 Good evening. This is June 8th, the monthly Burlington Electric Commission meeting and thanks everybody who might be watching and everybody here. First up on the agenda is the agenda itself. Wondering if there are any modifications or changes? Nope. Okay. So second is minutes from the May meeting. If folks found any substantive content related items that should be addressed or edited, then if folks are ready to make a motion to approve. Move to, except the agenda has presented for the missed minutes. Is that a friendly comment from that? So is that clear now? Second. Yes. All in favor of approving the minutes from May. And next we have the public forum. I do not see anybody. I'm here at the request of Darren. I'm not a member of the public. I'm counseled. Thank you. That's how I view you. I mean, you are a member of the public, but well for folks watching at any time, you feel like you have an issue or a question. We have a great customer care team with Mike Kenrick at the head. And then also you can always reach out to commission members as well as to the staff generally. And then next we have commissioners corner. This is an opportunity to raise some questions or comments that aren't on the agenda. That are at the commissioners top of the mind. Just a quick thank you to Mike. Mike said last time that the performance measures report would be online in a few weeks today. And it is just today. Actually, it made the timing. Being up and available. It would be bad to say it was because I was nuking my pizza, wouldn't it? Hey, team effort, Adam Raven, huge contribution, and many others. So glad we got it. Thank you. So without anything else, we'll move to the general manager's update. This is an oral update. Thank you. We had several items that are on this list actually went to the city council and board of finance on Monday and were unanimously approved. So we had our rate change approved unanimously. It can now be filed with the PUC. And again, thank you to the commission for supporting that effort. We also had unanimous approval for these two district energy items that I mentioned in the update creation of the 501C3 with evergreen running it to manage the further district energy development work. I believe we have a full agreement among all the parties to the district energy work that will basically create a scope for the remainder of 2022 in terms of what tasks we're going to be working on together. I expect to have that letter agreement signed by the end of the week by University of Vermont Medical Center, UVM, the Intervail Center, Evergreen, the city, BED and BGS. And then that is intended to take us to hopefully a go-no-go decision by the end of the year. There are headwinds for the project as I mentioned at council. Construction pricing remains at a very elevated level. Our hope is by the end of the year we can actually go for real construction pricing as opposed to indicative construction pricing and that that will ring out some of the excess that there might be from the bids that we're getting now. We're also hopeful that inflation will be lower by the end of the year. Interest rates for financing are expected to be more favorable by the end of the year than they are now, according to the evergreen bond desk. And we're working on the fuel price piece of this as well. Try to get the best option from McNeil that still covers our costs and some return for the joint owners, but also makes the district energy project pencil a little bit better. So we have the grant acceptance from the Leahy funds. We have the 501C3 and we'll be continuing that work, keep the commission updated. I expect we'll also provide an update to the TUC, the Transportation Energy Utilities Committee of the City Council. I don't know if that'll happen now or closer to the time when we're making a go or no-go decision, but they expressed interest in that. Oh, go ahead. Sorry. No, so understood that the fuel at McNeil, you know, everything has increased in price. Construction costs as well, but so too has, you know, natural gas. And so I wonder how that, are you looking at all and are you seeing, for example, we see diesel is at a higher price than, you know, if you go and you pump your gas just generally. Are you seeing perhaps a little bit more favor to some of our potential project partners to join McNeil because there would be perhaps less fuel volatility? Short answer is yes. We haven't rerun the numbers yet, but our expectation is the pretty significant increase in natural gas costs is going to be favorable economically for the project. We have had a run-up in certainly diesel and other fuel costs as well. What we're trying to look at is potentially just delinking some of the energy market volatility from the price for the steam from McNeil and having that be a little more stable and predictable based on maybe some different metrics. So if we're able to do that and natural gas costs are going up, overall the delta between the two should be more favorable than it is in the prior analysis that we had done. So additional items on here, policy development. We're working with different stakeholders on this idea of having additional buildings policy under the charter change that was recently passed. We had a good meeting with the University of Vermont. We'll be talking with them more. We're scheduling a meeting with University of Vermont Medical Center. We're working with the Building Electrification Institute, which is looking at policies that are in place in places like Denver and New York that at least have a similarly, maybe not as cold a climate, but a similar cold climate. And we're looking particularly at the large existing commercial buildings because that of the different sectors that we're looking at is going to be the most tricky, I think, to develop policy around. It's a little easier to set policy for new construction, building that hasn't been built yet. But if we're going to set policies that are going to apply to existing buildings, we want to be incredibly thoughtful about how that will work for the building owners and how they will manage whatever is expected of them. Our first report back, July 18th, that will be an initial report. It's not a final report. We'll have additional policy development, public engagement, other process that will go after that date as well. It's possible we may have, at least for new construction, some concrete recommendations by that point. The other items, one of them was actually intended to go on the 6th to City Council, but we ended up having to hold it over. But it's the mention of these new positions and update of vacant positions. We're definitely interested in increasing our capacity for the net zero energy initiatives, particularly excited that we're going to have a new position in sustainability. The Emily Stevens-Wiloch and Jen Green have developed that's going to focus on the nexus between net zero and equity. I think, you know, strategic direction later this evening. We have some great language in the strategic direction around that. We've had some really good initial conversations with the trusted community voices program with CEDO. This would be a position that could really further that work in a lot of meaningful ways. So we're excited about that, excited about adding capacity for energy services. We've had a vacant position there during the pandemic. We didn't have quite as much work, certainly in-person work. We're seeing hopefully that we'll have more of that going forward, and this position will be more focused on net zero, residential, heat pump adoption, and HVAC, some light commercial work as well. And then for the first time in a long time, we're looking at creating a position, although it's funded by reducing some of our outside services costs related to the IT Forward project. So we'll be bringing all of those to the Council Board of Finance on the 20th. And the last item is a save the date for September 17th, 2022, with a rain date of the 24th. For what we're