22, we're going to start FY23 in a much better cash position than we anticipated at the end of FY22. So the budget for FY22 assumed a 7.5 million dollar ending cash. Right now we're projecting that we're going to start FY23 with an ending cash position in 22 of about $8.5 million. So we're about a million dollars better going into 22 than we anticipated ending 22, if that makes sense. So that's why the cash looks pretty good when you look at these metrics even though we've got the 1.4 million net loss. And most of that cash comes from the revenue bond, not from operations. There's a combination of the revenue bond and the better operations in FY22. So all the, that we were seeing. To repeat, we're expecting to end about a million better for FY22 and we're expecting FY23 to end at 6, so a million less than what we had expected for this year. I want to clarify, this is not what we expect for 23 when we're done with the budget. And when we present you a final budget. This is current assumptions without the context for the conversation that we'll have in the executive session. Okay. Yeah, sorry. The preliminary budget assumes this is, you know, this is where we would get based on what we've done to date. And this is without the 4.9? With the 4.9. Okay. So we'll go on to the next, just a high level overview of the capital budget where we are. So the revenue bond, we've got about 5.75 million dollars worth of revenue bond assumed, revenue bond spending, excuse me, assumed in the FY23 budget that we've been working on so far and 3.37 of sort of non-revenue bond projects, which gets our total capital spending to about $9 million. It does include a partial purchase of Velco equity, about $630,000, about a $1 million worth of investment in McNeil, $223,000 at Winooski 1, $337,000 at the GT, $3.7 million in distribution projects, and about $1.4 million in the IT forward system along with additional. And we sent along, Lori sent along yesterday, I believe, sort of a big list of the IT projects, excuse me, the capital projects that we're planning for next year. If you want to look, I'm more detailed at that. There's no questions there. I'll jump to sort of the last, my last slide is just a high level overview based on this preliminary budget that we've put together where our metrics would end. So with all those assumptions in place, it's upper pressures. We would end FY23 with $83 of cash on hand. Our debt service coverage ratio would be at 3.17, and our adjusted debt service coverage ratio would be at 0.97, excuse me. So obviously there's a lot more, there's some more work to be done before now in May, but I think we're confident we can come up with a budget that gets these metrics to where we need to have them. And with that, I think I'll turn it over. There are no questions. Turn over to Darren. If there are no questions during for the open session, I don't know if this is the right time for us to consider moving to executive session. I think so. Does someone want to make a motion? Sure, I'll make the motion. I move to find that premature general public knowledge of the upcoming FY23 draft budget with the commission would clearly place Bernalton Electric Department in substantial disadvantage per Title I, Section 313A1 of Vermont statute. Second. I move that the commission enter into executive session with Bernalton Electric Department staff to discuss the... Shouldn't we vote on that first motion? Yeah, I think we need to roll a call first. Yep. Commissioner Shagman. Aye. Commissioner Herndy. Commissioner Herndy. Aye. Commissioner Moody. Aye. Commissioner Stebbins. Aye. Commissioner Whitaker. Aye. Thank you. Okay, I move that the commission enter into executive session with the Bernalton Electric Department staff to discuss the FY23 budget with the commission would clearly place Bernalton Electric Department in substantial disadvantage per Title I, under provisions of Title I, Section 313A1A of Vermont statute. Second. I'm sorry, who was the second? Can we... I think Bethany was first. Okay, Bethany. Roll call. Commissioner Shagman. Aye. Commissioner Herndy. Aye. Commissioner Moody. Aye. Commissioner Stebbins. Aye. Commissioner Whitaker. Aye. Thank you. We're going into executive session. Just give me a minute and I'll put you in a... Do you mind reaching out to Bob to see if he needs some help to figure out this link? Sure. I'll take care of that. Thank you, Lori. So we have exited the executive session, which means that next up we have agenda item number 8. This is with the renewal of BED's line of credit with Key Bank. This is a discussion and vote. And Emily Byrne, it's your show some more. Yes. Act 3, Key Bank line of credit. This will be a quick one. So we currently have a $5 million line of credit with Key Bank. This is to approval to renew it for another two years. Moody's flagged in our previous line of credit that there was language around the material adverse change clause that was problematic and meant that we could not include the line of credit in our cash... In the cash metrics. Key Bank has agreed to pull the materials adverse clause from the next line of credit agreement, meaning we can count the cash in our cash position and toward... It'll improve our metrics. The interest rate on this line of credit is better than the existing one. It'll be the SOFR rate plus 1.1%. Previously it was SOFR plus 1.4%. The unused line fee is the same as our existing line of credit. So if there are any questions generally on that, that is the line of credit item. I make a motion to authorize Burlington Electric Department to enter into the revolving line of credit with Key Bank. Second. Before we take roll call, did anyone have any questions on this? No. Pretty straightforward. Sounds nice of Key Bank, so thank you. Commissioner Shagman. Hi. Commissioner Herendine. Hi. Commissioner Moody. Hi. Commissioner Stevens. Hi. Commissioner Whitaker. Hi. