 We are now recording. Okay, hello. So this is the Amherst energy and climate action committee. We were organized to guide the town just as a reminder to everyone to guide the town and meeting its climate mitigation and resilience goals. Those goals and the plan for getting there are adopted from the climate action adaptation and resilience plan or the cart. Which was accepted by the town council in 2021 taking 2016 as its base year the carp calls for 25% reduction in carbon emissions by 2025 50% by 2030 and neutrality by 2050. So this committee has two primary functions one to advise the town council and recommend or propose policies or actions that will help us meet our climate goals. And two to promote a just equitable and speedy climate response through outreach and engagement of town and local stakeholders. So that's my blurb that I'm going to read. I think for now on at the beginning of meetings, so that everybody knows who we are and what we're doing here. And so that we can help get a little focused. I realize I don't have the up to date agenda in front of me so when I know there's at least one item that was added Stephanie when I get there if I skip it please correct me. But the first thing on the schedule is to always find a note taker. Even though it's not actually official. Part of the. Let's see where's the, oh, come on. I'm trying to find the agenda for the minutes from last time. Here we go. Let's see who was our last note taker. It was me on the last meeting you had that 13. Okay Don so who is after you. I have we just make this big because I'm working on my laptop I can't see all of you and this at the same time so I've done still is not on the committee anymore so Michael you want to try taking notes. Yeah, I can take notes. Cool. Okay. Question on note taking. Do I just kind of use the similar format for the for this for the previous notes and just kind of update them. It's helpful to me if you do and then you just make sure that I get them with a copy to Lori. Perfect. Sounds good. Okay, so let's see. What I'm going to do is to review and vote on the minutes both from the retreat and the last meeting, which was way back in the middle of March, about a month ago. So let's see how about we start with the last with the March with the meeting on 313. Are there any, I can share them. If folks would like actually, can I ask you to share them today, Stephanie. Yep. Working on a laptop one second. You should be seeing them. Yeah, so I think I had a correction, which was it's still a D was not on the committee at that point anymore right so she wasn't actually there and she's marked as present. Okay. Name off that as well and entirely. Otherwise I didn't think I found any. Anything to change. Any comments. If not, if someone would like to move to accept the minutes as they are. I will move to accept the minutes of 13 of March as they are. Second, we need a second. Thank you. Okay, and then if I could have your voice vote. No particular order roof. Yes. Goldner. Yes. Allison. Yes. Yes. Yes, assuming I can, I read them thoroughly. I approve them, but I wasn't there, but I, I read them. Okay. Good by me. Yes. Yes. Okay. And it's approved from the 13th. Okay. So now let's go on to them. If you'd share the minutes from the retreat. They're short and sweet. They are very short. I want to details on the, on the. The ice breaker. I want all the details. I wasn't going there. No, no, no. And I'll take Stella off. Yeah. Do we have any news on Stella? How's she doing? Oh, yeah, we did. I sent you all the notice about the baby. With pictures and I haven't heard anything since. So. She said she would stop by the sustainability festival. So I'm going to reach out to her and hope for that. She'll. But she'll do that. All right. I moved to accept the minutes with that little last edit that Stephanie just made. So second. Okay. I'll second them. All right. All right. And then again, in no particular order. Yes. Goldner. Yes. Allison. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Great. And it's approved. Okay. So we've got a. Okay. Sorry. We're going to try to divide. On the. Or are we still doing education and outreach? All four areas? I guess we are. Cause we, that's right. So we made a change to the way we're going to do this for now on. I think. Let me just copy this in here. So I have it. That messed it up. So I think we're going to try to divide based on the outcome of the. We're going to try to organize ourselves into education and outreach. And then advisory and support. Right. So I think we have a lot of things on the agenda today. I think the next thing that was probably public comment. So we'll go back to that in a minute, but I just wanted to point out that we have a lot on the agenda, but I think it's because we're getting reorganized and trying to figure out where our. Where we're going to put our effort. So. We were sort of going to continue. We're going to try to continue the discussion we had at the retreat really and try to focus in on some of the ideas that came up there and follow up on some of them. So. The first thing to talk about. Well, first we need to go for public comment. Is there anyone in the. Anyone in the audience. Martha, if you want to say anything, just raise your hand and I'll. Allow you to speak. There we go. Okay. So in that case, let's go on. I think that some of the, I just want to make sure I'm not missing something here. The education and outreach. I thought we were going to try to. Oh, there it is. Coordination with local groups. Right. Why don't we just go ahead down the list. This actually looks fine. I'm sorry. I was ready for the meeting two weeks ago, but I haven't had a chance to look at it and really look at this in the last week. So. I mills. I'm grasping a little bit here. So let's start with Don and any updates on pace and outreach around that program. No. And I apologize, but I was in London for 10 days. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So hopefully though, we can get something. The idea, if I remember right was to reach out to the Chamber of Commerce, even though they have new leadership and try to find a time when somehow we can connect with them around this pace program. Now that the new rules have been published. Is that the idea? That is correct. Yes. Okay. And coordinate with somebody from the agency to come. Speak or. Talk. And is that from mass CC or mass? Who is, who is doing that? Mass development. Mass development. Yeah. Okay. So next time we hope to hear something more on that. But I think that one of the more interesting things that came out of the retreat though was. Was. Tony, you were going to report on coordination with local groups and what other groups were doing in the way of outreach and education. Do you have something for us? I do. I have all that compiled. It turned out to be a longer document that I can share with you guys, but I was unsure about. My capacity to share it. Like, I know that we have a. Some rules in place about how we share things. Yeah. So. Usually what you would do is send them to Stephanie and me for distribution to the group and inclusion in the packet. And I think they can still happen, right? Stephanie, if you would just send them now. We can put them in the packet after the. Yeah. So more importantly, I have to actually post them online. I mean, you'll all see them during the meeting, but I have to make sure they get it. Posted in the meeting packet. And it's fine if it happens after, as long as you're sharing your screen, that's actually the way to do this. And then you can send it to me to get to the whole group and Lori or me and I'll get it to everybody. Okay. So for now, just go ahead and share your screen. Yes. So here. Is all of the ones. That are within the valley. That I know of through UMass. I will say I focus on three. I focus on sugar shack, the sunrise movement. And the no fracking gas because all of these here. I are either. Inactive currently. Or focused on. Fossil fuel. Which again, also the other ones are so when it comes to energy and climate action, many of the smaller groups have their own inner. Sustainability workings, but overall, all of the groups are all of these groups are focused on currently fossil fuels and carbon reduction through the elimination of fossil fuels. So we're the, we seem to be the only organization within the valley that's focused specifically on carbon reduction through other means as well as like solar heat pumps, things like that. We seem to be the only group active. Participating in those these groups have taken on a focus point of reducing fossil fuels. And all of that. I will also while I'm here since it's already here. I'm going to attend the transportation meeting on the 18th. I just finished reviewing all of their. Previous meeting notes, which was extensive. And I should never do that again. And they have some good initiatives in the work that I have some questions about. As well. I just outlined all of those. Yeah. Again, they all are really focused on fossil fuel infrastructure and just kind of really eliminating that. As I think that was, I think the last cop really just put that on everyone's. Agendas at a high priority. I will also say the transportation advisory committee has a walk bike and roll day on May 1st. And I feel like we should really encourage that as well. There are respective branches and groups. I think that'd