 Burlington Electric Department Board of Electric commissioners. This is Wednesday, June 9th, 2021. And first up on the agenda is the agenda itself. If there are any edits or suggested changes or additions to the agenda. Now is a good time to raise them. Nothing. Very nothing. We will move forward with the agenda as proposed. Item number two on the agenda are two minutes for review and approval. The first set is the minutes from the May 12th meeting and the second set is the minutes from the May 19th meeting. So let's start with the May 12th meeting. That was our standard Burlington Electric meeting. Anybody identify any issues or edits needed? No complaints. No, also. Yeah, I moved to approve May 12th meeting minute. Second. Lori. Mr. Shagman. Aye. Mr. Henry. Aye. Mr. Stebbins. Aye. Thank you. And then the second set of meeting minutes is from one of our special meetings last month from May 19th. And similar question, if there are any edits or suggested changes, modifications. No complaints. No, also. Lori. I moved. Right. First and second. I moved that we accept the minutes of May 19th. I'll second. Commissioner Shagman. Aye. Commissioner Herendine. Aye. Commissioner Stebbins. Aye. Thank you. And Lori, thank you. These are long meeting minutes. And if I recall correctly when we were in person, you would literally transcribe from a recording. So thank you for your effort. Thank you. Next up we have the public forum. I'm not sure, Lori, if you can tell me. I don't see any names. No, there's no one from the public with us tonight. Okay. Well, for anybody who might do this at another time, please know you're always welcome. 530 on the second Wednesdays or, you know, to reach out to us individually or to reach out to the team at BED. And fourth up is the commissioner's corner. This is an opportunity for commissioners to raise any questions. Welcome, Commissioner Moody. Raise any questions. Say any observations. Anybody has anything? I have a thank you to James Gibbons. Again, thank you for that information explaining the heat pump cost balance. I still don't quite understand it, but since I haven't done all my homework, I won't bug you until I have. But thanks for responding. At your convenience, feel free to bug me. Okay. My tardiness, I'm here, though. Thank you, Commissioner Moody. If you were trying, so you did get here. I have one comment, which is I was at a backyard gathering in the Old North End this past weekend, and there was a small PV system that apparently was actually set up not as like a community solar or, you know, a residential net meter system, but as a small power purchase agreement. And I was just wondering if someone from the team could give us a little information on how they're going and how many you've done and what your thoughts are on them. Well, I don't know who's it is, so it's hard. I suspect I know who's it is. I suspect you may know also. In that particular context, I'm sorry, I assume Darren wants me to answer this. I don't know where he, I don't see him. Go ahead, I figured, I think I know who it is too, and I think you're going to give the right response. So the answer was a customer reached out to us who wanted to put in a net metering array. You wanted to oversize it for future needs, but he did not want to lose the production under the net metering arrangement and said, you know, is there anything B you can do to accommodate? He said, well, if you're willing to do a purchase power agreement with us, you won't get the net metering rate, but you also won't forfeit any generation. So it ended up being close to the net metering rate because we, because, but it's really what we were doing was we were helping a customer solve an issue with not wanting to lose excess generation. But with an array that small, group net metering would have been a difficult prospect as well for him to find people and arrange contracts for them. So we have PPAs for maybe I have to double check. I think maybe eight arrays in Burlington and they range from that one, which is the smallest up to the South 40, but we have some in the 20, some of the 30. You know, if essentially I would say BED has never not been able to help somebody who want to develop a solar net metering, a solar array, whether that was with a PPA or net metering or whatever. So we certainly do whatever we can to facilitate. All right. Tell me again how big he is. The reason why I ask is I know that we haven't always seen a massive uptake with net meter solar in Burlington Electric. And this particular customer said that maybe this is a model that could be beneficial for others. And I wonder if you guys have any sort of broad comment to that or if it's really a case by case analysis and solution. Well, again, it's not generally going to be better than net metering. It would take a fairly decent loss of potential loss of credits annually before the pain and headache of doing a purchase power grain would be worth it for both parties. In this case, I think that could have happened. So again, I think net metering has historically been far and away the most lucrative option. And again, in a case where somebody says, well, I'm going to have a problem under net metering. Can you do anything to help us? We would consider on a case by case basis. But there haven't been very many requests. Is there ever a scenario where it may make more sense to have a larger power purchase agreement on a building that has multi-family units? And instead of doing a group net metered system, it was a PPA? Again, group net metering is generally going to get a higher value. So I'm saying he would have been better off economically under group net metering, but he would have had to come up with agreements for the offtake for a bunch of people for a part of a 6KW array. When you start getting to a decent size group net metering, group net metering is going to give you the best value. And the barrier to that contract negotiation isn't as high. Again, we've never said we won't talk to people if they're looking for a way around a problem that they're having developing something, but I think this was kind of a nichey thing. Okay, thank you. This will come full circle when we start to review the strategic direction as to why I'm asking this. Any other comments or questions, things that other commissioners want to raise during this commissioners' corner? I just had a general thought about when we all might be returning to the office on these Wednesday evenings. If we thought about that or how we felt about that, certainly in light of what the rest of the department is doing, people are there, not there, just what the general feeling was or thought was from either of you. Yeah, we haven't spoken about it yet. It's a good question. Darren has mentioned both in the strategic direction, a desire to try to identify a path forward that might allow for a flexible approach as well as in your annual review. So my sense was to see how that