 So the first thing, so I'm going to call this meeting to order. First thing is to review and approve the agenda. And I think there's one switch that I would like to make, which is just switching the order of items nine and 10, the water resource recovery facility, phase two product discussion and the conservation fund award to have the conservation fund award come before the water resource recovery item, unless there's a reason why we need to have it in the order that it's in. Any thoughts on that? Nope. Okay. Any other changes to the agenda? Okay. Great. So without objection, we'll consider the agenda approved. And so we're on to general business and appearances. This is an opportunity for any member of the public to make a comment to the council or to make any kind of statement, if you would say your name, where you live and try to keep your comments to two minutes or less, that'd be great. And that applies to any comment generally through the meeting. And then there's, oh yeah, so the other thing is that comments during this section should be about anything that is otherwise not on our agenda. If it does pertain to an item, then you can comment when we get to that item. The only other thing I want to mention before I forget is that when we get to 8.30, we are going to have a break for 10 minutes. And so that means that if we're in public comment, we'll wait till the last person has wrapped up their comments and then we'll take a break. Or if we're in the middle of a presentation, we might, I might actually interrupt someone and say like, hey, hold that thought. We're going to take a 10 minute break, but that's what we're going to do at 8.30. And I think that is it. Nice. So to indicate that you want to make a comment, you can use the raise hand feature, which is under reactions, or you can turn your camera on and physically wave, or you can unmute yourself and just let us know that you want to make a comment. And I see, I see there, Peter, that you want to make a comment. So go ahead. Excuse me. I got a little bit of allergies going here. Peter Kalman, I'm in district three. I'd like to talk a bit about My Ride by GMT. Since early March, 2020, I've had the privilege and responsibility of serving on what's now called the My Ride Community Advisory Group. For those who may not know, My Ride with GMT is a new flexible, scheduled, flexible route public transportation service in Montpelier. Operated by Green Mountain Transit, My Ride is a pilot project that features technology enabled vehicles that provide curb to curb service, taking you where you need to go. The idea of bringing such a service to Montpelier was one of the creative suggestions that emerged in 2016 from Sustainable Montpelier Coalition's 2030 design competition. It was proposed as one possible way to reduce the number of single passenger vehicles in downtown Montpelier, which would in turn both decrease greenhouse gas emissions and allow for the conversion of downtown parking lots and spaces to carbon dioxide absorbing public green spaces and much needed workforce and senior housing. Over the past four years, members of the Sustainable Montpelier Coalition and their allies carried out an extensive process of research, public engagement, and dialogue with vendors and government transportation entities, which ultimately led to the government funded two-year pilot program, My Ride by GMT. In preparation for launch of that pilot in January 2021, the Sustainable Montpelier Coalition, Green Mountain Transit, and the Vermont Agency for Transportation convened an advisory group consisting of a broad range of stakeholders, including representatives from the Vermont Center for Independent Living, Capstone, Montpelier Senior Activity Center, Central Vermont Medical Center, and Montpelier Alive, as well as relevant government entities, including the Agency of Human Services, Central Vermont Planning Commission, and the Montpelier City Council. That group has been meeting regularly since March 2020. We had our first meeting just before things shut down for COVID. And during these meetings, we've been commenting on program features, sharing suggestions and criticism. And since the launch in January, we've been reviewing operational metrics being collected daily by GMT. Throughout this process, the staff from GMT has sought and received the candid advice of stakeholder representatives with the shared priority that this service must do no harm to existing riders who are primarily a mix of low income, homeless, carless, disabled, seniors, students. In regard, in this regard, the COVID restrictions on passenger's density has turned out to be a blessing in disguise. It has meant that the January 4, 2021 launch of the pilot was necessarily limited to reaching only several hundred riders. This unplanned, very soft launch enabled SMC members and volunteers to personally interview and educate current riders in the months leading up to the launch, and it allowed GMT and its very experienced software vendor to test their system in the unique setting that Montpelier presents. This turned out to be very fortunate as it revealed numerous glitches and unanticipated startup problems that while a bit frustrating to users didn't rise to the level of the disaster, it might have occurred if the rollout had been robust. So thanks to this unplanned, soft rollout, meticulous gathering and analysis of data, genuine stakeholder involvement of the MyRide community advisory group, and a determination to do no harm to the more vulnerable members of our community, the chances, I think, are very good that this innovative approach to transportation to Montpelier will prove to be a success and will contribute to Montpelier's net zero energy goals. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else? Yeah, Steve Whitaker here. Go ahead, Steven. I'll keep track of my equal time here. I am troubled by the disregard of the city recurring to adhere to public records law, open meeting law. And the fact that I made a public records request, I spoke to the council. I said, this consolidated fiber build is causing problems. And then I said, we need to look at having an ordinance. And then I sent information to some of the council members about and the public works director about a one dig once ordinance that's in other places and our statutory goals that require we not dig up the streets multiple times. And yet I was told there were no records regarding consolidated efforts to bury conduits on the road under the road. And then I found out that wasn't true and not only wasn't it true, the records weren't supplied to me until after the vote of approval had been taken. So I don't know whether that's ineptitude or corruption, but it's not okay either way. The fact that it has been raised to the council, you shouldn't force your citizens to have to have the courts rule on whether you're serious about a hearing to the law or not. That's just fundamentally, that's your job and you're not doing it. Records, I have to not give legal advice because it's not legal for me to do that. But I have to inform Chief Pete, it's not okay to say, I don't think I can find any records. He has to say, I certify there are no records. And I've informed him of that and he has not done so. Similarly, the appeal to the head of the agency was filed regarding these permit records. Bill Frazier has not responded to that appeal to the head of the agency. You have five days to do it or it's right for court. Like what the hell is going on with this council, you know? Do you think you're above the law? And I just find it outrageous, you know? And it should be like following off a log. You should be strictly adhering to public records law. And no, we have to answer buts and no swapping excuses because we don't have a staff attorney. You know? But I would like for y'all to have some discussion about this because there's no excuse for it. You should have, once you became aware, once Shaq became aware of that, that records request had not been honored. You should have repealed those permits until this was sorted out. You know, and make sure that dual conduits go under those roads so CD fiber can pull the same ones without cutting the same roads. I mean, this is not rocket science. Secondly, my request about the housing authority that we have an old veteran who's sleeping in a burned out apartment because the housing authority cannot find him alternate lodging while they settle their insurance claims and get a contractor ready to re-sheet rocket. That's outrageous. And it's been raised in Dan Richardson. I've asked for repeated calls numerous times, you know, for return calls, have, you know, Rick DeAngelis, but get this guy out of his burned out apartment. We're better than that. At least I hope we are. Some of us are. There. Thanks. For the record, that's not a factual statement. Yeah, and you say a lot of nonfactual statements too, Bill. The housing authority has actually not allowed the person into his apartment and he's insisted on returning. They have attempted to find alternate housing for him that he's declined. So the housing authority is not forcing anyone to live in a burned out apartment. We did look in. They offered him an apartment where a woman had burned herself to death that had not been cleaned. So Stephen, let's let him finish. Okay. I don't need more to add Steve's making accusations that aren't true. Okay. Well, thank you. All right, anyone else. Okay. All right, then. So moving on then to the consent agenda. Is there a motion regarding the consent agenda? Jack. And move the consent agenda. Second. Okay, we got a motion and a second. Any further discussion? Yes, Donna. Oh, you're muted Donna. I was referring to the minutes on April 28th. Just a small addition that I've already given John, but it's not in the attached copy for the minutes of April 28th city council. It's item 133. It says counselor moved and Richardson second to approve the appointment to the CB fiber. And so I just wanted him to sort my name. I made the motion. Very simple change. Okay. And so no, any objections to that? So there's, there's a motion and a second to, to the, those who made the motion and second, are you amenable to including that, that change to those minutes? Okay. Great. Thank you. Thank you. So that's, that's included. Any further discussion? Okay. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. And opposed. Okay. All right. So the consent agenda passes. And so we're on to appointments to the development review board. So there are a couple of folks who are up for reappointment. And I saw. And I saw a couple of people at the meeting. I saw Kate McCarthy here. And I'm not sure if I see. Joe Kieran in, but Kate, would you be up for introducing yourself and just telling us about. Yeah. About the development review board and interested in staying on. Certainly. Thank you. Mayor. Thank you. Members of the city council. Pleasure to see you all this evening. Thanks for being here. review board for just over a year, starting in February 2020, that magic month before, and have worked with the DRB members over the last year to try and keep things rolling. And it's been a same challenge, but I've been really, really glad to serve in that capacity. I'd like to continue. I've served on the development review board in different capacities since 2013, just a couple years after moving to Montpelier. And it's just seems like a very, I won't say easy, but a very fitting way to contribute some of my personal and professional interests in service of the city. It's a pleasure to do it. I want to say that I, two things. One, the staff support that we receive for the DRB makes it possible to do this as the volunteer. So shout out to Meredith Crandall, Audra Brown, and Tammy Furry, the reporting secretary. And I also would like the counselors to know that I think we've, we've always had a really good mix of people on our DRB. And I'm very proud now of the people who are serving because of the variety of backgrounds that they bring to it. I think it's always in my interest and the interest of the city in general to keep diversifying those backgrounds, backgrounds of experience professionally and, and lived. But I think we're, we're working well together as a board right now and I'm pleased to support that. Great. And thank you. And I don't, again, I don't think I see Joe, but I could be wrong. Joe, are you here? Okay. So there are two spaces, I suppose, and two folks who have reapplied for the Development Review Board. There's also appointments to be made to the Energy Advisory Committee. These are student appointments. Greta Sebo and Eva Stumpf have been, or have expressed interest in serving on that committee as youth members, but I don't see either of them on, but I could be wrong. Greta or Eva, if you are here, you could speak up. That would be great. Okay. Okay. So since, since they are not here, is there a motion regarding these appointments or we can go and do executive session? Yeah. Connor. Well, I hate to trample on past practice. It does seem pretty cut and dry today, unless anybody objects. I would be willing to make a motion to reappoint Kate McCarthy and Joe Kiernan to the DRB and the students Greta Sebo and Eva Stumpf to the Energy Advisory Committee. And, and so there's a second, but just to be clear for Greta Sebo and Eva Stumpf, you mean that you're appointing them as student representatives? That's exactly what I meant. For youth members. That's exactly what I meant. Yeah, right. Okay. Let's make it clear. And that's okay with you, Dan? Yeah. That's okay. Okay. Great. All right. So there's a motion and a second. Any further discussion? Donna. Well, I mean, I want to thank them all for service and the new ones that willing us to come on board, but especially Kate, you've been a long timer and that's a lot of time. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Yeah, well, certain gratitude and certainly, you know, I know offense that probably gotten a better board since I moved off. So well, thanks. Thank you. Thank you for willing your willingness to step up. And I think we're lucky to have you and Joe served on the DRV because they make it a much smoother place for these these review of these applications and the wealth of knowledge that particularly bring Kate with your planning background. I think we're a great thing to have. Thanks, Dan. Okay, so there's been a motion and a second. Any further discussion? Okay. All in favor, please say aye. Okay. And opposed. Okay. Well, thank you again, Kate. And please pass along our congratulations also to Joe and Greta and Ava. If you are listening, congratulations to you as well. I'm psyched to have some youth members on the molecular energy advisory committee. It's going to be great. All right, so thanks, everybody. All right, so we are up. Thank you. Yeah, good night. We are up to the home energy information ordinance for the third reading. So I'm going to officially open the public hearing on that. So we just have a few talking points and a few slides to share. So I'm going to kick us off here just with a few points about changes that we've made. We're really grateful for all of the feedback that we received and we were able to incorporate not necessarily all of it, but a lot of it into some of the changes. So in the attachments, there are the responses that we received from our lawyer about questions that we had posed to him, as well as a red line version of the ordinance since the last time. So I just want to point out, first of all, some of the points that our lawyer or some of the answers that our lawyer gave us, as well as some of the changes that have been made in the red line version of the draft ordinance language. So the first thing, there was one question about privacy, about the privacy of information. So it sounds like there may be some legal space for currently for this information to be public, but in a follow-up conversation that I had with the lawyer, so this is not included in what was in the attachment, but in a follow-up conversation that I had with the lawyer, he made it clear to me that if we were to craft an agreement with either clearly energy or anyone upstream from them, the Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnership or Efficiency Vermont, that that would be, it would be possible to write an agreement with them in such a way that would make it clear that the city does not have ownership or control of the data. So the committee is already committed to doing that and already on track to make such an agreement and the lawyer is on board with that plan. There's also a question about what we do when the when the seller has to make their best guess. So the lawyer addressed that question issue of liability, if the seller is making their best guess. So the short version is that he felt that it's clear that the sellers are filling this out to the best of their ability and that should be sufficient for coverage for them. In terms of appeals, so in the newest version the appeals section was consolidated with the penalties section and just as we were intending to rely upon state processes for appeals, he was clarified in the section that the appeals would go through the judicial bureau. So it's also worth noting in this section that the lawyer recommended that reset the cap at $1,000 rather than $500. So that's what the current draft says. If folks would like to reset that to something lower, I'm sure that that is something that we could discuss. Also in the draft ordinance language, the actual profile does not need to be filed with the city, just the certification that it's been doubly signed with the buyer. And another sort of notable change that we made to the ordinance language, we heard people about the need for some time to continue to test this out. And so we've modified the date that the penalties kick in to be January 1st, 2022, which would build in some time for this process to continue to be voluntary. So during that time, we will be able to collect data, continue to receive feedback, and make adjustments to the system as needed. We think that that would be good, we think that it would be good to have a check-in meeting or an update on how it's going sometime later in the year. So that's just a few highlights of things that have changed in the ordinance language itself. And I am going to pass it on to Lauren to talk about some equity issues. Go ahead. Yeah, thanks. So, you know, some of the questions that we've been hearing had to do with the potential equity impacts of this policy. So I brought this issue to the city's social and economic justice advisory committee. And that group didn't take an official action, but we did use a tool that we had developed that some of you might have seen during budget season of looking at potentially impacted groups of residents, and then potential negative impacts, positive impacts, and ways that you might be able to mitigate. So just wanted to share a few of the highlights of kind of considerations that that group was thinking through. So high level, you know, there was kind of an overarching, you know, this policy being part of our kind of climate work as a city and acknowledging that climate change, there's lots of evidence that lower income people, people of color are hit, hurt first and worst by climate change, and young people will face the worst impacts of climate change. So there was a general, you know, taking climate action when and where we can, from an equity perspective, there's good arguments to be made there. Going a little more into the details of the policy, there was a big focus from that group on just transparency and disclosure as being generally beneficial to people in the community, you know, identifying that for every requirement that this puts on a seller that needs to provide this information, there's a buyer who can benefit by making a better informed decision. We thought through how different community members might be impacted differently, thinking through, for example, young people and BIPOC Vermonters are more likely to be home buyers than sellers. There's currently a large discrepancy in home ownership among BIPOC and white Vermonters, and young people of course are more likely to be first time home buyers. So again, having this information as a home buyer can help inform your purchase. We thought about people with low or fixed incomes, and I'm just giving a few highlights, there's more detail if anyone has questions, but for sellers, of course, they would need to provide this information, there's the $15 filing fee. And then for every seller, there's also a buyer. So there's for lower income or fixed income buyers of a property, again, having this information about energy costs and being able to make better informed decisions and plans seems like a benefit for that population. We talked about access to affordable housing. That's one of the issues that's come up and, you know, and looking at what information we had available, you know, of course, affordable housing is a major equity concern in our community. We concluded that this particular ordinance is not going to be a major driving driver in access to housing, to affordable housing, or have a major impact on housing prices. And finally, we identified that there are populations that could have lack of computer or internet access or computer skills, and, you know, or for whatever reason might have trouble filling in the form. So we wanted to be really sure and really clear in tonight's hearing that, you know, if we move ahead with us that the city really needs to be committed to providing support for access to the computer internet and help filling it out for people who need that help, so that we can make this feasible for everyone to be following the ordinance. So that was our kind of commitment we would hope to see tonight. So those are some of the highlights. Thanks. Great. And I think next up is Varanique. Yeah. Hi, I'm Varanique with Clearly Energy. So I have a slide which I don't know if it was provided or not, but I have to talk through it. It's just one slide. My goal is really to try to help demystify the modeling approach. Hang on one second. Sorry, Kate, go ahead. Kate's going to share the slide. Oh, there we go. Okay. So go ahead, Varanique. Yeah, I think, you know, from earlier meetings, you know, people have a voice concern that and a science test model sort of dropped on the citizens of Montalier out of nowhere. And so I wanted to provide a little bit of background, both on the methodology and the testing that the model has gone through. So the first component of the model are federal appliance standards. That obviously covers, you know, the appliances like refrigerators, washers. There are also standards for efficiency standards for water heaters, base heaters, air conditioning with differentiations between normal standards and energy star standards. And so where you see kind of, you know, breakdowns by groups of years is to actually match back to historic appliance standards. So that's kind of the first component going into that. The model shares some pretty key assumptions with the federal models that are used, for example, if you go through an in-home model, something like a home energy score. So all the assumptions, for example, on occupancy-length consumption, which includes water consumption, how many loads of wash, that is completely shared with, for example, the home energy score model. The space heating and air conditioning components are calculated on an annual basis and depend on the size of the home, the type of the home, meaning that a detached home, so it's a standalone single-family home, has a different energy footprint from a condo and attached home. Mobile homes are treated separately as are multi-family units. Weather obviously comes in, so off for Monteliers, the same same-input weather applies across Monteliers. The other factors that go into determining the space heating are the amount of weatherization, the qualitative description of air leakage, and then back to the appliance standards, the overall efficiency of the system. And that piece has been tested against a federal dataset called the residential energy consumption survey data, which is something that the Energy Information Agency collects approximately every five or six years. And then finally for the last two pieces, lighting and plug load, plug load being kind of the catch-all for everything else, that's your toaster, your computers, your printers, all of that, your phone plugged into the wall, those are drawn from federal studies and the reference are at the bottom of the page. So in terms of performance in Vermont, the Vermont Energy Investment Corp, which is, and I point out exactly their relationship, but essentially efficiency Vermont, sister company or whatever, they took the model and ran it against homes that had gone through an in-home home energy score. Now the in-home home energy score is still a model estimate, so this is a model-to-model comparison. On average, the models are very close, so there are going to be differences from one home to the next, obviously, but they average out to things that are quite similar. And the correlation of the two models is also quite high, so above 80% really was 90% for the electricity component of the model and above 80% for the individual fuels, noting that we definitely had a greater sample size for natural gas homes than for homes that may have had multiple fuels or lesser use fuels like wood and things like that. The model has also been tested independently by the Rocky Mountain Institute, which is a well-known nonprofit in the United States. On 8,000 homes, there were two models tested. This was really kind of a test of a very mini version of the model of very few parameters to see whether it could capture the gist of energy consumption across the US. Ours was definitely the better performing of the two models, and the full reference to the study is also at the bottom of the slide. And then finally, the model has recently been adopted for use by one of the two federal mortgage backers, the government sponsored entities, which are better known as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to estimate the home energy burden across their portfolio. So the model will be used across the board at the federal level. So hopefully this, you are at the forefront, but this is also happening at the federal level. And then finally, two things. I think as a developer, I really appreciate kind of all the input and feedback through this process. I think we have a really strong commitment to help anybody that will need help in generating their V-Help profile. There is now a help button, I think, on every page along the process. And I think we've been pretty responsive at addressing issues. And so from experience with the Beta Tester Group and Multiliar, even if it does take people a few minutes to get started and get registered, it really does not take more than five or 10 minutes for people to kind of get comfortable with the system. And certainly, and especially at the beginning, we are very happy to kind of walk as many people through this as needed. And then if anybody else has thoughts or things that they want to discuss, I think we will continue to be available and encourage feedback. So that was a big modeling background. Thanks for Anik. And then Kate. Okay. So I would just volunteer to say a little bit about some of the updates that have been made to the tool since the first hearing. And volunteers at my house, just as an example for you. So those of you who haven't seen it, this is the website, cleartheenergy.com, if you want to test it out on your own. So one of the things that we, you know, I just took a screenshot of what my profile looked like when I just initially registered my house. This was without any of the input of the actual bill data. And then what we talked about last time was that you do have the ability to enter in your own energy bill. And for folks who are wondering where that is, there's just this section with the pencil icon to enter your own fuel cost. Yeah. We did add a feature that allows you to choose between putting it in as dollars or an actual, you know, gallons of oil, kilowatt hours. So that is now an option to