 Okay. Welcome to this meeting of the Amherst Energy and Climate Action Committee. And I still haven't written a little blurb that I want to read every time and there's no attendees. Oh, we have an attendee. So I should say something or try to. So we are the Amherst Energy and Climate Action Committee and we work toward a fair, just and quick energy transition in Amherst. An attempt to do our bit to save the planet. Onward from there. The first thing on every agenda is always to review and vote on the minutes from last time. So without waiting, I will go ahead and bring up the minutes from last time, which are right here. Okay. I'll just make that a little bigger and you guys a little bigger. There we go. So hopefully everybody's looked at these beforehand, but if not, here they are. We need a note taker for this time. And I don't remember whose turn it was Jesse. Okay. Jesse will be our note taker. I don't know if you have any comments or anybody have any issues with the minutes. I did read through them and didn't see anything. Jumped out at me. Oh, there's a random switch to first name in five. Oh, let's fix that. Where is that in five feet? Stephanie is training to become a heat pump coach. Oh, Stephanie. Yeah. Okay. That's, let's fix that one too. Cicerello. Or is it, is it Cicerello or Chickarello? Chickarello. That's okay. I don't know if I should change it on my end anyway. So I got it here too. I should scan for stuff like that. And I did not. So if you see anymore. Oh yeah, there's a few more. There's six D and seven C. I think, yeah, I had updated these minutes and then saved them. And then I, for some reason they weren't where I thought they were. So I'll do that again. And then I'll post them. And seven. Yep. I got it. Okay. And go. I still need to talk to Dwayne Dwayne. I'll be contacting you about, about this. Issue just to talk to you about it. The cost benefit analysis for trees and, or the CO2 analysis for trees and, and suburban homes, suburban lots. So if there's nothing, we need a, we need a motion to accept the minutes and a second. I can motion to accept the minutes. Thank you, Laura. I can second. Thank you, Tony. Okay. And then Lori, if you could stop sharing. Yes. All right. So, um, please be sure you're. Not muted. And just either yay or nay for. Yes. And three, yes or no for approving the minutes, Goldner. Hey, Dr. Yes. D. Yes. MacKellar Al'Rath. Yes. Alison. A. The same. Uh, the same. Selman. Yes. Breger. Yes. Moving on, I think our next, next on the list, I think I do want to say a few words about Stella, but I think we should do the public comments first. So let's go ahead to public comment. Martha, got anything for us today? Martha always has good input. If not, then I just want to say this is going to be Stella's last meeting with us, right? Yeah, this is it. Yeah, so Stella is, will not be back. So I wanted to just say a few words of thanks for all your work at every level, and in particular with the transportation stuff and bringing the tech, being our liaison to the tech and bringing all of that to our attention. I was really impressed. You sent an update of all the stuff you've been working on to Michael, I think, right? Who will be taking over that? Was it Michael or Tony? Tony. Was that the email address, by the way? Yes. Okay. And it's quite a list. You're going to be a hard act to follow, Stella. And it's all really good, good stuff. So I want to just thank you very much for all your hard work. I wish we were meeting live so I could bring a cake and have it up and share chocolates or something. When did you join ECAC? I guess almost two years ago, right? Almost two years. Because we joined at the exact same time. Oh, we did. We did. That's right. All right. Well, thank you again. Thank you. And with that, I hope you'll still be available if we have questions about stuff that you've worked on or just... Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. Anybody feel free to reach out anytime. Might not be super responsive the next two months, but... Would be perfectly understandable and good luck and congratulations within the little one. Okay. I think that brings us right to updates. Lots of stuff going on these days. So let's go ahead, Don. Do you have a pace update for us? I do not. I'm going to apologize to everybody for disappearing for the last almost three weeks. I have a... And one of the reasons I was hesitating, Stephanie, on getting back to you on the retreat is I had this massive trial scheduled that was going to just eat up enormous amounts of time. And that's basically all I've been working on until yesterday at the pre-trial conference when it resolved. So all of a sudden, my calendar is now open, but I have been just totally out of it for the last three weeks. But now my life is back to normal. So put me on for next time. And again, I apologize to everyone. Well, we are glad to have you back. So we did notice that even though Claudia, is that the right name? Yes. Left, right. Left. There does seem to be a chamber of commerce calendar that goes out to like June or something like that. So somebody's been scheduling events on it. So I don't think it would be hard to pick up where we left off now. Do you know Stephanie who's taken over for Claudia? I don't, but I was going to say that we can reach out. I think we also... I would not be surprised if part of that loading the calendar was Claudia before she left. That would not surprise me in the slightest. So I think we can reach out. I just don't... I just want to be respectful to whoever is stepping in that role. Those are some big shoes to fill. So just give them a little breathing room, but we can reach out to them and see that we can try to plan an event. But my guess is it's probably a little overwhelming because you may or may not know that Gabriel Gould has left the business improvement district as well. Yep. And those two worked very closely together on quite a bit. So it's not... I think whoever the folks are that are dealing with their vacancies have a lot on their plates. So I will reach out for sure. And if I can schedule something, I will contact Dawn so that we can coordinate and meet up again and try to get this back on. But I just want to be respectful of the transition. Not that very... I mean, there's a lot of construction going on too. Not that Barry Roberts needs favorable financing or anything like that. But that is the reason why we should be doing this sooner rather than later. I do feel... So there's more coming up too, right? The IRA is about to dump huge amounts of money to the states. There are two parts to it, right? There are the tax rebates and incentives that go to us directly. And then there were these big chunks of money that go to the states. And Massachusetts hasn't even applied yet, apparently. But I think they have to soon. And that money will be doled out in the next year or two, a couple of years, maybe three, over the next 10 years. But we want to make sure we have the local business community on board and understanding what's coming and that this money will be available and how to make use of the system now as well because there's already money available through Massachusetts, right? So I do feel like this is beginning to bubble up to be something, even though there are these changes at the chamber, it's getting a little more urgent that we get those guys on board that it had been because this money is coming, right? We want them to be primed. And we also have the changes from the updated stretch code and our specialized coded option. So those are happening, I think we said July. So, I mean, timing-wise, it makes sense to sort of have everything presented to people at one time and not piece-mealing those changes. I think it makes sense to do, when we do a gathering that we sort of include that information to, I'm sure the