evolved and then to keep an eye on how other city boards and the council were moving forward. That was my sense. And to get a sense of what others were moving towards and then use that to inform however we end up moving forward. But Darren, if you have additional thoughts. Yeah, I think I'll address kind of the broader BED reopening a little bit in the GM report. But in terms of the commission meetings, I think the mayor's announced he'll be lifting the emergency order for the city on the 15th. And I think we have an expectation that the state is going to lift remaining COVID restrictions sometime over the next few days once we reach the 80% vaccination threshold that the governor laid out. So my thought would be, certainly we have the flexibility to continue with this remote technology for commission meetings as needed. But if there was a desire and an interest on the part of the commission to meet with us in person, that would be feasible, I believe on our end, starting next month. Well, for both us and just speaking, as I also work for channel 17, we're starting to see municipalities coming back to an in-person meeting thing. Generally seems to be like July, August is a target date for most of them. There is also the thought of coming back in a hybrid model, which has seemed to help people get more people to join in because it's easy enough to do this. And I'm sure the folks at channel 17 are listening, but because they're I'm sure concerned about where you're wondering where we're heading with this. And if we would consider a hybrid model as well to maybe allow people to join in with us, even though they haven't really quite yet, we had a couple of people come in, but how that would manifest itself. And if you're thinking maybe next month, yeah, I guess we're just going to play it by ear in that regard. That's my sense for two reasons. First of all, I think the hybrid model as challenging as it is to keep it organized and to figure out the initial setup. What I think we've all learned and particularly having served in the legislature is folks can really participate more when there are teams or Zoom events. And that's really meaningful to public discourse. And so that's one thought. The other thought is while both myself and my spouse are vaccinated, technically we are an unvaccinated household. We have two children under the age of what the age can be for vaccination. So in the back of my mind, I don't really feel personally like I am a fully, you know, if I'm part of a vaccine, an unvaccinated household, even though I'm vaccinated, I there's still a gray space there for me personally. And I'll just throw it also one of the things that we can discuss and see how things evolve at our July meeting is historically we have taken the August meeting off. And if we were to determine that that is feasible and prudent, depending on where we are with the rate discussion, if we determine that that is doable, maybe we think about September and perhaps we have a different sense at that time in terms of where things are at with children under 12 as well. That seems very reasonable and gives us a nice cushion to figure out what's going on and be much more confident by that time. That sounds like a great way to look to see things. Bob, Darren, Jim, any thoughts? No, that sounds like a good plan with me too. I have a similar vaccination situation to you and remain cautious for that reason, even though I'm fully vaccinated. So certainly if we wanted to hold the July meeting remotely, and then if we do follow the tradition of not holding a meeting in August, I can say with very reasonable confidence that we'll have, you know, an in-person meeting capability on the BED side, certainly in September, if that's the commission's desire. So we're happy to accommodate and there's going to be a period of experimentation here, I think, on our end too. So we're happy to work on a remote hybrid model where some folks are in person and some aren't. That works for us as well. Bob, I see you've showed up. Anything to add? No, okay. Okay, so let's revisit this at our July meeting because at our July meeting we'll also discuss how we approach August and perhaps, you know, every week, every two weeks, every month things shift a little bit. So we'll keep an eye and for now perhaps think about a hybrid return in September. I do ask that the IT team at Burlington Electric, you know, at some point as you start to develop your reentry, your hybrid reentry, I trust you'll start to practice, you know, what it's like to have some people in person and some people joining remotely so that that can be something that we do roll out for the public moving forward. That also might be a discussion with the folks at Channel 17, too, as we're using different technologies to provide the same, you know, we're bringing computers and streaming would be streaming from there and that might be a bring them in on the discussion as well. Scott, you're our closest channel to Channel 17 or maybe, Darren, you have a sense of how best to handle that conversation. I personally, that wouldn't be where I would, I wouldn't know who to reach out to to start in on checking in on that. Perhaps you can take Jordan Butterfield. That would be Jordan Butterfield. I've had contact with Megan or Rourke. Okay, Megan or Jordan. Yeah, and I told her that I would keep her posted as soon as we heard what kind of plan we would have. Great. Lori, do you have a good enough sense of the plan so you could let her know what we're thinking as of now? Sure, yes, absolutely. Great. Thank you, Lori. Thank you. Thanks, Scott. Anything else for the commissioner's corner? Okay, hearing nothing, let's move on to Darren, your general manager update and then Emily with the financials. Excellent. Thank you. First item I wanted to make sure to touch on certainly is the rate case. I first just wanted to reiterate our gratitude to the commission for holding so many meetings with us, multiple special meetings, as well as the regular meetings to help us as we were refining the rate case and bringing forward different options. And I wanted to thank Chair Stevens for joining the public forum at the Board of Finance and City Council to share the commission's view relative to the rate case. We did receive a 10 to one vote at the City Council to authorize us to file the rate case and our team is busy preparing to do that certainly by the date that we had laid out such that the surcharge would first begin in August. So we'll be filing some time over the course of the next week or so to meet that mid-June timeframe. This is our first rate case in 12 years. We've certainly tried to take to heart any critique that there was you know, some folks who may have been caught a little more by surprise than they had wanted to be. I do think obviously as the commission knows, we've been discussing this in this public forum many, many times over the past months and even years. And