 So I'm going to call the meeting to order 532 meeting of the energy committee with the select board as a working meeting to make some plans for our town policy work going forward on this topic. I think we need to start by having a motion to approve the agenda. So moved. I don't think of her sounds like that got to it. I got a little bit before you. That's right. And then I believe we would move on to public comment, which would be about items that are not on the agenda. Not really expecting much for that. And then we can move into our, our meeting. I'm missing anything Trevor. You got it. You walk this into it. We'll stay at open meeting law jail for the moment. All right. So one of the things that I think the energy advisory committee has done is there is a little presentation prepared. I think two of the slides have some of the projects they've been working on on it. So if the board's okay with that we can do a little screen share. And it looks like everybody who's listed on that is somewhere either in the room or on zoom. You're okay to start that way or we can dig in any other way but that's what's been the sort of for you. That sounds great unless there's some objection. Yeah, let's do it. I'm just going to do a screen share here and. Okay, this will take like three minutes. Okay, everybody's got that right on the screen. Okay. Thank you. Oh, I got an introduction. And some opening remarks. The active members of the energy committee. And our Susan Mills. Who had been on the energy for a decade like I have. And we've managed to work with our two young members Jeff grout and Mary Davis on five projects in the last 15 months, including one during the worst of coven 19. And we have the advice welcome advice of Pat French direct us. The energy committee works on most projects with the R3 energy task force, which came out of Randolph winning. The third climate model community in the state of Vermont. So we had the opportunity to work with John co pans for a year. And out of that effort came the hotel possibility, the hiring of Josh Jerome, Sam Hooper's glove shop was being heated by coal. We had zero belly solar panels on it. And as you correctly identified, we are an advisory committee, but we're known for being the economic or energy, economic energy committee. And we request. The select board. The chair and Trevor work with us the last time that the select board called in the energy committee was five years ago. We were very rich for the energy committee. And we had Pete Thonen. He who was the expert at that time. So we really, really want to work with you. We have a lot of strength with her with the energy committee. And we're here tonight to start that process going. Well, no, we're here as a result of coming to the select board in at the last meeting. And if there's nothing else that I can communicate at this point in time, the importance of the legislator in 2021, 20, I got that one wrong. I'm going to fix it Susan 20, passing the global solution act. Requiring an action plan by December one. And I've gone to a significant number of meetings, and it's the best run of planning process, they have five subcommittees working. And it's also an advice from the energy action network be heard and so on. And it's the future if we're going to deal with global warming significantly, it's going to come out of that activity. You're just so you know. So, what does a select board want communicated tonight, I know from Larry because he put it out. And on the network recently, but he wanted to learn how we can be more save money on energy and get on the track of get off the track of fossil fuels and more electric vehicles. So, at this point in time, I'm going to turn it over to Mary Ann. Okay, so, um, so the next slide is, is a projects list and this is really just a brainstorming list. And what we're hoping to, to get from the select or tonight is feedback on these ideas now some of these projects or projects that have been worked on, and they'll be continued. We'll continue to work on those some of them are new ideas. And so we'd love to have your feedback. And we also, we're also wondering if there are other committees that might be working on these projects, what you know the best way to coordinate with other committees, if they, if they are working on similar projects. And how we coordinate with our funding and how we coordinate with the town in terms of funding and that sort of thing. So, if you look at them, they're basically under two categories and the first is reducing fossil fuel in the building sector. Sorry. Yeah, I don't see any images. All I see is the file I don't see anything open. I don't know if anybody else is having the same problem. It's just, it's just a projects list you don't see the list. No, I don't see the list we're only seeing something says select communications number two. And already see project brainstorm 2021. They look like their files that need to be open. Yeah. I could last the screen share maybe just showing the folder. Yeah. You see files. I don't know. We can try to screen share it real quick. And if not, if you've got a print out, it might just be working. Yeah, it works if it doesn't work. Oh, okay. Can you see it now. There you go. All right, good. Okay, so this is the brain stormed projects list that we would love your feedback on. And we basically broke it up into two very broad segments. And the first is reducing fossil fuel use in the building sector, we increase them increasing thermal efficiency. And underneath that we have weatherization. And as I'm sure you know, the committee has done weatherization work with capstone communities and other partners. And Susan and Gary could speak to that in terms of the history of our weatherization work since I'm new I'm new as of August so I think that there is probably some ARPA funding for that. So that's actually a question maybe for the select board in terms of whether or not there is ARPA funding. And then just a little piece of data that I got from the energy action network website the number of buildings and Randolph that are completely weatherized or 400. So I don't know if you want to do this if you want to just look at it. So I'm just going to go back to the sort of reading things on the window dresser's project. That's a project again, that is in progress. And Gary is probably the best person to talk about that that's basically building window inserts. And then my understanding is putting those window inserts into municipal buildings. Is that right? Yeah, that's correct. That was actually a project started two or three years ago and was set back. by COVID-19 and some reorganization within the Energy Committee but Jeff Grout and myself and a member of the Lisa from the Rotary went down to Fetford a few weeks back and learned how to make these inserts and we look at this as an opportunity to get all the public the rotary public citizens working together for a common good and we expect to do that next fall. I just want to say the insert Mary