be cool because this is primarily for high schoolers and middle schoolers. But I think if we can encourage all of the five colleges and the students and even faculty to try to take a day if they can, of course. To walk biker. Roll whatever that means. To school on May 1st. I think that'd be a really cool initiative that we could get involved in. Zoe is. My liaison for. Elevate as well as the mechanical engineering departments at UMass, specifically those who work in energy transition and whatnot. And I know that there are some students working on transportation currently or carbon reduction through transportation. So I emailed her. About getting one or two of them to do an educational series. So to hear back from that. I will also send that information to you guys as well. This is. I'm sorry. Who is Zoe again? She is my liaison for Elevate, which is the organization on campus that I'm a part of energy transition. But she also, she kind of links all of the departments together. So I sent her an email asking if she could send out an email for any people interested in working in. Interested and or working in transportation. And like electric transportation, anything that has any relation to. Getting transportation to be less carbon productive. To come and do a speaking series. I know you guys did them on video last time, which I think would be perfectly fine. Whether it's through one of our committee meetings or. Elsewhere. So I sent that out earlier this week. Wow. It's still Wednesday. So I guess I sent that out yesterday. And so when I hear back, I'll let you guys know about this as well. That one is for me. And then I had a question for. Stephanie and or Lori. Do we have a data on the. PVTA. That's accessible. That shows. Whether it's the carbon emissions. Or just data. I know we've. Added to work. Three new electric vehicles. Has anyone done data on the. Impact that that has on reducing any of this. So we have a fellow coming this summer to do a greenhouse gas. Fleet emissions inventory. I don't know that it'll give us numbers on reduction, but it would be. Easy enough to see the vehicles that were replaced. We'd have to go back and, but it hasn't been done. Like I haven't done that. I haven't had the bandwidth to sit down with. You know, it's literally like two or three vehicles. And it's just a matter of, you know, looking at the gasoline that was used over whatever. Annually. And then. What was saved through. What was reduced through that amount of gasoline that was used. And then. That the inventory should help us quite a bit though, in terms of that's going to be focused on changing our vehicles out. So I don't know how detailed we're going to get into like. Beyond what's already currently been done. Transportation is really hard. It's really difficult. So. What we do have is the data that was used for the carp. And I can easily get you access to that if you really want to dive. I'm happy to share that information with you. And you can take a look at the transportation. But again. If you're looking. Just at the fleet vehicles. That's one thing, but trying to. Garner what community emissions are. Usually you just use estimates. Fantastic. Okay. Cool. I was reading the other day. An article from a friend. I was reading an article. From a friend in Chicago. And they actually used. The data to. To convince the city to actually give them more money for electric vehicles, because they could prove easily that. It was actually making a difference in the community. And so I thought that would be a good place to start. If you could actually send that to me prior to the 18th. That'd be fantastic. So I could at least present that at the. Transportation. Committee meeting one night at 10. They're doing anything with it or not. Yep. We'll do. Awesome. Thank you. That's all I have. So Tony, I have a question though. You, you had that long list that you said. Maybe it wasn't so interesting because they were just working on the fossil fuels transition. And they weren't, they weren't that active. But then you had a few things at the top. That you went by so quickly. I couldn't even see what they were. That you thought. I, I type to think. So those are just my thoughts on, because the sunrise movement was one of them. Sugar shack alliance was the other one. So what is the sunrise they know about? What is the sugar shack alliance? They advocate for a fossil, a fossil free future. So they're just very active in historical. They've like done historical movements and they organized the sit-ins demonstrations, public awareness campaigns. That all highlight the environmental risk and community impact associated with new fossil fuel projects. So they don't go and try to take down big oil companies. They're actually really just try to convince new developing companies to not invest in fossil fuel sources. One of those being UMass as well, because UMass is associated with a few fossil fuel. And then the other one was no fracked gas and mass, which is again also fossil fuels, but they, their concern is more about the disproportionate effect on marginalized communities. So between those three, they are the ones that I feel from my research and also my involvement are more active still today. The other ones, they're active, but they're not. They're not. They're not. They're more active still today. The other ones, they're active, but there, there hasn't been anything new or no bigger shifts in what they're working on. They're still kind of developing on the same things, but no fracked gas and mass, sugar shack and sunrise are all still prevalent and active, especially within the campus. You see specific places where we might interact with them or ask them to. Yes. I've already kind of sent out those preliminary communication. So I'm waiting to hear back about involvement. I proposed that they would, that we could explore what that would look like over the summer. And then try to read, try to initiate whatever we come up with over the summer in the fall when students return, because many of the graduate students also leave over the summer that are very much involved in those organizations as well. Okay. Good. Okay. So please do, if you have notes there that you, you know, want to clean up first, please go ahead and do it, but yeah, then I'll share it up to you guys. Yeah. Yeah. Please do share it. Okay. So moving on then. Heat pumps. I think this is probably going to have to wait for that RFP, although I do feel like I at least I'm ready to start hanging out of shingle and just letting people know. You know, if they want to get a little free advice on heat pumps, I encourage people to contact me. If you want some information about, you know, if you're trying to transition your house to fossil fuels, I feel like we already have a couple of people in the community that are doing energy coaching here and in Northampton on a volunteer sort of basis. And hopefully the number of people doing that will increase, especially as we get the RFP in place. So how is that doing Stephanie? Let me ask you for a little bit of an update on the heat pump RFP. Well, I don't have an update. I haven't, I'm still waiting on procurement to get to me. They had, you know, I was told it was in line with a bunch of other things. So, and I was out last week with COVID and even though I was working, just had a lot of stuff going on. Are you okay? I'm sorry to hear that. Oh yeah, I'm fine. I'm fine. It wasn't, I was more tired than anything else. No fever. It was a pretty mild case actually. Good. Okay. So there's not really anything to talk about there then yet. No, not yet. Unfortunately. Hopefully in the next meeting, I'll have something. And the next thing is also mine, climate resilient schools. I am on there. I think it's a discord channel. If I remember right. I have not been paying much attention to climate resilient schools the last couple of weeks just because I've been busy with family sort of not emergencies, but things that I need to do. So I haven't been, I'm sort of swamp. So I haven't been doing much with them other than trying to keep in touch. I will hopefully come back with some suggestions. Next time about places where we can. Interact with climate resilient schools folks. To make a bigger difference. All right. So that's the education and outreach. Part of the agenda. Am I missing anything? I don't think so. I think I got a lot. Right. In that case, we'll go on to advisory and support. So part of what we discussed at the. Retreat was maybe, and I know Steve said he was, he was pretty much exhausted with this. So. Maybe if somebody else wants to have anything to add, or if Steve wants to pass it on to someone else. That's fine. But I think there was a general feeling that we should. Look into again, trying to get some more information. Or at least figure out what information we already have. On the state of. You know, the rental units in the area, what sort of heat they have, what sort of. You know, who's, who's in line for a new, a new heating system, right? Where the, what, what is the age of the boilers and people's. Rental units. Who's going to be looking for to make changes and how can we help them. Change to cleaner fuels or cleaner. So that's what we did last year as part of the. Rental unit by law. We tried to get information and request for information in that by law and failed. So the question now is, what do we do next? How do we