hoping is going to be an excellent first of potentially many net zero energy festivals. What's the tagline, Mike? Oh, wow. Oh, I put them on the spot. Oh, wow. A supercharged day of family fun. There we go. Okay. I think that's what it is too. Sorry to put you on the spot while you're eating. That's okay, that's okay. But we're excited to host an event because a lot of times we spend time in the community with other organizations at their events, talking about net zero, talking about our program. We do the lake monsters and art hop and the farmers markets and we're expanding those efforts. We're going to have the old North End Farmers Market. We'll have a presence there this year as well. But we really thought this could be an opportunity to bring folks together around this particular mission, the climate mission of our community and have our preferred vendors, our EV dealers, our heat pump installers. Join us and table at the event. Try to highlight some non fossil fuel based food vendors who might be able to join us. The farmers market will still be going on down the street. So we'll have hopefully some good interchange of traffic between the two events. I believe champ is scheduled to make an appearance and we'll have kids activities and art. We'll have bucket trucks for touch a truck and we'll have power town or our safety exhibit that our line workers are able to staff. And we'll have some live music and a DJ in between the live music. So our hope is this will be a really fun event. We'd love for the commission to join us. So we wanted to get on your radar, even though we're still in the planning phase, just to make sure that you could put it on your calendar. And at the appropriate time, once we've got it fully ready to go, share the word with neighbors and with the community. And I think that was everything I had for the GM report. Any observations from the monthly update? Just one clarification. So the rate changed that when the city council approved that. So we've been talking about that for a long time, but it finally goes in in August. That's right. So we'll file it mid June and then it starts the 45 day clock with the PUC where it can be a surcharge starting August 1st. And then, you know, the PUC process will still play out from there and it's conceivable if they had a change that that would be applied. Later on to customer bills, if there was any differential. But our team here is working hard to prepare the rate case for the PUC. But the city council approval was the last local approval that we needed to be able to file. And we started talking about that, right? I feel like I've seen a little bit on Frank Porch forum that it's coming. Yeah, during, I think it was the day we first brought it to the commission. We did a public announcement. And then there have been a couple of news stories since then. WCAX, Vermont Digger and Seven Days have all covered it and some variation or another at different points. So I've certainly seen it on social media and different folks talking about it. I think, you know, just to contextualize further, because I know even though we're in the process of filing it, you've approved it. There's still a lot of discussion around it. The 3.95%, I looked at just some other fuels and the costs for other fuels is going up. Some cases, 30 plus percent over the course of a year over year comparison. So even though we never like to raise rates, even though we, you know, would prefer to hold rates steady, all things equal. I think the strategy of having moderate rate increases to keep up with the cost doing business makes sense. But also in this environment, folks are paying just a ton more at the gas station, for example, than they were a year ago. And this is a relatively good, you know, deal in that context. And it was something that we shared as well at City Council. How was that received? Because I did hear at a NPA meeting some comments about, you know, unfortunately Burlington Electric is having to raise rates again. And it sounded to me, this was before Monday night. And, you know, it kind of made me tilt my head because I thought, actually, that's, you know, the hope or the ideas, not to raise rates if we don't have to, but we'd rather do it in smaller increments rather than a huge shock. Precisely. I think, you know, one of the news story headlines was Burlington Electric raises rates for the second time in two years. I can write the headline going forward. We're going to try to have rate adjustments each year and not catch customers by surprise with something like what we had with the 7.5%, which is understandably not welcome in a given year. Nobody wants to see a double digit rate increase. No one wants to see 7.5%. So I think that's something that we really have tried to communicate. We communicated again on Monday. And to the media is most utilities do adjust rates year to year. We had this extraordinary run where we didn't have to for 12 years. We're going to repeat that. And, you know, some of the utilities have quarterly adjustments that don't get as much attention because they're not a full rate case. They're under what we call alternative regulation in Vermont. But, you know, GMP or Vermont Gas, they look at quarterly adjustments for their fuel costs. We only do this on an annual basis. And in some cases we hadn't done it at all on an annual basis. So to the extent we can, I want to socialize and normalize the idea that we're going to look at rates each year and try to have modest adjustments just to keep up with the cost-doing business, our workforce needs, inflation, et cetera. And hopefully that'll be well received. But obviously there will be some folks who will have concerns always. Yeah. And on Monday, did the council sort of hear that and go, huh? I was, yeah. I mean, we certainly had good discussion, but I was very pleased that we had unanimous approval from the council. I'm not sure we had that last year. I think we had a very strong vote last year, but I'm not, I don't remember that it was unanimous. And I think we've conveyed very clearly to the council what our plans are, how we're doing this. At least for folks who had looked at our earlier projection of a 4.9, then the 3.95 was welcome in that context, too. We looked at it in the context of the previous 12 years. That's right. The whole picture. We're still, if you look at that time frame. In the previous two years, you get a well, well below inflation and many other costs over that time frame. That's right. Agreed. I think we're ready for the financials. Good evening. The best way to share the financials is to join the teams meeting, right? For April. April was, I've presented a bunch of good months in a row. April was not as great a month as some of the previous months. We had a net income for the month that was negative $1.6 million as compared to what we had budgeted was a negative $1.1 million. That's about $560,000 worse than what we had projected on the net income side. However, that's for the month. However, for the year, we're still in great shape. We're still ahead of budget by almost $900,000. We have a net income currently over $2 million. We had only budgeted at 1.1. April wasn't great, but the year still ran really good shape. So on the revenue side for the month, sales to customers were down almost $200,000, $194,000. The residential sales were up 96,000, but our commercial sales were down 265,000. There were fewer heating degree days than budgeted just as a note. Our other revenue was up 18,000 driven primarily by the EEU. In April, there was no rec revenue for the month of April. It's not a rec revenue month. On the expense side, it was unfavorable in total by $243,000, both on power supply and the operating side. The power supply side was down $177,000, basically due to how the market cleared. And I'll let James add in if he wants to, but we're still researching sort of what was going on in April. Oh, sorry. Yes. They were up $177,000 as compared to budget. And we can