and said that the inserts were going to be in the municipal buildings there. They are not. They are for residential, especially low income residential places. Yeah. Okay, and the next, the next idea is to work on a community. And one idea is to partner with Norwich Solar. Apparently there are two and actually Brendan Mallee is here from Norwich Solar and he could answer questions about two projects that are on the Davis Road one or I guess one is on the Davis Road one is near the Davis Road. Is that right? One is in the process of being permitted. And they're interested in partnering with potentially schools or maybe municipal buildings that he can answer any questions that folks might have about that. The other thought is to work on heat pumps and increase in the number of heat pumps installed in Randolph. Currently, again, according to that to the data, there are 83. That might be something we can work on with efficiency Vermont. So, I don't know if we want to do questions like under this first section or what people want to do. Anybody can chime in. Any questions? So, some of my concerns here, okay, would be, you know, maybe this is where you can use the ARPA funds, but we have a lot of municipal buildings right now that I think could benefit from weatherization and also changeovers from the fuels they're using. And I know, for example, you know, Chandler is going to need a new boiler or going to need some significant boiler work and that's one of our biggest energy users. So, those are the kind of things I'd love to work on is how do we get some of these municipal buildings into the carbon neutral zone here. Yeah, and one thing we could start with possibly is a list of the municipal buildings that could be considered. And the town offices is another, I don't know how modern but the heating and air conditioner heating, the HVAC system is here but that might be a starting point where we could actually list all the specific buildings and see if there are improvements to each building. Well, I think when you look at what the consumption is, things like Randolph Center Garage, the Village Garage, Chandler, okay, just to start off with those, Kimbell's probably not that well insulated, I'm not sure. But if you start looking at the cost of what we're spending on, you can take care of those buildings and now that probably fuel costs are going to go up for us. I think that would be a really good place for this committee to scope for some time on. Yeah, the R3 committee went through a file list of all the all the municipal buildings and they're pretty pitiful as far as their energy use when never been any real weatherization or efforts to look at things like motors or lighting or any of those things. So, there's a lot that can be done in municipal buildings just needs somebody to pay attention. The committee needs to be working on this because that's just somebody's got to take the lead on those properties and, you know, certainly we can find out what the numbers are but I think you'll look and see how much money we're spending on on heat alone. For those five or six facilities you're going to be quite shocked when you see what the numbers are. John not looked into that three or four years ago and we have some data on that but we there's also data on the energy dashboard that we can pull in and we will gladly take that as a task. Yeah, I think one thing we could offer also is tracking that not just inventory at once but you know, regular reporting of the energy use of the key buildings and that might be something our committee could help with. Well, the reason I'm bringing this up is because you're exactly right we talked about it in our three when I was on the budget committee probably seven or eight years ago we talked about it and here we are still going nowhere is in my opinion. He's a baseline. Let's get on it. Well there that's what that's what this committee should be working on go somebody needs to be doing the analysis figure out what's going to cost how do we change over can we make heat pumps work in those buildings or you know doing they need to be you know pellets type situation like Sam like Sam Hooper put in I mean those are the kind of things I think we need to be moving forward to here and right now if we're going to have to make an investment in some form of heating system to fix Chandler I think now's time to start looking at that. Yeah, that's good. And that's really one of the keys that we wanted to address at this meeting is what are the key. I don't know two three or four energy projects that that are the priorities for the town if you have any now and this is that's an excellent example I mean that's something we can jump on and start tracking and I think that's the key is to track it. I don't know if it's month to month or here I would think month to month energy bills would be the way to start and I don't know if anybody has that data now or if that's something we can. I think bills and all these buildings for years I got to believe we've got the numbers. Okay, so I don't know if you're tracking it's going to be the solution I think the solution is to figure out what we're going to do to change those things. Yeah, but you got to know what you're using now in order to know how far we can reduce it to so I get that but we have the data we've been paying oil bills and all these buildings for years. I think you know, having the data and that sort of thing having the list is great but we have always run up against, you know, inertia at the town level as far as doing anything about energy in these buildings. So I think what we really need is to have some kind of effort to designate someone to be responsible for getting the energy conservation measures put in somebody who was actually able to take responsibility for that. It sounds to me like we need some sort of an overall energy on it, you know, just like what people do for their homes seems like we need something like that townwide for the municipal buildings, where then someone can come back to us and they can say, here are all the places you can improve. And this kind of improvement will cost you this much money and the solution and the solution will save you this much of money and so we can start to work our way down the list starting with the lowest hanging fruit and the stuff which is going to have the biggest bang for our buck and then kind of just tick them off as we have the funds to invest in these improvements. And Vermont does that very job and we can easily bring them into the equation. That'd be great. The town has to have the will to pursue them. I'm hoping that this activity is going to help that. That is just meeting this discussion. Yeah, I know I agree and I would like to see that happen. I'd like to see us, you know, have this sort of a list in front of us and then we can say to ourselves, well, we budget for the year we can say how much money are we willing to budget for, you know, what are the energy improvements in the next year and then