people at Mass Development are well-versed. Yeah. Well, it all needs to be on there. I think one of the big problems we face is that for a lot of people this just isn't in their vocabulary. It isn't in there. They're not thinking about it yet. They're not realizing that this is something they have to do now and not later. So I think getting that conversation started will be more and more important. Okay. Anything else on pace? Okay. Wayne, got anything for us on solar? Yeah. I'll defer to Stephanie in terms of whether there's been any action with the bylaw. But in honesty, we as a group haven't really done too much on solar since the bylaw process. So I'm open to a discussion about what ECAC should do next with regard to solar. But I'd also point out, and I think, Laurie, you just mentioned big money coming into Massachusetts. Amongst that is anticipated, not guaranteed, but pretty confidently anticipated, I believe, no less than $250 million coming into Massachusetts along with many other states all along that size magnitude. But $250 million for Massachusetts for an EPA program called Solar for All, which is $250 million, which is specifically to support solar and solar access for low income. And I'm not sure the exact definition, but the disadvantage communities generally. Frontline communities. Yeah, I'm not sure how EPA define or calls it. So and DOER anticipates hearing about the award, I think in April. So in a couple months, and to be to start funding programs in the fall. As part of the proposal, the DOER put together two EPA, there's a framework for the spending, but it's all in tens of million dollars of chunks of different categories of effort. A fair amount of this will be channeled through the housing. Housing agencies, but others are a bunch is going through MassCC for them to program through competitive solicitations. And then there's other categories, which are not clear whether they're competitive or how they're defined. So just something we might, there is a outline of the DOER proposal to EPA on their website. If you just Google DOER Solar for All, you can get that. But it might be something that we start looking at in terms of how we can think about preparing some ideas or tapping into some of this money for particularly for low income populations and any of our housing authorities that serve Amherst. I'm not as up to speed on that, but I'm sure Stephanie is. And Stephanie has her hand up anyhow. So I'm sure she has something to say on this. Yeah, I just wanted to say when this opportunity became available, I had reached out to Pioneer Valley Planning Commission to see if they were reaching, if they were going to apply. But again, we were just discovering that it was really such a large chunk of funds that it was going to have to be at a state level. But they may still apply for funds on behalf of numerous communities. So I did say that we were interested in any effort that they might be pursuing to access funds. So just want to say that if it's, I mean, I don't know what it's all going to look like when they actually present it and package it. Is it going to be able, you know, are we going to be able to do it as a an individual community? Or will we want to maybe work collectively with some other communities? So I just want us to think about, you know, potentially regionally working on something. I just, it would be nice to sort of think innovatively about this as well. Yeah, good point, Stephanie. I think the last thing DOER plans to do is give out, you know, $20,000 here, $20,000. It's going to be more like here's $2 million, $3 million to do an initiative. And so that would be more regional. Maybe in community solar might be something. Community solar is a big part of this thing. Through our new CCA even would be great to leverage the new CCA in that way. I know they're interested in that, right? At least I understand. Well, that's, that was so that there's the CCA and there's the joint powers entity, which we are not. We have a, we have a memorandum of understanding between the three communities. The challenge with becoming a joint powers entity is that it, you know, we were seeing it as kind of more bureaucracy to deal with when the state is sort of finally getting at a point where some of the program we might want to do with, you know, we'll be allowed through the new DPU regulations. So that's kind of, we're kind of waiting on that. So right now the CCA is really about getting greener supply for customers. It's not about developing solar or renewable energy locally yet. We're hoping that with the new DPU regulations that will happen down the road. I just want to be clear because there's a lot of confusion around you know, what the CCA is able to actually do. And right now it's not able to do a lot at all. Even if we had the JPE we still wouldn't necessarily be able to do that quite yet. So the JPE could, but you need funding and where's that going to come from? So because that's big, you know, that's a lot. Just to point out in the DOER's outline or framework for the proposal, there is a carve out $65 million worth for community-shared solar, but it's specifically and nicely low-income community-shared solar. So I don't know exactly how they define that, but I suspect a large percentage I would hope, a large percentage of the off-takers would need to be low-income. And my guess is siting will have to, will probably need to be like within EJ communities or adjacent to EJ communities possibly. That's kind of what I would assume. A lot of that criteria is that it benefits those communities. Yeah, I'm not sure if the siting benefits are okay. Well, I mean, put it in your forest or my forest. I guess, again, we're talking about, are we talking about, you know, solar development versus housing complexes, you know. And maybe that, but the housing is needed. So I don't know, you know, I guess. So that brings up another topic that I would, that came up earlier today in a different context that I think perhaps we should consider in our solar, you know, we just did a couple of webinars on solar. I think we need one on community solar because I for one do not understand how I benefit when I buy into a community solar. I don't understand the calculation for that is not something I understand. So I would very much like to, you know, know how that works, how I know I'm not getting scammed, what to expect if I buy into community solar, what will I actually save? You know, I think we need someone to do that. Does anybody have a lead on someone who could talk about community solar and explain how it works and how to find one that is reasonable? Go ahead, Stephanie. So I was just going to say that I think, you know, there's a few ways that this can go. And I think what you were saying was very specific to how do residents benefit from community solar, which is different than we want to develop community solar within your community, right? So I think if this is something that's information for residents, then that's a different conversation. And there's probably several people we could reach out to and Dwayne, you know, we could, we could talk offline and maybe you can recommend a few people I have a few that I can think of, but we can talk about that offline. Okay, and Laura. Yeah, just, I think this is an important conversation to have. I don't have any recommendations of people to speak to. But I know that this, and I don't say this in a negative way, but the skepticism around community solar is very strong in our community. And I think some of it is because people don't understand. Some of it may just be not warranted. And I think we need to dig into that more and figure that out. And if ECAC can help you, I think that would be a good role for us. Yeah, I have not bought into community solar because I don't understand it. And until I understand it, I'm