go about. Maybe pursuing separate. Rule or, or by law or. Some sort of method for getting this information. And I think. I'm also wondering. What information that town already has. In that, for example, building cards. All of us have building cards that have what our heating system is. And it's all out of date. Does somebody. Know what's actually there. So Steve, I should pass this on to you. I'm sorry. I see your hand up. I'm here. Yes. Let's see. I checked on the status of the current. Rental by law. And that is. In deliberation in the town council. What they did was separate out sort of the, the regulation aspects of the by law. And they're going to be leaving those up to the. Regulatory authorities. And I'm not exactly sure Stephanie might be able to chime in. So the, the, I think the permitting or the inspections department. I think it's going to be up to them to decide the list of questions to ask. As part of the permit. The permit application each year. So there's possibly still a potential that if we talk with that group, we could convince them to broaden the kinds of questions they ask on the rental permit. Application. Did you, Stephanie, did you hear what? Do you know, as I understand it, the rental permit by law is the, the regulations are being moved out of that and are sent to the permit granting authorities, which I think in the case of the rental by law is inspections department. And they would be the ones to determine what questions to ask about a building and its heating system. On the rental permit application. I believe so. And we can have a conversation, but I did want to. I don't know the specifics, but I, I came into the meeting late, late last Monday. And they did pass it. So it was approved. So the council passed it council passed it. So I don't, as far as the details about how they'll review or the questions that they'll ask. I mean, if we have some suggested questions, I can certainly encourage or ask, you know, get a, get a feel for what they might be open to. We do have a list of suggested questions that we worked on last year. At one point they were in one of the drafts of the bylaw when it was being considered by CRC. I could dig those out and I guess send them to you. And I will say that I would venture to guess that they won't accept all of them. So I think the, the thing to do is really see if we can hone in on what information we're absolutely looking for. If we can get it down to just a few, you know, a very few specifics that will give us the information that we need. I don't know that we're going to be able to get everything. So I would just say the fewer, the more likely we might be able to get that included. Interesting. Yeah, we had 15 questions. It was in the one of the earlier drafts that when it was in the CRC. Things like whether the building has received an energy efficiency rating. How many electric vehicle charging stations exist on your property? Do you have rooftop or ground-mount PV? And how, if so, how much in KW, gross square footage of conditioned space, age of building, number of rental units, number of bedroom and bathrooms. Not all of these were ours. Some of these came from others. So I think number of bedroom and bathrooms may still be part of that. What else? So I guess, Oh, what fuels are used for space heating? Age of the heating system is really important. Yeah. What type of heating system? Electric hot water, that sort of thing. How old is the heating system? What is its rated efficiency? How old is the domestic hot water heating system? It's, what is its efficiency? And does the do do rental units have air conditioned? And if so, are they window shakers, mini splits or central? Oh, and then whether tenants pay their own like energy bills. Okay. What is the annual cost for electricity, heating and cooling that renters pay? Those last few are important, but I think if you want to leave some off, leave off the ones about efficiency. I mean, the age of the unit tells you what you need to know. It doesn't need replacing yet or not, you know, is it recent? Because, because those are the places we want to, you know, you really want to know who has older systems that need replacing and target them, right? Right. Knock on their door and say, Hey, do you know about, I mean, I would do that. I would go door to door and, you know, find the landlords and do that. If we had that information. So, so I think that's, that's the important stuff is, is. All the other stuff that if it's, if it's number of, you know, the size of things. They're probably asking that for other reasons anyway. Yes. But it's not as interesting to us, I think. I can, I can narrow that list down. Yeah. I would take it to Stephanie. Yeah. And Stephanie, if you're happy interfacing with the inspections department that that's great. If there's any reason I could help. It's part of a discussion. I'm happy to do that. Yeah. Types of fuels, age, heating systems. Those are the big ones. They're going to start cutting. All right, good. That's great. So that has some life. There's some life in all that work. That wasn't. And I'd say, I guess, you know, the ways to consider going forward, there's sort of two different strategies. And one is a disclosure of energy use some kind of a disclosure requirement. And that is often attached to the point at which the building is sold. So it becomes a requirement that has to be posted or shared when a. Property is sold. That doesn't happen very often. So it doesn't impact too many properties, but it does give a buyer the chance to know that information. Some towns and communities have enacted rules where when a rental unit is posted for rent, there has to be some sort of information about the energy efficiency. And often it's a, a hers rating or a one to 10 scale. And the idea again is to help educate the consumer, in this case, the, the renter, let them know in advance what the rent, the energy costs would be. So those are disclosure type approaches. That hopefully then market forces would encourage landlords to reduce those costs to attract more tenants. The other other way that communities have done is to have an efficiency requirement. Where there is some kind of an efficiency rating that is adopted and then benchmarks. And residents are buildings that don't meet sort of an energy intensity. And that's usually energy per square foot would have to improve their energy efficiency somehow over some period of time. The great example there, Boulder, Colorado has got a wonderful program that they invented and administer themselves. One of the challenges though here in Massachusetts is that it gets awfully close to, to specifying things that are controlled by the building code. And local municipalities cannot interfere with the statewide building code. So a town could not say a building has to have X amount of insulation. Or a boiler of a certain efficiency because those are covered by code. There's thought that the town, a town of municipality could say that there has to be a certain level of efficiency and the building owner has multiple paths to achieve that. So that they're not, it's not essentially prescribing particular things that are in conflict with zoning rules. So that's, that's, those are the two ways there. The disclosure approach or an efficiency standard approach. Yeah, there was a, so relevant to this, I'm sorry, I'm not looking as anyone else have their hand up. No, it looks like not relevant to this, I think is something I sent us that came across my mailbox from zero carbon, from zero carbon Massachusetts, zero carbon math. That Neap is convening. Neap is the, what does it stand for? I don't remember. So folks who deal with energy efficiency of things like heat pumps. They're convening a Massachusetts based cohort of municipalities to pilot a model of building performance standards. And there is a upcoming summit. Is a virtual presentation. That's an hour long on April 23rd. I think what I will do is just send this to everybody. And I don't know, Stephanie, if you had a chance to look at that, it might be interesting to see what other people are doing in this space. I didn't have a chance to look at it. Sorry, what was the purpose of the presentation? Yeah, it's, I'm still trying to parse this. It says, Neap would like to make you aware of it's, it's regarding a grant award grant possible grant DOE grant award that we're working on with clearly energy. We're putting together a Massachusetts based cohort of municipalities to pilot a model of building performance standards adoption that takes advantage of aggregated and shared resources amongst towns and cities. Building performance standards are standards that apply to existing buildings, unlike building energy base and stretch codes, which applied a new construction, et cetera. So joining the cohort in no way obligates the municipality to progress a BPS and building performance standard program. The cohort will utilize a shared energy manager to provide administration support as well as a circuit writer who will help building owners in the community with compliance. We'll also give the community access to building level and now the building energy analysis manager, a database and CRM. I don't know what that means platform for managing benchmarking and BPS program as BPS begin being building performance standards programs. So it looks like for towns that are thinking about these sorts of