go down our list and say, okay, we can afford this one this one and this one. Next one will be next year, you know, some, you know, we, you know, I don't know exactly what those will be but to engage in that kind of a process where we can prioritize. So Trevor, do there's ARPA funds qualify for any of this kind of stuff. I think there's the potential for maybe some of the programmatic elements that we've talked about, such as the weatherization and that's an idea that the treaty had submitted separately too. There might be some programmatic dollars infrastructure based dollars I think we have to dig into a little bit. It's one of the things that the ARPA subcommittee could identify. Maybe how one other subcommittee that's in play then ties into these larger efforts related to energy, because that's, that's the group that's going to dig into what's allowed in how they do think if I remember I saw that there might be some programmatic capabilities there to take advantage of. I think that would be kind of official. And we, and we can pull usage data from those energy bills and just upstairs. Who would do that. We have to coordinate access through the manager's office it might be given our current short handed status it might have we might have to see who to do that. We have to pull each individual bill and compile them based on what's kept upstairs, and we can maybe reach out to the separate providers and see in a given year what the usage wasn't shortcut some of the, the grant work. So you'll initiate that. If that's what comes out of tonight. We can, we can initiate that yeah. I do admire that the energy committee's done this several times before. And then whatever's recommended doesn't get carried forward so it's very important that the town is committed to energy efficiency and meeting the standards that the state is setting. One of the conclusions I've come to is that I think we need a staff person, or we're going to need a staff person if we're going to within the next five or 10 years make. Anywhere's near the progress that we're supposed to be making for organizing help. Using in a sustainability coordinator model like some other communities have added or. Yeah, I'm thinking Hartford added one I think somebody that somebody else. Yeah. Well, yeah, Harvard push these issues for Hartford hired. Jeff Martin three years ago. And he has moved on and work for six towns, but he's how in to two rivers out of Quiche. And so he is responsible for those six towns and they pay his check, but two rivers out of Quiche is just hired Steve. Steve Bauer Bauer, who is with who we actually Marianne contact with already. Yes, I mean right now it's my understanding that Steve Bauer is our point person on energy projects through to reverse whether it's too late if the town was interested in joining up with the other six towns who are using. They have no idea that that those six towns, as Gary said are sharing with this one person to do that kind of work. So that model is out there too. Yeah, that's a good point that there could be a possibility of sharing an energy manager with other communities as well. Not just Randolph but then other communities could share the cost of that manager. There's 30 towns in two rivers out of Quiche so the Steve Bauer will be shared by 30 cats. Well, that's too many. Steve actually has a very different job description than Jeff Martin. So I think you'll you'll find that they're. They're working in different realms with within T-Roc. Well, I do like the idea of the potential of sharing somebody who, you know, works with this on a regular basis knows how this works knows the right people to talk to knows where funds tend to be. It's not hard to imagine that somebody who we were only use on a part time basis. In terms of the energy they bring to us. I think certainly worth looking into. But we can follow up and I'm one of the two coordinators with two rivers out of Quiche so that would be easier to talk to them about. Gary, are you familiar with any of the municipal energy audits that efficiency Vermont has done because it seems like before we jump into having a shared or even our own municipal sustainability coordinator. It seems like the easiest first step we could take to me is to actually either contract with energy efficiency Vermont or some other entity to at least get an audit done. We've talked about, about Trevor working with the staff to crunch the numbers of what are our baseline energy uses has been in the various municipal buildings but we can access that that and fairly short order it just seems like we should jump to the next level is getting an editor energy audit done and much like we do with capital planning and much like we do for our roads. Let's identify the biggest problems and set a timeline and a plan in place for dealing with them. Three years ago efficiency Vermont did that exact thing for our school system here in Randolph and that talks to Lane Millington about that whole approach and I say we talked to efficiency Vermont. I'm still concerned about follow them. And I would like to see if we can get the town or the town government to endorse the idea of pursuing these these energy efficiency measures. Once we once we identify the right ones to do first. This is stuff that that has been around for a long time it's been, it's been obvious in a number of buildings that huge amounts of dollars would be saved by, you know doing the weatherization or changing the energy efficiency of the building so we need to get over this little little problem we have which is that it's, you know, it's kind of not my problem. I would like to get the town to endorse the very idea of doing energy efficiency in its own buildings. Well, there are people who are capable of making that calculation we did it several years ago with a weatherization program and it was with homeowners and this organization I can't remember what it says. They would come up, you know with their energy bills or electrical bills and all the same. And then they said, we recommend you do this this and this, and it will cost this much, and we can get you a low cost loan, and you will say this much in the future. That skill is available. I would second your thoughts Mark that get it getting a commitment from the town in the form of somebody actually responsible for or following through with these actions rather than relying on the energy committee to try to navigate all of this on their own. I think that's very important. I also agree with that and I'm kind of asked Trevor to chime in here and sort of give us a better sense of you know if we really want to make this something that our town is going to move forward on. It does seem like it makes sense there to be, you know, you know, some sort of, you know, staff member that makes sure that it keeps going you know that having the volunteers of the energy committee where there's turnover you know it's and we're talking about a multi year project that can provide continuity and focus, you know what