certainly I think we've followed with, you know, additional notice all the different processes that are required of us from a local and a state regulatory standpoint. But we are, I do want the commission to know, we are instituting some additional semi-annual check-ins with the University of Vermont and University of Vermont Medical Center to try to keep them better apprised of how we are doing relative to our budget expectations and try to keep them apprised as to what we think may be necessary from a rate standpoint so that they can plan their budgets. We understand that our rates changing can have a material impact certainly on their budgets. We are going to, we've done a bunch of work to prepare for the energy assistance program to help our low-income residential customers. We have a landing page now on the website for the rate case with information, including a letter from me that was also posted in the North Avenue News to customers sharing information about the rate case. And we have a form now where folks can sign up for the energy assistance program on the web page. So we'll be hoping to help a number of customers with that in the coming months. And we will certainly keep the commission posted as to how we progress with the rate case in the public utility commission process as well. So that's a lengthy undertaking and I appreciate the entire BED team for their work on it and in particular the finance, the policy and planning, and the customer care and communications teams for their particular work on the rate case. A quick question about that before we go. You mentioned UVM and the hospital. I had wondered if there were other significant customers of that level or near that level of significance that might also want to reach out to off the top of my head. I can think of the school district or Champlain College to name it just off the top of substantial users that might also be grouped in that information, you know, let the heads up group. Yeah, no, there certainly may be other customers that those types of meetings may be helpful. We definitely tried to respond in particular to UVM and UVM Medical because we heard from them here at the commission. We heard from them at the City Council and I heard from them directly as well. I don't think we had received similar outreach from those other folks, but we can certainly inquire if this is something that would be helpful to them. I also think that just if we have another rate case in the future, whether it's next year or whether it's two years, whenever it might be, and we certainly may be pursuing more regular and more modest increases going forward than waiting for a period of time and having increases after a period of years, I do think that sending some sort of communication to the City Council in the March timeframe is something else that I would plan to do. They certainly take note of those types of communications that we can send and it can be kind of a broader public heads up as well at that point because March to me is the earliest in our budget process that we would ever know that we're really looking at something and have a decent sense of what it might be, even if we don't have the exact number. We don't really have the area budgets all consolidated before March in a typical budget process. I think having something for March where we would send a public communication to the Council that would be posted on the Board Docks website that would be available to the media and hopefully shared and discussed more widely could be another means of providing additional outreach. There could be other things we can do as well, but those were just a few thoughts. Darren, do you anticipate any additional pushback or intervention at the PUC level from the folks who were aggrieved? I don't know, but I do think that we've had some good conversations in follow up with those folks and some of our customers who had expressed concern. I've certainly articulated the rationale for filing the rate case, the fact that we actually we believe we have a justifiable 12.5% rate increase if we had wanted to go that high and obviously we're going at 7.5 to try to mitigate some of those impacts for our customers, but that also means that the likelihood of finding error with our filing is a lot more challenging when you can justify a 12.5 and you're only asking for a 7.5. So I'm not clear whether they will choose to do so or not, but I do know that the folks I mentioned are appreciative of our setting up these new semi-annual meetings. They were appreciative of our communications with them and they're certainly within their right, as is anyone else, to participate in the PUC process, but I haven't gotten a clear indication of whether they plan to do so. So moving past the rate case, a few other updates. We've certainly touched on reopening. I'll be meeting with the city's new HR director, Karen Durfee, tomorrow and we are discussing I think at the city level, but also at the BED level what the reopening looks like and for us we're working hard to try to finalize prior to July 4th, which is the date by which the city had proposed there would be kind of a broader reopening of city services. A remote work pilot that could allow for some continued flexibility for our team for the second half of 2021, partly as a pilot as a way to experiment with different configurations, letting individual area supervisors work with their teams, come up with remote work schedules that work for their different areas. In some cases we have obviously a number of employees who have been working onsite during the pandemic and may have some access to remote work in certain instances, but it may be more limited. In other areas we have folks who can work potentially up to five days a week remotely and successfully and we're going to try to experiment with different configurations and see what works for us as a company, see what works for individual areas and try to make sure that we have an intentional move towards having folks back in the office at strategic times and making sure that we have presence for our customers who may be coming back to the building to visit with us, but also making sure that we are trying to take advantage of some of the technology that's been developed here and making sure that we can lead by example in continuing to see reduced vehicle miles travel and reduced emissions as a part of the reopening and not simply go back to a five days a week, everybody be exactly in the office as they were pre-pandemic. That's not the model that we're looking to return to. So we will have hopefully a final policy in place by July 4th. I can provide more information at the next commission meeting as to exactly what it looks like and it will reflect input from all employees and supervisors as well as HR for the city. So it'll be a very thorough process to set that up. But that said we certainly are looking forward to having some in-person events coming