provide more information on that once we have some more data. On the operating side, the main driver for our over budget was we did not budget for revenue bond costs in April that we incurred as a result of issuing the revenue bond. That was about $342,000. That was offset by expenses being under on the labor side of things and some other operating expenses. The taxes, same story as before, down to the pilot change that will appear through the end of the year. And our other income was under budget due to lower than anticipated customer contributions. Over to the year to date piece. So would you say it's predominantly the sales to customers combined with power supplies? I mean, I'm just looking at the two largest ones. Sure. I think in a nutshell, we collected less than we expected and we spent more than we expected. No, but I was wondering if there was one that you felt was unique. Is it mostly the heating degree days that perhaps nothing particularly unique? Nothing really jumped on that. The revenue bond was non-recurring. Yes, the revenue bond was a one-off. So for the year still in good shape, we are basically on target for sales to customers. We are under slightly by $58,000, which is pretty incredible. Residential is up almost a million and non-residential is down almost a million compared to budget. So in the sort of specific categories we're different, but in total we're right where we need to be. Can I ask a question? Yeah. As usual, I may have asked it before. The Champlain Parkway, $400,000 plus. Is that because they're on schedule or because they're off schedule? Is it anticipated or is it something on there and it's causing a problem? It was expected. So on power supply revenues, it's the same story that it's been in prior months as a result of the REC production being down. It's lower than anticipated when we budgeted. Year to date on the expense side, power supply is still ahead of budget by nearly $1.7 million, which is about 6% below where we budgeted. Purchase power is under, transmission is under, fuel is under year to date. Our operating expenses are also down over a million dollars, similarly at 6%. Again, this is a variety of things, labor, timing of expenses, et cetera. Our other income is down, as I've said in previous months, due to that $175,000 of ARPA that was assumed in this year and our customer contributions that haven't come in that we assumed in the budget. That is my overview of the month. Is there any questions? Great. I'll jump to the capital side. So we're about 49% of the way through the budget on the capital spending side. We anticipate part of this is probably due to the timing of the invoices associated with the Big Neal overall. So the overall took place in April, and we are getting invoiced and processing those. So should catch up in May. And then if you recall, there's also a couple of projects that were in the budget that we know we're not going to do the Velco equity. That's not going to happen this year. Some IT forward expenses and the bucket truck that we will not buy this year. Our cash position is better than it was in March. We're $11.2 million compared to $10.7 million at the end of March. Our credit rating factors are still in good shape. The debt service coverage ratio is a little less than it was in March down to $4.59. Our adjusted debt service coverage ratio also down a little bit from the prior month to 1.21. And our days cash on hand is at 139 days, which is up from the prior month, which was at 138. I think, if I'm remembering correctly, the arpa, a rearage money would have been included here. So that's if you're seeing that part of the cash bump would be that the one plus million we were able to get to customers is now officially part of our cash position. So we'll likely see that get a little bit back to normal next month perhaps. That's pretty high. 139 days as of April is pretty good metric. I would expect it might moderate a little bit before the end of the year. That's our projection is that it will moderate. If it doesn't, that's great, but we're assuming it's going to be closer to what was 8.6 million or 8.5 for the beginning of the next fiscal year. Could be harder for a rate case if it stays at 139. Well, the cash is only really part of the equation really. So yeah, there's no other set of factors going into that. We all things equal be happy to start the year with more cash if it means something went well, but yeah. No, I agree. It's just a little bit of a perception thing though, right? If you're asking for more money and you have a lot on the end, but right. Thank you. So next we have 2022-2023 draft strategic direction and this is a discussion. If I recall correctly, normally we discuss it the first month and we vote on it the next after we submit some comments if we have them. That's exactly right. We were planning to bring this back to you in July. So as we do every year, we seek feedback throughout the company on the different pieces of the strategic direction. I think we've done great work with the commission over the past few years and really honing the values, the vision, the strategic objectives. Those are hopefully stable and in the correct kind of frame. So we focused our edits on updating the different initiatives and we had very few as you saw. And these all essentially came from our teams. There was the one added in the customer community section came from energy services and is focused on additional website tools for heat pump evaluation, which is something we're interested in. And then under the managed budget and risks responsibly, previously we had developed a five year plan, I think with the net zero energy revenue bond and some more work having gone into that. We wanted to reframe the language a little bit to reflect some of the work we've done. And then our IT team had the mitigate cybersecurity risk language a little more specific than what we've had in the past. But in looking over this, a lot of the initiatives here are things that are ongoing that's work that's current that we're continuing. And I guess I don't view it as a bad thing to the extent that it's a relatively stable document because I think we've gotten it to a place where it really does reflect well the current and future work that we're planning. But always interested to hear if the commission has thoughts on items that maybe not included in here items that are included that you would have different thinking or wording. We'd be happy to take that back and look at it. I'll just say I think it's a lot right so it's sort of like these. You have the vision and then the engaged customers and communities sort of a goal and then the objectives underneath them. And so if it's really static does that mean we're not making progress? Like I guess there's different schools of thought like should they be just a handful of things that we're really focused on or should they, but this is a little more of a kitchen sink approach. Yeah. And then I find in general like it's just and maybe it doesn't matter because people turn on the light switch the lights come on everyone's happy, right? And the electric bill doesn't come up. But it is complicated. Yeah, well the strategic direction definitely there are pieces here that we do in the past years we had more of a work plan in the initiatives. And I think we've moved away from that to having things that are a little more durable that reflect kind of ongoing work that we have. One goal that we've had is that everybody in the company can see a piece of their work reflected here. So that definitely adds content and adds some complexity. But on the other hand, we've tried to really make it a document that people feel ownership over and that feel reflects on on each area, each of the centers that we have have a chance to give feedback. But yeah, I think a lot of the program kind of initiative language is our items that we may you may never reach completion that you're always striving for. And some of them are things that