not going to do it, right? So I, yeah. Well, I mean, I just give you my, my thoughts off the top of my head, which is that community solar can mean a lot of different things. So it's not like one, one, one vision applies. I like to say, and originally community solar was referred to as community shared solar. I like to equip that the way it's really is turns out as there's not a whole lot of community involved, and there's not a whole lot of sharing involved, right? But it's solar. And, but it's basically, you know, for the most part, I would say 99% of the community shared solar projects in Massachusetts, and probably around the country or third party owned projects where the owners are, you know, making their rate of return. And the, the, the, the regulatory definition of community shared community solar in Massachusetts is that the, the, the, the output of the solar projects are delivered through net meter and through net meter and credits, but you can think of it as the electricity to off takers, retail off takers, 50% of the energy can be off taken by up to two large sort of anchor off takers. And then all the rest has to be divvied to lots of small homeowner off takers. But the value to the homeowner or to the off taker is not within the regulation. That's a private business transaction between the project owner and the, and the, and their off what they're offering as an off taker agreement. Typically, it means that they will offer you a, what turns out to be a discount on your energy of about 10%, maybe 15%. Nothing's nothing huge, but nice. So that's, that's basically what it is. I would say that there is a lot of misinformation or confusion, I guess, about a subset of community solar, which is community owned solar, which is rare, but also of great interest where the community, an entity within the community, be it a municipality itself or a company or an LLC or a cooperative or individual homeowners actually literally buy into a share of equity and ownership of the project. In which case they have all the benefits of ownership and all the risk and costs associated with ownership. But generally, that tends to be a much more wealth creating enterprise. If you can keep that ownership local. But that's not the way it's practiced for the most part. Yeah. Okay. I think I'm going to take the rest of this discussion offline. I'm going to just pick your brain a little about this Dwayne just for my own, my own interest. But I do think we should have a webinar about this and, and talk about both, you know, if there are ways we can do community on solar right now or wouldn't that be great? But we should have someone talk about this. So I think it might be two different discussions because community owned solar is going to be a different set of, of maybe experts that we would want to. Okay. All right. So let's just stick with community solar then and we'll do community owned as a separate thing at the time. We'll make that distinction. Anything else along the line with to talk about with solar? You want to have any other input updates? If not, let's move on to the sustainability festival planning. So let's remember this is on April 20. Remember that right? Yes. April 20 from 10 to four, right? Correct. And last time we had a few ideas for things we want to do. I'd like to start to, let's see, we're a little less than two months off now. I'd like to start putting together a schedule of who will be there, which hours and what sort of what we should bring with us to prepare. There's no huge rush on some of this. I just want to make sure it gets on everyone's schedule. And if you can't make it, let me know well in advance. Because it's the sort of thing we really do need as many of you as we can get to show up for a couple hours at a time. Better if we have two people there, you know, so six, three shifts, two people that six and then a couple more to set up. That's pretty much all of us. And I'll probably stay longer than that. So I'll probably stay at least four hours maybe more. Excuse me. So what do we got? Last time we had the, I'm going to sit at a stand that says keep pump advice, five cents or something like that. Electrification advice, five cents. I am still happy to produce that piece of infrastructure for you. And as well as I have a, what do I call it, a tent that I would loan out for the day. And I think I even have a table. Cool. I have tables too. So if we need tables. And I would just say from a time commitment I could do, I could participate in that setup, but I cannot extend my past, you know, mid-morning. I probably wouldn't make it to the start of the festival. And I can't do. Okay. So you can do the morning, in other words, help set up and then you'll disappear. That's, that's what I'm hoping for. Yeah. Okay. So I will bring two, I'll bring two or I can have as many as four tables. So right now I'll plan on bringing two tables so you don't need to bring those. They're the fold out, the white fold out, you know, Walmart tables. Okay, Laura. Yeah. I like the idea of heat pump advice for fives. And I also like the idea of, and we've done this in the past, I think, having a QR code or something where people can go, I think linking to our educational series, YouTube page would be helpful. And I'd like to collect input from people on what other educational information they'd be interested in. And that could help us determine future educational series topics. Sure. But the question will be, what would you like to know about? And we'll ask people that. And we collected information on how they participated in the energy transition in this year. Okay. What would you like? I like Stephanie's idea last time of having a computer or two computers with links to or open to the sustainability dashboard. So I put a plug for that. Unfortunately, this always falls on school vacation week. And so I will again not be in town this year. So I apologize for that. That's okay. Other input time of day, you prefer sort of just generally, we can mock up the schedule later. But so Jesse's morning, I'll probably be there from morning until about noon, maybe two. Any druthers? I mean, middle of the day works well for me. Hard to know exactly what's going on. And how are you set for April 20? Go ahead. You got your hand up. Yeah. How do I lower this? Again, I'm going to apologize to everybody. I'm the chancellor for the Episcopal Diocese of Western Massachusetts. And they are having an event in Southboro that day to celebrate a pilot program that the diocese has put together. It's called an Episcopal Path to Creation Justice. It's designed to equip our churches with for moving forward with deep and broad work and creation care. So I am going to be in Southboro. The chancellor is a fancy way of saying lawyer. I think back in King Henry's days, they got your head locked off, but it's just a fancy way of saying lawyer. And I'm the diocese lawyer and I have to be there. And it's from nine to three in Southboro. So you will not be here. Okay. So Tony and Michael and Laura. Laura's not going to be here. So who are we visiting? I will be present. I will be present and around most of the day. Okay, cool. Michael. Yeah, I should be around barring any emergencies or anything that comes up. I'm probably in Duane's similar to Duane's schedule. Like morning is better. But yeah, I mean just with advanced notice, I can plan around really anytime, right? Tony, did you have a time of day or anything else you want to add to? Whatever works for you best works for me best. This thing is fun. I had a lot of fun last year at it. So Stephanie, go ahead. I was just going to suggest that maybe just putting together a table with time slots and having people sign up for the time slots might work easiest. That's what I was going to do. That's what I always do. But I wanted to, that's what we did last year, but I