toggle. But you can see here at the bottom, you can put it in dollars, or you can twist the pipe and twist it to fuel and electricity amount. And then you have options for kilowatt hours and gallons. And I have wards, so I have cords of wards per year. And so you can see how this changes the model and the profile once you've input that information. In my case, it reduced my actual accepted energy cost by around $400. And you can see this section shows up on the profile itself. So these are the actual kilowatt hours that I input. And there is a sentence that says, these are calculated from homeowner provided bill data. So just wanted to kind of show what that looks like for folks who haven't had a chance to actually use the tool or generate a sample profile. Okay, great. And Donna. All right. Can everybody hear me? Yep. Okay, great. I've been having some problems with connecting. So I am going to explain how we're going to provide information for anybody who's interested in this effort, where it's going to exist and what we'll be doing long term. So this is a program that I think everybody will agree is changing the way we behave around households and energy in the city. And so it's a change of program and activity for everybody who will be involved. And there are four steps to making positive change. They start with contemplation and preparation. And that's all that we've been talking about so far in these meetings. And that has been presented well to all of you. The second, the third and fourth components are the action that's going to be taken, which will happen tonight. And then the maintenance of the program and the understanding and explanation to the individuals who'll be at different points in time looking to get involved in this process. And so the city is going to maintain a web presence. We'll do that through the public works department. I'll be championing that along with our administrative assistant, Jasmine Benson. We will provide a basic document that is designed to in plain English explain the process to individuals, answer questions. We will provide comments back when people have an interaction with us so that future interested parties can benefit by that. Change can be challenging, but I think that we have in public works championed a number of initiatives lately that have required similar efforts to be taken and we've done that with success. So we'll also keep a log of questions and answers that have been provided. And we will, I'm sorry, I just lost the screen. I'm back again. Thank you. Sorry about that. So we'll take everything from start to finish, explain the tool, help engage residents, talk with current homeowners, answer questions for prospective buyers, prospective sellers around this ordinance and essentially be the eyes and ears to help the city make this a successful endeavor. Happy to answer any questions about that. And that's pretty much the context that we have for going forward. We're generally going to make sure that we explain to anybody who's interested and help them understand how they can manage this process. I want to also add to that that my understanding is that NEAP, the Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnership, is planning on running trainings for realtors to help get folks up to speed there. And Efficiency Vermont is also using this same home energy profile in a different context. So they're going to be using or they're opening up or the plan is that they'll be opening up a hotline for folks that have questions about this as well. So multiple avenues for support for folks if there are questions, which is great. Okay, so I think that is everything that the committee wanted to put forward from our conversations. So at this point, so just so you know how this part will work, I'm going to open it up for just clarifying questions from council, not necessarily a pining, but just anything like to clarify. And then we'll open it up to the public, and then we'll go back to discussion with the council. So first thing, comments or questions, not comments, clarifying questions from council. Yes, Dan, go ahead. Any question on the VEEP form that Kate had shown up, I'd seen it online, which is the main page on the left side, you know, it has that energy readout and it says homeowner verified. And that appears whether you've entered the data or not. Is that correct? That is correct. And that's to distinguish it from the homes and the cases where we're able to pull in a third party verified score. So there are homes which have either a hers rating or a home energy score in Vermont, it's more likely to be a hers rating. That third party in home, well, in home with some caveats, but that third party audit comes with a cost, which is what we use for those homes. And those show up as third party certified. Then there is an intermediate category, which is third party verified. If a credited professional is the person that's actually updating the information on behalf of the homeowner. So they're really only three categories. Right. So the homeowner verified would be there, even if someone was to put in, not put in any data on their own, but simply just generate the form, assuming and distinguished from a third party who entered data on their behalf or a third party that had certified various pieces of the report. Right. Yeah, that is correct. I mean, we could have a default category that's just blank before anything is edited. I mean, at some point the homeowner, when they create the actual profile PDF, check the box saying that, even if they have not touched anything that it looks okay to them. But, and that then carries on over to the actual PDF profile. Okay. I obviously have some comments, but that's the only clarifying question I have at this point. Thanks. Any other clarifying questions? Donna, go ahead. In that same area, if you leave it unchecked, it stays public. If you check it, it's private. Private to whom? Private to sharing. Well, okay. So you're talking about the, the, the box that is the, the check box just before creating the actual PDF profile. Is that correct? Well, it's the box right under after required. If I check it, I'm saying it's correct. Yeah. So that box really is, is primarily there for the, for the Vermont voluntary program. So for them, it allows them to keep the profile undisclosed to any further interaction with, with the real estate world. So it, we would not then, you know, share it under any circumstance with, say, Niren, which is the multiple listing system across most of Vermont. For, for Montpelier, where the disclosure is required, the box has no, the box is in some ways more confusing than anything. And I completely agree with that. But that's where it comes from. It comes from the voluntary statewide program. So at some point, whether I check that off or not, does my data go into an anonymous field to get a picture of house efficiency in Vermont? So the, the, the opt-in opt-out is recorded in a database called Helix, which is maintained by the Northeast Center due efficiency partnerships. And that is the system that can talk with the local. And in the case of Niren, it really does not like interactively talk with Niren, but that's, that's the database that aims to share home information with the local multiple listing system. So as far, as far as Montpelier goes, once you end up with the PDF, you know, that's, that's what, that's the piece of paper that you're supposed to share with, you know, your real estate agent and buyers. Did we answer your question, Donna? Well, no, but maybe it's not appropriate here. I guess I thought it's, there's, there's sharing with the real estate world, but I thought there was a way that this data ultimately becomes anonymous to give the city a profile of where our houses are. Where is our housing stock? So I must have just, Right. That's a city question. Okay. Okay. Thank you. No, I mean, I don't mean to not answer it, but I think that's, that's what Ann is trying to answer. To what degree, and again, I'm going to, I'm not the best person to explain this, but we want to make sure that these records can be kept private. And so if the city does have access, that, that it, you know, that they have the access that that they might need for summary information that, you know, but, but, but do not allow access to, you know, to the, to the private, private records. So, so that's, that's what the mayor is, is trying to work out with the agreement she talked about. Great. Any other clarifying questions? Jack, go ahead. Thank you. I'm not sure if this is a clarification question or more of a implementation question, but I thought I'd start here and the mayor and I had a conversation about this today. I know that a number of people, many people are very concerned about the privacy of any data about themselves that goes out there. And so, you know, it's been a while since I've set up my own profile here in the system, but one of the things that occurred to me, I can't right now. Okay. Okay. Okay. What one of the things that occurred to me is that it seemed that anybody, you know, there's a process where you're creating a profile and you claim a certain address to be your own address. And I didn't see any, anything built into the system that would prevent anybody from claiming an address and becoming the owner of that address within the system, even if it's not their address. And I don't know if that would be something that would have negative effects to people, but since people are concerned about getting, about personal data getting out into the public, I think it's something that we should clarify. And then the other question, which is similar, which is that if a buyer, if a seller creates a profile, part of that is, again, claiming the address, becoming the owner of that address within the system, presumably the seller would at some point sell the property. They're no longer the owner of the property, but they're still the owner of that address within your system. And so, I was wondering, well, what can we do? Or is it possible to transfer the ownership or prevent the former owner from making any changes to the record once that person is no longer the owner? And then a third question is, is there within the system a way to keep the seller's information confidential once that person is no longer the owner of the property? So it seems like it's a bunch of questions, but they're all in the same, in the same area of control of the data. Well, I can address the first two. So when you're initially claiming the home, there are two check boxes. One is I'm claiming the home, I'm the rightful owner. The second is allowed you to lock the account and prevent anybody else from editing it for a period of 30 days. And that lock once it expires, if you are the account holder, you can always go in the system and relock it. So that's kind of how we ensure that if you don't want anybody else to access the profile, nobody else can access the profile. The second question is there is a way to share the profile with either on a voluntary basis with another party or with the buyer. Now, I'm not sure how the seller would know the identity of the buyer, but there is a way to sort of share access. So there is a way to lock and unlock access to the profile by the owner slash seller. And there is a way to share and, you know, all it does is it sends an email saying you've been invited to access this profile at this location. So that I think addresses at least in part your second question. So the third question is more difficult because we have no information on the real estate transactions, which means we do not know when the ownership changes hands, at least not at this point. So besides the fact that the lock naturally expires and that the new owner could then go in and claim the home and take it over that way, we don't have kind of a, you know, a rigorous way of automatically switching the ownership. This that leads me to another question, which might get us somewhere. Once this profile exists and you've bought the house, you're the new owner of it, but is there any use that you would be likely to make of this profile as a home owner or is it only really relevant to a home seller? Like would you care about even having it once you buy the house or do you even care about having the profile? Well, we hope so. That's a broader discussion. I mean, I will give you sort of at least one example where it could become important. So we're currently running a pilot program with the Vermont State Employee Credit Union. They're offering a half a percent discount on the 30-year mortgage for anybody that wants to do an energy improvement on their home. So in this case, what we're seeing go through now with this are refinances. So those are owners that are refinancing their homes. They need to document the energy use consumption of their home. There's a lot of, it's a pilot, there's a lot of figuring out that that is happening along the way, but one of the documents that we're generating is the Vermont Home Energy Profile for sort of the before and after the work of the home. You know, there's a lot of other things happening with the pilot. We're doing home energy scores, but that at least can give you some context as to how it can be useful down the road. You know, I think the hope is that contractors adopt it, and then when contractors are doing energy efficiency improvements on the home, you know, they can help, they can help show that, hey, look, you know, you've gone from here to here on the web and you've added, you know, a couple of credits on the profile and hopefully, you know, people see that their costs are going down and their efficiency is going up. That's useful. Thank you. I've one, I think this is the last question for right now. And again, it relates to protection of data. I know it's not set up this way, but is it within your technical capabilities to change the profile creating process so that the profile is locked by default, and it would only become unlocked if the owner of the profile chooses to do that? So from a technical standpoint, yes, of course. I think the question is we do have to allow somehow for new