we can check off the box and say we've done this. So yeah, I definitely agree. It's a longer and more complex document and it fits in one page on the website here. It's a couple pages. Yeah, and there's some like big strategic things and then some very specific things, which is, you know, I think. For me, looking at it in tandem with looking at the strategic direction dashboard is helpful because that's sort of so in the packet it's I guess page 18. That that sort of helps, you know, compare contrast so that you can actually see where we are making progress, not where we not actually see, but so that you can see where the progress is and how much is being made for these different initiatives. And then I guess in combination with with the updated report, that's always helpful as well. Yeah, I mean, there are some of these like as I look at it, we have on here about, you know, this new community ambassador program. That's in the budget this year, we're going to do something with that this year. It's possible next year we may either want to check that off and say we did that or reflect it with different language. So it definitely should be a kind of an ongoing process of keeping track of it. But this year we found the language to be relatively reasonable and reflecting what we're working on. I'll take a look in combination with the dashboard. I mean, it's not a one for one. Because originally, I don't think you were here when we started the dashboard. Originally, the dashboard was like, it was really, really, really long. And so over time, Emily's been whittling it down. But it does help, you know, connect the dots between sort of the vision, which may appear to be static if we don't change it, but then also what the stats are. We'll visit the vision in 2030. Because then it'll be net zero? We'll be net zero hopefully and we can set some additional visionary goals. I like the level of detail. A couple of points that I specifically lock in on and they're there. I think it's good. And your point is great about balancing it against the tally. Well, to that point, maybe we have a little asterisk that says, you know, please look in very small print because I know it barely fits on a page. But please look at strategic dashboard to see metrics results. Yeah, we have this posted on the website. We could definitely add a link or something to take you to that page, maybe. Looking at Mike because he and Adam will be the ones who ultimately do that. So I do have a question, which is, you know, this whole room knows that we need more than just heat pumps. We need weatherization. We need air sealing. We need, you know, all sorts of tools from the toolbox. So why would we only say on item number six provide website tools so that customers can evaluate both cost and carbon savings from only heat pump technology installations as compared to sort of the net zero home initiative that you guys been working on. Yeah, and I'll add a comment, but Mike may have further thoughts. I think we've had kind of ongoing this question on our team about the heat pumps and the economics and the customer kind of view of it. And the weatherization work by and large gets done by Vermont gas. So we are in as good a position to kind of have that type of calculator on our website, although we could have, as you mentioned, we have a kind of net zero home approach that we're trying to build with them. So there could be something more comprehensive, I think. That would be helpful. I always, I don't forget, but as someone who's using heat pumps and then just a wee bit of oil, I don't think with that lens. But no, so that's, I think, why we really feel primary ownership over the heat pump experience that folks have, the calculation, the rebates, everything that goes into it. I'm assuming that's kind of the thinking that the team had. And we could perhaps add a broader piece of language and then say like comma with special focus on heat pumps. Right. Or we don't have to. I'd like some, it just shouts out to me like as a preferential piece and I understand that's helpful reminder. Thank you. Like that's obviously not going to be the solution that's going to address everything. Right. So if there's a way to call out in this language to address it to what you were saying, Mike. And also when you actually work on this tool to, to like coordinate with VGS to say, hey, how can we actually give more of a whole building, whole home calculator? Excellent. That would be really helpful. Okay. We can refine this for July. Thank you. I also support that. I think from the old days there were some real fights. I was in on some of them about putting solar panels on poorly insulated houses. That sort of thing. So the overall global optimization. Sure. And I would say as well, to the extent other ideas come to you over the next few weeks, we'll continue to kind of hold the document open. We can edit it really up to the next meeting. So if you're thinking about it or reading it over time, we welcome additional thoughts. Thanks. So next I'm imagining this will be relatively quick is the addition of Emily burn to the signatory list for BED accounts. This is a discussion and a vote. And I think if I'm understanding correctly that the language before you to avoid having to have these types of periodic changes would be to kind of have the position descriptions that are eligible to be signatories approved by the commission, as opposed to the person, because I think periodically we've had to do this and it would be it's really the position that's that's the signatory, not the person. So I think the language before you makes that change resolution as opposed to a vote. I'd still be a vote. And it's it just would instead of having a person's name on it, it's focused on the positions that we can have as a signatory. And I think it resolution because that's the language that the financial institutions might prefer. But it's still just about I think maybe we just say approved the following positions as signatories on all the accounts. Yeah. Okay. But can I can I ask a question before we do that. So I do remember we actually I think we had only Jim Brurden on on many of the accounts at one point. And Neil was on some of them and then so then you were at it and then Emily was at it and I understand, you know, and all the positions make sense. I guess just going to sort of checks and balances and recalling in one of our audits like three, four years ago the challenge to find equipment that like was taken out of the back room. Is there any what are the what are the pieces put in place here to ensure that everybody's coordinated connected in terms of who's signing what and that there is oversight. If you end up having four people signing for McNeil generating station accounts that you have sort of that oversight coordination. So I think in practice operationally that generally speaking director of finance is the person doing most of the transactions and then consulting as needed with myself and then as needed. With general manager. And so we are careful to manage communication and relationships with the financial institutions. And that. Yeah, the all three of us are on sort of, you know, for example, we had to now that we have received the revenue bond funds. We have the $20 million that are sitting with the bond trustee and a construction fund. We're able to invest that money in the construction fund in Treasury bills, for example, while it sits there as we, you know, wait to draw it down as we do projects, right. And so the person that we work with to manage those investments, you know, kind of reached out to myself and Emily to say, okay, how would you like to invest this money. So I think I think having the commission approve a resolution like this that says these are who we deemed to be the authorized signers is actually a form of internal control. And then the banking institutions also have a matching list that says, okay, I've received instructions from a person. I've spoken to