just wanted to get some idea. I wanted to make sure it was on everybody's radar. Yeah, absolutely. No, all good. I love hearing about it and talking about it and thinking about it. It's a really fun event and a lot of great conversations with people. You know, it's fun to sort of see people engaged in conversation for like a long time. Some people have very, very deep philosophical conversations as well. So I encourage spending more time than just a few hours even and walking around and really appreciating and getting to know the event a little more. All right, Stephanie, do you have something else or? Yeah, no. Anything more on sustainability festival for now? You know, keep thinking about it. If you come up with any more brilliant ideas, I think we have plenty. I think between, you know, we'll have a big easel with place for people to write down what they want to hear about. We'll have a computer. We'll have a stand with, you know. The doctor is in. Doctor is in, right? One thing I will ask actually all of you is if there are organizations that you or agencies that you know of that you think would be great to be present there, please do some outreach and let them know about it and have them get in touch with me. The, you know, again, the booth space is free. It's 10 by 10. We just give them the space, but they have to bring their own stuff, but there's no charge. So organizations and then also looking for the demonstration area has opportunities throughout the day for people to come and learn something. So I would really love to have some. It's always great when we get some students to come out and do something. I think I don't know if it was last year we had some high school students come out and do a solar oven demonstration with the very little sun that we had that day. So those types of things, if there's, you know, if folks have connections to people and you could spread the word, that would be something we really need. Not for you to do, but if you know of other groups or people that would be, just let them come, you know, have them come to me. Okay, eCAC retreat planning. There's nothing else on that. Now we had some ideas and I don't remember where I wrote things down. Did they make it into the minutes? We had some ideas and then where should we start with this? So I think it made it onto there. I have notes somewhere for this, but I was thinking that for the eCAC retreat. I know I appreciated at the retreat that there was a little bit of a recap of where eCAC has been and the carp. I don't know, Michael and Tony, if you've read through the carp or not, but you know, just talking a little bit about the genesis of that and what's in it, taking a look at it. So I think we go to start with some sort of a little bit of a review of where the eCAC and where Amherst has been. Does that make sense? And what some of these programs are that keep going by like, you know, ARPA and my friend. We keep hearing there's a lot of different community groups that have been involved in one way or another and that are going to be involved again, I think with this heat pump program that's coming online. So a little bit of background there might be good. I forget the names of different groups. So it's nice to hear them again once a year in an orderly fashion. Then I think one of the big things that we probably need to look at a lot of, I think we need to look at how we're doing outreach and how we can reach more people, whether that's more webinars or other efforts. How can we leverage the new sustainability dashboard, this sort of thing? Laura, go ahead. Yeah, first I think, Tony, did you want to go? I saw your hand up. Yeah. Thank you. Glory, just briefly, Will. Will covering the carp be a part of the retreats itinerary? I think we'll go over it at least a little bit. I don't think we can go over it in huge detail, but I think it's worth talking about the different sections of different recommendations, the different sections, you know, things to keep in mind. Where are the things that we've done? Where are we in implementing this thing? What are the high impact things we could do next, or we could push on next? Some of them we don't actually do. We just try to encourage that this should be done now. The transportation plan keeps coming back in my head that we still don't have a transportation plan in this town that accommodates walkers and bicyclists in a reasonable way. But there are lots of other things in there. The heat pump program will address some of them. Where are we with electrification of town resources? I don't even know, right? That stuff that comes up here and there and it goes in one ear and out the other for me, so it would be nice to hear some of that again. And Laura, we might ask you, well, Laura has her hand up also, but I might ask you to, since I think you were involved, of the folks on this committee, the ones that were involved in writing the carp, that would be Laura, Stephanie, Dwayne, were you here? Who else? Steve? Yeah, and Jesse. I was just going to say, you know, happy to volunteer to, particularly since I won't be here for the sustainability fair, I can get some penance from by creating a bit of a presentation overview of our goals, the carp, and use, I think that'll be a good starting, and even just our charge, just to remind everybody, like what are we meant to be doing to help us kind of focus in the rest of the discussion on how we want to accomplish that over the next year or so. Right. Right. I think that would be a great, you know, spend the first at least half hour on that and then start breaking into discussions. We might want to break into groups to talk about different things. Maybe, Laura, you and I can get together and hash out what might be some of the particular goals that come out, you know, where's the low-hanging fruit? I'd sort of like to know where you think the low-hanging fruit is, and maybe plan ahead of time to do some breakout groups or a couple of breakout groups to work on different things and then come back and report, you know. We have three hours, so we have a little bit of time. Yeah, that sounds good. And the date for this again, I don't have it in front of me. Stephanie is March. Coming up quick. I think it's the 17th. St. Patrick's Day. It's March 17th, noon to three. Right, noon to three, and that's in the middle of spring break here. So hopefully the students will not be doing Guarni blowout on that day. Well, even if they are, we will be elsewhere. We'll be elsewhere. We'll be south of town, south of Eastern town. All right, so okay, so yeah, maybe Laura, can we talk sometime this week and hash out some ideas? And Jesse, go ahead. Hang on a minute, Laura. Go ahead, Jesse. Yeah, I wonder too, if we want to give a little time just to hear from people individually. I have not had an actual conversation with Tony or Michael ever in my life. I feel like we all bring to this a certain amount of personal worldview and baggage and triggers and thoughts and hopes and dreams and expectations, and I don't think they all align all the time. And I don't want to, this doesn't need to be too much of it, but I think if we could do just something maybe on the first half, we're just, I hesitate to use the word icebreaker, but I think that's what it really is. It's just a way to kind of rapid fire, get to know each other a little bit, I think would be both fun and help us and help in the subsequent conversations to really know who's talking to who and whatnot. And I would be happy to think of a way to do that. And if you told me how much time you want it to take, I could feel glad to fill that time picture, 15 minutes, 20 minutes, I don't know. The question is how do we want to do something like that after we've went over the carp and where the group has been so that people have that to chew on while they're introducing themselves