owners to claim. So I think, you know, if that's the route that you want to take, then we would need to have sort of a, you know, oh, this product and this is what shows up now. It says, right, this home is locked for editing. You're out of luck. An added thing that would say request permission, request, you know, request access, and that access would then be granted, but then we would need some rules to make sure that we're granting access to the person we're supposed to be granting to, namely the new owner. So there's a little bit of rule deafness. It's not really a technical problem. It's more of defining the rules that you want to operate by. Okay, thanks. Dan, go ahead. Sorry. Jack's line of questioning raised another issue that occurred to me. When we talk about locking the profile, and certainly when we talk about transferring, you've outlined some of those issues, but I'm wondering, you know, what if there is sort of a false owner that comes and squats on the profile and locks it, or I'm thinking in particular, oftentimes property becomes contentious in divorce cases. So, you know, both people are on the deed, but one person is actually trying to sell it while the other person may be trying to frustrate such purposes. You know, to what extent, and I think the questions within that are, to what extent are you able to, and I presume the answer is you can do this technically, but is there any process in place for unlocking the profile if there's a false owner or a bad faith squatter of some kind? And the other is, even if it is locked, can a person generate the necessary documents from the system? Very good question. So, we have a technical way of unlocking profile. You know, we will generally, when that happens, this past week, somebody was testing and had some inquiries and we said, you know, do we have your permission to unlock it? We can unlock it. I think if it's a contentious situation, it puts us in an interesting situation. I don't know. I guess, you know, as part of the rules of the road, we'd have to kind of know who to refer to as a city, or, you know, but from a technical standpoint, we can unlock a profile. I can also jump in here too, Varani, give you, I have some thoughts on this. No, I was just going to close up saying, you know, if somebody does not have access but needs the actual PDF, it's just like unlocking it. We can access stuff, you know, we can generate the PDF of the VHEP profile as the home currently stands, right? Sorry. So, yeah, so this is the kind of question that would be addressed in the guide. And that is, I mean, so this is a good question, right? So, if there was a challenge or a contention about that, I think we could come up with a process for, these are the documents that you would need to provide. And, you know, if you were able to show that, then, you know, then we can facilitate the unlocking. That's something that we can put on our radar for further discussion with the committee. Okay. Any further questions, clarifying questions? Okay. All right. So, I, we're going to open this up for public comment now. And Susan Labarth, I see your hand there. You've been very patient. Thank you. Excellent. So, you're going to go first here, but I also just want to clarify again, if anyone wants to make a comment, you can either use the raise hand function, which is under reactions, or you can turn on your camera and just physically wave and we'll get you in the order or you can unmute yourself and just let us know that you would like to speak. So, Susan, you are up first. Go ahead. Okay. Thank you for accommodating me. I got myself a little better organized. I was aware that I ran it emotionally last time. First of all, I'd like to acknowledge the time and energy that has been put into this by the committee and by the council. But I do have some remaining questions and concerns. I want to thank very, very unique. Have I said your name right? For the slide that she shared with us, I think it was hers in which she, she did partially address some of my questions. And maybe that'll be obvious. I'm particularly referring to, this is just a quote from the materials that are in the packet on page 91 out of 206. Good heavens. Do you guys read through all that? Anyway, so the thing in the packet that says, and I think this is a summary of the presentations, why should I trust the VHEAP methodology? VHEAP has been developed and tested through a multi-year process involving various stakeholders, including a focus group of residents. The automated energy model behind VHEAP has been studied and found to be comparable to other industry accepted energy usage and cost estimation models. Okay. I'd like to know, has the council been privy to or been provided the details of those actual studies, the data demonstrating validity, reliability of the tool itself, and or the algorithm that underlies it, including the method used, the number of subjects, and the data analysis? I'm a physician. Drug rep tells me, oh, this is going to save lives. You need to prescribe it. That's not enough for me. I do look at the studies and what the level of evidence is. And we have a rating system. Is this A, B, C, or D? Is it based on, what do they call it, controlled study anyway? That might be difficult with the kind of stuff that we're dealing with, but I'd be more comfortable if I knew that something had been done along those lines, in particular with how many subjects. In addition, studies with data demonstrating the outcomes of use of the tool, the benefits and the harms. Okay. Not just this is going to cure your cancer, but are you going to throw up or die earlier? In terms of this particular project, is it going to, in fact, decrease Montpelier's CO2 output or some other environmental benefit? And what will be the harms to homeowners or buyers or real estate agents or what's the guy that's going to manage my estate when I moved to Greenmount Cemetery? The harms possibly to the municipality or to the environment. Once again, methods, number of subjects, data analysis. Has the council been privy to this kind of information? Do we really have a clear idea of what we're getting into and what we're prescribing to the community? That's my question. Those are my main questions. I do have some problems with the energy tool itself, aside from validity and reliability and reproducibility and all of that business. It took me over a month to get into the website. I kept getting these cute little error messages. Sorry, something went wrong. We're working on it. And then you're going to be paying fines because you haven't filed for six weeks. I don't remember what your fine structure was, but what's that going to add up to? And then it took me the better part of two hours to get to the point where I thought it was anywhere near accurate in terms of my particular house. It took me about half an hour to just do the part that was kind of whatever you'd call it, the standard home that was built in 1904 in Montpelier, what have you. And that initial thing came up more than $1,200 more than my actual energy expenses, more than $1,200. When I spent another hour tracking down some of the, first of all, figuring out where to click and where that little pencil was that allowed me to change things and how to get to that. Then it was tracking down some of the data. What was the R value and the stuff that was sprayed into my attic? God, I have no idea. I could probably figure that out, but that'd take me another couple of hours. I'd have to contact the contractor that did that, but wait a minute. He's retired. Where do I start? Where would my son start when he goes to sell the house after I've moved to Greenmount? He'd have no idea. He would be almost, I think, forced to use the standard model without my specific details. Now I have to admit that I've been in the house for over 30 years. I've owned the house for over 30 years, so I've done a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot. There's not even an option to enter the actual heating and air conditioning methodology that I use, which is geothermal. I have a well in my backyard here in Montpelier for a geothermal water heat pump. It's not there. At that point, I'm to the point where I have to go find where you put in how much your electric bills were. I have to go to the banking website and search all my checks or my credit card, whichever thing it is. I had a lot of trouble getting it from somebody, and I don't remember who it was, but somebody showed us a screenshot of that report where it has the arrow where your home lies. It has an arrow up top and it's green at one end and red at the other end. It started out when I did the standard thing. The arrow was right in the middle. I got it all the way down into the green zone by putting in all my own stuff, but it was a difficult process and I can't imagine my son having to do that. He would be faced with presenting to the realtor or the buyer 10 or 20, I hope, years from now, whatever the standard thing is. If it was me, I'd just throw up my hands and say, that's it. I'm done. Anyway, I'm sorry. I rambled on again. I promised you I wouldn't do that, didn't I? Let's see. I had listed here the areas that I found it difficult or that did not allow me at all to interact with details. I mentioned the geothermal. It was difficult to find out how to change my water heater fuel to propane, correct the information about my attic, my basement, their insulation, the correct information about the refrigerator, the stove, the dryer, which are both gas, and to indicate that all my light bulbs were LEDs. It pops up automatically mixed. All right. Sorry, I threw in the, I started to rant again. I apologize for that. Insummation. While I acknowledge the good intentions underlying this proposal, I really don't see complete objective evidence that will achieve the effects attended. And the result, as a result, I see it as an example of citizen harassment. I'm sorry, but I do, which will add costs, though probably small, the city administration and to the homeowners. And I urge the city council to table it until that is available to support its efficacy and until the tool is refined to more accurately reflect actual home energy use. Thank you for listening. Thank you. Joey. Well, hello and thank you for the opportunity to comment. This might be sort of a mind bending pivot from the comments you just received, which I appreciate a lot of what you just shared, Susan, but I just want to start by saying I have a different view of the importance of this small but important step and just really appreciating the work that you have put into exploring, essentially giving people fundamental information about their homes, which we expect in demand when we're talking about looking at a miles per gallon sticker in our car. So I really appreciate, I think about Susan's thinking about her son on her way to Greenmount. I'm thinking about my daughter, who's nine years old, and the small but important steps we need to be making to become more energy literate. And when we're talking about selling our homes and giving people a sense of the energy costs and the opportunity to reduce those energy costs and also to think about that at the point of sale. I mean, this is, again, I just want to underscore what I think this is a very, I appreciate the really thoughtful consideration that's going into this and clearly more time needs to be taken to work out some of the kinks. So I appreciate there's a little bit of a lag time before any fines are established and more work will need to be done to protect privacy and really sort of unpack and address some of the concerns that have been raised already. But it strikes me that this is really crucial information to be giving potential buyers of homes. I just think we've committed to net zero as a city. I'm proud of that living here. I think it's fundamentally important, especially at the point of sale, to give people an assessment so that they can make informed decisions about what they're entering into in terms of the cost of the home and the opportunities that they may have in front of them to access some of the incentives of the programs that the state of Vermont offers to reduce fossil fuel consumption, which is, again, not only good for people's pocket books, but good for the planet. And when I think about my daughter and young people in future generations, this seems like one small but fundamental step forward to, again, give people information in sort of in a transparent way. And I appreciate underscoring the opportunity and the need to work out the kinks and really dig into the considerations that people are raising. But fundamentally, I really hope that you continue to move forward in embracing this as a city of Vermont Piliar and also recognizing I work on energy issues. I think that voluntary approaches are nice and they may seem less onerous. But ultimately, to do what we need to do, I think requirements are going to be essential. And this seems like a really important step forward. So thank you for the thorough work that you have done to date and for the ongoing work that you will do to address some of the very legitimate concerns that you have heard tonight. Thank you. Steve Whitaker waiting in the queue. Go ahead, Steven. There's no one ahead of you. My comments are better informed, but not much different than last time. That this is not half-baked. This is not ready for prime time. There are some of the smarter people who commented saying that this is not ready for implementation or adoption. I think you really need to get off the self-hat on your back politically correct nonsense that's driving this. We've got major serious issues with infrastructure around town and public restrooms, et cetera. So we're scratching. We're doing hot tub peacock feathers here and it's nonsense. The privacy issues are real. I remind you of Vital being a non-profit housing the data of all our medical records. I took them to court and they were deemed to be subject to public records law. And so I'm pretty sure that there's case law not being a lawyer. I'm pretty sure there's case law that says you can't... I'd like