up. We'll have some nights at the ballpark with the lake monsters as we do you know every summer except last summer of course because they weren't playing. We're looking forward to seeing our customers at the lake monsters games and in July we're looking forward to having an in-person employee appreciation lunch in September whereas that had to be virtual last year and it'll be great to be able to see some folks in person as we move towards the reopening period. I did want to mention that this week at City Council we received approval to accept a state grant, a multi-year grant of up to $560,000 from the VW settlement and that is to help us purchase the electric bucket truck that we're bringing in FY22. We expect that the truck will be specced with our line workers and our distribution team and our Center for Safety team working together on that over the coming weeks and months and we expect to actually have the vehicle delivered in June of 2022. So that'll be exciting. I think the mayor has spoken to the fact that that may be the first large vehicle electrification in our city fleet as a whole and certainly the city is working towards trying to electrify a number of its vehicles. So this will be an important step forward for us and it does come with a 50 kilowatt fast charger that we'll have installed as well at BED for the purpose of recharging it and we're excited to dive into that process of speccing out that truck. The strategic direction obviously we'll talk about this evening so I won't go into that too much other than to say appreciate the commission's patience as we worked on getting some edits and feedback on the strategic direction from the BED team. We were about a month later than we typically would be given the rate case. Normally we'd have this discussion in May and we'd be finalizing this document in June so we'll be finalizing it just a touch late in our July meeting but it'll be operative at that point for the remainder of the fiscal year 22 and looking forward to that conversation. And lastly one item I don't think it was in the packet but I just wanted to provide an update as part of our efforts to engage with the city on policy and participate where we can will be at the ordinance committee on June 16th. There is a proposal that we've been at previous meetings to discuss that would allow for an ordinance change to require new buildings to have a primary renewable heating system capable of providing up to or at a minimum 85% of the building's heating needs through renewable heating whether that's heat pump technology or whether it was wood pellet technology or conventional systems that are using renewable fuels with long term contracts. I think there are a variety of ways to approach that. It's not strictly electrification but there's certainly a role for electrification there and that's the type of policy that the city can move forward under its current charter authority from my understanding. It's not as broad as the proposals that have been made more comprehensive proposals for new construction that would be potentially put forward if the charter change is ultimately approved but this is a good interim step to ensure that there's something happening for new construction during that time frame. So that's happening on June 16th at the ordinance committee and just want to make the commission aware of that as well and that's everything. Thank you. Do you have a sense of how that discussion will go with the ordinance committee? I was not at the last meeting but I heard that there was some strong interest and desire to move the policy forward and I think they had wanted us to attend on the 16th to answer a few technical questions but my sense is that there is support to advance that. It's certainly a good compliment in my view to the building weatherization policy for rental units that's gone through already and has a policy now for the largest buildings to have a weatherization schedule. So weatherizing existing rental buildings and requiring new buildings to have a primary renewable heating system would be two strong policy steps that the city would be taking to help us advance the net zero goal. So I think there's interest and desire to move that forward. If that happened would that lock in the ideas that pellets are renewable? Period. Well I don't know what they're going to pick for a definition so that's kind of an open question. I think from our standpoint obviously we are supporting a very strongly electrification of the heating needs wherever possible but understanding that city policy has to be perhaps broader than just what we're talking about here at BED I think there could be interest in having a variety of options that are renewable options for compliance purposes and certainly elsewhere in the state I know advanced wood heat that's done in compliance with the kind of modern standards is seen as a good renewable heating source and is very efficient. So whether that's something that Burlington would put forward and whether we would see a lot of adoption here is kind of an open question. I think geothermal for example seems to have a greater uptake in Burlington. We know a number of the schools and some of the new commercial buildings are using it than biomass heating has but certainly could be an option among many options but I don't know if they'll settle on that definition or not. Other questions or comments? Hearing none thank you and thanks for the overall report as well. I know it's the busy season for changeovers you know accounts etc so it's good to still see the 75% rate you know call answer time and a lot of your other updates but Emily thanks go ahead. Thanks sorry about that my mute button moved on me. Good evening everybody. We'll start where the financials where we have been starting throughout the pandemic with a review of loads through the end of May. In May we saw a slight improvement from April as a system loads were down 2.1%. They were increased above normal expected loads by 4.7% on the residential side. Commercial usage was down to 3.7% compared to expected levels. A lot of this overall improvement you know both at the system level and in the commercial sector we believe is attributable to the change in the academic calendar of the colleges who took a longer than usual winter break and then made up an extra week in May. So that is we think it's a little too early to say that we're seeing broad widespread commercial district recovery at this point. We're thinking a bit of this bump is related to the additional week in May and then in the college schedule. Okay so now moving to the financials if there are no questions on the loads. So here are the financials through the end of April. In April we saw a net income actually of about $721,000 compared to budget net loss. So the big story for April is that we were able to execute rec contracts earlier than budgeted and also receive the cash in April. So we had budgeted