 Right. Good afternoon, everyone. Hope you all had a nice Thanksgiving. So we'll start off with our vision and charge. Just highlight today's meeting and the importance of it. So part of the agenda today is to go over the town manager's goals and our charge is to plan and prioritize efforts and to recommend programs and policies. It is going to set the tone for next year. Town manager's goals are going to be our goals and it'll help the community as well drive to common goals across the board. So let's make sure that we're making use of today's time to establish what we want to drive. We talk about us all the time. There are five pillars that were focused on heat pump region and state solar transportation sea base that hasn't changed. In terms of our mine personal metrics, we've seen a good level of participation. We continue to have the education series. I think there's some opportunity to continue to create more awareness. We continue to do so. And then the last one is our annual report, which we also have to talk about annual report for this year. But next year we would like to have the annual report completed in September with recommendations for what goals the town and the town manager need to have for the following year. And then in terms of open actions, Stephanie, I think these are all yours. I believe this action is done. You were, you did connect Lori to see T so I can mark this as complete. Stephanie. Yep, sorry, yes. Yeah, well Lori and I are both connecting with CET so yes. Okay. What about the other three, Stephanie. Let's see billing hours. I would say those are with the, the first two at least are in process and the last one. You've got that as a question mark so I guess we have to work on that together. I think we've kind of done, I mean, and I feel like some of what you're presenting tonight is kind of is some of that. So, yeah, I'd say that's the status. Okay. All right. Okay let's go on to the next part of the agenda. Meeting minutes that everybody get a chance to review our meeting minutes. Yeah I had a few changes. Let me just find them is just. Yeah, in progress ports paragraph B, I am credited with saying that many of the installers are not familiar with heat pumps and I really don't want to be credited with saying that. Stephanie a sentence of longer sentence it says well all installers from the massive website have some familiarity with heat pumps. They do not necessarily have complete information or do they have net zero was a goal. So the solutions while workable often fall short of what is best or possible. So it's a long sentence but it says what I was trying to say last time. All the solutions I got were pretty decent but none of them were ideal until I went through several iterations with a boat. All right so also in section eight of the minutes. It says golden explain that he pumps are four times more energy efficient and electrical resistance heating and that's not quite right either. Goldner explained that he pumps can be three to four times more energy efficient electrical resistance heating is a true statement. I'll be even more than that, but minor changes but important. So I'm sorry, I'm not sure we identified a minute taker. It's it should. And then it's me so I'd be happy to do it. Thanks Jesse. Laura's going to join us at five. Yeah, if you could. Thank you. Got it. Yeah. If you wanted to be even more accurate, I think it. That's not possible in this region. So maybe. What's not possible. Three to four times. Sure, it depends on the outside temperature. I mean all of them are three times over the course of a year. It can be. I see what you're saying. For another time. Okay, any other comments on the minutes. I move to accept the minutes as amended. I'll second. Okay. I need a voice vote. In no particular order. Yes. Roof. Yes. Goldner. Yes. Yes. Alison. Yes. Selman. Yes. Rose. Yes. D. Yes. Thank you. Minutes are approved. Great. Thank you. Let's move on to the next part of the agenda and open up to the public for comments. You don't have a number on that. Of. I got it. Jesse. Okay. You got eight. Okay. So Anna is now here. She's your only public at the moment. All right. Can we. Talk about goals before we talk about progress reports. And part of the agenda is to talk about progress reports for C. Basin transportation. Would that be okay? Don and Stella. I think with Anna here, that would be a good thing. Yeah. That's what I was thinking. Okay. So let me reshare my screen. Okay. Yeah. So I got a lot of. Emails. So thank you for all the feedback. I got emails from you all. On obviously, and. From the community as well. So I tried to. Categorize. All the feedback that I received. You know, like I said, some of them might be very similar. But. My recommendation. I'm open for any other feedback here. Is to go over some of these categories. And think about which ones are the ones we really want the town manager to own as part of his goals. And I can't see anybody raising their hands. Would that work for everybody? Yeah. And we have a discussion at first of the email. I was just trying to dig it up, but I couldn't, but there was an email sent around today saying that. The town manager didn't want specific goals, which it seems to me is working against our charge. It sounds like a bad idea. We need milestones. So I was wondering if, you know, what exactly is our role if he doesn't want specific goals. Or if the town council, let me, let me pull that up. I know. Laurie, you, Andrew, and I got that email. And it looks like this was their red line version that was discussed. So we didn't actually discuss this yet. Just so you know. Oh, it was on the agenda, but the meeting was adjourned before we really got to it. So it was discussed at GOL today, not the full, which was a meeting of the council, but not everyone was there. And can I interrupt if you get an email like that? Can you please share that with me? Because those are actually public documents. If you receive them as committee members. Yeah. Sorry, this is the first time hearing about what you're. Me too. I don't know anything about it. Yeah. I just got it today and I didn't read it very carefully. So who sent it? And I'll find it. Forward it. You know, it's from Darcy. I can explain what's going on in that red line version, but yeah, I'd love to see the, or hear what the email said first, just so I have an understanding of what the context we're talking about is. I can share a screen or forward this. What do you want to do? Let me just copy the email and do a word document and share. Okay. And then I'll need it for the meeting packet. Yeah, I can forward that to you. Thanks. Sorry. I didn't know. Okay. Two of us. Yeah, I was in fact, not in attendance due to my job. I can clarify that. So I can explain this and explain what I'm going to do on Monday. If that's helpful. I don't know. I'll defer to you. If that's beneficial right now. I mean, the question is, can we proceed with this? Yes. Okay. So, just to give folks context because that, that email is not quite correct. I read it very, very quickly, but it's not quite correct. And if you could forward it, that would be really helpful. Oh, perfect. So. This is a work in progress. The red line version that you had up before was basically the idea behind that. And again, I was not at the governance meeting today because I had to work, but the idea behind that is saying that the town manager is the executive branch, the town council is the legislative branch. So it's not necessarily fair for us to put specific policy goals into the town manager goals when his goals should be to support the policy creation and to do the management of the town. Through the executive branch. So. Repeat the last portion again, Anna. Sure. So the town manager's job is to support the policy creation that the town council takes on, but not to be writing policy necessarily. We often will do that in collaboration with him, but we need to set our own policy goals and we can set the management goal or the, yeah, the management goals. Right. So that's that executive branch. Angle. So what initially happened is that I believe they, they moved the climate, the climate action was not the only one. So climate action. Community health and safety and several other categories. They had moved up to be in the policy goals section for the council, not in the management goals section for the town manager. I am planning to do that. I believe that they live in, they should live in both areas. But this has not been decided. I just, I want to be very, very clear on that. In the reason, and again, I'm speaking for myself, not on behalf of the council at all. But the reason is that there are plenty of climate action measures that are. Executive that are not policy, right? So things like community choice aggregation work. You know, some of the other examples being work on the. Capital inventory. Qualifier questions, things like that. Those are really firmly under Paul's arena and should be in his goals. If that's what you all think we should push forward. So, yeah, so I, on Monday, I do plan to ask to put those categories back in the town manager goals, but what you're looking at in that red line version is very, very much a draft. Yeah. And there's not consensus on, on the change right now. Okay. Does that explain, does that help? It's really confusing. I need, I want to just name that if you're a little lost, you're not. You're not alone. So no, you are not wasting your time in my opinion. And I, I plan on, and I know several other people are planning on either supporting what I'm talking about, or are asking to go back to what we did before where we do have those categories in the town manager goals. So no need to panic. Okay. Does that explain, does that help? It's really confusing. I need, I want to just name that if you're a little lost, you're not. You're not alone. You're not alone. You're not alone. You're not alone. You're not alone. You're not alone. And I just want to, you know, thank you for that. And I'll be writing my own letter to counselors and the town manager. Absolutely. That is absolutely something you are all at any point. Welcome to do. So I really feel strongly that without goals and specific milestones. You know, we might as well. I get that. I do get that. Okay. So my recommendation would be to look at these 34 items. Again, some are repeated. And think about the top four or five goals. That. The town manager can own and just thinking about. Our goals, the town manager goals for last year. Was not very specific enough. I mean, substantial progress. In CCA. Implement portions of the car. Budgeting practices and hiring practices. Think thinking about climate. When you're making those decisions. Education of the town council. Bodies and staff. And then something around inventory. And then the report itself. So just keep that in mind as we think about the 2023 goals. So is everyone okay with what we want to do your, or my recommendation here? Or do you have any other input? On this list. No, just the approach that we want to take is to go to go through these categories and think about which ones should be. Town manager goals. I think that's helpful. And you made me a little nervous seeing 34 on there. But if we could. Yeah. Absolutely. Thank you. We have too many, nothing gets done. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and, and yeah, exactly. I need to be able to. Really kind of. Pitch it a solid set. Agree. Stephanie. Can I recommend that you. Consider. A goal from each category. A goal from what? Oh, each category. You know, because I think that's kind of how we approached. Last year's projects. And I think that's helpful. Yeah. So anyway, that's just a suggestion. Agreed. Agreed. And these categories are kind of made up. I mean, ish, right? And so we can talk about whether those categories even need to exist or not. We need to pick one per category. Cause right now I do have a few categories as you can see. And we need to consolidate. Okay. I mean, I'm not sure that. There might be two from one category. It's possible. Another. Yeah. That we want to prioritize. Yeah. Completely agreed. Andra. And I think we got to look at all the items in the car. So this is the list. So what I did. Was. I kind of scored. I know we've talked about this, but I went back in and I looked at all of these and scored. And what I want to do. Is at the end of this review here, when we finalize these categories and goals, I want us to look back at the carp actions and see. If they're truly the top. Items for the town manager. So we'll come back to this, but let's start with. These goals here. So what I have in finance. And I took all the names off of people who suggested. Just so we don't have any biases. So the first one is around. Sustainable capital improvement plan. To decarbonize and climate proof. And then there was something around. Research investment. And innovative financing for locally sourced. Owned and controlled renewable energy. So all of these are finance buckets. And I'm. Here's specific amounts of what we're requesting. Versus this is just the development and implementation of the capital plan. I think we need to know what the sustainable capital improvement plan is. Also, Vasu, could you zoom in? So the goal takes up the full width. Yeah. That'd be helpful for me. Thank you. Is that good? Just lovely. Okay. I believe that language of sustainable capital improvement plan was pulled from the carp in reference. I know Stephanie has done a lot of work on our current capital improvement. Or capital improvement. Plan, I guess generally, but. I don't know that that necessarily. I don't know that we know what it means yet. If that is helpful. Which I don't think it is because I think it just makes it more confusing, but basically I think it's that it. Part of the goal is to figure out what that would be. Yeah. And this point here that says double the sustainability funds, even if we double, we don't know. How we're going to use it. So is the. Question on the finance category is to ask for funding or is to. Tell us how that funding is going to be spent or both. My recommendation would actually be to take the things that are specific to the budget. Those are the things that are going to be spent. My recommendation would actually be to take the things that are specific to the budget. Those aren't going to be. Necessarily goals for the town manager, but those are really relevant. Right now as we go into the. The financial indicators and. Financial priorities setting. So. If you actually could separate those out into a separate document, that would be really helpful for and send it to me. That would be really helpful. So these will be metrics is what you're saying. And then the goals tend to not be about budget items. At least I've never seen to my knowledge, any that are specific about budget items other than. Creating positions. So. Yeah, I would say the double the sustainability funds. Those would be things that we'd asked for in the budget, not in the goals. Does that make sense? Yeah, but, but they're not all budget. Some are financial, but not budget. Yeah. For example, the spending. Of the sustainability funds, the 200,000 for this year. That's not. Budget. That's just reporting. Yeah. And research. Researching investments for. People in town to use. You know, that's totally different kind of finance thing. Yeah. I'm sorry. I was saying Rose three and four. The doubling the sustainability funds and adding 40,000 for tree planting would be things that would be more appropriate for the budget, not for the goals. If you want to keep the first part of prioritized tree planting and working class and BIPOC neighborhoods, that would be. That could make more sense, but the specific line item budget. The specific budget line items are not. Not necessarily relevant for the goals section. I agree. Yeah. The other thing I would say is, I mean, if we say prior to street planting should be a goal. It's not the biggest goal that would. Move the needle for us. So that will, I'll let you all decide those that. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think it does. So I'm not sure if we're talking about four or five goals that we want to have the town manager to own. I don't believe this should be the one still. I also have a lot of concerns about prioritizing tree planting in the absence of any like maintenance funding as a goal period. In a context, I don't know if this is an appropriate conversation to have now if we're going to really get into the budget line items too, but I think. I see Andrew shaking your head. So I can just leave it there. But I think. I think that tree planting is, is, is necessary, but not sufficient. So if, if we. Want to talk about tree planting, then. There needs to be a lot more there that we talk about. Thanks. All right. So I think. Vasu, I had a related comment. Which is that. The important part of that. I think that the, the priority, the tree planting thing is working class in BIPOC neighborhoods and a more appropriate goal there would be to just make sure that. Any of our town programs are more, perhaps more focused. I don't know anything about how things bounce out now, but I could imagine us recommending that whatever funds are available and that we use on tree planting be used in. In the more depressed neighborhoods in BIPOC neighborhoods. That would be something that would be more of a goal or a priority. Should we add that over here instead of saying use unallocated funds or implementing some of the. Unallocated. I would say take the allocated funds and emphasize the communities that need it the most. If that's not already being done. Actually. No, it's a, it's a part of the tree planting. So I think that. That would be something that would be more of a goal or a priority. Should we add that over here instead of saying use. Unallocated. No, it's a, it's a part of the tree planting one. It's like, that's an example of. You know, a specific goal that. Should. You know, be thinking about environmental justice. It's not about five. Right. But with tree planting. Should this be a goal for the town manager? It's a possible goal if you take out the budget. Allocation. And then. Yeah, but I'm saying if we look at our car. Page 25 of the carp that has the table. And it's a CCA is. The highest sea pace is the top emitter. Or, you know, residential energy. Should this really be the one that we should have the town manager focus. His efforts on. You know, Well, if we're taking the one by one, like all are already then. Yeah, I think that we could maybe give. Things a score or. You know, put it into a pile of a maybe. I think the goal there ought to be bringing. Environmental justice and energy justice to. I talk neighborhoods in which case. It's getting the city's heat pumps. It's getting staff member whose job it is. To help residents access funds that they're eligible to access and get those heat pumps in place. You know, it's, I think we need. Feet on the ground to actually do that. And that's where the money would be better spent, but the goal would be, you know, hire an extra staff person to make sure this happens. Or to oversee this program. Or or to somehow find ways to funnel. neighborhoods that have been, um, you know, historically, uh, underrepresented. There is one action in the car. Yeah. That is create official compensated bi-populate committee with overseeing planning policy review. Is this what we want to add? Uh, Steve and then Stella. I'm trying to think of your response to the question you just posed. Um, I like that focus. I think also there's the rental population focus, which overlaps, but in many cases, but may not totally overlap with the bi-pop population. And so I agree that with, with Lori, that sort of our possibly our prime focus would be to increase or improve the ability of rental populations and other neighborhoods to improve their energy efficiency and resiliency quality of grounds. Oh, I love that. And that includes trees and everything else because you stuck the word resiliency in. So I love that. That's, that should be the goal. Yeah. Do you want to repeat that against Steve? Oh, no. I have to go back to the recording to understand what I just said, but I think the concept was adding in rental population in addition to the bi-pop and low income, I think was originally in there. Figure out the right way to encapsulate and include all of those populations, but to improve the energy efficiency, benefiting those people as well as improving the resiliency of