would be the best way for our municipal government to make sure that things don't get dropped along the way that we do keep focused on this and make the, you know the investments that we really ought to be making. Two pieces to it one is the actual project planning and identify to find which projects in which order and what the cost is. And then committing as a community as a whole is where it doesn't just fall back on the town but it also falls back on the voters as well. There are resources needed to get these things done the resources need to be there. And from a staff perspective, it would be, it's would be one of a number of areas of need where we could use a body to help us do either things we want to commit to, or that we've already committed to. So the sustainability coordinator idea is one that would help us advance that we could use somebody to help us with some of the ordinance enforcement stuff we're still wrestling over. We're a full time or a part time recreation person to help support those programs. So we're talking about staff and want to make sure we're moving that holistically as well as the conversation so I think it's got to tie into some of those larger budget elements. It's really comes down to getting these things done is about resources both financial and, and, and the people and if we have both of those we can get it done. I don't see that being a problem the challenge would be if we don't have the the financial resources to do it, or ask to deal with people that's going to be a really heavy lift. We're trying to lift a lot of other things right now too. Well one of the things about the energy coordinator position that were such a position is that that person could also be responsible for, you know, getting the funding to do these things. So the federal grants of line for whatever is available to support this activity. It's not just making sure it gets gets done, but making sure it gets funded. And then the back end of making sure they're the finance department resources to help us with the grant management the reporting the reimbursements. Right structures. So it's showing up not just adding capacity but also showing up existing capacity so that we can successfully navigate whatever we do. I met with Stuart blood is from that for last evening. One of the member towns that Jeff Martin from T rock services and you know he sees he's actually helping them with energy audits and developing procedures and budgets to allow them to selectively choose, you know, the best impact for their towns individually. So that kind of position brings a lot of power and a lot of value to the process. Well, sitting next to me happens to be a person who does energy audits. I I'm not saying you should do it. No, I don't know if I, you know, I mean I can certainly work with people to do that right at this point and I'll be glad to. I do have some systems and programs that could could definitely aid with that that we use at work but I. Yeah, it's it's definitely I mean yeah that that's what I do and that's what we do at work so we can. When I knows, keep in mind when you're thinking about the cost to put this together or to support the whole concept that when we save energy in a building it's significant amounts of dollars as well so this can definitely pay for itself over a fairly short time and you know as a town we have a long time to think about this so we have a long amortization to deal with and we can we can do some serious things to save money. One, one other data point to consider is I just read an article last night when Jeff Martin was at Hartford and doing the work there. He had actually already within I think the first 10 months of his appointment. He implemented enough energy savings within the town to pay for his salary in year one. So, you know that kind of that kind of position can save real money for the town and put us on the path of much more resilient. Exactly, and there's pay for performance type contracts where that person we might be able to find an entity that would do that, the energy audits and get paid by with a portion of what they say, which is a fairly common way to do that without a large upfront cost for the town. But you know there's options for payment structures but yeah I mean if we're not really paying attention to that and not really tracking it. The rule of thumb is probably 10 to 20% of your energy spend is going to be very low hanging fruit and very quickly rectified so it's definitely cost effective. It's going to be very surprising if it wasn't. And typically for the town I'd say you know it's the fuel for the buildings, and number two is probably maybe number one I don't know is the vehicles is the fleet cost for fuel. We haven't even started talking about electrification of the vehicles yet. So, but I would think that between the buildings in the in the fleet that's a huge portion of the kind of brand off energy costs. And with money to pay for staff is always a big hurdle. So if it's possible for us to have people start with the promise of getting paid with what they save us. That sounds like something will be hard to refuse. Yeah, well, really love to learn more about that. And maybe there's somebody from T wrote Gary that we can engage with directly to flesh flesh that out. And as, as far as other towns with within the area. You know, perhaps Bethel Brookline and Brookfield and bravery are also interested in that kind of a resource being available to them, which, you know, spread the closet. He's a Stephen Bauer. He's an energy planner with two rivers on it. I mean, how much time and energy is going to be devoted to patient. I have no idea. He's got 30 towns to deal with. So, I'm not sure. I think the idea of having a quad three or four town collaborative coordinator makes a lot of sense. I don't think Steven's capable of doing that. From his position at you. Yeah, it could be the Randolph towns brain tree in Brookfield, which is our common way of working. That that's consistent with the R3. So. So my understanding, we're talking about two different things or two, two things together. One is helping the town of Randolph. Save energy, save money, and also helping the people in the town. Amen. They're. Attempt to do the same thing. That's where we get into the big, the large progress. There are specific actions that we can take and then report back to the select board on our next meeting to keep this alive. Is there somebody who couldn't reach out to three rivers and find out about the possibility of what kind of support they can give what kind of independent contractors are out there. And then my partner with other communities. What, what those different options look like and, and bring us some, something that we can act on at our December meeting is that. Yeah, I can do that. And I'll have our next energy committee meeting. Together and then we'll get back to the town with where we go. If we're going to give consideration to an energy coordinator position, it seems like the