to receive that revenue in May it actually came in in April and so it was recorded in April. So what we're going to see is a far better than budgeted month in April and then May is going to look a lot worse than budgeted. But the I sort of guess bottom line story is that we were able to sell recs very close to the budgeted amount it's just that the revenue is going to be spread over two months and I want to appreciate the policy and planning team for doing good work to sort of close out our 2020 positions. There we forecast for the year to be less than 1% under budget for rec revenue even though we have seen pretty significantly reduced when you ski one production due to the drought conditions and the low water levels. So the policy and planning team has done a good job sort of making the best of our position despite the lost or reduced generation compared to budget. So going down the summary income statement as we've just seen I can just flip back to this for a second. So we're looking at April results where we were down 3% as a system. We see that shortfall here in sales to customers being $218,000 below budget. Other revenues had a positive variance and again power supply at $1.6 million favorable variance because we had budgeted to receive no rec revenues at all in April. Emily, yeah just skipping back I pulled up in the I did see the capacity factor for when you ski one was like 47.88% but I think that was for May. So are you pulling that up for me? Great. Okay, yep. Yeah, and when I say when you ski one production is down, I'm really talking about the entire fiscal year period today as well as the calendar year 2020, right, because wrecks are produced or marketed like on a calendar year basis. So we always have a six month lag with our fiscal year. So the lower than budgeted production has been going back even farther than this period because of low water levels. That helps. Yeah and and from the monthly report year-to-date generation is hovering at 75% where what do you guys normally I guess I mean that's 75% capacity average. No this is year-to-date generation through May 2021 and it says it's 75% of average so I guess it's a quarter loss generally. Yeah, James go ahead. I'm just sort of wondering where are you seeing the 75% I guess that's my question on the- It's on page seven of the department highlights. Okay. James you're muted. I believe we've been seeing some generation that's been under producing so far this calendar year which will represent some loss of wreck revenues in fiscal year 2022 but at least to the extent that we knew about them by say March we were able to build those effects into next year's budget already. So and it's not always true that a loss of production and loss of wreck revenue is an adverse effect on the budget. If the price of the resource is high enough right then it's actually beneficial but it does have strange effects in that you save money on the purchase power but you may see a loss of wreck revenues the following fiscal period. Yeah. Thank you. I did that all of that without saying it's a timing issue. Thanks James. Okay so then returning to the income statement I think I was just about to cover expenses here. So we had a favorable variance in power supply which is made up of a favorable variance about half of this $238,000 variance is in fuel. Fuel being actual is being better than budget that is primarily due to an adjustment in inventory. We have a drone fly over our woodpiles every six months or a year or something like that to sort of verify that the inventory we've been accounting for is correct on a drone inspection and so with that drone fly over we realized actually had more inventory than we had been recording so far so that resulted in a credit to expense to sort of restore inventory because McNeil fuel of which this is most of this is that fuel expense actually was McNeil produced a little more than budget so that's why we have a favorable variance in fuel despite over budget McNeil production. Purchase power was also favorable. Wind production was quite low and ISO exchange prices were lower so we bottom line came out better but again to James point we've generated fewer wind wrecks in this period than budgeted which will affect wreck revenue in FY 22. Operating expense was unfavorable by I'm sorry O&M expense was favorable by $114,000 but EEU rebates were unfavorable so we have a net variance unfavorable of $124,000 and then I also wanted to note miscellaneous non-operating income we're continuing to see this significantly below budget mostly due to fewer less customer contributions to capital projects which has been a theme throughout the year so again positive variance for this month expect to see a negative variance for May results. Our net income now is $1.9 million versus budget at this point in time of about $700,000. For the year we're continuing to project a browned $1.5 million net loss which includes the pension liability which was unbudgeted and we're also projecting a healthy days cash on the hand balance as of June 30 of approximately 97 days at this point with you know with April results included. I'll move down to the capital spending and cash so in May we are 56% spent of the capital budget we were at 54% in March we have additional spending occurred in April in the production categories distribution and the general plant moving down to cash we have a higher than budgeted balance again due to the early receipt of those rec revenues we have $9.7 million in cash versus a budget of $7 million and we are at 127 days cash on hand we're at 122 in March and we have a currently an adjusted debt service coverage ratio of 1.15 we were at 0.96 in March. Any questions? I just want to note that the 1.15 we're projecting even with the rate case in FY22 that we'll be pulling that figure from where it's been which has been in the 0.8 something range to about 1.06 so 1.15 is great is heading in a good direction but really could be affected by some different factors in terms of the timing of that so we are looking to get that to a 1.06 or higher if possible in FY22 for that fiscal year. Certainly these metrics look quite good at the moment. Right I think I would agree Darren that this is a again related to the temporary condition of the early receipt of the rec revenues and that may they will return more to the levels we've been seeing throughout the year. Thank you. Questions comments from commissioners? Hearing none it's interesting to me to see that well actually I suppose not that residential usage continue you know has gone up you know compared to last month but realistically it's not that interesting because it's getting warmer so maybe more people are using AC in their home and people are still working from home so I guess it's not that interesting. Any comments? I just gonna say last summer there were moments in time where the residential use was up so much that it it did help to balance out