the environment, you know, sort of the outdoor environment. So that would include trees that would also ensure proper flood protection. I wrote it down and I might have it succinct. And Steve, you can just tell me if this is accurate. Prime focus, improve the ability of rental and other populations to improve efficiency and resiliency of grounds. I don't know if that's too simplified. No, I like how Vasu has it better. Environmental justice, working class, low income and bi-pop. Yeah, I agree. I think including those names as long as we get them right and don't exclude any important ones is valuable to have those names in there instead of just other. You talked about rental. Steve, is that you want to include that as well? Yes, that's been part of our focus. Stuff that I've been working on is trying to, and that was a target that we identified before, is helping the rental population that is a little less able to manage their indoor environment since they don't own the property and outdoor. I'm concerned. I don't think we should leave out trees all together. I mean, they do create the environment, especially if you're talking about heat islands or even efficiency of heat pumps or stormwater, all of these things. So I think it's worth leaving the trees in there. My concern with tree planting is just if the tree warden has been flat funded for 11 years, which to my knowledge is the case, if you just plant bare root seedlings in the ground and then have no budget to take care of them, they're just going to die. So it needs to be a whole package of structural soils and really thinking about the grounds. So I think it's worth leaving the word trees in there because that is a big piece of equity. I mean, there is very well documented research that in less tree cover, human mortality goes up. And you don't think improved resiliency of the environment is... Because who is doing the work? You know what I mean? It's the tree work, the tree warden and crew, and they don't have the funding right now. So even if we're prioritized this, if they don't have the people and they don't have the funding, and they can't, you know what I mean? Yeah, but that's where the next part of the finance portion where we're asking for specific things allocated to whatever. Stephanie? I suggest you put the word natural in front of environment, then it makes it a little more specific. So it doesn't specifically say trees, but... Okay, Laura? Sorry, really, I have to jump onto my phone from my computer, so I will be dropping off and dropping back on. The only thing I want to just quickly remind folks of is that last, I would ask that you also just take a quick look if you haven't yet at last year's goals. They may be too broad, but there are six. So just remembering that I will fight tooth and nail to get these in here, and six broad goals is what people are used to. Just keeping in mind what feels attainable as a year-long goal, and sometimes giving them a little bit more breadth allows for more to get done. If that makes sense, like it's a little bit of that dance between specificity, so you know what's getting done and you can kind of really be clear and a little bit of breadth to allow for maybe more to get done within that, if that makes sense. Okay, and I'm going to drop off and I'll be right back. Thank you. And I know we have a lot to cover, so what I'm going to do is if we have one person supporting a specific goal, and I'm just going to take a quick vote or whatever feedback from all of you, and then try to move on to the next goal. So we just try to cover all of them today. Okay, so can I get rid of this in red then? We don't want to talk about a committee that came from the start. Yes, yeah, delete the red. Okay, all right, thank you. And we're getting rid of this, we're getting rid of these two as well. So mark it in red. And then Stephanie, you have something? All right, in terms of reporting expenditures here, do we want to be specific around how things are earmarked for the year or what should be? I do think we should know how things are being spent that are supposed to be for energy and other sustainability issues. Otherwise, how can we assess our own goals? Yeah, my recommendation, Andra, is to get rid of this 200,000 because we don't know what's going to be authorized. Maybe it's more. No, I was talking about the one you just mentioned reporting. Yeah, no, no, I think we can see that. Oh, I see. That's to identify it. It doesn't have a name, but it's in, there's a line item in the capital budget for sustainability. Right. But if we're, I don't know if we're going to get 200 or 300 or 100, should we just get rid of 200 and just say for goals whether we're authorized? Sure. The request here is just to have him report back to us on how the money's used. Yeah. Currently, this is not just for next year. Yeah, this should be in 24 or 23, at 424. Rather than, rather than using the word regularly, can we take something like quarterly or something? I mean, what does regularly mean? Yeah, good point. Quarterly would be great. Yeah. And why is it fiscal year 24, wouldn't we want to hear what was said last quarter? Like fiscal year 23. Yeah, we're on fiscal year 23 to see it. These are 10 manager goals for fiscal year 24. But no, no, it's not true. No, it's for 2023. They're not, they don't correspond. I'll just say fiscal year. Okay. I'll just say 2023. Yeah. Okay. That doesn't read right. Report expenditures quarterly. Yeah. Okay. And do you want to say, apropos of what you were talking about, Andrew, the TCA and Town Council of the line item budgeted, after of the line item budgeted authorized for sustainability. So it's clear what it is. I mean, you're saying there's a line item in the budget. In the capital budget. It's specific. You know what I'm talking about, Stephanie, does it have a name? Right now it's just identified as sustainability funding. Okay. Then that's good. A sustainability funding. Yeah. Is this okay, Don? Report sustainability expenditures quarterly to ECAC and Town Council? That's broader, which is probably okay. So can I jump in for a second here about this particular item? Because I don't think the town manager is specifically going to be reporting directly to this committee, but I am your liaison. So I think if you want to somehow ensure that those expenditures are being reported to you, it should be through me. But Stephanie, you do a lot of this stuff. No, I know. The town manager, you know, having it in its goals will ask you to do it. Well, no, but I guess I'm just saying that to have it expressly, that he doesn't specifically report back to a committee in that way. I think it makes sense to have it to the Town Council, but I don't think it makes sense to have him reporting to you all if that's, you know, his goals. I think that's the purpose of me. And I totally disagree with you. I'm sorry, but I do very strongly. So I think all of the things that we're going to list Stephanie or another staff person that we, you know, successfully get to work alongside of Stephanie will be doing, not the town manager. All of the town manager's goals are done by other staff. I totally agree with that. I don't disagree at all. I just, but I just think having that in a goal of him reporting back specifically to you doesn't fully make sense to me. I just don't think as a town manager goal that that really makes sense. I think having him report to the Town Council totally makes sense. And then, you know, again, you're right. He's going to have you, you know, he's going to have it go through me. And in fact, I supplied you all with the proposed 2023, I think, expenditures. So I'm just, you know, anyway. Yeah. Okay. I we can talk about that more if you really object. I'll step back. But I think that we can ask the town manager to do a whole bunch of things and he can ask his staff to do it for him. But if he has to report it to Town Council, as Stephanie says, why can't Anna report it to us? I mean, why do we have to, I mean, if he's got to report court, if the goal is report quarterly to Town Council, we're going to find out either through Stephanie or through Anna. What? Okay. Read. Exactly. Exactly. That's, thank you, Don. So yeah. Oh, sorry, did you say me, Vesto? Yeah, go ahead. Okay. I'm sorry. I'm late, everybody. I had a meeting that ran over. Yeah, I think that Don, I think that makes a lot of sense. And I just want to reiterate to folks that these are not our goals, right? We're sending this list of goals to Anna, who's then going to try to get as many of these into the Town Manager goals as possible, but the Town Manager goals are from the Full Town Council. So I just think us wordsmithing these too much is probably not the best use of our time, because this is just a list of sort of what we think the Town Council should put in and then they get to decide. So just wanted to throw that out there. Every wordsmithing shouldn't be our priority, but Fasi did start this whole conversation saying we want them to align with our goals. Yeah, we want them to align with our goals, because well, I mean, it's then we drive a common goal for everybody for the Town and ECAC. But I think this is fine the way it is. We just have to establish some sort of a process with Anna. When she gets these reports delivered on a quarterly basis, Anna would be presenting to ECAC. Would that be okay? All right. Laurie? I have two things I want to throw out there. One is I think to speed this along Vasu that we've had enough discussion on this that you should just make a draft and we can make edits to the next meeting. But I think we need drafts. I think working from this spreadsheet is just going to be an infinite circle of commentary. But the other thing is we got an email from Darcy on November 14th that was specifically addressing what she thinks our goal should be, encouraging us in specific items and also embold urgently need to at least double our capacity to accomplish our climate justice goals by hiring an additional full-time professional level staff member. Laurie, we'll get to that. It's part of one of the directions here. Okay. That's stuff that should be in here too, so. Yeah, I've added all the recommendations made by everybody into this file. So it is there, Laurie. We'll talk about