things, something that might have some resources for us. I don't know if it's interesting or not, but it's only an hour long virtual presentation on the project. Does that make sense? Did you say that was specific to Massachusetts? Specific to Massachusetts, yes. I will forward that email to everyone and I can't be there on the 23rd because I think it's a Tuesday and I have to forward that email to everyone. I don't know if it's interesting or not, but I'm not sure what it's going to be about. I'm not sure what it's going to be about. It's out of my area of experience, but it looked like it might be relevant to this. Okay. So the immediate action item is for Steve to send those questions to Stephanie with stars next to the ones that we think are more important. And you can pick those, I think. And see about maybe getting some of them included. All right. The next thing on the list. Should we go on? Is the solar bylaw. So where are we with that? We had some specific issues around the solar bylaw. We just started to talk about at the. At the retreat. Duane, you want to talk about this? I think Stephanie actually has a more recent update that I saw. On the, on actually what's happening procedurally with the bylaw. And then we can talk about what ecac. Roll might be. And I think Steve's brought, brought that up in the past. Okay. So, right. So, Stephanie, you want to start? Sure. So I can tell you what the plan is. Chris Brest, the planning director and I. Met with the CRC. Two weeks ago, a few weeks ago. And at that meeting. Basically just. Gave them the draft of the bylaw. And we were there to answer questions and also to. Just go over the process with them of what it took to put it together. Who was involved. How long. Who we reached out to the groups that we consulted as experts. And then. Chris talked about the potential process for moving it forward. Moving the. The bylaw forward. There was some very strong response from some of the CRC members. That they felt that the. Bylaw was too long. That it was not consistent with the language of how our other bylaws are written. It. To my. Point in, I think. What I think Mandy Joe. Henneke was trying to get to two was that it read a lot more like regulations. There were a lot of. There's a lot of regulatory language, you know, typically a bylaw is somewhat more general. And the specifics are identified in the. Regulations, the accompanying regulations. There are also some things that really read as special conditions. So when you're. The permit granting authority, there are very strong. Things that you will ask for in a project like. You know, I'm just thinking about well, and I'm not even going to. Compare this to solar, but like in wetlands, you might say. You can't use salt to de ice, you know, because it'll impact the wetlands. So there might be these general conditions that apply to almost all projects. So we would have. So some of the language in there was really specific to conditions as well. So given their. Feeling about. You know, that. As it was presented, they didn't feel that it was. They weren't able to work with the document in its current form. Mandy Joe Henneke asked to or offered to meet with staff or staff offered to meet with Mandy Joe, I should say. So we had a huge group of staff. And I was with Mandy, and I was with Mandy and I were with the manager of the broadship and I met with her actually just the other day. And we just listened to what Mandy Jo's concerns were. And then we came up with the proposal that. Instead of the bylaw in its current form, we would. Break it out into what seems to be the. The respective. Parts. then there would be the special conditions or the boilerplate conditions and there would be a cover memo. And the suggestion was that we use the language that already exists in the bylaws. So we're not changing anything. We're not even going to really edit so much. We're just going to extract those parts of the bylaw that really belong in other places. And so the whole thing will be presented as a packet to the CRC to review. The suggested process for that will also be that at that point, once that language is kind of parceled out, the package will go to the planning board because the planning board actually are the ones that or the zoning board of appeals are the two bodies that actually write the regulations. So it's not the council really only has purview over the bylaw itself, but the planning board and the ZBA will be the ones that will look at the regulatory language and then and the special conditions as well. So the idea right now is to keep the language as it is and just have it separated out. And then the ECAC is also listed as a body to review that packet of materials as well. But I think you may want to be focusing more. I mean, you can look at all of it, but you think as a probably spending special attention, paying special attention to the bylaw itself. So again, that's going to be a few weeks before it's going to go back to the CRC, I think at the end of April, April 30, if there's their next meeting. So the attempt is to at least identify what sections the parts of the bylaw will belong to so Chris is going to mark up the bylaw I'm going to work with her. I'm going to try if I can if there's time and it makes sense to try to start separating it out so that people are very clear at what they're looking at, you know that you're looking at a set of regulations or you're looking at the bylaw, or you're looking at the special conditions. So that's all coming by April 30, but I don't know when it will be distributed to the various boards and committees to review. So that sounds like we can table this until something comes back after April 30. So after the sustainability festival. Is there anything Steve do you have anything you want to add is there. I have watched the two CRC meetings and it's been a fascinating lesson and civics as to how these things work and it. I'm still not exactly clear what in their minds sort of what what belongs in a bylaw and what is a considered a regulation so that I'm still learning about that. So it sounds like the first stage is the CRC sort of wants to get it organized in a way that contains all the stuff. All the intent that came out of the solar bylaw working group get it organized in a in the way that they like the organization and then I assume they will then deliberate on the merits of the different aspects of the bylaw of the that what came out of the solar bylaw working group. And I presume then once they're happy with it it will go back to town council who may further deliberate on it. So as it gets more attention as it goes up the chain and particularly in town council there may be more community feedback and more changes is kind of what I'm expecting that's what I saw with the rental bylaw how it evolved both in CRC as and then further when it was sort of gain more exposure in town council itself. So yeah sounds like it's going to be a fairly drawn out process. I think the important thing is the concern that we had was just that the, that the, that the bylaw as written or the document as written didn't perhaps do enough to encourage the development of solar rather than, as opposed to merely restricting it. And so, when we do look at it, I think, and if there's a place for us to chime in the process. Sorry. Then that's sort of what we're going to be looking for if you see a place where we need to chime in. Steve, let us know as long as you're keeping an eye on this and attending these meetings if there's some place where we need to have a little injection of thought, you know, a memo a from ECAC, please do let us know. Okay. And this may also be a moment to mention a related thing that's happening statewide. And that is that the commission on energy infrastructure citing, I think that's the correct name for it and permitting and permitting. Yes, thank you. They have been meeting pretty well since last summer, I think this commission was established by the governor. They just a couple of the last week, two weeks ago gave their recommendations back to the governor on energy infrastructure, citing and permitting. And there's some fairly substantial recommendations that they include in this. They are recommendations to the governor. It has to do with changes to the EFSB, the energy facilities, citing board, which is a state agency that typically looks at, I think, larger energy projects. So these recommendations cover things that are large 25 megawatts and larger, that's larger than most solar facilities, but that could include some really big ones but it may also include wind and anaerobic digestion. There may be some changes in the way that those are dealt with and there's also some proposed changes in way smaller projects are dealt with at the local level. And there's some sort of attempts to consolidate permitting processes. I don't have a quick summary to provide to you but some of them are pretty substantial and likewise controversial. My question is that these are recommendations coming out of a commission to the governor. I don't know where they go next and how long it will take them to actually become effective changes in how projects are permitted at the local level that Dwayne may have some more insights on that having more experience in the government. Yeah, I guess I can add to that and thanks, Steve, for that good summary and, you know, the thing I just opened