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Item nine. Thank you, Emily. This is the Synapse Net Zero Energy Roadmap. This is a discussion. Okay, appreciate that we have so many substantive topics tonight and I apologize that we have so much stacked in the meeting. If, okay, I'm going to share my screen and bring up a few slides just to share with you. Just bear with me one moment. Okay. Folks should be able to see my screen. I'm not going to run through every slide here because this presentation is actually intended for multiple audiences, including some who are not as intimately familiar with our work as the commission. So I'm not going to cover the vision of net zero, which you all know very well. I'm going to go right to this chart, which is we have the 2021 emissions and fossil fuel use data from Synapse. We've updated now for, we had 2018, 2019, 2020 and now 2021. On the left, you can see the business as usual compared to the net zero path. As you'll recall last year, we were essentially on the net zero path, although we caveat it very heavily that that was partly due to reduce driving during the pandemic subject to rebound. We have had some mild rebound. As you can see here, we're up about one and a half percent relative to 2020 in 2021. I would note that we are still down compared to 2019 and 2018 and I'll share some additional context. This is a sector analysis here. So we have transportation from Burlington Electric customers on the left. As you can see, even despite a rebound in vehicle miles traveled, it hasn't rebounded fully and we're still actually below the amount of fossil fuel use and emissions that would be consistent with the roadmap path. So we're still in reasonable position in the transportation sector. In the building sector, natural gas use declined on a non-weather normalized basis about one percent relative from 2021 relative to 2020, but the roadmap had a much more aggressive trajectory and so you see us sort of deviating on the roadmap path with natural gas relative to what would otherwise be necessary for the roadmap. So these are some of my takeaways just from reviewing the data. I mentioned the rebound we had was about one and a half percent. Nationwide, we had a 6.2 percent emissions rebound in 2021 compared to 2020. So if you look at it in that context, Burlington didn't necessarily have as much of a rebound in emissions as we saw nationally. We're still down 12.5 percent in 2021 compared to our baseline of 2018. So we've consolidated some of the progress that we had made during the pandemic even as we started to come out of the pandemic. I mentioned gas use being down about one percent. Again, that's not weather normalized. So if you had a particularly cold winter, I would expect the non-weather normalized gas use to increase. So that's just a flag. Gas and diesel consumption is estimated to be up about 10 percent in 2021 from 2020. The driver of that is, and I should talk about this data just for a second. In 2021, we're estimating in the SNAP report a little over 7,500 miles traveled per vehicle. That's up from an estimate of 66, 71 in 2020, but still down from a baseline in 2018 of 81, 87. This data is a little bit unique because the 2020 data has been re-analyzed using Chittenden County travel information. The data we presented you last year in 2020 was based on state of Vermont travel information. As we go forward a year, we're able to get the more granular Chittenden County data, which is closer to accurate for Burlington. The 2021 data is using state of Vermont. So next year, the 2021 data will have the Chittenden County results and we'll be kind of continuing to have this one year lag in the vehicle miles traveled. But these estimates are the best estimates that we have from SNAPs based on the information that's available today. As you'll see on some of the subsequent slides, while we are making progress on strategic electrification, we are not at the incredibly aggressive pace that we need to be for the roadmap. On a positive note, there are a number of initiatives took place last year. The rental weatherization standards, the new construction renewable heating standards, and the net zero revenue bond passage that did not impact the data in 2021, but we should start to see some impacts from those in 2022. So we'll be monitoring for that. And then I think the net zero 2030 goal continues to be invaluable to us as a guidepost for what we're trying to do at Burlington Electric. And I think we need to continue to contextualize it in the state and federal trends. There are things that are within our control and things that may be outside of our control. And as long as we are progressing in the right direction, that's good for our community, good for the