them on the phone. I've got their email address, right. I know that this is Emily Burner, Emily Stevens Wheelock and they are an authorized signer for, for BED. Thanks. So now I folks want to make a motion. Is this eliminating our making these decisions periodically from here on in? Well, typically the only time we would make them is if we had a staffing change. Right. So you wouldn't, we wouldn't have to bring it back to you, my understanding. If, you know, if I was to leave tomorrow, the next general manager would automatically be considered a signer and you wouldn't have to approve them as a signer. Not just by virtue of their position, as long as you're comfortable with that. And I don't, I heard your question more as there are certain financial decisions that come before us based off of a financial cap or trigger and then there are others that don't. And that's what I was hearing your question to be. But what was Darren hearing it correctly? I think Darren was hearing it correctly. Okay. The positions. Right. Regardless of when they change down the road. Right. It's assumed that they are part of a significant. Would be an appropriate signatory. That's right. Right. Should I try? Sure. I make a motion that the authorized signers of Treasury Banking and other asset management accounts for the Burlington Electric Department shall be the employees in the following positions. For department accounts, general manager, manager of strategy and innovation, director of finance. What if, I mean we've seen departmental and hierarchy changes over the last few years. What if those changed down the road? If we changed positions, we would need to come back to you. If I think we'll always have a director of finance and hopefully we'll always have a general manager. The positions, your position and Emily's position have had some naming changes in the past. So if we had a change, we would update those if they were no longer consistent. No. I don't think I can second. All in favor. Hi. Hi. Thank you. Okay. So next up is a street lighting primer. This is a discussion with a potential expected executive session. And for folks watching, the next agenda item is a Moran frame update, which is a discussion as well as an expected executive session. So it might make sense to have the primer, see where we land, and then if we definitely feel like, yes, we need to go into executive session, we leave that, and we then get the Moran frame update, talk through that, and then go into one expected executive session. Instead of in, out, in, out, in, out. I think that's what I did. Coverable subjects. That's why you put them together. Yep. So just for folks at home, last summer, there were quite a few street lights that were replaced and up and down. According to certain standards. And commission members heard from a number of Berlin Tonians asking, you know, this is this really necessary. This feels like overkill. And where do these stats come from? Or where do they come from? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I'm asking, you know, is this really necessary? This feels like overkill. And where do these stats come from? Or where do these standards come from? And our crew spent quite a bit of time going out into the field to talk with people, identify areas that either the lights could be tilted differently or addressed, but ultimately stayed with the standards. So the commission promised to the homeowners that we would pick this up and dig into it a little bit more so that we all, since some of us weren't here in 2017, so that we all have an understanding of what the standards are, what they do, where the conversation is in terms of why various communities stand with the standards and maybe some others don't and what the pros and cons are to different approaches. So that is the purpose of this after a long-winded intro. And Andy, thanks for joining us. Thank you. So good evening, everyone. So I'll just jump right in. I figured I would just start with a little recap of things I've presented in the past. So I've mainly focused on our street lighting policy, what it means, what we follow, how we decide where we're doing projects and when. So today I wanted to get into more about the standards that we follow and maybe explain our design process a little bit more. So just to recap, as we've talked about in the past, we have the responsibility. BED has the responsibility of lighting the accepted streets in Burlington and we follow our street lighting policy, which has been adopted by the commission. The key point to take away from this slide is that our street lighting is designed to conform to illuminating engineering society or IES recommendations for lighting levels. And what we look at for that is their document. It's actually an adopted ANSI standard, but it's a roadway lighting design handbook called RP8. And as projects are designed, we refer to the current addition. And this is all kind of review, but I'll just go through it quickly. The fixtures are modeled using a road template and we look at the light levels on both the street and the sidewalk. And the goal is obviously to choose an energy efficient fixture that provides adequate lighting on both the street and the sidewalk. And we try to minimize the spill beyond the sidewalks. So to jump into what we mean when we say lighting levels, because there's a lot of different criteria that we actually look at when we're designing a street lighting project. One of the first things is called luminance. And basically what that is, it's a measurement of the light emitting passing through a reflected by surface. So bottom line there is that we use the term luminance to evaluate the lighting that we have for the roadway itself. So the part of the road that people are driving on. And to dive in a little bit further with that, in terms of roadway luminance it's looking at a specific point as seen from a specific observer position. So again, this is all getting technical. But the main point I wanted to make with this is that when we're looking at the road itself, it actually depends on the direction of the travel lane. Because the luminance actually has a reference point. So when it says observer on my slide here, what that means is the motorist in the vehicle. So it's like somebody sitting in a car a certain distance from the light. How much light is there? How much light you're going to kind of see on the surface of the road from that vantage point. The next term that we look at is called illuminance. So this really gets confusing because the terms sound so similar to each other. Different units for that. It's a measurement of the amount of light falling onto something and spreading over a surface. And what we use that for is evaluating sidewalks, crosswalks and intersections. Anything that involves pedestrians. And what it really correlates to is how a human would perceive the brightness of an area. And it does not depend on location or direction like the roadway luminance does. So continuing with a couple more things that we look at. The next group of terms is called uniformity. So that's really a ratio to make sure we don't have a large variation in the perceived brightness. So we don't want to have areas where we go from really bright to really dark in between. We want it to be relatively uniform over the entire area. So we actually look at the average and the maximum. So those are just two different mathematical ratios of average to minimum and maximum to minimum. And then finally there's another one called veiling luminance. And just to try and briefly sum that one up it's looking at glare. So we don't want to have fixtures that are going to create a lot of glare for drivers. Because it can be distracting and cause issues. So I've talked about some of the terms. Now I'll get into some of the classifications for streets. So when we're looking at lighting it's not really a one size fits all approach. We don't use the same lighting levels on a residential street that we