the net the system net whereas you know commercial is obviously a larger part of our system overall and we got that question a lot during the the rate case discussions of why if residential use is up and commercial is down why isn't balancing and we've reminded folks that roughly 75% of our system use is commercial but I would expect to see if if there is some continuation of remote work I would expect to see residential to be up over the summer for exactly that reason even if you know even if there is some return if more folks are still taking advantage of remote options. Mr. Herindy any comments? Okay all right no thank you thanks Emily appreciated next we have on the agenda a discussion of the draft 2021-2022 strategic direction and that's you Darren. Thanks would it be would it be helpful for me to share screen and walk through the changes or or would you like me to just speak to them? I for for people who might be watching I think it's helpful I mean I have it up but I think for you know to make it easier for potential viewers. Let me pull up the correct window here okay everyone can see the strategic direction the first edit being to change the years a non-controversial edit hopefully with that 2021-2022 we did not propose any changes to the mission values or vision which we've we've certainly modified over the past several years and and I think our feeling was they're in good shape so we really focused in on the strategic objectives some of these edits are substantive and intended to be some of them are more for kind of you know grammar or wording or cleaning up some of the language to make it a little bit easier so I'll walk through each of these the first here is just capitalizing the words in BIPOC each of the words which we believe is the correct approach so we proposed an edit there we also in the customers and community subset of strategic objectives mentioned the new proposed community ambassador program which was part of the FY-22 budget and is an option for us to provide stipends in some limited cases to be able to reach out to different folks in the community who may be able to help connect BED and some of our initiatives to different parts of the community that may not always engage with us or who we may not always be as engaged with and so we wanted to specifically reference this community ambassador program as part of our you know proactive efforts on customer outreach and engagement moving to the strength and reliability section these are mostly non-substantive edits changing update to maintain because we've we've got a five-year plan adding generating station after McNeil and Hydro after Nuski one so those are mostly kind of non-substantive house cleaning edits investing in people process technology the first the first item there I think was written last year and referenced a number of specific partners and I think that the team's goal here was to make the objective broader and potentially even more inclusive of more partners by by focusing on the attract develop and retain a diverse workforce with the knowledge skills and ability to support BED's net zero vision and strategic objectives the the different folks that were previously named are all folks we want to continue to work with but there are actually a number of others who are not mentioned and probably we would take up quite a bit of space if we tried to mention everybody so that was the thinking behind that edit there's a word change from improve to maximize in number three under people process technology and then a substantive edit in addition here that I think chair Stevens noted earlier with our focus on implementing a remote work flexibility under city policy to lead by example at BED and reducing vehicle miles traveled and emissions I certainly see that as a substantive addition to our net zero portfolio approach moving to the innovate to reach net zero question about that oh yeah absolutely is that especially the way it was worded to be used as a as an example is there do you have a have you set up any sort of ways ways to codify to not codify to some metrics to be able to show that over you know at that BED as a as a micro scale version of what could be possible well that's a great point I think you know we're still working on the on the policy itself at this point but I think once we have it in place that could be a great thing to track how many days we were able to avoid somebody commuting in and how many miles of travel that reduced or avoided and maybe that would be a good way to report out on our six month intended pilot so I appreciate that suggestion I think we could we could definitely do something like that not necessarily for documenting in the strategic direction but more a question about you know some people work very well from home and others do better in the office and I wonder if part of the policy that you're you know working to develop specifically for BED how that how that incorporates employee reviews or you know performance and whether or not folks are still you know performing at the same level at home or perhaps better or worse than in the office yes we definitely have and a kind of a productivity and accountability aspect to what we're looking to do and the ability for an employee to be approved for remote work under this policy will likely be contingent on their supervisor being able to be certain that they're completing their projects on time that they are continuing to be available and productive as indicated through you know regular availability during their work hours answering emails phone calls microsoft teams calls and meetings with their camera on so that we're able to kind of continue to have the face-to-face interactions that their that their ability is still there to come into the office if there was some sort of an urgent need obviously this can't be a substitute for taking a vacation day or something like that if a supervisor noticed that an employee was falling behind and unable to be productive then there would be probably a series of progressive conversations and documentation and efforts to to rectify and if those were not successful we would reserve the right under the policy to revoke the remote work either in part or in full in that instance so we definitely want to continue to have productivity be at an extremely high level I think we've had that during the pandemic and I think it's something we want to be able to to continue to have if the policy would would go forward thanks absolutely so moving to the net zero energy portion here we had previously listed micro grid projects in this in bullet number one around advancing district energy which we certainly are doing and then micro grid and we actually think that there's more likelihood in the near future of our advancing battery storage projects that have a value to the utility and to our community then that we would actually produce a micro grid I think this was written at a time