environment, good for emissions. You know, the rebound certainly isn't the direction that we want to go, but we have to contextualize that within the national rebound that was much more significant, given that we're not an island here in Burlington. I'm going to skip this slide. These are our incentives. I'm going to start with those and some of our different initiatives. I think again, the commission is familiar with these, so I'm not going to linger. I'll go right here to the heat pump slide. This is looking at heat pump installations under the Tier 3 incentive program specifically. And you can see we had a 15x increase from the period prior to the green stimulus launch and then the period since. This is a good trajectory, but for context, we're not at the roadmap pace. We have a total, not just the Tier 3 incentives, but other incentive programs and other heat pump installations. We have a total in the residential sector of 1,235 heat pumps in 2021. The roadmap goal would be a little over 6,300. So that gives you just one example of kind of what the roadmap pace is versus our pace. Here's another example. Looking at EVs and plug-in hybrids. Again, we've more than doubled the number of rebates since the green stimulus launch that we had in June of 2020 relative to the period prior. We've got 549 total EVs and plug-in hybrids registered in Burlington in 2021. The roadmap goal was a little more than double that, 1,209. Synapse does give us a 2040 roadmap pace just for comparison purposes and we're actually basically close to that pace in the EV sector, which would have been 614. So helpful context I think to look at as we're thinking about our different efforts. These I'm going to not linger on for too long because these just show some of the uptake on our EV rate program. I think generally an upward trajectory, not dramatic. In terms of charging infrastructure, we do have a significant build-out planned as part of the rental expansion of the EV match program and including some of our net zero energy revenue bond, but this gives you a snapshot of some of the charging infrastructure that we have just as of 2021. We're looking at a major expansion I think throughout the city in the coming years. And this is interesting with credit to the team, particularly at policy and planning and I think perhaps energy services that worked on this. This is analysis that was done overlapping looking at multifamily housing, looking at median income and identifying areas of the city where we had a good opportunity to expand charging in areas that lacked it, particularly serving areas where we may have a higher number of low-income residents and a higher percentage of multifamily buildings. And we've applied to the state for funds to pilot a program specifically for these areas of the city that could include chargers mounted on light poles and available for street parking, which would be something new for us. So just sharing that for the commission's benefit. I don't know if we've discussed that previously. In terms of low-income customers, around 15% of the EV and heat pump rebates are going to low-income customers as part of our enhanced rebate program. You can see the uptake here, again, significantly increased after the Green Stimulus launch. And as I've checked the numbers, it's pretty much been consistently around 15% to 16% in those programs over the months that I've been able to look at the data. Again, not going to linger on these, but as you can see lawnmowers and e-bikes have seasonal upticks as we use them in warmer months and then nobody's buying them, particularly certain other months of the year. So you have some seasonality in the uptake for those programs, but they're generally continuing to move in a good direction. And then this slide is looking at the Tier 3 program that the state has and our obligation in orange and our actual 2020 and 2021 results. And as you can see, we continue to exceed the Tier 3 obligation in 2021. And in some ways, I think that's actually more impressive, even though the 2020 figure was higher, because 2020 had the two electric transit buses and a major geothermal project at Hula, whereas 2021 was mainly just regular program uptake from heat pumps and EVs. So I think we're actually on a good pace there. But again, Tier 3 is not the net zero roadmap pace. Tier 3 is the state of Vermont goal. And then this is my last slide. And I apologize for moving quickly. I'm just sensitive to the time and wanting to make sure we have adequate time for all the materials. In terms of next steps, the things that we're thinking about, obviously we have the new incentives in 2022 and the revenue bond. I'm hopeful that those will positively impact our 2022 progress. We're waiting to see if the governor signs thermal energy charter change and we're eager to engage with the commission and the council on further policy development in the city. I mentioned earlier, we're working hard to bring phase three to a conclusion with district energy. And that remains the single biggest step we could take to reduce emissions, particularly in the building sector, commercial building sector in Burlington. We're actively pursuing a number of opportunities with federal and state funds. We've done that for district energy. We're looking at it for other opportunities as well. I mentioned the