there, like 74 pages long, a lot of it at the end is extraneous stuff, but it's a, you know, it's a chock full of recommendation, shall we say, and with some, I would say, potentially profound impacts all coming from the state perspective that we are we are committed to this climate emergency, and that our pathway is to develop clean energy infrastructure keep in mind this is about clean energy infrastructure not just about solar but it also deals with grid up grid upgrades. Battery storage, even offshore wind to the extent that it has landfall and so forth that's where some of the larger projects come into play. But it certainly has, I think, and I think it's the recognition by the agencies and the legislature at this point that we are not keeping pace with the build out that we need that the road map suggests we need to move forward to get to where we need to go by 2050, and they're trying to figure out ways in which this process can be improved, but also accelerated. And I think, yeah, there's definitely things in there with regard to that is, I know will be a little bit, well maybe not a little bit of concern to the likes of towns particularly. You know, some of the issues are very much at this intersection of state control and home rule. And, and I think they they talk about not so much state permitting but standardized permitting and timetables that need to be met to get permitting done and so forth. Everybody should have an open mind to it, but at the same time, there's going to be a lot of discussion about this. I will say that I did have the opportunity to meet with our legislators about this. The first reaction is they, they, they need an English translation of the recommendations and particularly a translation that would be very clear in terms of how, how do each of these recommendations change the status quo. So they're actually going to reach out and try to encourage EA to offer a sort of a, I wouldn't say a dummy down version, but just a plain spoken version of the recommendations. I read through them and there's it's pretty dense of language and nomenclature regarding state agencies and grid infrastructure things. So, and you know legislators and, and, you know, we discussed, I mean, at least in Western Massachusetts and generally legislators aren't professionals in this area and town, town officials aren't really versed in this area either. And so that was one of the issues. And so we're going to, you know, continue to work with with them we are the purpose of our call with the legislators were really to start. It was a pre scheduled call to start thinking about part two of our solar Western mass solar forum. And based on feedback from the legislators or the expectation from the legislators is that these recommendations, which are now back to the governor. And also obviously back to the legislators is will will, there will be a desire to put language in in the current legislative session. Probably fit into some of the bills that are already out there that provide some action on these recommendations. And so as you know the outcomes may be a couple years off before they're actually enforced, but there's going to be creation of some language, potentially pretty pretty soon on this and so our legislators were really pressing that it's really important to bring our towns and constituents into this conversation. And so we're in the process of potentially trying to hasten their part two of the solar forum as quickly as mid May, which is a little daunting for us but sometime in May say that would focus on these recommendations, because that's the timetable the legislature needs, and this legislators need to get some feedback, and be able to have some impact on on legislative legislative language that is probably be, you know, maybe actually be filed before the end of this session. Hi kids. Wow. Awesome. Go get my kid. Yeah, I bet you it's a kid and a grand kid. All right. You're so interesting you brought all the kids to the room. Yeah. Okay. Okay, I sure you want to go back to your parents. I think it may it may be something that you can't you know we have obviously have a number of more meetings but we might want to continue to have some conversations on this on these recommendations over the next couple of sessions. Laurie, if you're talking you're muted. Sorry. Yeah, I was saying I think the take home here is that this may impact or even supersede. I mean, is that a local bylaw? Is that am I just saying that correctly? Potentially, yes. Yeah. But, but probably a couple of years out so right local bylaw that doesn't take more than a couple of years could be in play but then it's aspects of it could be made mute. Moot by the state law. And there's actually some, you know, good things in this recommendation with regard to really trying to encourage processes for community engagement in these projects and to develop. Community benefit agreements. I would say that in the recommendations, those are are it's great that they're mentioned. But there's not a lot of detail there in terms of like, how do you really do productive or effective community engagement and how do small towns particularly get into a position to negotiate good community benefit agreements. The legislators were really pushing for the need. And for the state to provide through some mechanisms, technical assistance to our towns, particularly our lesser resources down. These are obviously our legislators from Western Mass to help them be in those positions to be able to. Be in a better position to negotiate meaningfully. Okay, engage meaningfully. Okay, thanks. Thanks, Wayne, Steve, Stephanie. So, okay, let's keep an eye on that. Let's go ahead and move on though. Next on the list is transportation. Do we have any policy or advisory things we ought to be looking out for there. Tony. No, nothing I didn't already discuss. Okay. All right. Regional state policy updates I had a goal of coming into every single meeting with a ask that we can broadcast through this, through this media of local residents bills that they can support calls they can make to their legislators. So, I don't have anything today I've just been too busy to come up with a cohesive statement, but I have as a goal to come up with one thing at every meeting so next time I hope I will have something for you guys. So, next on the list then is network geothermal Laura. I don't have any updates specifically on network geothermal. I think the one thing I would flag is that last week, I believe the Biden administration announced 20 billion in grants to mobilize private capital and deliver clean energy and climate solutions to communities across America. I can share that announcement with Stephanie to share with a group. I haven't dug through all of them some of them are regional regionally not relevant to us, but other one of them are more, you know, us wide like power for communities is one organization. That's led by enterprise community partners rewiring America have it up for humanity, local initiative support corporation United Way worldwide that I think got some of the funding and its goal is to make it one of trusted housing climate and community investments that dedicated to decarbonizing and transforming American housing. So, that's one that struck me as a potential of interest. There are already Massachusetts people engaged in that Boston Housing Authority Cambridge, I guess the town of Cambridge mass energized mass housing Melrose and Salem are all part of that. That may be something to look into to see if we should be engaged at all there. Undaunted a 12, which is the group that Sarah Ross works for is also one of their national partners. So anyway, I still need to dig into these announcements more and see if any of them impact us or provide opportunities for us, but power forward got $2 billion so it's not not too shabby. So that's, that's my update there. Okay and at some point there was also a suggestion I don't remember if it was part of the discussion of geothermal or demonstration sites but there was a suggestion to reach out to different nonprofits in Amherst including for example the survival center. And I don't remember I don't think we finished there was so many things that came up at the retreat. Does anyone remember what that interaction would have looked like. So we have talked about trying to reach out to the nonprofits and let them know what is available to them under the IRA that wasn't available to them in the past. And that includes direct payment for solar which in the past they would have had to gone through a third party that also includes some ground source funding from the federal government, which is not super helpful because I think a lot of them would probably be better off with air source, but I think that's because the air sources covered under mass save. So, yes, I do still think that's a good idea. That's more under outreach, but it's sort of related because it's coupled to policy. Yeah, we would have to do our research to figure out what we can tell them, and then figure out how to tell them so I think doing your research is the first step. I'm looking on that right now trying to understand the different incentives and state and government state and local and and federal levels. So maybe I can put a little star next to that. Yeah, honestly would be nice to check it maybe it's worth checking in with the Massachusetts climate team