and what they think might be important? Or do we want to start with an icebreaker? What do you think? I prefer starting with the icebreaker and then going into the content, but that's just me. I agree with Laura. Yeah, maybe given it starts at noon, maybe we can all start lunch, have an icebreaker that's somehow affiliated with the eating lunch. We could. Well, I think the idea was to make this a potluck. We didn't say that, but we could make it a potluck. Yeah, be fine. Not let the lunch and icebreaker first. That works for me. I'm hungry. So, Jesse, you want to come up with prompts or some organization around how that gets done? Or do you want it to just be interesting? Yes. I do think it would benefit from a structure. Stella, were you going to say something about that? Yeah, I'm not going to be at the retreat, but I just have a quick question with the potluck thing because it is open to the public, right? So just everybody remembers it's open to the public. Typically, people don't come. People won't. It's not likely that we'll have public at the retreat. And there should be plenty of, there's food, the quantity of food is not an issue and we're not going to be cooking for 50. So I wouldn't worry too much about that. If they do show up, they should bring a dish to share. Yeah, I wouldn't mind if people do show up, we should have some time put aside for them to give us their ideas and input. Maybe after hearing from us and from the carp and then, you know, go ahead, Stephanie. Can I suggest that you don't do that actually because you're not required to have, this isn't, this is a retreat. It's not a formal meeting. So you don't have to have any public involvement. I think this is your time. And if you, I mean, what I would say is maybe you want to schedule, that's part of the discussion you have, is maybe you want to hold a separate public event, like at the Jones Library or not the Jones, well, maybe the Jones Library or somewhere else, the bank center where you invite the public in to sort of talk more about some of the things that you all came up with from this retreat and then run that by the public and give that as a whole separate session so people have time and you're not all rushed. I think this is your time and you need to really give yourselves that. All right. All right, good. Other things that we should, you know, other than ideas for future webinars and ways to do outreach, are there other specific things we want to make sure on the agenda? Go ahead, Dwayne. Yeah, I think we, I think we talked about this last time is, you know, maybe a revisit of sort of what our subgroups or subcommittees might be. We have sort of solar transportation pace and, I don't know what the other one is, but you know, is that, does that still make sense? Are each of us who are in that quote unquote lead position still passionate and motivated or want to move on to something else or somebody, and somebody else want to take that on, especially with the new members and whether there's, we have to be cautious about subcommittees or anything like that, but you know, is do we have the right organization in terms of divvying up some work and how can we think about divvying up work so that there's, you know, we continue to make progress in between our two week meetings. Yeah, that makes sense, especially since we have new members and since I think, you know, to me, that's sort of the point of this, is to figure out where is our focus going to be. And then once we figure that out, we can divide up, we can give out assignments appropriately. I think that makes good sense. Anything else? I'll think on it a little bit more and see if I, we have one more meeting, I guess, before the retreat, right? So I'll think on it a little bit more and see if I can come up with anything and you all should do the same thing. If there's something specific that you really want to see discussed. Yep, go ahead, Jesse. Do you think it would be reasonable for you to bring a timed agenda to the next meeting? Yeah. And I think for me, I think it would be super helpful to just sort of reflect on that and just see like, okay, is half an hour enough for this conversation and sort of like, block it out, because we probably want to even, some of these can be like, topics for later meetings. If we don't think we have enough time to get into the meat of the big picture stuff that I think. Yeah, I think having a agenda is important. So, yeah, with the expected, what we think the times may be. Right. Stephanie? Great. Thank you. Yep. So the next meeting, ECAC regular meeting is on the 13th. And I do have to post the retreat. And legally that has to happen 48 hours before. And it has to be during business hours. So, technically, I have to, well the event, so we're having the meeting on a Saturday. Right. Or no, I'm sorry, it's Sunday. It's Sunday. So I have to post it on, let's see. Friday by noon. But yeah, Friday. No, it can't be Friday. Has to be during business days. So it's like Wednesday by noon. Oh, shoot. Right. Can't you just, Stephanie, can you just put in like, retreat the whole three hours is us planning for next year? Like, I don't, doesn't have to go into that much detail, right? Well, and then we can have a working retreat, a working agenda. How about this? I'll give you a draft agenda and we'll talk about it anyway and change it. You can put it in. Yeah, I can always revise. I can always revise. So, yeah, as long as you get me the sort of bones of the agenda ahead of time, then I can post that and then we can update it after the meeting. That's fine. We can do that. Okay. But unfortunately, we do get dinged for not, I mean, technically, you're supposed to have what's being discussed on your agendas. Well, the car. Yeah, but I mean, I think we can't just say. No, I mean, but I'm going to push back on that just a tiny bit because we don't actually know what we're going to discuss, right? We know we're going to discuss, we know we're going to go over where we've been and where we want to go, but like where the, where we want to go part of the conversation. Yeah, we don't have. It doesn't have to be that specific. I'm just saying that you just have to have the frame of the, of the conversation. Like, okay, so where have we been, you know, that's all I need a little more than just discussion. That's all. I got it. Don't worry about it. This is easy. Okay. We can, we can do this. It doesn't have to be specific, but it'll be outline. It'll be a. Yeah, you don't have to exactly just a general like we will be discussing XYZ future past whatever. Okay. Anything else on that? Okay. Okay. Next, we have the education series planning. We sort of talked a little bit about that before. I think if there is, is there other, are there other things like, so I would very much like to see this community solar discussion and maybe a community. What's it called? The other one? Community owned solar community. Community owned solar. Community owned solar. Yeah. But yeah, community owned versus it's different. So community solar for the next one, maybe. Is there any further discussion? Other ideas that people want to put out there for future? We can discuss this again, of course, at the retreat in more detail. There's nothing else on that. I feel like we've already covered that one. So I think we can go on. Real quick. I don't know how anyone knows anything, but I think we have a website or the dashboard or something. I wonder if we would put out like a call to the community and say, do you want to use, you know, ask our community members what they might, do you have expertise? Do you want to speak to us? Do you want to give a presentation? I don't know if that makes sense. It might be interesting to put out the RFP to the people. Is there something you want to talk to the community about? Or is there something that you want