to know the name of the attorney that you relied on to say you can just offshore it by saying we don't have possession of it and that would stand up in court. You happen to know the name of that attorney that advised you that? Madam Mayor? Yes, but you can continue your comments. I'll address them all at the end. You will name the attorney because... But anyway, the complications of this... I think if the citizens that want to sell their house at a premium can pay for an energy audit and get it done properly by a professional, this is kind of a do-it-yourself, you know, average and generalized, even the 30-day lockout. You know, I like that somebody else can capture your profile on the 31st day. It's just... It's comic how half-baked this is. While the intentions are good, I understand the intentions are good and someday it may be ready. It may be a public service. It may be something that the League of Cities and Towns hosts and keeps secure for all its member municipalities. But to be going about it the way we are, I have to agree with the person that called it citizen harassment. But yes, this one would be fun to shut down through court action if necessary because of... I can see what's pushing it and the lack of readiness for a prime time. It is. Okay. Thank you. Peter. Okay. I prepared some remarks, which I'll deliver some of. But I'm going to have to deviate because of some of the opening statements that were... Presentation were made. I definitely applaud some of the changes that have been made to the ordinance, namely the elimination of the aspirational paragraphs in section 21.1 regarding purpose, particularly the unsupported assertions regarding consumer protection. I'm glad you got rid of that. And also that you tried to figure out the legally problematic section. I'm not a lawyer, so it sounded a little gnarly to me, but maybe you've got to figure it out. The most interesting one to me is the delaying the penalties until January 2020. I have a question. You don't need to answer now, but I hope somebody's thinking about what does that actually mean? Supposing I put my house for sale on December 31st, or December 1st, or October 1st. And it hasn't sold by January 1st. And I didn't fill this thing out. Well, I started the process before I didn't sell it. Now am I going to get penalized because I didn't... I'm not sure what that cut off actually means legally. So I hope someone's going to figure that out. But the idea of the delay is a good one, a very good one, provided that you really are able to do the things that you are going to need to do to make this ordinance work. Now I've sent you guys lots of emails about suggesting things, and I heard some responses that seem to be, quote, answering me. I'm not looking for answers. I'm trying to get you to do the right thing. I'm going to just give you one very good example. Lauren, I'm glad you brought up with C. Jack. I sent the information to C. Jack for months about this, never got a response. However, I want you to notice that your harms were all focused on the buyer. You did not address the harm to the seller, and you did not address seniors. I'm going to tell you right now, there are 100 seniors who are going to have to sell their homes in the next 5 to 10 years, and these people, and I think Susan Labarth gave you an idea of the frustration that she's considering. I tried to use this on our home that we're selling right now, and boy am I glad that we're selling it before this goes into place, because it is impossible, I think, as Ben Hoffman showed us. It's impossible to actually input stuff that is accurate, and it leaves you with either having that sort of taking all the numbers that Veronique showed us that come from this national database and this national database and this national database, but this national database is not necessarily a reflection of Montpelier at all, and certainly not of my home or Ben's home or Susan's home, and when seniors are in a situation where they have to sell their house, this is going to harm them, and I think you guys have to, God, have to take some very, very serious look at mitigation for seniors. You really need to think about that, and I also think you need to think about, you're saying, oh, well, low-income people are most of the buyers in BIPOC. That is true, but until there's more than a pilot program with VSECU to knock off half a point, think about the real problem of affordable housing in this town, and think about the fact that this ordinance is going to drive up prices of everything in this town, because the people who can afford to do this, like me, are going to do it, oh, and here's the dirty word, voluntarily. We're going to do it, and our houses are going to increase in value, and people who cannot afford to do it. Notice how few people are here today, and I can tell you, I talk to people every day who are low-income or moderate-income, and I tell them about this, and they just shake their head in disbelief and fear, but they're not here. They don't have time to be here. They're trying to hold their lives together, and I think CJAC needs to go back and not just think about young people and the buyers, think about the sellers. Think about the pressure that this brings. Now, I'm not going to go, I had a whole section like Susan's. These studies, and Anne sent me to these studies that, I think four or five studies, and I looked into them, these studies are non-comparable. They do not apply to our situation. Most of them are for new construction. We're not talking about new construction here, and when they're not with new construction, they're using things like hers and Leeds, other completely different instruments. This instrument, this VHEP, was developed for Vermont, not from a failure, and you guys are making changes in it. This instrument has not been tested. Oh yeah, you had some focus groups. Listen, I was in publishing for 20 years. I published software for 15 years. I would have been fired if I tried to publish a program or put out a textbook based on focus groups. Focus groups give you general guidance. They do not give you the kind of testing you have to put this thing through. I went through this thing with my wife who was an editor, and we tried to figure this out. That interface has so many flaws in it. If an editor brought this to me, I would have said, come back when you've made it close to being acceptable. This needs a lot of work. Where is the plan to, I don't want you to do this. We did this. We did this. You need to do more. You need to do much more. As for efficiency Vermont answering questions or need answering questions, we tried to, we had the same problem with Susan. We couldn't get on. Finally, we got to Veronique, I don't know how, and she did some magic fix and we got it on. Do you know what the magic fix was? It turned out because my wife asked. Some programmer in her company got us mixed up with another program. That's the kind of startup problem, human error that is bound to happen. That's why I told that little story in the beginning of the meeting about how my ride was developed slowly over time with genuine stakeholder involvement. We had people on those buses talking to the present riders, finding out from them what their fears were, what their issues were, what wasn't working for them, what was working for them because we were replacing their regular routes with this route and we made changes to and we made via a much bigger, much more experienced technology company than Clear Energy and we showed them how their model that they've had in Copenhagen and here and here and here and here wasn't working here. Answers, we have to be careful about Montpelier exceptionalism. I'm not talking about exceptionalism. I'm talking about each place is unique and we need a program that will work here and has to be tested here and has to be tested in high-stakes situation. Having a few people, you know, go through this who are already predisposed to this using this tool and giving ad hoc suggestions is not the same as testing it out with real people having to sell their homes and I would strongly propose that instead of having a delay of this ordinance, you change it and have a program that will be studied and encourage people to participate voluntarily, help them through the process and they will help you to redesign the instrument appropriately but if you just say, oh, you know, for the next six months we just want to enforce this, that's not going to get you the right group to do testing with. So I just have to say I'm more discouraged by hearing these defenses, hearing Donna assure me the Jasmine and, you know, and the overworked Public Works Department is going to be able to answer the questions. I have about 50 questions. Who am I going to talk to, Veronique about this? You know, we call the efficiency Vermont. They didn't even know, they didn't even recognize the word VATP. I hope you guys understand that you've bitten off more than you can chew. You need to delay this, you need to run this as a voluntary program. Sorry, I didn't mean to sound like Steve Whitaker. Thank you. Thank you Peter. Susan, I see you've got your hand but I want to make sure that anybody who hasn't spoken yet has the opportunity to. So anyone else who has not yet spoken like to weigh in? Hi. Oh yeah, Peter, I see you. Go ahead. Thank you. Yeah, for some reason my hand doesn't raise or the hands that I sent you you didn't see. So Peter Tucker, I'm a resident of North Park Drive in Montpelier and also work for the Vermont Association of Realtors as our Director of Advocacy and Public Affairs. And I've been involved for the past year with with the statewide, you know, programs to develop, you know, this similar system. And I've learned a good deal about it. One thing I've learned tonight is I actually know, I think a quarter of the people who have tested this program because I am aware that, you know, around 16 folks were in the Montpelier focus group. And, you know, you've heard from some residents that were able to get through it and get on the profile. And I think they're, you know, their results are, you know, kind of indicative. I was able to log in, you know, claim my home and and log into the profile, you know, not an incredible amount of difficulty. What I wanted to see was how this system works with with kind of the default settings that it has. You know, as we know, City of Montpelier provided a lot of information to NEAP to populate through public records, tax records. So when I called up that default profile, you know, and I looked at it and I said, boy, I mean, you know, I'd have to change this and I've got to change that. There were 13 fields that I felt like I would have to correct before the profile even started to represent my home. And it's a combination of public records and assumptions. But I think that that the majority of that public record information is going into or is part of that algorithm that defines a home, whether or not the owner creates additional inputs in their profile. So, you know, I, you know, my experience has been that this system has a number of, you know, a number of issues with the records that it's working off of. Something I can tell you is that this profile cannot auto populate our multiple listing service system. There's something in the software design of our multiple listing service that doesn't allow for auto population. So that is, you know, that's just another kind of, you know, one of the challenges of the profile. We worked hard at the state level to protect the privacy of owners who did enter information into the profile. It's very important from our perspective that that information is made available only if the owner wants to make that information available. If this ordinance becomes mandatory, that, you know, it's kind of taken out of their hands, as we saw, you know, the checkbox really wouldn't apply because they would be forced whether they wanted to or not to provide this information. You know, the realtors and I have had continual conversations with brokers in in Montpelier, and I'm sure you'll hear from at least one later, you know, are really concerned about the ability of this profile to represent properties accurately. And they oppose, you know, the creation of this ordinance, you know, and it's very clear to me that they, you know, they feel strongly about that. Just a couple of other thoughts that I've had, you know, after the first hearing, you know, applying this to for sale by owner properties is going to be extremely challenging for the city. You know, our multiple listing service publicly available, anyone can go on and take a look and see what's there. Some for sale by owner, you know, websites are available, but there'll be many that you just don't, you're not aware of. But at the end of the day, you know, why are realtors concerned about this? And the real reason is that we work with property owners every day. And, you know, we work with buyers as well as sellers. But, you know, I think the point that's been made here this evening is that there are sellers of older, vulnerable sellers or older properties that are just not going to do well, you know, in an energy profile analysis. I agree that the, you know, the statement of purpose, reducing that or, you know, really taking most of that information out was probably a smart thing to do. You know, because at one point it did say, you know, this is for buyers to properly price properties. You know, having spent 25 years as a broker, I know that what that means is that buyers are going to use it as a negotiating tool to get a lower price on the property from a seller who may not be able to either make those improvements or be able to afford that loss of equity in their property. So, you know, that's why, that's why we're here. That's why, you know, Tim Haney's on the call. And that's why we're concerned about it. It is, it does have an impact on your community. It's an impact on, you know, your constituents, the voters of the community. And if it's not working incredibly well, now is not the right time to enact disordnance. So, I'll leave it at that. Thank you, Peter. Anyone