to see if they're if they have anything planned that we could latch on to. It'd be nice if individuals towns didn't have to do all this on their own. Great. So I think we're done. There's nothing else. We should move on. We're just about an hour in we should move on to item five discussion and vote on Nathan Cummings level of interest. That's Dwayne. Tell us about this. Yeah, thanks. And thanks, Stephanie for getting this on the agenda in the last minute and with the revision. It's not a proposal. It's a letter of intent for a proposal that I would like to submit. I plan to submit hopefully this week and would seek here support. Ability to state support from in the LOI. So this is a. A letter of intent to a national foundation and Nathan, Nathan Cummings Foundation. They have a do work and do provide funding specifically in areas of equity, environmental justice, racial equity. And the call that's out now is open and they may have specific language with regard to enabling communities to engage in the clean in what they call the green green energy economy. And so for those of you who have been on the committee for a while and have good memories. A couple of years ago, maybe at this point I did mention a proposal, a much larger proposal. We had put together at the clean energy extension. In partnership with five towns around Western Massachusetts inclusive of Amherst. Along with some not along with some community organizations to develop community owned solar projects where that ownership the at the gain and benefits of those ownership ownership were particularly targeted to low income. Minority. Disadvantaged populations within those towns. That was received pretty well. We got good feedback, but then submitted a full proposal that didn't get the funding fast forward recently. This Nathan Cummings Foundation and I'm working closely with our foundations office at UMass Marco Monic. He brought this to our attention, particularly with regard to racial equity, environmental justice and so forth. It's a much smaller amount of money up to $250,000, which is basically what we would try to apply for. And so I carved out specifically the Amherst pilot, which was in the earlier proposal. And that is basically in coordination. This has been discussed with what was the African heritage reparations assembly for the town. That's done their work and is now not formally convened anymore. But also with the department of diversity, equity and inclusion of the town. And they've given approval and interest and definitely interest in submitting the cell. Why. And it's basically the proposal is basically to work with recognizing that Amherst is the second in the country. It's a jurisdiction to approve and fund reparations for the black community within the town. And that the idea there is to really try to build some wealth generation in the town that a form that some of those reparation funds could go into is to support the black community to form their own black owned controlled organized business. And then develop a solar project that would be of informed by and supportive of the black community in terms of ownership and and returns to the business as well as significant discounts and energy through net metering credits. And so the idea for the proposal is to use the potentially $250,000 from the Nathan's found. Cummings Foundation leverage some of that for yet to be determined amount that the reparations funds could put in. Organize the black community using the members of the assembly to help organize the black community as they would see fit to create a business. That business would then have own control of the development process. The $250,000 would be particularly useful for supporting the development costs of the solar project. The business wouldn't have that capacity. They would contract that out to solar developers and experts legal financial experts that would need to be brought into the process. But then they would construct own and operate and maintain the project. And so that that's that's the that's the intent. The idea from the for the clean energy extension at UMass we would be supportive of this. There's also commune other organizations that would be part of this to support the effort co op power is involved. Um, UMass five and the Franklin County CDC have all taken an interest. The idea would be that this business would work on fundraising to bring in additional money for the project is capital. Capital formation and also look for access to low interest debt financing for this as well as take advantage of all the federal and state incentives that are available. The goal would be to have enough fundraising to build what I'm suggesting is anywhere between a 250 250 and one megawatt project. Um, so, you know, more than a resident and probably, but, but, you know, so meaningful for that could support through net metering credits a decent portion of black rate ratepayers in town. And create a business for them. Um, so that's that's again, this is a letter of intent details, budget, all that would need to be part of developed fully in a proposal as well as getting much more formal letters of support. Um, uh, for from from from the organizations and from the town and so forth. Uh, but at this point, um, I would like to be able to state that, um, that I can state that the town is behind this with regard to the, um, uh, department of diversity. Um, equity and inclusion. Um, and, um, but I'd also, uh, and members of the assembly, at least past members of the assembly. Uh, but I'd also, um, it would be really helpful also to be able to, to, cause I talk in the proposal. The L a Y is very limited in how many characters you can have. So I had to get a lot in, in a little bit of language. Uh, but I do mention, um, that Amherst itself and not only do we have, uh, reparations, which is very unique, but we have an active, uh, energy and climate activities as well. Uh, and so it would be great to be able to state that, um, the L a Y, uh, has the support and this project has the support of the EECAC. Um, so that's my pitch and proposal. That sounds great to me. Is there any further discussion? And if not, would someone like to move to support this? Uh, this L a Y, this project. I'll move to support it. It's wonderfully social justice and climate justice. Goals. And I think specifically if we need wording, we should say what that this is to, we are, we are voting on it on emotion to support. Uh, the letter of intent to the Nathan Cummings. Uh, is it a foundation regarding a, uh, what would you call the project regarding a. A letter of support, a letter of intent for a proposed project for solar. Um, well, I can give you this. I have to get the proposal. I have a title, but it's putting solar to work. Uh, solar as reparations or something like that. Can I suggest something? Sorry. Um, Allison moved to support a letter of intent to the Nathan Cummings foundation regarding a letter of interest for a proposed solar project. To serve as reparations. Is that. I think you could take out the second occurrence of letter of intent or letter of interest. I need to take that out red fine. Okay. Yep. Thank you. Yes. So, okay, we have a motion. Do we have a second? Steve is seconding it. I will second it. Okay. Okay. And a vote in no particular order. Roof. Yes. Goldner. Yes. Breger. Yes. Kissing. Yes. Allison. Yes. Drucker. Yes. Calriss. Yes. All right. It's approved. All right. Awesome. Thank you. Okay. So I think we are on to sustainability festival planning. And I don't think there's a lot left to do except that I would love to get one more person signed up for, let's see what time was it. I need to find the. I had it up here. Just a moment. Of course I must have closed it. Okay. Thank you. Tony, thank you for joining me at 8am to set up. I think 830 is probably fine, but not later than that. If I remember right. Parking gets hard to find to drop stuff off and we will have some tables to drop off. Jesse's not here, but I think he was going to loan us a tent. So. And or who is going to loan the tent? Yeah. Who had the tent? Maybe it wasn't Jesse. Okay. I think it was him. About that. He was going to get the doctor in the booth thing. The peanuts booth. I think he had a tent. I'll bring a banner. We need folks to bring laptops. I will try to bring one if it's not raining. And that was to showcase the sustainability page, the web page. And we needed one more person for. The last. For the three to four o'clock. Slot. So we had, we have me and Tony at eight and nine. Don Michael and Tony at 10 and 11. I'm going to come back at noon. I might stay through, but I'm going to come back for sure at noon and one because my recollection is that was the busiest time of day. And I want the doctor to be in then for the P pumps advice. So 12 and one will be Steve and me two o'clock Dwayne and Steve. And then three and four cleanup. We have just Jesse. Is there anyone else who could volunteer in that slot? I just want to, Lori, I can't volunteer at all. If I heard my name. I'm going to be at a, all the. Climates meeting. In South Borough for the Episcopal diocese of Massachusetts and Western Massachusetts. Oh, okay. I don't know how it got on there. So we do have Michael and Tony in those two slots. So that's okay. I don't think Jesse will be stuck by himself. Right. And maybe other hands to help him. Okay. So I think we're pretty much set up. I'll come with some flyers. I didn't have time to put stuff together for today. And I think the next meeting is after the sustainability festival. Right. So this is for the Saturday the 20th. And I guess I will see you all there at one time or another. During the day or see most of you there. I think Laura, you couldn't, you were also not able to. Fortunately. It's spring break. So. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So. Laurie, can you just tell me how you could have to write it down. This time. Can you tell me what I signed up for? When you signed up for two o'clock, just the two o'clock slot. Yep. Good. Thank you. Okay. So two to three. And I think that'll be fine. I'm going to try to stick around most of the day. I think I enjoyed it last time. It was fun to talk to people. I met a bunch of interesting people. So. Okay. And I, and I will have a banner printed out. I just haven't taken care of that yet. That'll do this weekend. So I think we're at staff updates. Um, yeah, I have some really exciting news. Um, I think that was pretty fast. Our CCA was approved by the DPU. Oh, that was fast. That was not fast. Wow. Oh, I think that was pretty fast. It was submitted in October. I'm thinking about the whole process, but. Yeah, right. Well, the process of us, but the process of DPU approval, I have to say, it was pretty fairly quick. Um, I think other communities would, would. I think it would be a success. So I will say that doesn't mean that it's going to just launch next week. We have things that, you know, that have to be done. And, um, in terms of. Precuring our electricity supply. And we have a consultant, um, mass power, energy choice that we're working with. Um, which they're fantastic. They're just, they've just been amazing to work with. They're an incredible group. I'm looking to the end of the month because in the next two weeks there's just a lot of other things that are happening. So not only the sustainability festival, but there's other things in deadlines that are due. So, was this announced anywhere else? I haven't seen this. No, it just happened. I'm telling you, you're, I don't even know if the town manager read his email yet. This is, you know, this literally is hot off the presses. Okay. It's okay for us to tell folks. Yeah, I mean, yeah, there's not, you know, it doesn't mean it's going to, like I said, it's not launching tomorrow. There's a whole education and outreach campaign that has to happen. So, you know, there will be very much an increased presence of information in the coming months. But again, we're, we're going to be working very closely with our consultant, given that this is especially our first time around with this. So it does mean that our residents will be automatically opted in. People have to opt out. And, you know, if they're, if they're getting basic service, utility service from ever source, they'll automatically be opted in. If they're getting it from another party, they'll have to opt in themselves. So that's the biggest news. But anyway, this is all, there's going to be lots of opportunity. People will have time. There'll be a lot of information. We still have to work on securing our energy supply, our electricity supply. And that's something that the consultant will be working very closely with Amherst, Northampton and Pelham on. So, yeah, it's just very, very exciting and a bit surreal. I felt this way when bike share was launched and when the solar project was built on the landfill. It's that same sort of feeling of, wow, it's really happening. Okay, great. So, so, so thank you all. And that will be more informational becoming soon about that. Other news, the other great news is that the town council unanimously authorized the town manager to sign the Valley bike memorandum of understanding. So it commits the town to continuing with that effort and submitting at least providing their short share of financial support in the next three years. We don't know exactly what that amount will be, but certainly we know this year and we've already allocated that funding for this year. So we at least have three years of bike share on the horizon and hopefully it will grow and become even more successful and it will continue. We'd love to see that just be. Yes, but I can't announce it yet because we haven't. The contract is still being negotiated and it can't really happen till all of the communities sign the MOU so we were one of the last two to sign the MOU. So, I think the city of Springfield is the last. Oh, why is this thing Valley bike? I didn't realize it extended all the way down to Springfield. Yes. Yes, there's eight communities. It's a regional bike share effort. So, it started with four communities. The fifth was added fairly quickly. And now it's grown to eight with a ninth that was interested and plus the University of Massachusetts. What's the region over which this is Springfield from Springfield up to like where's the whole North Hampton. It's North Hampton. North Hampton. Yeah, where it's Amherst, North Hampton, Holyoke, Springfield, West Springfield, Chicopee, East Hampton, South Hadley. I think that's, I think that's it for right now. Hadley always opts out of these things. Yeah, we're trying to get them in. We've been trying for a while. But so, yeah, so it's really exciting that that's happening too. And then the last thing, and I don't know if I announced this or not, but the rental survey that was and report are complete and I finally got that report to Dwayne. It's been completed for a little bit. I was just kind of waiting on sort of finalizing the submittal of the final materials, but I will share that with you all soon. I just want to have a final meeting with the grant permitting authority and because we have check ins and I just want to sort of check in with them first. And then I will distribute that final document for everyone, and that'll get posted on the, on the sustainability dashboard as well. So a lot of things coming together and happening right now. And there's more but I just, I'm tired. I can't really, I'm still a little, you know, foggy brained so I can't really think of everything else that's going on right now. Well, that's great Stephanie thank you for all that good news. Sure. All right, member updates. Anyone seems to me I had something and now I can't think of what it was. It might have been that email I read off earlier I'll share that. No member updates. I would say that Stephanie and I are both taking this heat smart energy coaching course now and that's I missed the last week's the third session but the fourth is actually there's a meeting today right after this one and then they regular courses tomorrow. And I think that's actually one that is more accessible to more people I don't know what you think Stephanie but I think this is the one that I would recommend folks who don't have a lot of technical background and want to get into this tape. First, I agree. I almost wish I had taken this one first and then the other one or maybe just this one. You think it's a little better organized although rewiring is scaling up fast so we'll see what happens and they're changing with every iteration. That's really good. I think there's this really good too. I think they're both great opportunities. I just think this is more. I think the other program for for someone who is more further more involved in the industry or more informed and technical. I think that other program would be better for those folks but folks who just sort of want to assist people with some sort of general guidance I think this program is much better. Okay, if no other updates agenda items for the next meeting. I think we had a couple of things to follow up on right including solar by law for sure. Of the done the pace. Hopefully we'll hear about that. I think we want to think about one thing we didn't really talk about today is what actual presentations I mean I do like the idea of of ecac either sponsoring or helping with or being involved somehow in bringing information to the community and what's the best way to do that. Going forward. We talked about the outreach effort we talked about today. I think this is still narrowing things down we were going to before the, before the retreat, we were talking about completing the solar discussion with the discussion of community, community solar and community owned solar. So we went on hold because we felt like we weren't getting. We're not getting a lot of viewers with getting viewers after the fact that people aren't coming to the meetings we're getting a couple hundred views of these recordings. But is there some better way to do that or the groups we can coordinate with. And I think we didn't quite touch on that today so maybe that's something we can all think a little bit about. Next time, especially given the document that Tony's going to circulate. I'm going to talk a little bit more about what we should be doing there. And otherwise, I think the agenda is going to look sort of similar every week with a, you know, advisory role and outreach role, education outreach and advisory and policy. So if you have things that come up in the next two weeks that you think ought to be added. They all mean, send them along. I think we should also put a sustainability festival. Review recap, whatever you want to call it on the next agenda. Lori, I have sorry to go back to the education series. I had my hand