next couple of months is the time to do it and to do it in collaboration with rain tree and Brookfields select boards so that you know this could be something that can be discussed in town meeting because it is going to be a significant commitment if we do it collaboratively even on the part of each of the three towns. I'm comfortable with moving that process along and I think we should try and expedite it. The town meeting is marked so we got like four or five months here. Yeah. My point is we're in the budget we're going into the budgeting cycle right now. So if money is going to be set aside. You know, we'll be working on budget and on capital budgeting over the next couple of months, and that'll be presented at town meeting this is the time to give us some serious thought. I'm pleased to do that because of the budget by by member of the select board in vessel was doing the very same thing now. So, and him involved as well. In what capacity here. He's a member of the select board. And what capacity does a member of the select board and Beth will play into the process here. I think there's there's a cooperation between three towns, why not cooperation between four, right. That's that was keenly interested. At least the select board members. I think that's a great idea should outreach to those towns be done by the Randolph select board or the Randolph town manager. Should that be handled I couldn't imagine energy committee to do the outreach to the select boards of the other towns. Oh, I do but I can but I, you know, I'd rather that the town manager do it but if he doesn't want to do it, I can do it. Yeah, I think it makes sense Gary for a town representative to do that kind of outreach, if, if, if we're going to possibly discuss sharing a resource, and that should be from a town official. Nice to have some meat on the bone before we approach them and with an idea though as well. I can make conceptual sort of introductions. But at some point there's going to have to be a level of detail if we're going to move into warrant for town meeting. It's not the town meeting they keep in mind is the end of January when that warning has to be set is less than two and a half months to have something on about or incorporate into a budget at a time where some of our finance resources are, are a little bit under. So I just moving to ship or moving to fleet. To keep that in mind. I've placed Jeff Martin's email address into the chat. I'm sure somebody wants to do so I'll reach to him. He'd be willing to provide more information about what he does specifically for those six towns. Should we bring him into a future meeting. Maybe we should meet with key rock. In a future meeting, including. Jeff Martin. I have a pretty good relationship through some of my other my freelance writing pursuits and so on. With Kevin Geiger, who's now the director of planning for T-Ror, and I haven't met Steven or Jeff, but I'm aware of their work to some degree. I'd be happy to at least reach out to them and learn more about what Jeff is doing for the six towns and get their counsel on this idea of having a multi town shared energy coordinator. And see if they can cite any other models in the region that we might look to, but I do agree with Trevor. We need to hang a little bit more meat on the bones of this idea before we can really move it forward. And I think T-Ror could help us with that. So, Tom, I know I probably speak for everybody on this call that would be grateful for that effort that you made there. I think that would be extremely helpful. I'm talking to Kevin almost every week about I've been writing a lot about housing issues, particularly in the Upper Valley and Kevin's my go to person on on those issues. So, I can start with a phone call to him and and I will bet he'll hand me off to back to Bauer or Martin, but at least we can get their perspective from a regional planning standpoint about how to collectively move forward. So, I'll offer to offer to do that and I can report back to both the energy committee and the select board over the course of the next week or two, just what I find out. Well, that'd be great because I, you know, other communities have done this that we should be learning from their experience and not reinventing. So, I do know that Stephen Bauer is working with at least one community in the Woodstock area, which would be Woodstock, which is revising its town plan over the course of the next six months or so they're hoping to present a revised town to the community in the early spring and and Stephen is working very closely with the Economic Development Committee and Sustainable Woodstock on revising their energy plan which hasn't been touched in years. So, there's an example of what he's doing. But yeah, I'll take that on for sure. Great. Sounds to me like we have a good start here for the process of looking at townwide efficiency not time like but you know, within the town, municipally owned properties to get started. So what we might do in terms of staffing, and then having a process for prioritizing projects, and figuring out what makes us to do moving forward. We also heard from folks to tonight that there's some some solar power potential opportunities that we should be exploring and I'd love to hear more about those. I wanted to add Larry and to pick up on something that that Pat spoke to a little while ago. I know we don't want to get going in too many different directions at once, but we've spoken mostly about the municipal energy issues tonight, and how we can address those inefficiencies but we can get about what we can do for the general public to and so I'm thinking for example, I mean I'm just brainstorming off the top of my head here but we get an energy coordinator in place. Can we do an energy fair or some kind of public education program that that tells our people who live in the community what is a heat pump. What do wood pellets, furnaces work, what do they cost, what kind of rebates are available for them I can tell you because I'm looking into it $7,000 right now from the efficiency of Vermont to install a wood. The Energy Task Force has done several of those over the over the years. Right, right. And we can do another one. Yeah, yeah. I just, I don't I don't want to see residential. I mean, right now we've got to focus on the incredible energy drain we have dealing with our municipal buildings, but longer term big picture let's let's, you know, let's keep a focus on residential energy improvements in energy usage to see us bite off more than we can do we got to take things in, you know, reasonable steps but we've had three programs on weatherization over, I don't know, six or seven years and compared to other times we've done extremely well, but it's a drop in that bucket, compared to the knee, a drop in the bucket. Yeah, yeah. And all that stuff is really important but what I what I really like about working on municipal projects and making that a more immediate priority is just that we have a lot of control