that. Okay. So we'll go to the next category and console support. I think very similar ones here. Create sustainability improvement plan similar to this, or sorry, sustainable capital improvement plan. Basically saying this is not a place that responds with the staff to have a full grasp of what the most climate friendly options are. And the next one is expanding current policy for applying a climate lens beyond purchasing. It's very similar to the 2022 goals and ensuring the town boards apply climate lens. So this is saying the staff and the town boards and committees need to apply everything that they do, all their decisions through climate lens versus this is saying it's not the responsibility of the staff, but they offer support to staff is how I'm reading this. Do we want to keep this? Does someone on this group write that one? I don't understand the line six. I don't know what this thing is that Anna says it doesn't exist yet. But I mean, I think we've always talked about needing. Is Anna on the call? Can she respond? She was. She did tell us already that this is something that's sort of in process and going to be created, but it's not the same as a accountability measure. I can explain this if that's okay, Vasu. And then I also wanted to speak to the last discussion if that's okay. Yeah, go ahead. Okay. So first off, I want to I'm going to lean to Stephanie's camp on the last comment. I'm your liaison. So I am actually not necessarily it's not necessarily within that role as liaison to be giving updates. I do it, but I it is very much within the role of your staff liaison, which is Stephanie. So it would be much more appropriate for that to be something that you all agree on as an internal body. And it sounds like Stephanie does that already, which is great. So I think that what would be appropriate in the goals, again, from the town council to the town manager is to say that that report needs to get delivered to the council as well. And I will always do my best. But it's it in terms of kind of who's supposed to do what and who currently does do what because I do think this is happening. Stephanie would be the person who brings that report to you all and then you place it on an agenda to discuss it. In terms of the the last thing you were talking about with the climate lens, that was my addition. And the reason I say that the reason that I put it in there is my experience on the joint capital planning committee this past year was that, you know, I think that there's been a really good effort made to to encourage staff to think about whether or not the things that they're asking for. So new trucks, retrofitting buildings, et cetera, et cetera, new capital needs, whether those are the most sustainable or climate friendly options. However, it's relying on those staff to know that information and relying on them to do all the research and do all the knowledge gathering as to what the most current climate action or climate friendly, I guess is the phrasing I'll try here, capital options are. And so my my thought with that and from my experience on the joint capital planning committee is that there's got to be a support in place for staff to do that research or for someone to do that research to create a plan to say, okay, maybe there's not an electric dump truck right now. But here's what we would need from it. And here's how we might shift. Oh, like, sorry, I'm not doing a good job explaining this. Maybe there isn't an electric dump truck that can do exactly what our current diesel dump trucks do. But here's the need. Here's how we might need it in future years. So I don't think that that's necessarily something that we can place on all of our staff right this second because they've got so much other stuff on their plate. And and to be honest with you, Stephanie's got plenty on her plate too. And so I think that this is something I'd like to just see attention paid to is how we're actually supporting staff in creating sustainable capital improvement plan or capital improvement needs plans. Sorry. Instead of just relying on them to know everything about what's out there in the world. I did a terrible job explaining that. So I'm happy to answer questions. I think we're all in favor of that. We want to support. So we can leave it to Vasu to figure out how to say all that. Yeah, I'm just curious, Anna. So how will a plan, a capital improvement plan help the staff? I'm trying to think what the capital improvement plan would look like. Yes. No, go ahead. Someone else was speaking. Sorry. Oh, okay. So we have a capital improvement plan, right? It shows how many years out we're going to need new things, new trucks, new repairs to buildings, et cetera, et cetera. What I think we need is that except from a lens of how are we electrifying our fleet? How are we retrofitting our buildings to be, you know, with with heat pumps instead of relying on fossil fuels, how that sort of angle. And it may not be a five year plan, right? But it at least can get us to a place where we understand what it's going to take to electrify our fleet, whatever kind of things are. And I know the carp outlines a lot of this. I'm sorry, I still haven't memorized it. But I think that that's what in my mind that idea, and we can wordsmith this, and it'll get wordsmith plenty by the council as well. But the idea of saying, what's it actually going to take to get to a place where we have reached a much more climate friendly or sustainable capital base or capital inventory? Yeah, so it's more than a plan. It's a guidance document or whatever you want to call it that would help the staff look at the allocation of capital and the guidance document to help make decisions. So there is something that already exists that is that support staff when they're making capital improvement requests. I would like to see that elaborated on so that they're able to create their own kind of capital improvement plan that is bending us towards more more sustainable options. I think it's a great idea. I think that, you know, later on, there's a, you know, we need this, we need a three year plan. How are we going to meet 2025, 2030 goals, you know, step by step, given the carp, you know, components. Yeah, I think Stephanie and I have been waiting. I think Stephanie was first. Sorry, I didn't see that. I can now. Go ahead, Stephanie. So I, you know, I like the idea. I think the challenge comes in the implementation. And if you all recall way back, you know, in the early years of this committee convening, everyone asked for and went to actually meet with department heads about how they could make more sustainable and climate friendly purchases and decision making and that this committee would help provide them with how to do that. And I think the problem and to honest point, and I don't know how this would evolve, but I think you absolutely need to outline how department heads especially can make those decisions because the off the support was offered and meetings were had and held and yet there was no actual follow through like some of the department heads were absolutely open and agreeable and amenable to that, but yet there was no follow up with actually working with them to develop what that looked like. So you know, I think this needs to be, I think it's a great idea. I just think it really needs to be figured out is how to actually implement that. What's that really going to look like and what are some examples, some specific examples of this being implemented elsewhere would be really helpful. So maybe Stephanie, I'm wondering, sorry, I have to run in just a couple minutes, but I'm wondering if that is the helpful goal, right, is develop a plan for implementation of a capital sustainability improvement plan. Right, like if you do that by writing a plan, the way you do that is by hiring a consultant or getting somebody in who staff can go to to solve this problem. Nobody is going to be expert on this. We're not going to write a document. We're not going to write a plan. We have to have somebody there who people can go to and ask, okay, I want to improve the fleet. What are my best options right now? So that's the only way this is going to work. I mean, I also want to say or it can be an individual we hire, but it has to be contract with CET or individual, but it has to be something along those lines. We're using up a lot of time here on this. I just want to encourage us to move on. I think Ana had her last comments. Sorry, I was just going to say that that's a level of specificity that we wouldn't necessarily go into in a goal. However, I think that that's something to keep in mind as if this does get if the concept gets into the goals, that that would be something that we would make sure to advocate for as the process for the town manager. And I agree that we can move on. And I do apologize. I will have to leave you all. But Vasu, maybe you and I can catch up tomorrow. Okay, sounds good. I'll be here for a couple more minutes, but just a heads up. Okay. All right. I'll work with that. So I'm getting rid of this and keeping that. Okay, next is the building by law. Adopt a local building energy benchmark benchmark. Vasu, I didn't catch what you just got rid of. This one here in red. The one in red? Why? That is not related to the other one. This one's about the whole town structure. Correct. But it's talking about decisions that we are making or the town is making. Yeah, I don't see what Anna has proposed being adequate to our closely related and clever wordsmithing could come up with one sentence that describes them both. So I can I can volunteer to try to do that if you want. Or Vasu, if you want to do it, but I think we should not do it here. Yeah, that's fine. Okay. Yeah, that would help. I do want to butt in one more time because I apologize. I do really apologize. I'm having your meeting. We're discussing this on Monday. So whatever wordsmithing, whatever does happen, I'll ask that you get it to me before Monday so that I have a chance to look at it. So I know what I'm introducing. But we're not supposed to work on this on our own. Exactly. So anyone who individually would like to send me anything or if Vasu does put everything together, I'm just letting you know that what you choose to do with this information you choose