would on like a major road like Shelburne Street or Main Street. So in the IAS recommendations they have different street classifications going from major collector to local. So from highest to lowest lighting levels. And DPW has actually provided us with a list of all the streets in Burlington and what their classification are. So like I mentioned some of the busier streets are the majors. The collectors are ones kind of like some of the busier but not as busy streets like think of like Cherry Street or Bank Street or ones like that. And then you get down to the locals. That's like your residential streets. So then getting into sidewalks. The classification for the sidewalks is actually driven by went too far. Sorry about that. The lighting levels for sidewalks are driven by the expected what they refer to as conflict levels. So high, medium and low. And just based on some historical data that we've looked at in the past. The downtown core area which really would be the busiest part of Burlington for pedestrians is only considered medium in the eyes of what the IAS recommendations are. Our residential streets are considered low conflict. And then to make it even more confusing the addition that we had looked at in the past for this has the low pedestrian conflict even further broken down into three more categories. So it's like rural low density and medium. To make it a little bit simpler. The good thing is we only have to look at medium density because it's based on two to six dwellings or houses per acre which is really what you're going to find in Burlington. So hopefully you're still with me. It's a lot of terminology here. So I just have some tables in the next few slides just kind of showing how the numbers change as you look at the different. If you can see my yeah. So this is really the lighting criteria for streets and you can see you know you have your major collector and local and the pedestrian conflict actually does factor into the street itself as well. But you can see the numbers do go down roughly you know the difference between major and local is about half half the light level required. And then there's you know the uniformity ratios and the valing luminance are fairly similar. On the local streets we actually do allow for a little bit more variation so that would mean we'd have need fewer lights. And then just looking at sidewalks there's a lot of information here but I've kind of circled and read I'm sorry that that part of it's covered up but circled and read the ones that we're looking at. These are for the sidewalks so for the medium areas the levels for the sidewalks are a little bit higher than for what we're looking at for low low medium. And intersections if I go backwards here we can see we'll pick like the one in the center there the average luminance for the walkways in medium areas is point five foot candles. If we go to an intersection it's significantly higher. The idea being that you might have pedestrians crossing the street in an intersection. So as far as our design process so now we have all these levels that we have to meet and we have a project that we're going to look at and you know what do we do. So for each project that we're looking at we actually build what they call a grid calculation system and we actually use a CAD drawing that we have of the entire city for that. And the CAD is based on actual GPS data and also orthographic imagery so it's fairly accurate as far as where things are. So we include the streets sidewalks any driveways houses etc so we know where things are and all of our facilities are mapped out as well. And we have separate grids for the travel lanes the sidewalks intersections so on and so forth. And we just you know start placing it's a little design exercise you just start placing lights and run the calculation to see if you're meeting the levels that you need based on where that street is located. And as far as where we put lights we obviously try to keep to existing poles first you know existing poles where we have lights we can upgrade a light to get the levels we need. If that's not enough we'll try and add them to any existing utility poles that might be in the area and if that's not enough then we'll obviously resort to putting in another pole if needed. So in laying these projects out some of the challenges we run into is really like it says there it's a balancing act. We want to choose the lowest output fixture that allows us to meet the minimum criteria. So again there's two sets there the roadway and the sidewalk so you're looking at the levels and the uniformity for both and then the glare for the roadway. One of the challenges is actually related to the fact that our fixtures follow what they call the bug system which I may have talked about before. It's backlight uplight glare which is a system that IES came up with to basically limit the amount of light spilling beyond where we're intending to light. So the B in bug stands for backlight so the fixtures that we're putting in have if you think of it like a cone coming down from the light. The amount of light that comes behind the fixture is limited. The problem we run into a lot when we're placing lights is that we're trying to light a sidewalk that's behind the light fixture. So you don't get a whole lot of light from that fixture so you end up sometimes effectively lighting the sidewalk from the opposite side of the road because the light comes out more forward from the fixture and less to the rear. So the result that we can sometimes get from that is that the sidewalks actually end up driving the lighting levels more than the roadway. So we're fine on the roadway levels but the sidewalks are lower than what they're supposed to be so we have to put in more lights or brighter lights. So we have made things a little bit better with that historical challenge. Back in 2020 we did make a revision to the policy which I brought here to this meeting. So some of the things that have been made possible by our changes there are basically a little bit more flexibility in the equipment that we can choose. So now we can actually use a shorter arm so for that challenge with sidewalks if you have a shorter street lighting arm, your fixture is closer to the pole meaning you can get a little bit more light onto the sidewalk. And then it also opened up the possibility of using different heights of poles so a shorter pole would tend to be a little bit less obtrusive to the neighborhood but the only drawback there is that you may end up needing more poles because since the light's closer to the ground it doesn't spread out as far and you might need to put more in to maintain that uniformity that I referred to earlier. So as far as where we are with all of this some of the things we have in progress right now we kind of touched on this earlier. Some of the feedback we've got from customers and we've talked about at this meeting we're looking at the feasibility of reducing lighting levels in certain areas of the city primarily residential areas. So back in January we reached out to IAS for some clarification on a couple of items that we noticed in their standard. They had a note about departing from recommended lighting levels requires a thorough investigation but it doesn't really explain what that means. The title of that section was actually when residential street lighting may not be needed. And then there was another subsection beyond that that mentioned that streets with travel speed below 30 miles an hour says street lights may not be necessary for driver vision but says that it doesn't address lighting for pedestrians. So we reached out to them trying to dig into those two items a little bit further to see if there's something we could possibly do to maybe reduce lighting in certain areas. We also asked them if they had any advice or direction on whether there's a venue for asking questions like this and whether a membership would give us any additional benefits or assistance. So as of