when we had considered a micro grid project for the airport that didn't pan out and I think battery storage is probably a more accurate label for the types of projects that we're pursuing in that space and and I think the local renewable energy production is I think consistent actually with last year's language there had been an edit and then an edit back so that may not be a substantive change that last part there can I can I so this is why I was asking about that power purchase agreement because you know there's there is a difference between local renewable energy production that could be you know Burlington Electric owning all of the generation whereas by striking customer or community based I I I guess I'd I'd prefer to see an and both because local renewable energy production could mean that it's all you know that that we're not necessarily going to continue trying to advance you know homeowners and businesses and community solar but we're just going to try and advance renewables that's regional in you know within our area and those two are are slightly different to me so I this is the this is the item that I had a little bit of a huh yeah if I remember correctly I don't have the the current version of the the strategic direction up I think we may have added in this process customer or community based and then it had previously said local and we decided to stick with local because we thought it was more kind of all encompassing I mean I certainly agree that customer and community based renewables are good and and we've I think James made a good point to say that we've tried to support them pretty much any time we have an opportunity whether it's through PPA or net metering or or other means so I think you know maybe there's a way to wordsmith it to include kind of all of those concepts we weren't looking to be exclusive of customer community we were looking to be broader I think with the local but we could probably wordsmith it to include all of it if you could try that that'd be appreciated okay good noted in bullet number two here we have improve and expand automated demand response capability with focus on EV charging and thermal I think those are exactly the areas where we are looking to have this capability we had a good discussion at the commission on the EV charging rates that you all approved and that the city council approved us filing with the PUC that include the option for a more real-time dynamic response technology approach and certainly this and then if you look at bullet three advanced additional dynamic and creative rates to achieve the net zero goal these two things really go hand in hand in a lot of ways we're continuing our work with packetized energy on demand response through the water heater program that we've had we are also actively working on bringing forward an additional rate package that could include our hope would be an FY 22 a heat pump rate that could be available as an end-use rate for customers that could be a very important one for us for two reasons first because the economics on heat pumps as we know are challenging relative to very low natural gas prices so anything we can do to make the use of a heat pump operationally more affordable is a real plus for our customers who are looking to to move towards heat pump you know heating and then secondly it's a more challenging area I think in some respects because with an electric vehicle it's reasonable particularly for somebody who's using it for residential commuting purposes you know to set up a rate where you're doing most of your charging overnight and off-peak whereas with a heat pump you're looking at a more challenging use case potentially and so finding ways to mitigate the impact of a heat pump on peak times particularly in the winter and then perhaps in the summer during air conditioning season I think is a really important goal for us as we look at maintaining the economic advantages of electrification so these items two and three in my mind are about those types of initiatives and we've tried to add language to to capture our focus on thermal as well as EV charging and to make clear that we're working to advance additional rates and projects in this space in the coming year and I think that's important given that we did actually receive some feedback from a Burlington Electric homeowner who had installed heat pumps and then was concerned about what the rate increase might mean interestingly I hear your point that it's easier to you know to develop a really clear demand response program with EV charging as compared to you know thermal needs and I guess I would just argue that the reason why the thermal needs are so tough is because our building shells and our envelopes aren't tight enough and aren't robust enough but no that's that's certainly a part of it and I think you know with the heat pump you're not going to be looking to interrupt fully the usage you're going to be looking to potentially moderate the usage whereas with the EV we can potentially you know fully interrupt the usage during a peak event so that both important just different different use cases and we're intent on pursuing both critical strategies for us and then we've we've word smithed a little bit here the the language around continuing to track and report on our progress towards net zero road map goal I think we were very specific in the previous language around the performance measures report I think as we've seen this year that the Synapse net zero road map update is really is now the venue I think through which we're going to provide these very important substantive updates on our emissions and fossil fuel use progress so I didn't I didn't want to have the PMR be the only means through which we were identifying that type of update I think the the Synapse report and some regular reporting that we'll do on on incentives and other things will be important as well we do have a deletion here on six because we've successfully launched many of these programs or in the process of completing the work there on electrification we have a cooking induction cooking program we have added leaf blower incentives for residential and commercial and we have actively explored snow removal equipment and may have something available for the next winter season in that regard so we don't we don't see a need for that specific bullet any longer we do have an edit here in the city policy processes to add ground transportation we previously focused it on the building sector I've mentioned that you know our work on building weatherization and heating with the city but there's equally important work going on with BED and the city on ground transportation particularly what comes to mind is our work with the city team that does fleet purchases where BED is actively engaged in helping to evaluate a debt financing plan for net zero energy to support electrification while mitigating upward rate pressures certainly we see the