to do, but we are discussing this Monday. So I need to know what I'm going to pitch by Monday. Okay, so Vasu, you're voting. I'm sorry, you're voting on the town manager's goals for next year. No, we are not voting on them, but it's our first discussion. So this would be the place that I want to get things in so that we have a chance to discuss them. There'll be multiple discussions on this, but I'd like to be able to get this in sooner. So do you need all the goals for Monday? So you can take the time that you want to take. I'm just sharing with you that I would love to have as much as possible by Monday so that I can come to the table with a set of goals that are ready to go in instead of kind of continuing to try to add them. And you know, I also own that this is my first time in doing this discussion, so I don't know how it's going to go. Yeah, we'll try to get you most of the goals consolidated. Vasu, can I suggest that we hear from members of the committee which of these goals are like top priority for them rather than going through each one because we're going to run out of time. Does anyone want to say any preference on what they think is a priority? Honestly, I think this one is the most important one. Getting somebody in there that can solve these problems. Somebody or a contract or because everything else won't happen unless we have that. And it could be there are many towns that have done similar things that we can, I know Stephanie has worked on stuff like this. I'm pretty sure this is what the discussions with CET touch on this. Yeah, I think there are some obvious ones here that we don't have to discuss, right? I mean, if we're running out of time, CCA is, I mean, definitely something that we have to do. Solar is something that we have to do. Heat pumps, we have funding available, we have to do and then and pace. Is there any concerns about any of these? Can I wordsmith these four categories? Well, we have to prioritize. I agree with Anna. We can't hand in 20. But it's their first draft review. So we can hand in hand over 10 and then they can decide which one we can make a recommendation on priority. You ought to have one sentence in each category. It can have more than one thing may be embedded in it, but it ought to be a lot shorter than this. Yeah, great. Laura? Yeah, I think those are fine categories. And I think we can say that we, I think we can start with them and offer some specificity under it. I just want to like the point of this is so that when the town manager does his reports back to the council, he's going to look to his goals to think about what he's going to report on. So I think we want to prioritize things that we want to make sure the town manager is talking about on a regular basis. And if he's not, we can say, Hey, we haven't heard the town manager talk about this one thing for a while. It's one of his goals. What's going on? Like, you know, how do we elevate this? So that's what I would focus in on. Like, what are the things that we really want to make sure the town manager has on his radar to keep it up in sort of the high level of things that we're focused on as a town? So Laura, what categories would you recommend are the top ones that we should have? I mean, I think those four areas seem fine. I actually don't think this should be our job. I think the counselors, these are their town goals. They should be taking this and deciding which ones they want. Yeah, great. But we're making a recommendation and then they can decide. I think all of these are my recommendation. I don't think it should be our job to shorten these. So what about like environmental justice? Definitely data and reporting. Definitely. And like staffing and kind of administrative infrastructure as like three general categories where there has to be some like, we want to be hearing what's happening and the town council should be hearing what's happening on those things. Yeah, I mean, you touched on data and reporting. I mean, that could cover a lot of things, right? In terms of what we want to cover. Yeah, but those other goals, I mean, I sort of, yeah, I mean, it just seems like those other goals were really broad. So if we are doing this, like, and it sounds like we really are like nothing, it sounds like the town council, it sounds like we have two options, like what Laura suggested is just like give them all of it and they can figure it out. Or like kind of make it really kind of broad and executive branchy. Yeah, Andra. If we give them the whole list, I think that we should rank the things. Make a recommendation on what is the top priority. So then I go back to the car, which already has, this was my attempt at, like I said, scoring them. But there is, let me increase the size here, we just look at until this red line. We have energy benchmarking and by disclosure by law, we have pace, we have CCA, we have solar, which is a solar bylaw, the fleet policy on electric vehicles, we have staff, online resource help for data. We have everything about homes, multifamily and single family, solar assessment, which we are doing anyway. Again, on the multifamily home, we got pace and we got things around the waste policy, vehicles and composting. Laura, Jesse and then Don. So one other way to look at it would be to have us all go through this before we turn our computers off and pick out the ones we don't think should be on this list. Like what are the things that we don't really care to think we needed a regular update from the town? They're all on this list because we think all of these things need to happen. So then I think the question is what of these do we want to make sure are top of mind to the town manager and the town council and whatever didn't make the cut are the things that we want to focus on in other ways. So I liked Stella's suggestion, but I think that's another way to narrow it down without trying to rank it. We've tried to rank things about 300 times and we've never been successful. So I don't think we're going to get that done. Great suggestion, Laura. Don or Jesse? Don, you go first. Oh, thanks. I might be confused and Stephanie, you can help me out on this, but some of the things in here don't seem to me to be the town manager's goals as opposed to us lending our support to town council like community choice aggregates, which is already in the works and the zero waste proposal, which is before the town council. I don't know that I see them as town manager goals. I see the town manager goals are more like what you were talking about Stella, the goals being have more staffing, get more information to the people that work for the town manager using that lens to bring environmental justice and sustainability into the whole stuff that you've got in green. That to me is a real goal of the town manager who supervises his staff that is doing all of these, making all these purchases and doing all these things. And we want him, we want the town council to tell him your goal, one of the goals we want you to do is bring a lens to your staff that is an environmental lens. Can I say something? Is it related to this? Done. So here's how it works. What happens in town is because of the goals that the council sets for the town manager. And that's the only place if there's accountability. The staff do whatever the town manager wants. And the council is the political body that says, here's what the people of town want town to do. But it's not just about town expenditures. That's why to me in some ways the only thing that matters is that we get a second Stephanie. It's just cloner and do double the work. All of this will happen. All of it's possible. But like community choice, it's not been happening in part because it has not been a clear enough goal, even though it says make progress. It's like, okay, one thing happened. Things are happening, but there's a point at which you have to say this needs to be something measurable. Like we actually have file with the DPU, not just progress. And that only happens if the town manager has it in the goals. That sounds like a great goal. Well, we hope it's filed by early in the year. That would be the goal. I hate to use this metaphor, but I think it applies. I feel like we're in this classic case of reaching into the cookie jar and trying to grab every single cookie. But the opening of the jar is a little bit smaller. And as we pull our hand out, we end up dropping them all. And maybe if we just picked that one perfect cookie, we could reach in and take it. And what I'm hearing, and I'm not even saying that, I don't even know if this is right, but I think what I'm hearing over and over again, even for years now, is here's all the list. We believe all of this needs to happen, but our priority, our single priority goal is to increase the staff that is doing this. It's one way of looking at it and maybe fleshing that idea out with what some of this stuff that's in green, say to like sort of basically empower the town to do all these goals. And like Laura said, how do we rank these, you know, and maybe there's some that we can remove. I've heard good suggestions for things that could be removed, but reasons to keep them on. So let me make a suggestion here then. So we have what 34. I'm going to send this over to all of you. I want you all to pick individually eight top things that you think will drive to our 2025 goals. Send it over to me. I will consolidate that information and we can then talk about it. The problem Vasu again is that this needs to be, it needs to be consolidated first. And what I will spend my time doing if you do that, is writing my own set of goals based on this discussion, which is what somebody should do. The way this should work is we have a listening session and then one of us goes and comes up with a draft. And then you have something you can actually work with 34 blind items is not a draft. Yeah, the question is the time factor, right? If we need to get this out by right, yeah. Laura and Dwayne, you're on mute. So to Jesse's point and to Andrew's point, if I actually don't think limiting this list is going to help us. I think what we need to say is these are all the things that need to happen and this list is going to continue to get longer every single year that we don't do some of these. And so the