now we still haven't gotten a response from them. We've continued to reach out and they've been promising us that someone's going to get in touch with us and it hasn't happened yet which is really frustrating for us. So in the meantime Commissioner Sebbins has reached out to IES and she did receive a reply from their director of education and standards and just sent a link to a bunch of publications which is less than helpful. However we did get some interesting information from that. We did discover that there is a new version of the RP8 handbook. So we've gotten ourselves a copy of that and we're currently evaluating it to see what's changed and if there's any more anything in there that we can utilize to potentially reduce lighting levels. So that's what I had for that portion of the presentation. I feel like I just talked a lot. So does anyone have any questions? Well if we've been doing it and we continue to do it, why are our customers concerned? What's changed? Is this a perception? It could be. I honestly don't know a good answer to that question. I'm not sure that we've really changed anything with our practices. Not the Richardson area. You guys were updating areas by year, like bit by bit, and they finally got to Richardson and I guess it's been a while since it's been updated. So it was a distinct difference for the people there. There were certain areas of the city or still are certain areas of the city where there's clearly not been a lighting study done. And there's maybe one or two light fixtures per block. And so when we go from that to meeting the standards, it's a pretty significant change. So for some of the historical background, as far as why we're following the IAS and things related to that, some of the information relating to that is confidential. So we anticipated possibly meeting a executive session for that. Okay, there is this criticism made over the years. I'm old enough to remember about how the lighting recommendations slash standards typically go up over time. Kind of reflecting the idea that when in doubt, more light is better. And so I've heard some comments, but they're anecdotal in which there weren't any new poles or new fixtures. There were new bulbs, LEDs typically. So I understand if you go to a street that maybe had no standards applied to it ever and then you apply new standards. There's going to be more light and there should be. But other times I wonder if light is also just going up on streets that already met whatever standards we had. And is that because the new standards are brighter or just accidental? I think there may be a perceived difference if you were to compare a newer LED fixture to an older, say, high-pressure sodium fixture. Especially with the high-pressure sodium, if they've been out in the field for a long time, they do degrade over time. And LED tends to actually purchase fixtures that maintain a constant light output over time. So in that case, sorry, luminance would have gone up. If it were an older fixture, that's quite possible, yeah. I just want to say I think that this is great, right? It's spot on. Everybody's being treated equally according to a set of standards and categories. The application of those standards, sometimes there's variations, right? Because equipment changes or something like that. But that's what we have as public servants. That's the way that things have to be done because they're user conflicts. Somebody on the sidewalk wants good light. Somebody in the house, maybe they don't until there's a crime problem. So you can't win, but you have a strategy. You have a framework and you're applying it universally across the city. I think that's the right answer. One of the pieces that was an eye-opener for me was that although we call them standards, they're not like standards you must comply with. Technically, we don't have to comply with these. But I do think it would be helpful for viewers or whatnot, you know, to the degree that we can talk about the fact that we have gotten legal guidance to follow these otherwise, what are you following? And how do you make it to your point about consistency? You know, what are you following? And how are you identifying what those alternative choices may be? What is the process? In this case, there is, you know, a lengthy process with a lot of, you know, lighting experts who spend all their time doing this, but I know I cut you off. Well, okay. There is a movement out there about questioning light levels, including astronomers, no surprise there. They really don't like uplight at all. But also various green arguments. And although we have a precedent here, a legal one, which I guess we'll get into in our closed session, there are precedents out there for people that are cutting back with justification, but the bottom line is they get away with it to put it mildly. I had a list of these once upon a time. I've been asking or suggesting that somebody should be a reporter and dig these up because I think they're proliferating, but I haven't done it. Del Mar, California, I mentioned there were four communities in Vermont as of five years ago, six years ago, had been cut back, lights to what level? I'm not sure. So is there any argument for that? Well, is the poetry about, you know, being able to see the Milky Way? That's the thing about only 10% or whatever it is, 40% of Americans can see the Milky Way. If there were no precedent, we'd have to drop it right there. But I think there are, but I'm no legal person. Do we want to bother to investigate that? It looks like it's going to take some work. Maybe we should discuss that, but that's out there. Otherwise, we can just say there are recommendations which we have adopted for years, which keep us protected and in service to our customers, and that's the end of it. And everything will be dictated by the IES. Have we heard from some of the customers that you were working with last summer? Have we heard anything back from them in the last several months? I alluded to it earlier, but we do try to handle these on a case-by-case basis because obviously nothing's one size fits all. But we do try to work with the customer and listen to their concerns, and we do look at if we can put a shield in or something like that and still maintain the levels that we need. We definitely do that where we can. Identified as any or of any of where some of these pockets of low light or fixtures that haven't been touched in a number of years? Is there any sort of knowledge of where those still might be around the city that haven't been looked at? As we're doing our projects, we have a record and a plan that we keep up to date with when we've updated it, and we've gone back as far as we have records, which again, it's an internal thing, but we have a fairly decent handle on what's been looked at and what hasn't. And we have an actual capital plan that's behind it. We try and do a certain number of streets a year as our budget allows just to get streets up to lighting standards, and it's prioritized based on a number of things including customer requests for lighting evaluation, there might be city projects or BED projects where we're doing work in the area and for efficiency reasons we'll do the street lighting work at the same time. So, I've heard one commissioner say, good to have these standards, we're treating people equally and trying to balance and thread the needle, which is challenging with competing interests, and another commissioner say, you know, there's an alternative view and we're starting to see communities that are, you know, revisiting this and I guess, I mean, I could imagine we say, all right, well, we have standards and we will hear a little bit about some of the legal precedent. Can we talk about any of that in open session or is that really only executive? Paul might have the best sense of that. I just think if anyone, since we don't have a lot of public comment often and one of the few times we've had it is on this issue. So, for anyone who