up, I just was thinking that I don't know about timing, but it probably would be really great now that we know the DPU is approved. The CCA, it might be great to have a session on that. And I could ask our consultant if they would be willing to do like an hour long discussion, Q&A presentation. I can ask. I don't know. And I think heavy on the Q&A. Because we'll have a lot of questions and that's something we could really advertise and say, you know, especially once we have a date. Presumably residents are going to get something in their mailboxes saying this is happening. Yeah, it's they're going to, there's going to be a lot of information and people are going to get notified. So legally, we have to do that. So there's a whole education and outreach plan that was put together. So this could be just, you know, one of the myriad of ways that we're getting the information out. I would suggest that when a mailing to leverage those mailings, right, that this that we plan it so that it is advertised in one of the mailings that CCA, you know, there'll be this question and answer session on such and such a date. Yeah, there'll probably be other opportunities like that too. But yeah, I'll, I mean, we'll, we'll have to follow up because that's, it's a really big, the education and outreach pieces very, very big. So we'll have to follow up with our consultant on that. And I'll definitely keep you abreast of the timing. Um, does this change. So this is different from a municipal power. This, this doesn't change our access to mass save rebates, right. No, no, no. This is just our electricity supply right now. Okay. All right, so yeah, there are going to be lots of questions. Anything else for the next meeting agenda folks can think of. And Stephanie, I think we usually meet the Friday before Wednesday meet before we meet but we can't meet that Friday I think. I think the next Friday we have to find another time to meet. I think we can just follow up offline. Just let me know. Yeah, we'll figure that out. I think we're going to have to go back to public comment. Do we have public comment? Oh, we got a hand up. Yep. Martha, you can go ahead and unmute. Okay. Thank you. And I'm impressed you folks have come out of that retreat and your agenda was really full today. I have really two or three things I'd like to comment on, starting from the end, working backwards. Wayne, your report on the state committee there on the renewable energy siting and so on. I mean, they did have a couple of listening sessions in January that that I attended. And what struck me was the listening sessions were all full of the people from the small rural communities either in Western Massachusetts or Cape Cod Southeast Massachusetts that have been so severely impacted by large arrays that have just come in and you know, up the landscape and so on. You know, nobody from any of the Eastern cities or that was sort of expressing any interest in solar or other large renewable energy projects and so on. And the other thing that of course came up was that the challenges of the grid infrastructure. And to my mind, and I saw Mr. Judge who was what is he the under secretary that they are that was chairing sessions he kind of nodded his head when the infrastructure came up but you know, much of the delay I think in the large solar projects right now is because of the lack of the grid infrastructure. You know, as we learned in our solar bylaw working group, we were told that it's costing a million dollars a mile to put in the, what is it the three phase transmission lines and so on for Doug Belliper and so that's very discouraging for putting in a raise that you kind of tuck into a five or 10 acre place, you know, if you can't get enough profit to make up for that. So that I think is one of the things that's most needed. Another thing that I think is very important, you know, they're talking about setting up this whole new bureaucracy in Massachusetts and trying to get the nation out to communities and circuit riders and so on and I would like to say and I said it to them that why not use the regional planning commissions more. You know, we have our Pioneer Valley Planning Commission that does a lot of good work on various topics. And it seems to me that rather than set up a whole new bureaucracy, it would better be better to give a little extra funding to the various regional planning commissions and let them be the ones to advise the local communities. I mean, as you know, from our solar bylaw working group, our PVPC had already put out this, this solar best practices guide, which had a lot of useful information to get us started and then, and so on. So, I sure would like to see that but there's a big concern really of taking away the local communities ability to regulate the large solar arrays and giving it to this, you know, Boston based commission with its new bureaucracy and its belief that that rural Massachusetts is just eagerly waiting to have solar spread out to serve the city of Boston and so I see a lot of concerns there and I see that there could be other ways of doing it as I say that using the regional planning commissions I would love to see that seriously considered. Yeah, so I had sent in my comments my two cents worth there on that. Steve, I along with Steve I had attended the CRC last night to switch topics and it's it's mainly the one counselor Mandy Joe, who was really concerned about rewriting the solar bylaw I mean granted, I think it does. It could really benefit from some, you know, cleaning up some of the wording and so on but there is a concern about, you know, how, how this might be divided up and so the hope is and Stephanie I guess this is for you. If you and Chris are putting together a draft document for the April 30 CRC meeting will that then with the open meeting law be publicly available 48 hours in advance. It'll be part of the packet. So whatever we submit to them goes into their packet. Yes, but their packet. I have not found it on the on the town website. Okay, I can I can maybe assist you with that Martha. Okay, thank you for that. And then finally, Tony, I was very interested in your report on transportation, like to say a couple of things. One is our League of Women voters used to have a strong sustainability committee that was interested in a lot of things, including, you know, public transportation and so on. It's fallen apart a little bit. We're trying to get it re going again. But I wondered in that connection, whether it might be possible to have access to your email that I might be able to, you know, let you know if we have something going or. Yeah, of course, as long as that's okay with Stephanie and Lori. Yeah, communication then of course, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. You go ahead and forward that. Yes, please. That'd be awesome. Okay, thank you. I'll just connect you to whether whether you are you aware of the. Of ride M a online tool. It sounds familiar, but I don't. Yeah, well, this is a whole online mapping tool that's been put together that maps out the public transportation routes. And things like the connections to where the grocery stores are. And certainly that's been a problem here in Amherst. It's even mentioned in the, in the car. From your group that say, if you live on East Hadley Road and the, and any of these rental properties. If you want to get to a grocery store, it's a huge hassle with having to go downtown and change buses and go, you know, it's a. And then it would be possible to really kind of study the map and see if there are ways that would, you know, actually improve the public transportation, which would. Presumably mean saving gas and so on. And again, we might have somebody from our group that might be willing to be interested in working on that. So just wanted to let you know that it sounds like you actually doing some very interesting things there. Fantastic. Yeah, I do know that the attack, the transportation committee has been looking at revising the bus routes. So it's good that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, it's a they, they, the PV, Pioneer Valley transportation has, has received quite a lot of money and my impression is they're putting most of it into buying electric vehicles. But I'm wondering if some of the money ought to go into providing better service in terms of the route so the frequency and so on. You know, the emphasis is on the UMass students, which is great. We have so many of them. And all, but, but perhaps more could be done. So anyway, thank you. Yeah, I can bring that up in the next meeting on the 18th. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Martha. Okay, and I remember that I did have an announcement that was sort of important, which is that we have a new town council liaison. So I'm just going to mention that quickly. I'm sure I'm going to pronounce wrong. And it's, it's F R E K E. Oh, freka freka eti. Yeah. And freka will be our new liaison. They apologize. I don't know if it's he she or they apologize that they cannot generally be here but I will reach out and make sure that they know what's what we're interested in and what's I'll make sure I have a conversation with freka periodically. All right. And with that, I think we're at adjournment. So see you all to sustain or see most of you at sustainability festival and the rest of you in two weeks. Thanks everybody. And thank you. Thank you.