point we can't cut this list down because this all needs to happen. And so we think Anna, one of the town, the main goal needs to be the town manager coming up with a plan to staff up or increase the focus of sustainability so we can get all of these things done. I don't know that, I think the town manager needs to talk to Stephanie and talks to his staff to figure out the right way to do that. I don't think we should be telling him how to do that. But I think that that's, I think we can give that message to Anna and see if that's something we can get in as a town manager goal. Because that to me sounds like what everybody's saying and I think cutting the list shorter would actually go against that message. Fair point. Thanks, Laura. Dwayne and Lori. Yeah, I've been mainly listening, but I don't know exactly the outcome here. But I guess I'm, again, similar to what we had a year ago and what Anna was saying, I mean, I think a sweet spot is about six of these things that are sort of manageable and what we might get, be able to entice the town council to move forward on our behalf in this category of one of many categories of town manager goals. My sense is that we need somewhat of a hybrid of some general goals and some more specific goals enable the town manager to be very, with some very specific goals. And just from my perspective from the solar, for example, to assure that a solar bylaw is done and the solar assessment is done. Those are very tangible things that he can really make sure he gets those done and be proud and check that off and so forth. But then these other, a couple that are also more general as we've been talking about, I do like the idea. I wouldn't necessarily just say the goal is to hire a new Stephanie or hire a new staff person. Because I think that's more of a tactic than a goal, I guess. I mean, really why do we need that? I would say maybe something on the order of and particularly taking advantage, perhaps, of Stephanie's promotion to director of a department that is of one. So maybe take advantage of that and suggest that the sustainability department, if that's appropriate language, is staffed out to reflect the work that's needed to accomplish these, the goals that the town has committed itself to. So I don't know, I'm happy to, I think just in my little world here on the solar side, looking at those, I think those could certainly be consolidated into one goal that sort of combines those things together in ways that are kind of broad but also very tangible goals and outcomes that the town manager can make sure that he gets done. Yeah, thanks for an interesting perspective. I think what you're saying is if we have the X number of goals, if there's a lot of goals, that should drive the manager, the town manager to double the staff capacity if needed. But the question is it has, it's not been done before. And that's why I think everybody wants to add this to the goal. But it's interesting that you say that is you bring, we don't want to remove any goals is what Laura is saying, but we need another Stephanie. But if we can lay out all the goals that should trigger the town manager to say we need an additional person is what you were saying. Yeah, but I would, I did say that, you know, I think we can be explicit to suggest that we need to staff out the sustainability department in line with the activities that are in front of us. I'd be very pleased and supportive of having a goal around specifically around that. Okay, Lori, and then Andra. Yeah, I actually, like what Dwayne just said, I agree with it. I think that there are two options here. One is sticking with, you know, that maybe that one goal of staffing out the department, or otherwise coming up with a way to support staff, but that's a simple way to put it, staffing out the department. And then, you know, if you want to keep all the goals, attaching them as an addendum, but there are some that I think are more pressing than others. And I think getting that CCA in place and getting a solar bylaw passed are two of them. So those are things that can be done the next year. They're absolute, you know, simple goals. So those are, those are clean, right? Those are clean goals and the others attach the rest of the list as an appendix in support of the following goals, you need to staff out this department. Boom. Yeah. That's what I was writing on. Thanks, Lori. Andra, and then Stephanie. Town manager, the council, you know, every time we've talked about, we need more staff. The answer is, that's just not going to happen. That's just not going to happen because people are thinking in terms of the bottom line, not our values. And so to add staff, well, first of all, you have to create a department because there is no sustainability department. There should be. And then, yes, you need to staff it out with additional staff, not piling more on, which is what happens. And that's why I think we and others have talked about doubling the professional staff capacity, because we know of the strong pull of business as usual to, no, no, no, we'll just get it done some other way that doesn't cost money. Stephanie, Jesse, and Laura. So I, I think I've been saying, yes, I agree that we need more staffing. I don't think having a quote unquote, another me is going to solve all our problems. I think that was actually said. And I totally disagree with that. That is not going to solve everything and make all of this happen. I also disagree that you need another me. There is a sustainability department now because I am officially a department head. So it is a department of one. And that's just that, you know, there's a few departments like that. Communications is another where it's a department of one, but it's a department used to be, we had an economic development director, he was a department of one. So I am a department and I do think staffing out that is important. And I don't know when you say just staffing out to me that can include professional positions, but it doesn't mean we need two directors. So I just think we need more staff. I will tell you what is frustrating is all get out to me is the amount of time I spend on the administrative details of posting meetings and making minutes happen. I spend so much time on that. And the more meetings we have, the more I have to do that. And so I feel like I need more support on that level because if I could get that taken care of, I could do so much more. So I just think if, you know, it's, I hear what you're saying and I understand why you think that, but it's not the case. I mean, I just think more staffing is needed, but it's not like two of me. Okay, not two directors, not two of you, but professional level who can actually, you know, take things and run rather than take your time to learn on the job and, you know, be supervised closely, because that also takes a lot of time. I totally agree. I don't disagree with that. But I also think the administrative support would make a huge difference, even if we started there, it would make a difference. So I'm not sure who's next, but I actually have a suggestion that I think could help. So when we presented, when I think Andra and I presented the carp to town council in June of 2021, we almost, the town council almost approved a motion to have the town manager go and develop an implementation plan within three months of how we were going to implement the carp. It got sidetracked. They said they were going to talk about, again, they never talked about it again. So this to me feels like something that they would be willing to put in as a goal, like a overarching goal. We want the town manager within the next three months or whatever to present back to us an implementation plan that includes details on things such as ways to increase expenditure, capital expenditures, way to increase support for staff implementing sustainability priorities, way to increase staffing levels, way to increase coordination across town departments. So then that will ask the town manager to go to Stephanie and the other town directors and figure out what do we need? And how do we do that? And let's come up with a plan. And then I think we can list all of these goals as examples of all the things that need to happen to help him develop his plan. We could still pull up a couple more of these as goals, but I feel like if we led with that very specific and time bound request, then I think that will allow us to have the accountability we're looking for, because I don't think us putting forward a goal that you must hire a new person is actually going to make it to the goals list. So I think we need to be strategic about what's going to make it to the goals list. And I think this could be that. So I don't want to move away from what Laura just said, because I think it's an important idea. So I'm going to make a quick comment and then maybe just ask that we circle back to respond to what Laura said, because it's a big important idea. I just wanted to get it on the table that Stephanie, I totally agree with what you said. It's what I meant when I brought this up. And I think and I, but I still think it's, and to respond to this point of Laura's piece, I think it's still an important piece of the puzzle to address. And I think there is a way to address it. There is part of it is there is no other Stephanie that you couldn't make another one if we tried. It would be amazing if we could, but I don't even want to try. I think it, and without words smithing it, I think I believe we should have some language such as the goal. And I don't think it's a tactic, Dwayne. I think it's a critical goal that the town have the capacity to address this list and and the capacity to build the skill set of the current staff in order to address this. We have the intelligence. We have the will. I don't think the capacity is there. And I think asking to have that capacity and not telling them how to do it. Stephanie, you figure out exactly how to build that capacity. We're not telling you how to do it, but we're supporting that it needs to be done. So that's my comment on staff and that I want to reiterate. I think the more important conversation is what Laura just put on the table is is could an overarching ask of these goals be to come up with a plan as was requested