over that. We're going to do this and we can educate folks out in the community but it's it's hard to make folks do stuff. Absolutely. I hear you. But that's a role that the energy committee and task force can do because we've done it before we have these educational programs. Yeah, a lot easier to do that outreach Larry when when when the when the town itself is is behind and implementing similar improvements in their buildings as well. Yeah, I agree and we can, you know, publicize what we're doing at the town, why you know for our municipal buildings and and use them as an example of what you know you can do. Exactly. That's terrific. You know, hello everybody my name's William here. I moved to town about one year ago so I don't quite know everybody yet. And as a new homeowner I'm kind of looking into getting some, you know, energy improvements on my house. And the biggest hurdle for me has not been information, but about who I can actually talk to to get quotes and actually get somebody here to tell me, I don't have much money I can save. And so having a better list of those resources would actually have been much more valuable for me as somebody newer to town. William call up efficiency Vermont, and they will provide the people to do the work, who they have approved that they have an approved list. Exactly. Yeah, absolutely. I've looked through that list and kind of the problem I've been running into is everybody I've called doesn't work and Randall for his book solid. So, you know, to go back to some of the earlier conversation, you know, you're talking about the town leading the way. For me, you know, if I saw the town got new heat pumps from so and so that would be the first person I'd call. I just kind of want to throw that out there. That might be a good way to help people in the community is just by, like you said, leading the way putting up some resources. Here's who we use to see it in action. You know that might be very good. Barry, I was I was looking at that very list that you're referencing yesterday with respect to with pellet boilers and the two nearest contractors to Randall for in Montpelier and Barry and the next nearest ones in Bristol. I didn't call them to find out what their workload is right like now, like right now but if they're like any other plumber electrical contractor or builder in the state of Vermont right now. You know, they're inundated with work. They're short and to make it worse their short staff. So they're building costs are going up all the costs are going up. They don't have a number of employees to service their accounts and and their book six months eight months 10 months out so William I hear your frustration but you're not alone. It's just the way it is right now. I mean, use about peel your construction and who are excellent excellent and they are also capable of making the calculation on how much you're going to save as a result of doing the job. Another close one very competent is building energy and they're out of white river junction. That's the problem. Yeah. So, you know, in in any problem there is also great opportunity so it sounds as though there's an opportunity here for the energy committee and Randall to try to work towards developing more local contractors that might be interested in doing this type of work. Weatherization and he pump installation represents an enormous backlog of work for any one company that wants to take it on. We just need to find a way to develop that backlog so it makes it more attractive for a contractor to seriously engage in this area. And if we can do the outreach to pull the people in that are willing to do weatherization on their homes, then you create that kind of a backlog and you create that that attractiveness for a contractor to get more deeply involved in Oh, we know those contractors. Well, they don't exist right now that's the problem. They do exist. It's just that they're booked with work, but we work with them in the past successfully. The problem is, you have to get into queue. Oh, we have to create our own local queue. I can't hire anybody here telling you it's been a struggle in my business, you know, I need 35 people to do what I do and I could only find 11 and five of those were high school kids that were years old. So we have a major labor right now and that's what's going on with all the contract. I mean, harmony electric took no new customers, Tim took no new customers from March. I don't even know if he's taking new customers now. And he couldn't even serve his, you know, existing customers to the degree you wanted to. I had to do backflips to find somebody to install an EV charger in my garage. It's crazy right now. Yeah, I'd like to, I'd like to jump in here and say that I think we're getting a little off our topic. Yeah, we are to bring us back to focus and I think we've made some good progress. And I just, it's 630 now we've been we've been here for an hour. I think I would we have someone I I'm pretty sure was here to speak about solar power and some opportunities for the town and I thought we might be able to give that person a chance to talk before we look at wrapping up our time together. Larry, I just have one other question this reference to the six town project that Steven bowler is working on. Who knows a little bit more about that I don't want to call him cold and not know anything about it. What, what, what is he doing. Jeff Martin. Okay. Yeah, I believe it's Jeff Martin, who you want to contact. Okay. It's not safe. Our also works for T Rob. Jeff Martin works with the six. Jeff Martin works with the six. Okay, our works with the 30 towns. All right. So Jeff has a much more discreet or if you will. Yeah. Okay. All right. Well, I'll get, I'll get on those calls right away. Yeah, Steve Rower though is the contact person for Randolph in terms of energy issues. If you can't reach Jeff, you can you can reach Steven. Yeah, yeah. And so the person that's here from Norwich solar is Brendan Malley. And he can, he can explain the two projects that are in one, one has been permitted permitted and one is in the process of being permitted in Randolph. Yep. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. And so I just wanted to say at the start that the balance of the discussion is great because solar alone is not the solution. And we don't promote it as such. But, but it is an important element of what can be done. Very similar to the discussion of the, the town buildings. It represents an opportunity. You can make a specific decision where a town or a school district can make a single decision that makes an impact for a long period of time. So the, the basic idea is that community solar in the state of Vermont is designed so that as many people as possible can participate in. And so the way it works is that that we create local solar arrays. And, and we partner with entities, towns, schools, businesses, individuals who might not be in a position to make that long term financial investment. But they can make a decision with the energy dollars they already spend. And the majority of those energy dollars get funneled through our utility and out to buy energy that gets imported into our state. Our state produces the lowest amount of most amount of in-state generation of any state in the country. And so what we have here at Randolph right now are currently two Vermont 500 kilowatt community solar arrays. One is in permitting. We discussed that earlier this year. It's the Davis Road project. And the other has an issued permit, which is on the Gifford barn. And those projects are seeking those community partners who have bills that they pay for the utility. And we'd like to use that and connect with solar and make the local generation renewable energy possible. So that's what we're working out doing. So Randolph has right now one and hopefully two projects that will be available to partner with local entities. How does the money, or how does the, do they buy shares in the project? Is that how the, and then get credit for the solar generator of a certain portion of the array? So the way, the way that these community solar projects work is, is that we don't ask the town or the school to purchase the share in the array. You ask the town or the school to commit their energy bill to the array. So it's a call that it's a net meter and credit arrangement. So what happens is that the town or the school or other entity agrees to be served with credits from the array. They get those credits at a discount. So there are some energy savings that are not enormous but make a big difference over time with no upfront investment. So making that commitment takes what you would spend on your monthly electric bill. Like I said, which typically just gets shipped out of state for important power and uses that those resources to allow the building of local renewables. And the local renewables help us meet our in-state renewable goals. It's, it is complicated. It's important to mention that it's, that can be complicated because the renewable energy credits typically go from the project to the utility green power because the utility has a regulated entity has what they call tier two requirements. So they have to meet these requirements for in-state generation. So the Rex renewable energy credits stay in the state and they get retired here. So it's really a partnership model. As opposed to asking any one entity to do everything, which is find a place to build it, pay the money to build it and have all the benefits. The partnership model allows the each entity to do what they can. And the thing that the town can do or schools can do with the upfront cost is to sign up to be what we call the customer or the off paper, to use those credits. And that allows that helps us meet our in-state goals for renewable generation. I have two questions. One is, would the electric bill, would it somehow reduce the entity's electric bill? So it doesn't reduce the, it's doesn't reduce the bill, but the credits are at a discount. In the simplest fashion, the full rate reduces $100 worth of credits and the partner customer would pay, say, $93, $100 worth of credits to figure out. So it kind of provides energy savings. And second question is, since these are in Randolph, would these count on our scorecard for solar generation in the town of Randolph for the amount of solar generation? They do. So when towns have goals for the amount of renewable energy that they are able to put together in their town, these community solar rays count for them. Great. I'll make sure I understand a little bit better. So basically a private investor or a set of investors are constructing the solar array and the town committing essentially to be buying its power from the net meter credit that this array generates. You know, the community solar model means that you're buying, you're paying for the credit. So not the power itself, right. The value of this net metering program is that you might not be able to put your solar on your parking lot or on your school or in the middle of the town. The array is located and we do all that work to find a good place for it. And it produces that energy and the credits show up on the bill of the town or school and the town or school makes that commitment to buy those credits that it is from. This is a different approach than the community solar program we did here five, six years ago. And Susan and I bought four chairs and I don't know what it cost. And Susan did something similar. And that but that's a private one. And you had to pay for it. And I had to pay for it. In this case, just as an example, just as an example. If you have a town building that had $1,000 a month of an electric bill and that town building signed a solar net meter and credit agreement with an array here in town. The goal would be to have approximately $1,000 a month of net meter and credits show up on the bill. And, and they would offset the monies owed to GMP. And in turn, you would owe the array owner. Those for those credits at a discount. So say, you know, $930 instead of $1,000. How would we be GMP isn't purchasing fossil fuel generator power with those wrecks. The way the wrecks are treated is that the, the array by its CPG it's certificate of public good from the state of Vermont, and it's GIA generator interconnection agreement with GMP. So those wrecks are produced by the array. They are, they go to GMP and GMP uses them to meet their tier two in state requirement for renewable energy generation. So, that's been trying to jump in for a little while here. I just wanted to cut in on his via. Am I correct in thinking that Norris solar is working with RACDC. Yeah, so RACDC has signed a solar net meter and credit agreement for some of its building with Norris technologies and is served by solar here in Vermont. So there would be a customer. They're a customer you can talk exactly exactly and that's. And we have a, I know separately we've come to the town I believe the LED dynamics building the solar on the roof, but they don't own that solar. So they have a net mirroring credit agreement. So they get the credits produced by the solar at a discount. So that's one way to have have that store renewable energy generation be here without asking led dynamics to use some of their valuable resources to pay for this. This is interesting. And I think there's it's possible if this would make sense for the town. We've heard we've heard enough tonight to, at least in my mind, want to have you back at a board meeting where we can put this under, you know, our agenda as an item that we're going to discuss and so that other folks can know that we're considering something like this. Could you be willing to come back at another select board meeting next month maybe or in January. Of course, thank you for happy to do it. And I can just as, as Pat mentioned, this is a not a new thing so talking to towns that have met me in credit agreements, or talking to nonprofits that have them as super easy. There are lots of