else who has not yet spoken, want to jump in? Okay. Seeing no one else. Susan, if you want to go again now is okay. Okay. Peter's comments just stimulated a couple of thoughts in my mind that I kind of wanted to follow up on. If you want my bona fides for elderly, I'm 78 years old. But I had the first Apple computer that was commercially available and I've dealt with electronic medical records for over 20 years. So, I'm not, I'm not an IT idiot. And it took me upwards of two hours to get this thing to where I thought it truly reflected my home. With regard to the cost and your lower income sellers, my home improvements have been all voluntary and probably way ahead of the curve. In terms of cost, probably about $100,000. The geothermal alone was $30,000. And that was, I can't even remember, maybe 10 years ago. I don't, I can't say the year, maybe more than 10. I've had one service call that cost me $5,000 because of a problem with the well. And that's probably not sustainable for some people. So, maybe you're not expecting people to go as far as I have, but I'm not all the way down at the green end. Even so, I'm just a little bit into the green. So, there's that. There's the cost of responding, if someone wants to, to the report that they generate through this tool. And the last thing I want to say is much more simple. Please stop comparing it to miles per gallon for God's sake. That's two numbers. That's two numbers. There's no algorithm. It's miles divided by gallons, two numbers. It's not a complicated thing like this. The end. Thank you. Just want to check again if there's any, but oh, Ben Huffman, go ahead. I had thought I would not make any comments because I know I've made my points pretty clear, I hope. But I guess I can't resist. Particularly with Veronica. I don't know how to pronounce her name. Veronica. Say it again. It's Veronica. Okay. Two things I want to raise. One is simply that selling a home, buying a home is all about specifics, about very concrete circumstances. And there is no way that the score on the, through this algorithm, is going to address the questions, the multitude of questions about a home, which are really what's important. And as you know, and I had about a year ago the interest in trying to develop basically an alternative to all this through using public monies to assist people to actually collect genuine data through professional audits. And I made a real effort to get information from energy efficiency. They were, it was a zero. They had nothing. And the point here is that what's clear to me is that if we're going to make a headway on dealing with the climate situation, there are going to have to be a lot of bonafide energy off it's done so that people can then make the investments and the improvements that are required to reduce the emissions. And if in fact, a thorough, complete professional audit, including the scan and the air infiltration, can be had for roughly $400. I see no reason why that should not be what is mandated at the point where something is offered for sale with the cost of that shared by both the seller and the buyer. I mean, when you think about doing a title search or any number of other things that are entailed in a real estate transaction and think that providing information about energy consumption is such paramount importance that it needs to be mandated in the way that this would propose to do. It makes perfect sense to me to approach it in the same manner through the help of professional experts and gaining the experience, which would be a real value to a buyer who would want to know what it is that's going to require to be spent in order to have the kind of energy efficiency in this home that I might desire. And I guess there's no point in pursuing it further. It looks like there's no opportunity whatsoever in this current proposal to do something other than go through the mystery algorithm. And so I will just say I'm disappointed in my city taking this kind of approach and leave it at that. Thank you. Other comments from anyone who has not spoken yet? Okay. And Peter, did you want to make a second comment? Yeah, let me just make a couple of slightly more positive comments. I think there's some things that we need to take a look at. For example, I'm surprised some of the real estate people didn't point this out. There's no Montpelier real estate market. There's a central Vermont greater Montpelier market. And some of the materials that have talked about a level playing field. Well, how is it a level playing field if Montpelier sellers need to do this and East Montpelier sellers don't? We need to think about the fact that like the governor says we're not an island. Montpelier is not an island either. The second thing is, and I'm sure I know there are politics behind this, but come on. If we are serious about wanting buildings to be greener, how about the commercial buildings? Why is this only for residents? Why? Because we're more vulnerable. We don't have the cloud. Okay. But you guys, if you guys are serious about this, you need to turn to the commercial owners of commercial property and say, this is going to apply to you too. And the third thing, and I mentioned this a number of times, how about waiting and seeing what's going to happen with the Green New Deal? The feds and the state may really have some answers for us that are going to be more than about 100 houses a year, which is really anemic. And then the last thing I want to say is, and those are all positive. Let's wait and find out what happens. Let's talk about this as a regional approach. And let's get the commercial properties under the same kind of treatment. But, and by the way, on these studies, the materials that you guys showed us last week alone in the presentation, the VHEP has been used and similar tools have been used almost exclusively in non-mandatory settings. Look at the map of the very, very, very few places in the country that have done mandatory. And ask yourselves, why? And I think a lot of the problems that we've been talking about here would go away if this was voluntary. And I'm sorry, but voluntary does work. And we do not have, Lauren, we do not have decades of evidence that voluntary measures don't work. Are they enough? Probably not. But is this, are these 100 homes enough? Absolutely not. Because I don't think the answers are anywhere in what a municipality is going to do. They are what the federal government's going to do, what the state government's going to do, what countries are going to do together in Paris Accord kind of things. And they're in the hearts of individuals. And the hearts of individuals not only include caring about the future for our kids, about, you know, the climate. They also care about sending our kids to college. They also care about putting food on the table. There are lots of things that people care about. And making them feel like criminals, because they haven't filled this thing out, that language is so punitive. It's disturbing. It really is disturbing. When you make something a law and have penalties associated with it, you make people who feel that they can't do it feel like criminals. It's blaming the victim. All right, I'm going to shut up. Okay, thanks, Peter. Anyone else? Yeah, I'll just say here, here to that person and say, I didn't want to sound like Peter. Okay, anyone else? Okay. All right. So thank you, everybody. There are a few things I wanted to just comment on. So thank you for those comments. Those were great and helpful. And so I want to clarify just a couple of things. And some folks asked some questions. So I thought I would answer what I can anyway. So one thing, so Susan, you asked about how will this affect CO2 and Montpelier? And the studies that we have, there have been multiple studies on this sort of thing. And this is really why we've pursued this in the first place. The studies that we've seen show that depending on the study, between 12 and 37% of home buyers end up making energy improvements to the home that they were otherwise not planning on making. So that was very encouraging to us. But I'm also happy to share those studies with you if that is useful. I also thought it was really interesting that they didn't have the option for a geothermal heat pump for water. I feel like that's really valuable information to know and something that can or should be incorporated into the process. There was a question about who our lawyer was. That is Joseph McLean. And there was a question about when, like let's say this kicks in, there's a date that where things, either penalties kick in or it starts to be mandatory. My understanding is that there would not be any provision for being grandfathered in if it was listed previously. If it's being listed at that date that you would then be required to do the profile. There was another, oh, there was one thing that I wanted to point out that I'm not sure. I think you might have said it in the comments at the beginning, but I wanted to make sure we made it really clear. We've also added a comments section. So if in the end people enter their data and let's say there just ends up being something ultimately very weird about the house or something really unusual that we've added a comment section so that the seller could specify that. They could say, well, I don't think these numbers are quite right because blank. So it's an opportunity for the seller to make any kind of comments about anything, particularly about the house. So I just wanted to make sure that I had clarified that. All right. So any, I guess that's it for that. Any other folks from the committee want to address any comments or respond to anything? Okay. All right. So Council, what are your thoughts? How do you want to proceed? Dan, go ahead. Sure. Well, I want to thank the committee for adopting a number of those changes because they've mirrored a lot of my concerns. And I think they've taken care of some of the issues that I had, removing the intent section, eliminating the actual recording of this sheet in lieu of a certification sheet. I think these all deal with this. But the one issue that I guess I would push is that I would urge that we consider making this voluntary for a full year as opposed to six months in order. And the argument that I would make in favor of it is about three points. First, I think a full year's data of home transactions gives us a better picture of the number of sales, the voluntary versus involuntary compliance, the issues people have as well as the troubles or evolution of this. And I think this is one of these ordinances that we're looking to make long-term changes. And so the idea of an additional six months of voluntary compliance, I think gives it a full and true run. The other reason I believe that extending it to a full year for voluntary compliance as opposed to six months is sensible is that I do think that we are hitting the tip of the iceberg on a number of these issues that these are things that we're seeing as we're sitting here at our desks reviewing this. And I think in actual practice, there'll be additional ones. And so giving it that extra six months, I think gives it that extra six months of protection to work through some of these issues so that we don't end up penalizing homeowners who are selling and going through this for the first time. The third is that I think it also addresses the remaining concerns and issues that we've talked about, whether it be opportunity for the Green New Deal to come in or the idea that the state is working on something similar and maybe catching up. That gives another legislative session for them to do that. And it gives us an opportunity to have that click on from voluntary to mandatory after that legislative session, but give us the opportunity to pull back if the state legislature and the realtors were to come up with something better. For those reasons, I think adding that extra six months seems sensible. I don't think it takes away from the impact of this ordinance. Gives us a bit of a safety buffer, allows some of the testing that's been alleged to have either occurred or not occurred to really be settled once and for all, but also gives people a year-long heads up to say this is coming. And so if somebody is feeling very motivated not to participate in this, it gives them a year to make decisions in that respect. And I think it would give us an opportunity in the next spring to look at eight months of data about this and to see whether or not voluntary compliance works or whether there should be a mandatory element or whether this is so successful. Of course, it should be mandatory because it's a wonderful tool everybody's using. I think it builds in all those possibilities, but stops us from having the situation that I think a number of the commentators were concerned about. So that's my big pitch. I think most of the other concerns could either be classified as, I think, changes to the form as it evolves, such as removing the homeowner verified plate, when no one, when you haven't as a homeowner actually verified any of that information, I think is a really important change. But it sounds like something that can easily be evolved over time with the committee. I think the dealing with the sort of squatter issue is more complicated than any of us realize. Just because, and I'll give an example, in divorce cases all the time, you see this where one person doesn't want to sell the home, and they're on it, and they squat on it, and the other person is really motivated to sell, it becomes yet another block in that fight. And I know that that's not something that's necessarily, that's going to exist anyway, and that exists for a number of other issues that we as a city deal with. We don't stop recording deeds because of that problem, for example. But it's something is going to have to be addressed a long time. And I think it further illustrates giving us a year sort of breathing room to check in and see how this works allows those type of problems to filter through in that first year. So that's my strong pitch to give this a year. And I think I could support this ordinance in passage with that