but a year or two ago. I love Laura's idea. I think that's a great idea. I like it too. Also, I think you've gone funny again, your voice. A few minutes early tonight. Must be the rain. Can you hear me okay? Okay. Perfect. All right. So I guess to cap this discussion then because we're running out of time. Let me put a draft together. And I think it's, I think what we're saying is we want to keep most of these actions. And then to Laura's point, we have an overarching action around a timeline to create a plan to think about what the capital allocation should look like, what the staffing needs need to look like. No, I think the plan is to come up with the capacity to address these goals, whether that's by how they do it by staffing up the department or by hiring Rocky Mountain to do their CET or Block Power or somebody that can plan for the capital, whatever, everything that they need to do, all the actions, they have to come up with a plan to think about how to drive these actions. Well, as I understood it from where it was the carp, not these actions. And these actions are just like examples of like to help think through what would be needed to implement the carp. But I think there are some important examples that are timely and particularly the solar bylaw and the CCA. So those we should mention somewhere. Yeah. All right. Anything else? All right. Let me take a stab at it. And I'll probably discuss with you, Laurie and Stephanie. We're sending it up. All right. We're good. Good. Let's move on to the next part of the agenda then. Don on C-PACE and then Stella on transportation. Yeah, I'm sorry. I have very little to add on C-PACE. But I promise I will have more my next, the next time to bring some sort of summary to you all. I was hoping to do a little bit of work in the last two days, but my wife, Edie and I welcomed our latest grandchild. And I've spent all day today in New Haven rushing back for this meeting. Meeting our new grandson. So I apologize, but that's where I am. Stephanie and I are going to talk tomorrow. And I will have something to report next time. I can just add that if you weren't there, there's this BEA retrofits working group that has a whole bunch of examples of places that were retrofitted successfully. And that I assume at least some would be eligible for the C-PACE program and as a slide deck and a bunch of information that came out of that that I can forward to you if you weren't there yourself. I wasn't. Please do, Laurie. Stella, any updates? Yeah. So I wrote this to my friend Erin, who's a transportation planning manager in Durham, said she'd love to come talk about what they're doing there. She also has extensive experience with bus, bus, bike. I mean, she's the transit. But so Stephanie or Visu, just let me know. Because Visu had written back about the kind of upcoming calendar with the heat pump stuff. So just let me know when would be good for her to come talk. And then Visu had also suggested making it a series with like an electric car show and how to get chargers installed. And if people have other questions or thoughts on things that would be good as part of kind of an educational transportation segment, feel free. Well, you could raise that now even. And I got in touch with Eve Fogel or Vogel, I don't know. Andre, do you know? Is it Vogel or Fogel? I know it's Vogel. Yeah, it's Vogel. And we're going to chat, I guess, is she formerly of TAC? But so we're going to chat. It sounds like her semester is also very busy. So we're supposed to chat over Thanksgiving, and then I think now it's winter break. Yeah, that's what's up over here. Great. Any recommendations for Stella on education series for transportation? I would just suggest there is a state program called Clean Cities Coalition, Clean Cities, which is kind of a name that doesn't really get to it too much. But it's really about alternative transportation. That is a federal program, but the state's implemented and DOER at the state has the Clean Cities program. And so they put on shows or events around the region periodically where they'll pull together a bunch of EV vehicles of different types that people can do test drives and some technical information. And so one option is either to connect with them to see if they would be, I don't know if they would do it for one town, for example, because they can't do all 351 that way. But there is probably some good technical information that they would have available for towns to make use of. Stephanie and Jesse, thanks for the position, Ray. Thanks. There's actually an organization called the Pioneer Valley Electric Automobile Association that is more local. And the woman who leads that, her name is Kay, and she would be more than happy to put together an event that's local for people to test drive EVs. She loves doing that. And she has done it often. And she's been at every sustainability festival with electric vehicles as far as I can remember. So the sustainability festival is in April. It's probably going to happen there, too. But if you wanted to do something before then or at least even get the word out about that opportunity, then that would be a good coordination if it's going to happen anyway, not to reinvent the wheel and just to get the info out about electric vehicles and opportunities to test drive at that event. Jesse. I don't know how this would work, but I think a fun thing. This seems like a great one. We talked about this before to reach out to the middle school and the high school. And maybe try to invite a student to give a presentation on, you know, I think they use phones for things, but like how to, how to like, I'm watching a lot of these kids learn how to use the bus and how to like use the app to find out when's the next bus coming and how do I get there. And it might be a fun way to get a student to present that and they can get their friends to join. That might be a good way to get more people at our meeting that are younger than us. If one of them is presenting sort of like how to use the buses in this town, tales of the PVTA kind of thing. So I don't know who that would be. I could ask my, I've got a high school or middle school, or I'll ask if you feel like you want to go that direction. Oh yeah, that'd be totally, that'd be totally awesome. Yeah. Could have a scavenger hunt where they get to go around only on public transportation gathering a number of things and first person back when something. Anything else? I will also, I just like want to, I do want to point out in the context of goals and stuff, there's a lot in the, in the Transportation Advisory Committee's plan that like is so easy to do that they relatively speaking, like literally one of the things that they came up with in their, in their process was to just like write on the sidewalks, no bikes, please, you know. So there's a lot that just like, if I just, it seems like there's, I don't know, I like, it's just one of those things, there's so much to be done. And then you see these things that it's like, if I had the right permission and a can of spray paint, I could like go do it tomorrow. And like, I trust them that they did do diligence and like, that would make a big difference to like people's quality of life walking and rolling downtown. So I don't know what to do with that information, but I've, I'm now, like having read the plan, there's a lot that's just like that, you know. Yeah, I don't know if TAC is coming up with recommendations for town manager goals, Stella, and maybe Stephanie knows this, I think it could be working with TAC to identify what are the top things. Or I think, because like I said to you, there's that prioritization list in their document. So it could be on Laura's model, just if they're not, I don't know if they aren't, if they're not, but if they kind of whether they are not one way of kind of uplifting their work could be just as one of our goals, kind of similarly, like within three months come up with an implementation for the CARP and within like nine months come up with an implementation for the transportation advisory committee's plan. Yeah, I see some hand nods. Okay. But in terms of topics, Stella, I think you had some feedback on what topics we could have for the transportation sector. I just want to make sure that if we're focused on a specific topic for the education series, I know, Laura, you have one next week, and I believe you're going to have one more. Let's make sure it's, you know, we don't jump between different topics and we stay consistent. That would be my only recommendation. So Stella, yeah, I mean, I don't know what Lori, when you plan on ending the education series on heat pumps, once that happens, then Stella, you can then take on and have multiple education series on transportation. That makes sense. So I think it's a question for Lori on when. Yeah, so Lori, just let me know because if I'm reaching out to people, everybody's so busy, it's nice to have like a clear sense. Yeah, I don't have any plans yet for a third one. And right now I'm, it's late and I'm having trouble even remembering what the third one was supposed to be. But so I don't think there's any trouble with interleaving them. You'll just get different audiences for the different, you're not, you know, you're going to get different audiences, which is fine. Yeah, your third one was interviewing. It was a live interview, the panel. Yeah, it's going to be harder to get together, though, so it might take a while. But yeah. But the next one will be on envelope issues and as a person from CET coming next week and there'll be a flyer going just did the flyer up today and send it to Vasya and Stephanie. So you should all be getting that shortly, I hope. And please forward it to your network. Okay, our next topic is on is on the discussion of state policy issues. How to engage. Yeah, I was supposed to get something into the packet to delineate what the three pronged approach would be for policies around building electrification. And I didn't do that. I have some family health issues going on that have really distracted me. So I'm not prepared for that. But so we will not have time next week because of the education series then so we'll discuss this topic the following week. Yeah, we have to talk about vacation to the 