to hear spoken about that you want to hear? Yeah. Right. Right. What do you want to learn about? What do you want to talk about? There are a lot of experts in this town. Yes, there are. Maybe too many. Okay. So in that case, I think we are on staff updates. So where are we with things? So nothing really new to report on the CCA since the last session. That's, you know, in process of being reviewed by DPU. As far as the RFP for the heat pump program that's gone down to our procurement officer, but it also needs to be reviewed and sort of released by the director of accounting and that's being looked at with a million others that have been placed down there. So again, it's in process and I'm trying to push it along as best I can. Then as far as the ARPA funding, that's the heat pump program. So we've done really well in most of our sustainability initiatives. I did put forward a request for another fellow for this summer to do the vehicle fleet, the green vehicle fleet and greenhouse gas emissions inventory that I have interviews next week with potential fellows. So we will secure somebody for this summer doing that. We did just wrap up the tenant outreach regarding their views on heat pumps and their comfort level and their current residences. And so that is wrapping up. The report is done. I just, there's some final tweaking by the student, one of Dwayne's students who was working with me on that, Nicole Perry. She was fantastic, really great to work with her. So she's wrapping that up and I'm hoping to get that out soon. And I will certainly send you all a copy when that happens. And I, at the next meeting, I will hopefully be able to have a grant award announcement for you all funding announcement, not a big one, don't get too excited, but it's still something, but I can't announce it yet. So I have to wait until the state says it's okay. Okay. Okay. Good. Okay. So we have any, any other, no other staff updates? We have some ECAC member updates. I think Steve, you have something for us. Yes. And Jesse has his hand up. Should I go ahead? Yeah. Well, Steve, why don't you go ahead? Okay. Hi, folks. Sorry, I was late. I was contacted just yesterday, maybe two days ago by Alan Snow, who's the tree warden in town of Amherst. He's an Amherst employee and resident. And he wrote asking, he was asking, I was looking for someone to do a presentation on Amherst climate action plan, and specifically how the town's green infrastructure is positioned in the plan to help meet with the town's climate goals. And he's looking for that presentation to take place before the Western mass tree wardens dinner. I guess there's a couple of them coming up this spring. So he said there's 30 to 50 attendees, which is sounds like a pretty good sized group. I thought, oh, this sounds like fun. And I could probably do that. But I wanted to check with everybody on the committee to see if it was okay with you guys. If I represented the committee in this position talking to this Western mass tree wardens group. And if there's others who want to do it, that would be fine. I don't have to do it. Steve, I think it would be great. I don't have to do it. I think Stella would do such a great job, but I suspect she's going to have an excuse. Yeah, they actually gave me a scholarship. I was supposed to present my research to them in the fall and was at a wedding. Yeah, but if you have any questions about them or the, I'm familiar with the group. So you have any questions about angle or anything? Sure. I'm going to have to go back into the action plan and remind myself of the, particularly the green infrastructure and the initiatives that are described in there around trees and forests and that sort of resiliency aspect. But I think I can do that and plan to give some sort of a presentation to that group when they want to. Boston Greenway actually, the UMass community tree conference was yesterday, yesterday, and the Boston, a representative from the Boston Greenway gave a really great presentation on all of that. It might be worth mentioning to Alan because I don't, I don't, I don't think that's kind of sidebar. Okay, maybe that's something you can mention to Alan because I haven't talked to him directly yet. Yeah. Stella, do you know Alan? I do. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Boston Greenway is like making their own compost tea and stuff. So other announcements, Jesse, you had your hand up? Yeah. Thank you. A colleague of mine sent me this picture today. If you got anybody to know what this is? We're not seeing it yet. We're curious. Yeah, we can't see it yet. It says you're sharing. Let's try it again. Share screen. Click the thing. Let's share. Anything? It says you have started screen sharing. There we go. That, let's see. That's the police station. Oh, I think we saw that yesterday. Yeah, that looks familiar. Is that the police station? Yeah, it's the police station. What are they doing? They were out there with flashlights working on the roof last night in the dark. Yeah. Aren't they just replacing the roof? That is, that is what we would call a re-roofing project. And, and so this is a building that we've heard about a lot and, and I don't, I do not mean to do this in a finger pointing way. I know this, the way things work are much more complicated than I could ever imagine, but they are not putting insulation on that roof deck while they re-roof it. And, and I thought that was a part of, and feels like we've got a little bit of a right hand left hand. I thought that was a big part of our climate action plan was the, hey, when you do these kinds of projects, what are these opportunities? You know, boiler replacements, re-roofing seem to be something we really flagged. I assume there, there are reasons for this. And I just wanted to like put it out there as like a sort of like humbling moment of like, ah, I wish we had known, I wish maybe there's something happening on the inside. Maybe there's a something else going on, but it's from a face value. It looks like a, a lost opportunity. It's, it's okay. The world will keep turning. It, it, but I think it makes me want to re-ask the question of our town manager. Are you aware that that is someone looking for these opportunities? And hopefully Stephanie will put me in my place if there's something bigger to this that I'm missing, or it's just a bummer. Go ahead, Stephanie. I'm certainly not going to put you in your place at all. I was going to ask you to just send me the photo because it gives me an opportunity to follow up and to maybe get an answer for you all for the next meeting. So I think part of the problem is there are so, we, so we have 60 buildings of some size or other in the town. And almost everything needs some kind of work. And the challenge is always, what are we just immediately responding to? And we did, as you recall, we did put together something that was for any of our bid documents that it had to do with more with HVAC equipment, but again, addressing some of those opportunities as we move forward. And even with that in place, I think I reported out to you all several months ago during the summer, I think that there had been a pump station that was replaced with a small boiler and it was small. And it wasn't in the, in the, in the context of the whole project, that was actually a very, very small boiler. And there was more, there are other pieces and components, it could have been worse, but the fact that that was part of it at all was frustrating. So I will reach out to find out because, you know, I'm only on top of so much. I don't know every single little thing. There's always so much going on at any one time, but I have worked very closely with a facilities manager, who would be someone who is directly involved with that project. So I'm going to want to follow up with him. So if you can give me that photo, just