state EV charging grant program earlier. I mentioned in the GM report, we're going to experiment with new outreach strategies with advertising, with marketing. We're going to support, as I also mentioned in the GM report, state policy development, like the clean heat standard that would help our progress here in Burlington. And we'll continue every year to update the data with Synapse, both for the next year and to retroactively look at the current year data and see if we can make it more accurate and more granular. We'll continue to have challenges with the pace of change that we're looking to achieve. We are looking to achieve a pace of change that is not yet common anywhere in the country or really the world at the scale that we're looking at. We're going to have nonlinear progress. I think that if we think about net zero energy, you could have absolutely every Burlington customer with an electric vehicle in the year 2030 and people move in and out of the community. And somebody may move in with a fossil fuel vehicle, for example. So as I've started to think about 2030, I realized there may not be an absolute zero, because, again, Burlington's not an island. So we may have to think about our markers for success a little differently in terms of directionality as opposed to an absolute zero. But I'm sure there'll be thoughts about that. That's something I've been thinking about. We'll continue to manage peak loads. We'll continue to advocate for carbon pricing for a level playing field for renewables. And we'll continue to focus on balancing our financial responsibility for our customers with our need to make investments in the various technologies. And, again, with apologies for being somewhat rapid in that presentation, I will unshare my screen and glad to answer any questions the commission may have. Sure. How can we get a copy of the synapse report? Well, we don't really have a report, because we don't commission a full report each year for cost savings. We really ask for data. So the data really is presented via the slides. I'm glad to share the slides with you if you'd like them. Yes, please. Absolutely. Yeah, because those are not in the packet. They're not. I was just able to put them together, because I think we just got the data last week. You know, to be honest, I'm not surprised. I mean, we are setting a very aggressive goal. And it requires more than just the electric utility. It requires external market forces. And, yeah, we just got to keep on keeping on. Appreciate that. We also have to do it in a manner that is not a shock for Burlingtonians. And I, you know, I'm not surprised. I think the fact that we have set this goal is what we need. The fact that we're even just charting it is, and seeing where we're going. We'll see what the impacts are from the war overseas and so many other changing variables. Thank you for that. Are you going to have any sort of bigger presentation on that or anything? I am planning to present at the city council. The same set of slides, essentially on the 25th. So that'll be the potentially another public forum for this discussion and could draw greater, you know, media attention during that presentation as well. So that's on the 25th. And then we're also in our, our BTV stat meeting, which we are presenting in on the 27th. I'll be presenting this data for BTV stat as well. So we have those two planned and certainly, I think there are going to be other opportunities. I'm doing an APPA webinar that's with the town of Ann Arbor, which is also trying to think about in that zero, a 2030 goal on the 21st. And I'll present some of this data in that context as well. So we're always looking for opportunities to share what we're doing and how we're doing and may have others as we go. Will you be posting this on BED website, your PowerPoint? Yeah, I think actually some sort of presentation, some sort of update. We'll probably, and Mike Cantoracle, he'll be helping us with this as he always does. We're going to be trying to update our performance measures report, which is now fully online at the BED website. And I anticipate that this will be included as part of the performance measures report that we'll post online. And Mike will, I'm sure, keep you updated when that's available. I know it's on his radar. Great. Well, thank you. And I'll send them to you in the meantime. Thank you. Thank you. And, you know, just being, again, being transparent, being honest where we're at and what we're trying to do. Not a lot of places are doing that. So let's just keep on with the effort. Agenda item number 10, BED low income rate. This is a discussion and a vote, James. Thank you. So I'll be sharing my screen, hopefully. And if I'm really lucky, it'll work. So hopefully everyone is seeing a slide that says temporary energy assistance program. Is that correct? We do. Yep. Good. So this is a quick summary of where we stand and what we've been doing to date. Since the last rate case went into effect on August 1st, we've been running a temporary energy assistance program and we've been using funding from the COVID relief funds, essentially, to fund that, not through rates or through cost of service. It's a 7.5% discount on the electric bill for residential customers, which offset the rate increase of 7.5%. Eligibility is based on participation. Neither is