books and we're free to have we have experience with it and had it for years and can describe the experience. And I think your website explains this also. It's not what you said tonight sounds very familiar to me and I think I got the information from your website. We try we try but sometimes, you know, writing because it's pretty complicated but that would be a good idea I think to talk to entities that are doing it now but also spend a little time on their website. Because at least for me it's easier to see the figures right in front of me and how that works. So, you know, I'm aware of everybody's time I just wanted to say the main points are that solar arrays that are permitted or in permitting in physically located in your town are often hard to come up. So this is a, this is a special opportunity and our are really the goals that we all share here. And a big picture which is, we would like to move to a version of Vermont where more of the power that we use is generated in Vermont and is renewable. So those are broad goals, right. So you could say a mission, and that's great mountain towers goal as well. Okay, so it sounds like we have clear action items that we can move forward on as a result of our time together. I really appreciate everybody coming together so that we can do this. Is there anything else that folks are itching to get off their chest before we return. Just a quick question. I missed the first part of this meeting and I haven't met others in the past. But given the passage of the recent infrastructure bill I know there's a lot of funding in there for electric vehicle chargers. And I'm kind of curious if the town Energy Committee here has thought about trying to take advantage of that as soon as possible just as a way to kind of lay infrastructure for the future. And I think that in the future for when the fleet gets changed over, but, you know, yeah, has that been discussed that three years ago when the first offering came out. And we spoke with the hospital. We spoke spoke with the different hospital and Pat Moulton at the college, and they applied for it. They didn't get the town or Randolph to apply for it. And the other two could have turned down, but if the town of Randolph had applied for it, they would have got it. I'll offer here this is not solar related but our technologies has an EV marketplace, and we have a grant currently to install DC fast chargers in six Vermont towns with exactly for that purpose which is, you know, if the chargers aren't there. And folks won't come to the town with their EV cars and folks in the towns don't have the resources they need to buy cars, but if they are in the town they bring people to the town. They do bring. So it's right at the beginning I should say this is the first version of this grant it was a grant that we work with the state on, and it pays for the installation of what are called DC fast chargers. Level three, level three chargers. So they're expensive. Right. This is somewhere between 50 and $150,000 for an installation. So, but it's a significant resource that lets people visitors come to the town and charge their cars quickly like to get about 75% of a charge in less than an hour. Randolph to take advantage of soon. I'm not sure so I have, I've had other questions like this from other towns so these six towns are the first ones, but it is a promising avenue and I hope there's more opportunity and if I hear of it. I will certainly bring it to my own town. And that does the same thing as well. And they're just short drive north of us. So, yeah, I'm just really curious about the infrastructure bill, because I know there's like 30 billion or something for DC fast chargers. So, this is obviously what half that money has to take to end up in your town. So, you know, this grant is from money from, you know, a year ago. And so what we don't know yet is the path that money will take between the federal legislation and Randolph. I'm just curious here Larry didn't we have this conversation about locating electric chargers in the village we already applied for that grant opportunity I thought. Now it never happened. John Copan tried to make it happen, but it didn't happen. There is a level to charge of being installed by the coffee shop. Yeah, I thought we'd already been going down this path before we got what was available to us at the time. But Jerry Ward facilitated the one by the coffee shop. I know that we had these conversations at a select board meeting because we talked about the matching grant money. So I know it never happened. Ever happened. It doesn't. So it didn't happen. All right, well that's where I thought. I know we have some of the parking right up in the center and so I'm not sure what where that went but, well that well that's the date. So you're talking about the one here. Randolph or the one down and exit. We talked about different locations around the town to locate these and one of them is by the municipal offices and we talked about. Oh yeah. Yeah. So what happened there. Why, I'm not sure why. I'll give you the answer offline. All right. The ball was dropped. The ball got dropped in the application process. All right. Let's not drop that ball again. Any other questions or comments before we go. The quick comment. I think this has been a great meeting. I'm really hopeful after listening to what everyone has had to say. I agree with you totally, John. I think, I think it's a new day here. Can we review action items or is somebody writing down the actual action items from the meeting. I don't know who's going to talk to who for energy auditing does not go in your notes. There could we maybe do just a real quick review of Gary you're going to talk to two rivers about was it two rivers and did the free energy audit for the municipal town. I think those are the only two. Somebody's going to pull the baseline data or energy uses that'll probably be town staff. Counts staff is going to reach out on some of the coordinator models both from a single town to a share, maybe make some initial outreach to the extent we can with the information we've got. I think we need to dig into some of the weatherization type of models where we get to the part where we benefit. We need to dig into some of the weatherization type of models where we get to the part where we benefit the residents in addition to the town. There's a larger need for planning for these projects once they're identified, both the money and the timing. And then there was some talk about a resource listing and contacts event, just connecting with efficiency of Vermont, making them more easily available to new residents like Willem or anybody else who's interested, those were the five things that I wrote as takeaways from this, that amount. Sounds good. Sounds good. And we're going to hear more about community solar future meeting. Yeah. I think that sounds great. Great. I want to thank everybody for being here tonight. It was a fruitful discussion. And have a wonderful thanks to you all.