might be watching this in the future, I think it would be helpful for them to know that there has been some legal precedent and legal guidance and if you felt comfortable at all articulating that so that someone could hear that, so it's not just hear the standards and we follow them, period, but hear the standards and we have been following them and it is according to some sort of guidance we've been receiving. Well, I think in general just the insurance, the legal, the claim, the risk management world would, no one's more risk adverse than that group and so if we hear about lowering lighting issues, as long as we're meeting the standards that IES set or the guidelines you call them, what do you want, but as long as we're meeting that, things in general are good. If we have a claim or an accident or a call from BPD, that's when the lighting issue is going to be heavily scrutinized and we would not want to be below those standards because a particular call from a customer that says they have trouble sleeping at night because it's too bright and they're living with that kind of stuff, so in general, we have had, and all utilities have had those type of claims or incidents and that's about as far as I'd like to go into that detail, but. So we, I guess for commissioners, this kind of sounds like a homework assignment in terms of what you were saying, you keep saying a reporter, what we do not have a reporter volunteering to do that right now, so it sounds like an internship or something like that or one of your students from another time, but to the commissioners, is this an area that you'd want to look into further to dig in a bit? Okay, let me answer, even I would say maybe no, maybe not more, it's kind of a question of how much personal energy I have for this, I think I may be involved deeply one way or the other. We also don't have all of the commission members here and Commissioner Shagdon was one of the ones who felt very strongly that we stay with IES and actually I think he wanted some of the streets brighter. Maybe you just haven't gotten to them yet, Andy. We can also mull this over and talk through this a little bit more in July when we have all five of us and see from there because it does require some homework to actually look at what other communities have done, what have the risks been, what did they do. It's not a light undertaking. How are we suggesting to deviate from IES? My sense is that a number of communities have and what are their reasons? I'm not sure of all of them, some of them have to do with just less light. There is also, this is old stuff, right, when I was looking into this way back 2017 even before. There is a cadre of consultants out there who say we can do better in the end by changing the varying levels as you go down the street and so on and so on. You maintain contrast with a lower light level. That was creeping into the field, I thought, there was academic work going on at Virginia Tech, all about to come out back then and it got delayed like IES. So I think there is a yes. So yes, there are communities that are strained from it and the question would be, what are they doing? What do we want to be one of those communities? What are they doing and what are the risks? Are they comparable communities? I think that's an important question to ask. Are we comparing ourselves to Fairhaven or something? Right, because we have a different level of issues in Burlington, you know? Sure. We want people to feel safe walking down the street. Which is why Mike... Okay, well... Stay with IES and the fact that we've been... there's plenty of evidence that we've tried to reach out to them and to the M degree for further... we've shown that we've done our due diligence to... Well, I think that covers us. I mean, if we just use it, although I was kind of joking saying we don't literally know what they're saying today, right? Is that correct? We just got the latest version and we're in the middle of evaluating it to see what's changed. Fingers crossed that it actually has some relief for us. You know, maybe some options or... What's the printing date? I mean, is it pretty... It's been in the last year. There you go. You know, it's... Unfortunately, from what we've seen, there's no summary of changes. So we're kind of digging through the pertinent sections that we would look at to know what the differences are. So with that, how thick is it? Do you think you can get through it by July? Or do you need August? Oh, good. Okay. Light reading. I made a pun and didn't even... That was a good one, actually. So I'm going to suggest that you don't have to read that all by July. And I mean, this is... As I said, this is not a light endeavor. I'm sorry. But it's... You know, if someone gets hurt and sues the city, sues Burlington Electric because there wasn't enough lighting, that's real. On the other hand, we also know that there are issues that we've seen with biodiversity because of overlighting. And we've heard from... Not necessarily here in Burlington, but we've heard from, you know... I think this is the third topic. We've actually had public comments on since I've been here for 10 years, I think. So I'm going to suggest that you think about how long it'll take you to get through 600 pages. We historically have not necessarily met in August, so that's something to think about. We're not going to, like, make a decision on this quickly. I think if there are any changes, it needs to be very, very thoughtful and very, very careful. So do you think you might have read through them all by September? I think that's reasonable. Is this to be dealt with or through? Okay, I also should volunteer for something. So I will contact the usual suspects and others I can dig up and see what I can find about what's been done. It won't be the hardcore reportage I talked about, but it'll be more than nothing. Great. And the time scale we're on is... September. You heard it? You heard it here? Okay. Thank you. Thank you. I'm also mindful that you guys generally are doing quite a bit, so... I know this is, you know, another task. So to the degree that come July, you're like, wow, I still haven't even touched any 600 pages, let Darren know and we can talk through it again. Given what we've said here, do you think that this closed session is still appropriate? I would argue yes. Well, we're probably going to have to go into an expected executive session anyway for the Moran Frame Update and MOU. So let's shift over to agenda item number nine, Moran Frame Update and MOU discussion. Thank you, Andy. Thank you, Paul. And that's you, Darren. I think the most I can say, similar to last time, is that BED and the city have had discussions around potential liability contributions from the department to the city relative to the Moran site and we had consulted with the commission, I think, back in, I believe it was January, correctly, on this during executive session and we would like opportunity to provide some limited updates on what would be a potential agreement between the city and BED on this topic so that the commission has a chance to hear from us and weigh in before we would move forward with something. And we have Mr. Moody, who's going to make a motion. All right. I make a motion that premature general knowledge, general public knowledge of BED's history, background and legal cases relating to street lighting would clearly place the Burlington Electric and Moran plant MOU would clearly place the Burlington Electric Department as substantial disadvantage per title one, section 313A1 of Vermont statutes. Second. Does someone want to make a second? Oh, sorry. I can't make a second. You're asking. Yes. Second. I second the motion. All in favor. I make the motion to enter into executive session with Burlington Electric Department staff and council to discuss the Moran plant and street lighting under provisions of title one, section 313A1 of Vermont statutes. Second. All in favor. Thank you. So let us know when we're off.