the state of Vermont fuel assistance program, which is 185% of federal poverty level, or a housing choice voucher for Section 8. So we're really trying to use external verification so that we're not the ones we're trying to verify people's income status. The current number of participants, as Darren mentioned, is about 59 customers, which is 1% of what we estimate the eligible possible population to be. The average bill for the participants is 470 kilowatt hours a month, which is a little below the residential overall average. The bill for credit is 79.19 and the average credit was about 5.94 for the entire period. There is some seasonality to it. It looks like there is air conditioning load in this group of customers, just to be aware of that. By the way, the 5.94 is probably not wildly different from the average bill impact for most residential customers. I mean, the average usage isn't that much different. So from the earlier conversation, that's a number that's probably going to be something like what you see when we give you the usage for the average 7.5% bill impact. We've talked about this slide. I am going to gloss over it. We've talked about VGS, what they're doing, Green Mountain Power, what they're doing. It's Sacramento Municipal Utility District. SMUD, affectionately known as SMUD. We did talk to the Burlington Water Resources Department. They are offering a waived fixed monthly fee, which is the equivalent of our customer charge. That is 7.95 right now, which is roughly a 15% bill discount for a typical household in Burlington. The income threshold is less than 200% of the federal poverty level. So it's a little higher than what we're using right now, but not that different. The eligibility is determined by other programs in Burlington. So they're using outside, it looks like they're using outside verification too. Again, I'm not surprised that the city department doesn't really want to be in the job of verifying people's incomes. This is where we stand for recommendation. This has been discussed, certainly with Darren and the policy and planning team. We are proposing a 12.5% discount for eligible customers. The advantage of a 2% discount is that all of the existing customers will be better off under the proposal. They're currently getting a 7.5% discount on the bill. They will get a 12.5% discount on the bill. If we switched to a fixed customer charge discount or something like that, it would depend upon their usage relative to their customer charge whether customers who are currently enrolled in the rate would actually be better off or worse off. This way, you know they're all going to be better off. It's structurally consistent with what GMP and VGS are doing, which is a percentage discount. The nice thing is the assistance scales with usage, so it would be scaling a seasonality, so if a customer has increased air conditioning load, or for that matter, if they took advantage of our programs and put in a cold climate heat pump or something like that, instead of one of their fossil fuel heaters, this would also scale. The assistance would scale to match the electrification use. And would continue to offset the 2021 rate increase, and potentially, you know, it's not that different from the 4.9 on top of 7.5 that Darren has been talking about. So it's in or around the order of magnitude that would displace a second 4.9 percent rate increase, too. The eligibility criteria unchanged, 1.85 percent of federal poverty level. Again, all current customers would transition. They would all still be eligible. If we change eligibility, certainly if we made it more restrictive, you would have the risk of people dropping out of the assistance program, and we would rather that not happen. We continue to have extra qualification verification, and it's still consistent with the VGS threshold, and VGS overlaps our service territory a lot better than Green Mountain Power does. So, you know, consistently with VGS may be more reasonable. We do think we can show it as a negative surcharge on the bill, which has the merit of showing a gross bill, then the energy assistance program reduction, and the net bill. We did want to make sure that people were aware that that was reducing their bill by some how. So they would still see the gross consumption for things like energy efficiency activities and things like that. It does simplify to the assessment of the program cost impacts. We could do a report and summarize the negative surcharge total amounts by month easily and get the total cost of the energy assistance program for every month that we implemented. And that is the summary of our recommendation at this point. This is the impact analysis. We talked about the impact analysis. We've now run the math on it. The impact is essentially the number of eligible customers onto the level of financial assistance you're going to offer them times the adoption rate. In other words, what percentage of the eligible customers choose to participate in the program. And that's really sort of the big variable. We don't know much about participation levels and I will show you some information on participation levels. At 100% implementation or acceptance of the program of everybody we think is eligible using census data and demographic data, you would have an impact of about $700,000 a year on the