as a lead in, and I will have a conversation. And it's, you know, you can feel free to reach out to the town manager too. I have a question. Maybe this is something we should do in this next year. Think about for the retreat. DPW ought to be posting all of their projects, right? Hopefully before they do them, there must be a website or a dashboard somewhere. They have, well they have a website on the town's website, public works. I'm on it right now. They used to, I mean, I don't know if they've kept it up, but they did used to have current projects. And it would list what they were working on, but it's not, it's never really listed absolutely everything. And maybe that's something that we could ask for. And one of us could just keep track of, you know, and ask the question, just be the citizen, you know, bystander slash person trying to take, trying to do the due diligence to make sure that all this stuff is being done, just to call people to just to just to make sure they know that we care. Well, it's not always, so I just want to be clear because that incident with the pump station wasn't specifically something that they were solely responsible for. It was another department. So that was newer and wasn't aware of some of the things that we had in place. So but a re-roofing that ought to be DPW, you know, no, no, that's facilities. That's facilities. Yeah, that's not DPW. And that's so that's again, and this is why things are complicated, because different people are in charge of different things and we're not always communicating. So DPW is more like the infrastructure, like, you know, the they're less about the building construction. Building construction is all facilities. So, right, I don't see nearly as much on the facilities website. Oh, yeah, because we don't, and I'm going to tell you straight up, we have a great facilities manager, and he is so overwhelmed. Like, I just, we don't have enough staff to do everything that needs to be done. And I hear everybody, and I get it, and maybe it's the weather today, and I'm feeling particularly weary. But it's just, there's so much, like, it's a town, like everybody wants everything done. We can't do everything all at once. So we're trying, you know, I mean, I think we could do things better. I'm not saying we can, and I don't think there should be push for that. But I mean, in terms of just, I think, I don't know, I guess I guess I want people to frame their expectation about what we can get done at any one time with the resources that we have, because we don't have limitless resources either. And Jeremiah is just alone. He's just, I mean, he's got a very, very small staff. There's no way that he can possibly do, it's honestly overwhelming. Like when I talk to him about what we're trying to coordinate, you know, together, I think it's just an overwhelming list. But I hear you, and again, I'm not saying that this can't be done better, or that this shouldn't have been done. Like I, that's why I want to follow up, because I want to say, like, what's happening here, I want to find out, and I want to ask. All right. And I think I saw Jesse's hand up first and then Dwayne. Yeah. And just quickly, I really agree to, these things are, there's so much going on. And I really don't want the tone of this to be like, how could you, but more of like, oh, this is a great reminder that, like, let's circle back on this, is there a way, like, could we, you know, could someone from this group sit down with Jeremiah for just an hour and just look at the projects for the next three years and just, again, ideally we're making his job easier and not harder. This, you know, it's a, yeah, focus on the forward on this one. It's just, it's a good reminder that, like, it's hard to, it's hard to be aware of everything. And if he can think of a way that we can feed into it, because this, this is, this one would have been a slam dunk. Well, and I will say too that, you know, we had that, there's two things we're looking for. One of them is that we had that HVAC inventory created. And that was super helpful. Like all, there's so much information on the work that Miguel did. It's a fantastic resource. And part of it was like, okay, we've got this now. Can we look at this? And we can start prioritizing. So there's, there's, you know, the planning piece. But then there's also a desire and a need for a complete assessment of every building in town to identify what it is that's needed. So I think part of the problem is that there's also sometimes where things happen and he's just having to respond in the moment. This is how like in the past we've ended up with, you know, we replace a boiler with another boiler because it's an emergency. It's out, it's winter, and you got to replace it. You know, and so I think, again, we're trying to to get that shift in thinking, like when these emergencies happen or these things happen, it doesn't have to be replaced like with like, so, you know, I would just say that that's a great, that's a great offer. I don't, I think, you know, like we have our five year capital plans that identify projects going out five years. That's maybe a good place to sort of look at. And you all, everyone has access to that. The budget's going to be coming out. You can all look at that online. And if you have a specific idea, maybe then reach out to him. Because I don't think he's going to be able to just sit down and talk about like his plan for the next three years. Because I think that's part of what's hard here is like trying to plan out and then trying to deal with the immediate day to the day of all the things that come up. It's hard. Yeah. Go ahead. Yeah, I was going to, and let me just second Jesse's comment about the tone. We don't want this to be accusatory or anything like that, but just helpful. And I guess in the, and this, this is a little bit different than an emergency boiler replacement, because it was very premeditated that they were going to redo this roof. And I guess I would be, I mean, one tact or in order to be most helpful and most informed before we potentially speak with the facilities person or even the town manager is that I would imagine there was a request for proposal for this work to be done that the town put out a public document for competitive bids to re-roof the police station. So I'm wondering if we could get a copy of that to see what the language in there said about insulation. I guess, you know, one issue is maybe they said insulation, but then the contractor didn't do it and nobody noticed, except Jesse in the middle of that. But I doubt that's the case. But, you know, that way we could look at that RFP and say, okay, facilities manager guy, I forget his name, sorry. Jeremiah. Jeremiah. Okay. You know, our, our recommendation, EECAC is that in this section of the RFP there should have been some specific request or requirement for some level of insulation. I think Jesse would probably know his way around that type of document pretty well. And well, I work with RFPs as well. And the reason why I want to reach out is because I also feel like it's my responsibility and my role. If we're talking about implementation of the carp and the things that we're doing, that's part of my job. So it's when these things do come up, they tend to feel frustrating to me because again, it feels like a lack of communication and just trying to get things done. So I, with all due respect, I would like to have that opportunity to reach out and to get information and report back. And I feel like if you want to review the RFP, I think rather than having the entire committee review it, it's just like, is Jesse, you know, Jesse brought this up, Jesse and I could look it over and we could discuss it and we could talk about recommendations for the next time. But to engage Jeremiah on this, I think is like, this is where I