21st. Okay, thank you. Yeah. All right, let's go on to staff updates. Just a quick thing on that. And Andre, I presume you know and Stephanie, I just wanted to put on your radar and just ask if there's anything that you guys have going on. There is a municipal aggregation manual and best practices guide that do we are put out recently as I believe a draft and they're seeking comments by December 6 I think it is. Are you guys aware of that? And this obviously relates to the CCA. And I'm just wondering if you're aware of that or any plans to submit comments. Please forward that to Stephanie so she can send that out to the CCA group. Yeah, I'm surprised. Maybe all of us land on your desk somewhere. Yep, it's a draft for public comment. So yeah, I will do that shortly. That's a Stephanie. Yeah, and then she can do it. Yep. I'll put it in the packet for today's meeting. No, just okay, you have a meeting next week. So there's a packet going out by hopefully tomorrow. So okay, okay. So you everybody will get it soon. Yeah, okay. But let's get it to the CCA group. Yeah, I plan on doing that. That's a given. Stephanie, go ahead. So where to start? Solar Assessment, we had GZA Consulting meet with all of the department heads today. They had submitted a five question survey to them and then consolidated responses and had a discussion about areas of concern, interest, how this would impact workload, community concerns, equity and justice covered a lot of different topics. So we had I think 17 total department heads present. So we had a really good turnout and we had a pretty decent involved discussion. So the next step is to draft the survey questions for the community members. Department heads will take a look at that, but also you, ECAC and the Solar By-law Working Group will have an opportunity to look at that, those survey questions as well to weigh in and offer feedback and input before they actually distribute it to the public. There's a technical meeting on next Monday, which Duane is a part of, which we'll be discussing more about the technical aspects of putting together the actual assessment and where we are with that. So that's one update. I had a meeting with the folks from Utilamarck. I've just forwarded them the vehicle inventory information. They wanted two years worth of data for each vehicle and their fuel usage. So I was able to get that information from both the fire department and DPW for diesel and regular gasoline. So that's been forwarded to Utilamarck. So they'll be putting together a greenhouse gas emissions inventory for our fleet. And then a second part of that will be to develop a timeline for changing out and moving those vehicles to be replaced by electric vehicles. So that's in the works. The heat pump program I've met with CET, they've sent me an initial draft and Laurie, I'm not leaving you out of the loop, but I just want to make sure that I'm bringing in the finance director and having a conversation about the funding of that and how the heat pump funding would work before we bring it to you. I mean, I just feel like you'll help to fine tune what we have, but I don't want you to have to be spending a lot of time on this either. I think we've got it under pretty well in hand. So that will actually be coming together soon. I'm meeting with them I think next week. And then I'll follow up with Laurie with the proposal and hopefully we can, if we have to get an RFP out, then we'll start working on getting that together so that we can actually start moving the heat pump program forward to implementation. Let's see, what else? CCA, the lawyers, I think they're finally, what's been really holding us up most recently is just the lawyers having conversation to finalize the joint powers agreement. And that's really been the only thing. We do have a consultant, they're doing a great job. They're totally on task and getting us the information we need. So I feel like that's moving forward. I do anticipate that that'll probably the joint powers entity will probably be created, I would think, within the next few weeks to a month for sure. Because that's really going to be just about the community's legal councils coming up with agreement on the language and then seeing that they're the ones who've already agreed to it, then it just basically goes to the executives of each community. So all three communities would take a look and then I think we just move that forward. Once it's signed, it actually goes into full force, which means a joint powers entity exists as soon as it's signed and executed. So that will happen quickly when it does happen. And I think that's what I have for now. Great news overall. Thank you for those updates. Okay, any ECAC member updates? Actually, I think Dwayne, you have won Solar Capacity hosting analysis as part of the agenda. Yeah, was that an update or was that a separate agenda item? It was an update. Okay. Oh, I do see that. Okay. Well, I do. If you want to jump into it at this point, it's a bit more of an update than an update. I can sort of go through the spreadsheet-based analysis and model, if you will, that we talked about before. That's sort of still draft, still working on a few things, but get some feedback on it from the group. And I'm happy to walk through that. I don't want to... Can we table that discussion for the next meeting, Dwayne? I think it's important. I'm sure everybody would have a say in to look at it just because we don't have time, and I'm looking at next week's agenda, and it's pretty light. Could we move that to next week? I have no problem with that. Yeah, I'm just not sure if I want to send it out in a package packet without getting some feedback first, because then it becomes fully public, which might be fine. I guess I don't have a problem with that. But yeah, I'm happy to do that. Okay. Thank you. Any other ECAC member updates? Yeah, I just wanted to say a little more about this thing next week. I explicitly asked the guy giving the presentation is Edison Dica from CET, and I explicitly asked him to make sure he discusses both what renters can do to improve their envelope and what homeowners can do. So hopefully we'll have a discussion of both, and also to talk about the rebates and incentives that are available. I haven't seen the slides yet, but he's supposed to send those out tomorrow, and the title is going to be something like, what was it, weatherization and insulation. And it's going to be about an hour, Laurie? Yeah, I did. I think I told him that and might be earlier emails, but I'll emphasize that he should leave time for questions too. So when he sends me the slides, I'll make sure I mention that to him again. I don't know if they're planning on advertising it separately through CET. I told him that anybody was welcome to come. We would be advertising it to Amherst folks, but we had no objection to him letting other folks know about it. So it may be a much bigger turnout if he advertises it more widely. Stephanie, questions for you. Is the education series videos going to a specific folder on the Amherst website? Yeah, it's not up yet because I just have to go back and get that information to the communications director. But yeah, there's going to be on your page under the resources folder. There'll be another folder that will say education series, and then each one will be numbered. And it will be just because all of these already exist as part of your meeting recordings. But these will be isolated out so that they'll be just the presentation. So I just have to go back. I mean, there's not many. It's not, you know, I just haven't had a chance to get to it. But when I do, it'll happen pretty quickly and we'll be able to load them up. I'll try to get the first two up by next week before the third one happens. Thank you. Any other? Yeah, just a heads up. One thing that I'm trying to do is working with other neighboring towns to see how we can collaborate and maybe they can take a portion of the work. And we could do something else like, you know, if we need to build our website to provide some information while there's already information and other town website can we collaborate between towns to really reduce the workload and really focus on specific topics. So I'm trying to do that. Well connected with the chair and Shootsbury, but I'm looking out to see if there are other towns that are willing to collaborate with us. Jesse? I just throw out to people they have time to go and watch the last town council meeting and the last school committee meeting. Very heated. And our name came up in one of them about this some some of the conversation about the what materials and and how the the student fields could be improved. And just, and someone suggested that we would be a group that could weigh in on this. I'm not sure if that's accurate. I think it's outside of our expertise and preview. But I think it's just, you know, I think important for us to see what else is being talked about in the town. And I happened to be at those last two meetings and they were they were intense. And I think worth if people had time to sort of get a feel for like what the other things the town council and school committee are dealing with those are good ones to watch. Are you specifically talking about the artificial turf discussion, Jesse? I am. Yeah. Yeah. Or the turf discussion. I'm not even going to totally unusual. Thank you. Okay, anything else? Okay, let's talk about the items for the next meeting agenda. So we're going to have Dwayne present on the calculations that he has. We're going to talk about our typical progress reports on heat pump and solar. I don't know, Lori, if you would have anything at all or Don, could you could we have because you didn't go today? Could we could you present pace next week? Okay, so let's do pace and solar. And then we have the education series. Yeah, I don't need to do anything because the education. Yeah, yeah. Makes sense. Okay. That should be it. Andra, you had one topic too, but that'll be the following meeting. Anything else? Okay, let's open up to the public for comments. Darcy, do you have any comments? You're the only one. Hi, Darcy. Hey, Darcy. No, she doesn't even want to say hi. Anything else? That's all we have time for. Thank you, everybody. Have a good evening. Bye.