budget. We don't think that that's likely at all. GMP has nothing like that and again I will show you what I think the adoption rates are going to look like. But that is sort of the maximum impact. That's a heat impact chart that says as you increase assistance and as you reduce thresholds and as adoption rate goes up you see an increasing effect on your budget. The red dot is roughly where we are right now. So we have a very low adoption rate therefore we're not seeing much impact on, well we're not seeing any impact on the budget because we're using cash funds right now. This is just the assumptions. We're using 2020 census data. We're using a household size average of 2.2. I think it's actually 2.19 based on most recent census data. So the federal poverty level is 18136. We will use 185% of that. And then we're going to look at adoption rates. The low of 1% is what we're currently seeing. 14% is our estimate of VGS's acceptance rate or uptake. And 25% is GMP's acceptance rate. And the electric usage we're using the subset of our customers who are already on the program to evaluate average usage. We're not assuming that the average usage of customers who would be on this program are exactly the same as the population at large in Burlington for obvious reasons. This is the estimated impact at those various levels of adoption. At 1% it's $8,000. That's roughly where we are. We're not seeing a problem either from a cash or a rate point of view. At 14% the VGS uptake level you'd move up to about $100,000 a year. If you get to the GMP 25% you'd be at $189,000 of annual impact against roughly a $60 million budget. And at the 100% you'd see the full 755. But again, nothing we're finding says that uptake is ever anything like 100%. I'm sure there are a lot of reasons for that. One of the most obvious reasons in Burlington which is why I'm inclined to lean towards the VGS number is the student population probably affects the census data. And that was something that was pointed out in the city report on income levels too. A student may count as a zero household income, but practically speaking they may not be. So that's the rough impacts we're thinking we're probably going to be in the $100,000 range not the $700,000 range and probably not the $200,000 range is my first guess. But it's possible once you offer a rate that you can't control uptake if you will. It's offered as a rate and anybody who is eligible may take advantage of it. We propose a resolution which is the commission approves BDC approval for an 18 month pilot energy assistance program based on a 12.5% discount to BEG charges for residential non-net metering customers. We might change that at some point, but right now we can't figure out how to handle the net metering through our billing system and mathematically and how to make it work. So we're proposing to start with non-net metering customers. My first guess right now is that most of the net metering customers probably would not qualify either, but that's a guess. I don't have that data. Whose household is equal to or less than 105% of federal poverty level to take effect on or after July 1st, 2022. And then I'm proposing that we would monitor and report to you through our dashboard the number of customers participating, the cost of the program, and any proposed revisions that we make, because you could make revisions to a pilot program during its period of 18 months. And that is the last slide. Thanks, James. So at the end of the 18 months, there is the opportunity to end the program or change it depending on what we're seeing with the impact. There is the opportunity to change it during its progress as it goes forward, but also at the end of the 18 months, you can request to make it a permanent rate, too. So it doesn't have to terminate. You have to make a filing with 25 days notice before the end of the 18 months to say that you want that rate to become a permanent rate. Or you could file a revised pilot that would go another, you have a number of options in 18 months, but one of them is to make it a permanent rate. Yeah, I think my major concern is, you know, having a safety clause for BED because 700,000 is a lot even though I understand that that's not what we're guessing would be what the financial impact would be. Yeah, and it is possible to look at whether you would consider students to be low-income and whether there's a rational way in the tariff to screen them out or not whether you want to or not, but that would affect that number. You know, the city estimate was about a third of the low-income customers were actually college students and so they derated the low-income percentage in their report from 24 to 16% on that basis, but that was a straight ballpark and it was not based on any specific data, so we've not incorporated that yet. How tough would it be to turn it off, especially if it was successful? Politically? Well, yeah. I'll let Darren answer that. I choose not to engage in politics if I can help it. I would say that my hope would be that when we implement this it becomes a long-standing offering from BED to low-income customers, but that said, I think the terms of the program would be subject to revision based on a variety of factors including the budgetary impacts, and I think that there's, as James has alluded to, there's a number of different