think it's my responsibility and my role and you need to use me because it's a lot to take him away from what he's doing to sit down and take the time. Like he is already overwhelmed, but I need to be able to be empowered, especially in my role as director, which is a different role now. I have the authority to be following up on this. And so I really need this committee behind me to ensure that I have that power to like talk to other folks in other department heads and say, look, we saw this happen. The committee's really wanting to know about this. Can we talk about it? What can we do differently? And then I can report back to you. That's really the flow, I think, of how this should probably go if that's okay with all of you. Yeah. So I think I'm going to have cut off discussion on this and just say thank you, Jesse, very much for bringing it to our attention. And we should let Stephanie, you certainly have our backing to do what you need to do and consult Jesse as needed. And I think we all support you in that, Stephanie. Thanks. We won't get in the way. No, I just want to be clear. It's not that you're in the way at all. I mean, I just, it's just sometimes frustrating because I feel very in the middle sometimes. And I really appreciate like knowing that I can get this RFP and then sit down with Jesse and we can go over it. And I can get some suggested language that I can bring back to ensure, like we, you know, I mean, Jeremiah was the one that came up with the HVAC language. I just tweaked it and worked with it and massaged it a little bit with Duane's input and made it better. So I think we could do a similar kind of thing. Yeah. And I think I really appreciate the idea of like, how do we improve the process? It was made abundantly clear to us when we met with the town manager when this committee first formed that this type, the way these systems are set up is in no way designed to make this work well. So it is, you are, Stephanie is paddling upstream in the rapids for this. So yeah, I'd be glad to look at that with you. Okay. And we got your back. Thank you. Awesome. Okay, so I just had a, excuse me, squeaky toys ought to be banned from the world. All right. So I think for the next, I just had one really quick update, which is that the, if anybody else is interested in electrification coach training, heat smart alliance is offering one coming up in March, and there'll be another one from rewiring America, a more technical one in April. And these are all free. So if there's any interest, you can contact me and I'll send you appropriate links. I didn't show the next agenda. Definitely the, we'll do heat pump. The updates will be from, on the heat pumps and on transportation. I don't know. So Tony, that'll be your first effort at that. I don't know if there's anything new there, but maybe you can give us an update if you, you know, what you're thinking about in terms of what needs to be done for transportation, what is next on the agenda. And then we'll talk more about that at the retreat, which should also be on the agenda. Sustainability festival planning should probably stay there, although I don't think we'll spend a lot of time on it other than just getting a signup sheet next week, two weeks rather. What else needs to be on the agenda? We'll be having that retreat a couple of days later, a few days later. So I don't know that we need to back it. Go ahead, Dwayne. Did you have something? I know. Sorry, just clearing my throat. Though we could do a little menu planning. Menu, menu. Who's going to bring what? I'll send out a, I'll send out a sign up for what people want to bring. Okay. So we don't end up with three pots of soup or nothing but potato chips. Let's see. And I think Stephanie and I can go over the rest if there's anything else that needs to go on here. Otherwise, just the usual stuff. Anything else? If not, we're at the public comment again. Martha has her hand up. Martha, you can go ahead. Hi, thank you. Yeah, Martha Hanner in district five. And I just a couple of quick comments. When you were discussing community solar, I was surprised you didn't mention the valley green solar. Isn't that going to be our opportunity here in Amherst within a year to be part of community solar? Yeah. And then I guess it was just very interesting to hear your discussion about how, you know, everybody has good intentions, but it's just gets swamped. And I just see lack of communication as one of the challenges here in Amherst, you know, both between the public and the private as well, as I think, okay, thank you. Excuse me. Yep. Valley green solar, which is a particular project you're talking about, Martha? She's meaning valley green energy. Valley green energy. The CCA. That's the CCA. Yeah. Valley green energy. Yeah. And I think there may be, there's not currently an opportunity for that at the time, the way the DPU regulations are currently written, but there is some changes that are being made. So it may afford itself to an opportunity in the future. But you know, that won't, that's at least a year away, if not more. Yeah. So in other words, there's no, there's no solar, there's no plans for a solar, a community owned, or even a community solar put up through valley green energy. As far as I know, they're talking about it, I know, but they don't, there's definitely, I guess they don't have, I don't know if valley green energy is talking about it, but I know LEA talks about it quite a lot. Yeah. And that, that's so, again, that's something that, so there were two efforts just to be, so for clarification, Martha, there was the community choice aggregation itself, which is just about purchasing energy supply. And the thing about that is that we could potentially use adders for additional income to do specific projects, but the DPU is very, very restrictive of what those projects can be and they have to benefit everybody in the community, at least the way the regulations are currently written right now. So when the group came together to form valley green energy, what we were talking about was creating, it's called a joint powers entity and the CCA would just be part of that. And so the joint powers entity would allow more freedom to do some of that kind of work, but it still needs a funding mechanism. And so that's, and it's not something that would happen right away. I mean, quite honestly, even if we get the CCA up and running, it would at least be another year to two years before you'd ever be able to get that kind of funding to launch that kind of a program. I mean, you have to get additional resources. So right now, we don't have the joint powers entity established. It's kind of put on hold because the DPU may allow us to do more of this creative programming. I know this is a lot and it's super, super confusing. And I would be more than happy to talk to you one-on-one if you'd like to hear more. Well, thank you. It just, you know, yes adds to how complicated everything is, right? Exactly. Nothing's easy. Yes. Okay, thank you. Thanks. And Laura, did you have a response? Yeah, I think it's just, this is just highlighting sort of what Dwayne was saying about the confusion between the different community owned versus community accessible solar. And I think some of the confusion about what the CCA can and will do versus what it actually will do. So all of these discussion points together, I think warrant more discussion, whether separately or apart, but we should probably connect the dots somehow to make sure we're all kind of clear headed as we go into all of this. Yeah. All right. So with that, I think we can adjourn. If there are no, no objections, shall we adjourn the meeting? All in favor? All right. So I'll see you all in two weeks. Thank you. Bye, Stella. Good luck. Thanks. Bye, Stella. Thanks so much. Thanks, everybody. I'll send a picture. Bye all. Bye bye.