revenue bond as being a critical element of that but maybe not the only element of that we've certainly looked at whether or not there might be additional general obligation bond capacity at some point in the future through the city to support BED's capital programs and other net zero efforts and I think we've identified through this process of going through the rate case that we are you know we're really only accessing about three million a year in in the general obligation bond and we are funding a roughly eight million a year net of customer contribution capital program so we really can see some additional appetite for financing of those capital projects as opposed to paying for them partly out of cash which is what I think we've essentially been doing the revenue bond and the potential geo bond expansions as well as other things like the the lease for the IT forward equipment that you all approved taking to the city council in which they approved those are the types of strategies that I see encompassed in this bullet two here and those are the edits that our team worked through and again I want to thank folks because this was certainly as it is always a team effort with a variety of input from across different divisions at BED. Thank you commissioners feedback comments. Hi this is Bob I guess I feel a little timid to talk about wordsmithing the very first line and all of this submission statement but I don't see environmental environmentally responsible the standard view is that environmental sustainability has three components economic social and environmental and economic is mentioned here and affordable and socially is mentioned explicitly but environmentally is not mentioned so I suggest thinking about whether ought to be I also did a word search on sustainable and the only place it shows up is regarding financing I think I'm not sure that's necessarily bad but just know that that's the only place it is and then I have a third comment the 230 vision indicates to me a goal that's quite explicit a target and that seems to conflict with the idea that we will make burlington a net zero energy city by reducing and eventually eliminating fossil fuel I'm not claiming we're going to eventually we're going to get it all done by 2030 but this interacts with the idea of mileposts and synapse kinds of studies so I guess I'm a little bit concerned about the word eventually and would even propose to remove it that's it thank you for the feedback I think we can I'd like to take some of those thoughts back to our team obviously as we always do before we try to present a proposed final draft those are good thoughts I I think even in the the mission and the vision you're pointing out some some interesting language and potential gaps that I think we should we should explore there it's interesting I recall the mission at one point having the word sustainable in it and I don't know if that was two or three years ago but and I recall it being cut I don't remember but I I do Bob I I agree with you it's that's sort of a glaring no mission what once you pointed out other comments feedbacks and commissioners okay and is it the hope that at the July meeting we would vote to approve it I think that's the hope and certainly we can you know we can we can share kind of further you know iteration of this with the commission ahead of time and try to give as much time as possible to to have you review what would be a proposed final and you know you can edit at the July meeting and we can capture edits if there's a need prior to voting to finalize it as well I take this feedback this has been good feedback we've got some good notes here to to chew on so far yeah and I think that if there is an opportunity to you know share it out with us um earlier than you know with the actual entire meeting packet for July that would probably be helpful um absolutely there should be no reason we can't do that great thank you um I'm gonna share my screen here to get you back to regular meeting view and the last on the agenda is just the um commissioners corner if there's anything remaining that folks want to um raise at the close of the meeting I just wanted to reinforce uh the comment that's in one of the minutes and I think it was based on something you said Gabrielle to uh the idea that synapse may be more uh optimistic than we are at this point about how far we can get in a given time towards net zero and um what this just says to me is to again strengthen your comment that having regular and as quantitative as possible um mileposts etc is important um we see in that report the synapse report there are a lot of graphs that do this for a while and then they do that right at the end as potentially extreme uh let's say strong measures are you know instituting um that's potentially quite reasonable but also it does come back to the idea if we're 30 percent of the way and 60 percent of the time how are we doing so uh just returning to that uh to me is important yeah and I um on my end I think that's why it's so important uh I think the most that the biggest change that I see is that debt financing addition um and the need to figure out a way to help people afford the upfront cost that ultimately presumably will save them money in the long run but that upfront cost uh you know not everyone is either able to or willing to make that investment but if it's you know if it's it's a monthly payment that that they can make that you know is generally offset by what they're saving in their fossil fuel bills then that's that's a different opportunity to move forward and we could really see that dial rise up a lot more quickly um I just wanted to throw out there that uh just because I've I've mentioned a couple times there was one Burlington resident who reached out to me um and said um you know raised some concern with how how do we make this affordable for people so at some point um you know certainly uh there are a lot of incentives coming from the state legislature uh and from the administration for weatherization and for electric vehicles etc um and if we saw something like a debt financing opportunity that would certainly help as well for for helping folks to pay for these investments but at some point it would be great to um take the synapse analysis a step further and say okay what does this look like in terms of um cost savings for the customer um and I you know you guys have all been swamped with the rate analysis and the budget um but just flagging that for at some point it would be great to um have a little bit of discussion about that any other thoughts or comments from commissioners no okay uh thank you as always um general manager springer and the whole team um and Laurie if you'd like to actually sorry if we could have a first and a second to adjourn so moved second commissioner shagnan hi mr herring jane hi commissioner moody hi commissioner stevens hi thank you we adjourn at 648 thank you thank you