ways that you might determine eligibility. I think we're trying to be consistent here with VGS and based on the uptake level that they see, I don't think we would have a significant budgetary concern, but if there was a far larger uptake level, you could look at other potential measures in terms of eligibility. But I think in fairness, our hope would be and I want the commission to know it going into it to have this as a long-standing offering with terms subject to revision, obviously. Last time I was concerned about what James called the cliff, I'm not worried about it here because right now it's a relatively small amount. I guess it comes down to maybe 100 bucks a year for a customer, typically. We're estimating it would be about $9.95, I believe is the number I'm just double-checking, $9.90 per month per customer would be the 12.5% level, which is up from current $5.91. So, yeah, it's $120, a little less than $120 a year. Okay, so no problem there. I think I get the idea if we'd like it to continue, then we do want it to be successful. So, one can anticipate, I guess it's kind of a catch-22 if we put it in place and nobody takes it up, it doesn't affect the budget, but it's a program that maybe in the end we abandon. If it's successful, then we want to do it long-term and then we lock ourselves into a new expense. And if nobody takes it up, we could amend the program as the program is going on, theoretically. Okay, anyway, if we feel I like the idea of a long-term, I'm a little leery about the idea of something that potentially can keep getting bigger. So, I hope even though I know it's a political comment that we will have a way to sunset it if we want to, if we really want to. And just as a practical matter, I think we are proposing it as a pilot rate. It's an 18-month commitment and it is subject to revision or cancellation at that time, although I think as we're focused on equity for our customers, we wouldn't want to ideally have to be in a position to cancel, but rather perhaps to amend if necessary. If we took no action, it would terminate automatically. So absence and affirmative action to extend it, it will end. That makes sense. And if it's all students signing up for it or whatever, then we can kill it. And, Erin, I don't know if you wanted to mention anything about the funding discussion, too. There's the... Well, yeah, as I mentioned earlier, but it's not. Yeah, as I mentioned earlier, we're anticipating that we'll have a portion of the ARPA funding for a Rearage Assistance that may be left over. It'll probably be less than 200,000, but it perhaps is something north of 100,000 left over. And our intent was in bringing this to the City Council that we would request that they also extend our ARPA our time frame for using that funding which has supported our Temporary Energy Assistance Program as well as Rearage Assistance and enable us to utilize it over the course of the next 18 months to support this pilot program as well. And that doesn't guarantee that there wouldn't be further budget impacts if the uptake was significantly above our estimates, but it certainly provides at least some comfort, hopefully as we go into it, knowing that if estimates of uptake were at the levels I think that James discussed earlier, much if not all of that would be covered potentially by the ARPA funding which gives us a good opportunity to know when we make this perhaps a more permanent program that we would have a good sense of how many folks are taking participation in the program and how we would budget for it going forward. One way or the other it's very likely at the end of 18 months we're going to have a lot more data than the relatively small data set we're using right now. For folks who are just curious, 185% federal poverty at the maximum gross monthly income for a family of four is just over $4,000. So you're talking about a family of four of about 50k gross monthly income. So you know annual sorry annual yes thank you 12 times 4 Gabriel yes so $5, $10 it means a lot I forgot what I was going to say any other comments or questions from commissioners oh I remembered on how this will how this compares to at the same time a request for 4.9% rate increase well I think I mentioned that these we're essentially maintaining the seven and a half existing discount and expanding it by five so it would essentially offset that increase but not anyone's after that. No I understand that I mean more it could look like we're looking for a rate increase writ large but then we're offering something that we haven't necessarily paid for in the past well the magnitude of $5,000 on $60 million is a fractional percent so if we need a 5% rate increase even if this makes the rate increase because we're actually having if we have cashed off set it for a period of time it might not make the rate increase even if it made the rate increase it's a very very small amount. Thank you this is what I needed to see I just needed that to be reminded reminded of. Any other questions or comments from commissioners okay hearing none would someone like to make a motion I make a motion to adopt the BED low income rate as presented and recommended adoption of this as presented and recommend adoption of this rate to the Board of Finance and City Council Second Commissioner Shagman I Commissioner Herendine I Commissioner Modi I Commissioner Stebbins I Commissioner Whitaker I Thank you Thank you everybody and last on the agenda is the commissioners check-in we had postponed thank you James sorry I know everybody's like could we maybe end our day sorry for not for cutting you off thanks James I know that's a lot of work even though you presented it in like 12 minutes commissioners check-in so sounds like city staff BED staff are going back to in person in May wondering how people are feeling you know COVID numbers are going up personally I'm fine to go in it'll be you know warmer season and I'll be wearing a mask but wondering what the commissioners think I guess I'm the most potentially vulnerable but I basically like the idea unless I can find some reason I'll be there unless I can find a negative reason I'll be there I would like to go back to in person as well and I also strongly encourage the department to work with channel 17 I know we're going to be rather than happy to either bring gear and or and I'm sure work with the IT department to figure out how to do what's what I'm looking for hybrid meetings I think they're essential and I think this component of of our meeting much like all the rest of our municipal meetings is essential we found that and I'm sure even you know we found across all of our municipalities that this huge uptake in participation and so I would strongly suggest that we continue with a go back in person but continue a hybrid model and I'm sure channel 17 be happy to again figure that out with the powers that be the tech folks that be and both I'm happy to be in person I do know I'm 90% sure on February 11 I'm going to be out of town for work so I would love the hybrid option short term yeah I'm all fine with it that's good okay and great I personally I still think you know we have learned over the last two years that you can be a productive member of society and meetings via hybrid approach and to the degree that you know if you have to go out of town but you can join from 530 to 730 I think we should keep the hybrid available and who knows we may end up finding that COVID numbers go up and we'll end up going in a different direction in November or what not but so let's plan on going back in person with the understanding that if folks need to attend hybrid we're going to keep that as an option I do think it would be helpful if you do find out that you're going to need to attend via hybrid that if you could let Lori perhaps me or whoever is chair generally just know so that we're aware not kind of looking around the room wondering where you might be anything else for commissioners check-in yeah a couple of questions first of all we are going to do something about lighting in May as planned that's a question I'm assuming that unless I hear otherwise Darren is about to respond I don't know if Maneer is still on I think it's worth between now and then having a conversation with Maneer and Andy and seeing if we have something to share and I wanted to just get context on this we had talked about going to the standards folks and seeing about options that we might have and I think we're still waiting on that if the commission wanted kind of a more basic primer if it has value I think we could look at doing that again but maybe we can talk more offline about it depending on what your interests are okay I'll send you my take on it okay thank you I think what we had I think what we had talked about was understanding that if the standards folks haven't gotten back to us this is a complex enough topic that if the May meeting isn't too heavy it would be helpful to have that primer so that when we do get some information from the standards folks we're not starting at wait what did we last discuss five years ago on this and instead we're starting at a point of right that's where that's the background content information and then we can take it from there via discussion Paul Alexander is on and he's familiar with this topic too so I'm sure Paul will want to join the discussion next time along with Andy and Muneer can do okay also you mentioned Darren a carbon profile of McNeil which will be available later but it's not right now is that right that's correct okay I certainly look forward to that you also mentioned you're doing a presentation of the stats on the 27th is that a public thing I don't know Mike if my camera is on still it looks like he is I don't know that that's a public meeting but I think that there is a website for BTB stat where they post data from different city departments Mike do I have that correct I think you're right I don't believe it's a public meeting when it happens but I can find out for sure a commissioner here and see I know the room they usually do it in is pretty packed with the people who are there but I'll check it out and get back to you all right also I have not updated on the website okay thank you anything else well thank you everybody 818 this has been a really helpful meeting thank you and thank you also for your hard work anyone want to make a motion to adjourn I'll make a motion to adjourn second we're going to go with Bob Lori okay commissioner shagman Mr. Herndy Mr. Moody Mr. Stebbins Mr. Whitaker hi thank you we're adjourning at 819 thanks everybody everybody thank you everyone have a good night appreciate it good night