year. But without, I think a number of these issues, six months strikes me as just from my own personal point of view too short. Thanks. Thank you. Jay, go ahead. Yeah, I would just take, I absolutely agree with Dan on giving it a year. I think that there are a number, we've heard from plenty of folks, there's a lot of issues that need to be worked out. Having, you know, launched a couple of apps and a number of websites, I mean, having a strong beta period is gives you real world information into how, into how something like this will live and breathe in the community, or whether it's, it's for a homeowner or a potential consumer or whatever. But you've got to put it in people's hands and then learn from that process and then adjust and adapt and make it work for them. It's not all, it'll never work for everyone, but you've got to sort of, it's got to go beyond more than just a small focus group. And there is good data and there are a lot of energy has been put into this, but it's got to sort of get out in the wild so we can learn from it. And I would take Dan's, actually Dan's comment, in terms of supporting this and moving forward tonight. It's a little bit further in that what I think what we should do is commit to a feedback, feedback loop structure that we say, you know, first off, I wouldn't wait till July 1st to make it available, make it available tomorrow. You know, Tim's on the call, he'll tell you, I mean, I know year over year things are different, but summer is the time, right, for real estate in Vermont, generally, right? So I mean, I know the market is what it is now, but you know, transactions are happening. So we should get it out there now and then create a structure where on November 1st, we have an opportunity to say, okay, this is what we've learned. This is who we need to engage with. We need to engage with realtors, with homeowners, with sellers, with buyers, we need to understand, have they used it? If not, why not? What did they learn from the process? And then we take that in, we say, okay, all right, now we've got six weeks, we're going to adjust the tool, this is what we've learned, and this is we're going to put out a new version on, you know, the beginning of 2022, we're going to go through the same thing in the spring, and then we're going to launch it and require it moving forward, based on that feedback. So I just, I strongly support the idea behind the work, and I, you know, what I heard that really resonated to me is the importance of making sure that homeowners are energy literate, that they understand what, you know, the impacts of these decisions that they make in their homes, and can convey those and understand those. But I do feel like something like this that is something of a behavioral change, like Donna alluded to, is something that needs to be out and be used in the real world for at least two rounds of, or at least one solid, maybe two rounds of feedback before we can, before we're in a position to fully require it. Thanks. Jack, go ahead. Oh, Jack, you're muted. Sorry about that. Okay. I've received a bunch of communications from people at home and heard and listened to all the comments that we've had at the meetings, and it strikes me that they come down to three major categories. One is that, as Peter Kellman mentioned tonight, this ordinance will not in itself be sufficient to address the important issue of climate change, and that more action is going to be necessary. And of course, that's correct. For instance, I would like to see us be able to apply this to commercial buildings, but that is not the authority we have from the legislature at present. And hopefully, as we implement this ordinance and we show that it's successful, that will give us ammunition to argue for expansion to commercial business sales. Second, we've heard a lot of comments about how this ordinance isn't going to be as good as we hope it will be. The algorithm, which I don't, I still don't consider algorithm to be a scary word, but the methodology may not give a perfect reflection of the energy uses or energy costs of a property. And so it's not worth doing because we're not going to get perfect data. And I assume that that's true, that the data is not going to be perfect, but I don't think that the fact that this project or program isn't going to deliver perfect data is really enough to say that we shouldn't pass the ordinance at all. I think that already the changes we've seen, mostly not in the ordinance, mostly in the instrument, are already moving us to a better place than we started in. And finally, we've heard suggestions that this ordinance will impose severe harmful effects on unsellers, particularly on minorities, old people, and other disadvantaged segments of the community. And I've tried to understand where this comes from and I really don't agree with that. First off, this ordinance doesn't require anybody to do anything, except some basic reporting. It does not require anyone to do any energy efficiency improvements to a house they're trying to sell. Second, it's true that there may be people who have trouble registering and filling out the information. I didn't find it that hard, but I probably have a more typical energy use profile in some people and so that could be why. But I think the people who say, well, this is just going to be too hard for unsophisticated users, unsophisticated sellers to manage are overlooking the fact that in most cases, in Montpelier, real estate sales are handled by real estate agents and they're going to be working with their clients to make sure that the property is registered and everything is filled out correctly, just the way real estate agents work with their clients to make sure that the lead paint disclosure is done. So they could be doing it entirely or they could be working with their clients, but I think it's going to be done. And the third point on this is that if the opponents of the ordinance think that sellers who can't afford to make energy improvements will be disadvantaged in the market, I would say that that is a result of market conditions and not a consequence of the proposed ordinance. So for all those reasons, I think we should be moving forward on this. I think there are some provisions related to data privacy that we should build into the contract that we're going to have to enter into with the vendor before we roll this out. But I agree with Dan and Jay that having this be voluntary for a year is probably a good change. But for all those reasons, I will be supporting this. Conor, go ahead. Sorry, Mayor, I'm cognizant of the time it is 835. Did you want me to speak before or after a break there? That's a great point. We said at the beginning that we were going to take a break at 830. Conor, can you hold your I can't be for Donna's sake. Okay. So we are going to take as advertised at the beginning of the meeting, we're going to take a 10 minute break. And so we will be back here at 845 since it is now 835. And I will see you all then with Conor's comment. Okay. And so we are going to pick up again here. And Conor, you had a comment. So go right ahead. Yeah, no, sure. Thanks. First of all, I just want to thank everybody who spoke tonight. You know, I think the comments so far have made this a better draft of an ordinance. And I think it's important to acknowledge that, you know, in many cases, a person's home is their biggest asset. So anytime there's a measure taken that may affect the value, whether that's real or perceived. It's certainly going to cause some anxiety. But that said, I do think we need to move forward with this ordinance. You know, I look at someone like myself. And, you know, to be honest, I'm not the best environmentalist, like I recycle, I bring the bag to the supermarket. But just using this tool, it made me think of, you know, think things I didn't think before. And sure enough, I can't like, you know, if a special assessment came out with my condo association to put solar panels on the roof, I'm not sure I could afford it right now. But I can certainly take some minor steps that this tool has guided me towards to replace appliances and start thinking about it and maybe even more importantly, like, start talking about it in the community. And it has generated some conversation. You know, what Joey Miller was saying kind of resonated with me. It's, you know, climate change is real. And it's coming. And we need to take steps to address it. And maybe that first first step is actually getting all the information we need to make an intelligent decision, both as a city and somebody who's purchasing your home there. So I think unless we do something, and this is a pretty minor step. But if we do something that does take people outside their comfort zones, and I think we need to do many more things like this, unless we do things like this, our net zero goals are nothing but a farce and a talking point. It's really true. So I think we do need to take action. I think it does need to be provocative at times. I think we do need to keep working on this. And I think we need to continue keeping our thumb on the pulse of the community as this rolls out. And for that reason, I think I would be supportive of moving it to a year voluntary before we do that. But even over that period, I think that does get the conversation going. And every step of the way, it does make this tool better. So I think it needs to be mandatory. I think it needs to happen. Again, I appreciate everybody's concerns. But I think this is a good first step to take to start addressing some of these issues. Thanks. Thanks. Before Jack, I see your hand, but I'm going to let Donna go first here. Donna, go ahead. Thank you. I mean, I really agree with what's been said. But I still have some things I'm a little confused about. I'm so sorry that people were so upset about this. I just see it as a positive step. And I'd like to see every household do it. I'd like to see every building do it. I see this as a beginning. I am concerned about the $1,000 cap. I would feel more comfortable at $5,000. And I would like the year being voluntary to give time. But I do feel like when you're selling a house, you're asked for your fuel bills or at least a summation of them or your electrical bill. I mean, there are many things you're asked to put together already. And to me, this is just another tool. I don't think it'll be a big hammer, unfortunately. But I think it'll be a nudge to help us, all of us, start looking at that. So it is a mindset. It is talking about it. It's stirring the pot. And I'm hoping it can stir the pot in a positive way and that we are mindful, whether it's me who gets confused on the computer or somebody else, that they can get assistance. They can call. In fact, right away, we could be very proactive, go to the senior center and say, you know, you have a lot of volunteers here. I bet you got some savvy IT people to help us introduce us to people. And we could really be very active about it and not pass it, even if it is voluntary. And I feel like the app, I made some comments. I missed one meeting that you talked about this before. But earlier on, I made comments how my frustration was that I couldn't put in exact usage. So they changed it. I went back in and there it was. I could put in my units instead of the bill because I'm on community solar. And so my bill is a flat $78 versus the unit. So I was really glad to see right away that they did that. And as the mayor mentioned, they added the comment section that if you felt something wasn't quite right. So I think it can be better, but I think it has improved and everybody's comments has helped. I just hope people can maybe just take a breath and not be so intense about it. It's just one tool we're trying to use. So if we'd go for the year voluntary and if we could change the cap to 500, I would support it. Thank you. Jack, go ahead. Oh, except for that you're muted again. Thank you. Sorry about that. Yep. I wanted to correct something I said earlier. I said that we only have the authority from the legislature to do residential buildings. Peter Kelman pointed out to me that in fact, we do have the authority to do commercial properties too. And according to the legislation as signed by the governor, so That's I feel that's that's my fault there. So yeah, thank you. But so I wanted to I would like to see us moving in that direction too. But I didn't want to have that misstatement stand on corrected. Thank you. Thank you for that. Lauren, go ahead. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, I generally agree with what the general sense of the council so far and really appreciate the input, even just hearing the firsthand experiences of what Kings people are still finding. It's incredibly valuable. You know, we've had the chance to address a number of them over the last month. And I think taking that extra time really helped to work through both policy issues and some of the technology issues. And, you know, a lot of a lot of good and valuable work's been going on in the background to try to really work through the issues. So, you know, you are being heard and appreciate people taking the time to provide really detailed thoughtful comments from a variety of experiences. You know, I do think that the delay of making this mandatory really it gives time to address a lot of the additional concerns that we're hearing. You know, some of these these other tweaks that might need to be made and really appreciated the way Jay was talking about it of a really deliberative process for feedback. So we make sure that if we're going to do a delay that we're learning and have a way to assess and make sure that we're implementing that really thoughtfully. My only kind of concern with the voluntary for the first year is how we're encouraging participation. If it's really low or only certain people who, you know, might want to tout the energy efficiency, but, you know, the improvements they've made to their house are the only ones participating. Is it really going to be, you know, us learning all that we can? I hope our realtors will be encouraging everybody to participate. You know, maybe in a few months we look at what the percentage of homes that have been sold actually use the tool and can see, you know, how that that's going. But really hope that, you know, all of us collectively as a community are taking that time to to really use it so that we can do the learning that we want to so we can continue to improve it. You know, and I know that let's see. I guess, you know, I guess I would just generally agree with the sense and I'm happy to support the, you know, Donna's proposal to cap the max at 500 and to have it be the year and, you know, just to reiterate Connors, you know, if we're going to really achieve our net zero goals, we've got a lot of changes coming and we need to get out of our comfort zone and try new things and, you know, take the time to learn from them. I think, you know, we're constantly adjusting and looking at what the city is doing. So I think moving forward and knowing that, you know, anything we do tonight isn't set in stone, we will learn, we will get better. But we need to be trying new things and the status quo isn't enough. So I appreciate everyone really, really pushing and trying to do something new and pretty innovative. And I think, you know, it's just one small step that we need to take for climate. But I think it's an important one. Thanks. Great. Yeah, thank you. I'm also going to chime in here, I suppose, and say, first of all, I so appreciate all of you for taking the time to dig into this, because this is maybe one of the most technical ordinances that we have, or that we don't have it yet, but that we've ever talked about as a group. You've all been very patient with this, and I really appreciate that. And you're digging into the details, because it is kind of a very detail-oriented ordinance. So I just, yeah, so I'm also happy to support, you know, changing the cap from $1,000 to 500, I think. I think that's fine. Just as far as the delay goes, I'm glad that everyone is okay with the idea of a delay. I would advocate that it be less than a year, just because I, you know, worry about, you know, that a year is beyond next March, and you just never know who's going to be here. And because this is so detail-oriented, it might be a lot for a new crew to catch up on. But having said that, you know, whatever is the will of the group. So in any case, I think, any other comments that Council would like to make? Okay. Jay, and then Dan? Well, I do think it's, you know, the year is somewhat arbitrary because of the cycle of the housing market. So there might be an opportunity to look at it. But if we're going to do that and try to make it mandatory, you know, February 15th or something like that of 2022, then we, you know, I think, you know, we need to look to Bill and to staff and figure out, okay, how exactly, or to the committee and say, okay, we need to have a real structured feedback loop so that we can, and I do really appreciate the changes that have been made since, you know, since it being launched, you know, I feel like folks have been heard. But if we are going to move that up at all, then we need to acknowledge that, you know, we have a real structure around how the changes are going to be made before it's required. So I, but I, you know, that being said, I don't know that that's necessarily can be accomplished in that amount of time, given the cycle of the real estate market and the number of transactions that happen in the summer versus the shoulder seasons. So sure, sure. Other thoughts? Dan, you have a comment, right? I was actually going to make the motion to amend the ordinance. The, so let me make it, and maybe we can discuss it. I would move that we would amend the, I'm looking at the amended ordinance. In fact, it's section 21-5 subsection B2 changing, striking 1,000 and inserting 500 for the penalty. And then I would also move to amend section 21-7 striking January 1st or striking January and inserting July 1st. I'd also move to strike the July 1st, 2021 effective date and strike July 1st, 2021 and insert upon passage. That's my motion. Okay, there's a motion and a second. Any further discussion about these three changes to the language? Will you take comment on the amendment? Yeah, give me one second though before we jump in. Any thoughts from Council? Lauren, go ahead. Sorry, was the cap part of this one? Yes. So just wanted to make sure because I missed it or maybe it was part of the presentation. So just, I mean, I think I can live with it just reiterating that the point of the city lawyer who had recommended 1,000 because we want to be able to show that we would actually have the resources to defend it as a, you know, so that was like one and then that typical caps and a lot of other state statutes are 800. So that would was the next recommendation from our city lawyer to be more consistent than 500. So just again, I think I could live with either but just that was the input we had received. Thank you. I did not mention that previously. Thank you. Any other thoughts on that part of it? Okay, Stephen, go ahead. As you're commending this, I think I would ask you to consider the not misleading folks as to the amount of protections you're going to be able to give their data, especially once it becomes mandatory. When it's optional, there may be personal privacy protection exemptions you can invoke, but once it becomes mandatory, you will lose those. And I guess similar to the you haven't dealt with or your task force hasn't dealt with data creep of the homeless management information system, which is sucking up data on all of your charges. This is one that that data migrates around on different systems and with all assurances of protections. And for you, this is an area that warrants rock solid methodology and storage you're going to have to insist on the security protocols anywhere the data is stored or transferred. What happens if you change software vendors or algorithms? Can you get the data out and move migrated somewhere else? This is way more complex than y'all are trading it. And I just think that you should amend it to make room for this type of analysis. Thanks. Thank you. Peter, go ahead. Yeah, I think the motion that's been made is a real step forward. I do want to underscore something that Jay said and that Lauren said. And I think it's behind Dan saying effective immediately. Really, I cheated a little bit by telling the story about my my ride in the beginning, but I'm serious. This will require an affirmative effort to reach out to the people who might be selling their homes, etc. Pulling them in, getting them to do it voluntarily, walking them through the process, see the challenges they need. I could give you one or two just right now, but that is going to be critical, whether it's six months or nine months or 12 months is less critical than what happens during those months. And I think you might want to talk to the real estate people about what makes sense. And of course, they might not know now because of the COVID has made the real estate market go crazy. But leave yourself the opening to shorten or lengthen it by vote. If it turns out that you're getting tons of great information and the changes are happening, you've got great confidence, it might be shorter. But I think what happens over the next, whatever this period is, it's going to be critical and really put together an advisory group like the one that we have with my ride, where you have all the stakeholders really speaking up and looking at a lot of those little details. I'm just going to give you two quick details. Our home that we bought has vermiculite insulation. I had a home inventory done by WARM and he said, no matter what else you do in this house, you got to put more insulation in your attic. But now I find out that if I have vermiculite, I may have it. It's assumed I have asbestos. Now I'm looking at a possibility of a $20,000 amount just to remove the old insulation. That's the kind of thing we're talking about. I think one of the things you might want to consider as a mitigation is build in some exceptions for people who, like Connor said, I might not be able to afford to do X, Y, or Z. That doesn't mean that I wouldn't like to. Those are some of the kind of things you'll only find out when you actually reach out to people like some of the people I've talked to who are hysterical about what are they going to do and get them to tell you, I'm really worried about this because I can't afford to do this. What am I going to do? And Jack, there is a penalty. If you can't afford to make these changes, you're going to get a low score compared to the people who can afford it. And then the people who have the big good, the good numbers are going to be much more able to get their price than the people who have the bad numbers because the buyers are going to, as Peter, the real estate guy said, are going to use that as a weapon just as they use inspections now. So these are some of the kinds of things that really need to be investigated. I have hypotheses that need to be tested, Warren has hypotheses that need to be tested, but they need to be tested. And this is the time to test them. Thanks. Okay, other thoughts? There's a motion to amend. Any other thoughts on these changes? Just going to say this out loud, as folks were talking, it occurred to me that something that might be helpful with this. I mean, we've listed all of the kinds of outreach that we're going to do, that needs going to do, that the Department of Public Works is going to do, but it also occurs to me that something that we could maybe work on offering is we could have, I guess I would call it a clinic or a class through the senior center. And so you don't have to be still in your home. Anybody who wants to do this could come and we could have a day where we help walk people through it and make sure that they're able to do it and have support of everybody as they're doing it. Anyway, just thinking out loud, that could be good. Anyway, just kind of a non sequitur. Other, any other comments on these amendments? Okay, so there's been a motion and a second to make these amendments, three amendments to the language. Any further comments? Okay, all in favor, please say aye. Okay, and opposed. Okay, so the ordinance has been amended and so thoughts on passing it or any other further comments in general. Connor. I'll make the motion to pass the ordinance as amended. We got a motion and a second. Lauren's seconding it. Further discussion? Okay, all in favor, please say aye. And opposed. Okay, so that passes unanimously. Thank you again, everybody. I really appreciate all of your thoughts, all of your comments. And yeah, well, so it will follow up with some updates as we go. I think there's some good work for us to be continuing to work on with this. Donna. I do want to thank you for all the wonderful handouts. But they do need to be updated. They have Jasmine as the contact for Montpellier. I don't think that's wrong. Is that your impression that it's wrong? We were intending to direct people to Jasmine. Okay, okay, good. Yeah, she's, yeah. Yeah, cool. Thank you. I mean, we can continue to talk about that, that like who could or should be the contact to, but that's that was our intent. So we're very, very helpful. And that's something we should be getting out with our promotion. Great. All right. Thank you. All right. So we are going to move on. So then we switched the order here. So the conservation fund award is next. And I think I saw some folks here from the conservation fund board. I'm not sure that I still see them though. Here I am. Yes, you're here, Paige. Great. Paige, you want to, you want to take this away? Sure. I think we have reconstituted the conservation fund and the board. Thanks for your approval. We have a really thoughtful board and we had several meetings over this award. But we thought it would be really important to show support for the city, from the city for, for this purchase. Everybody's familiar with the land purchase, right? Okay. We thought it was important to show support. And there are many good reasons for going ahead with this purchase, I think. It supports Act 171. There's some unique habitats up there that were found on the, the inventory that Brett Engstrom did in 2007. The neighborhoods really supports it because they, there are trails through the properties that people use to access the park. Some of those trails go through places they shouldn't go through like wetlands. And the parks would be able to correct those issues and, and close those trails and maintain the other trails better to prevent erosion, et cetera, et cetera. It's great habitat. It's connects to some of the important state priority level forest blocks that the state is interesting in preserving. Most of them are nil sex, but this is a good connectivity path. So there are, I think there are a lot of good reasons for doing this for supporting this purchase. And the board had some thoughtful discussions about it, about the fact that there aren't parks in other areas of the city, which we all agree with, but the fact is this was an opportunity, and there haven't been opportunities in those other areas of the city yet. So when those are, when those opportunities come up, then hopefully we'll be in a position to jump on them. But in the meantime, this is the opportunity that presents itself, and I hope you'll support it. And I see Alec. Yeah, so I, if anybody has any questions, feel free. Alec, do you want to add anything? I just want to add, and in case you didn't hear, but it is public, it's been made public this week by the US Forest Service that we were awarded the grant from the forest program for $258,000. And our proposal was ranked number four in the country. So we did a good job. And this is just another, another way to chip away at those matching funds. And $20,000 is a significant, significant contribution, for sure. That's great. Okay. Any questions for either Paige or Alec? Donna. I'm ready to make a motion. We approve the purchase. Oh, there's the second. Motion and a second. That's Jay. Technically, the motion isn't for the purchase. It's for awarding the $20,000 from the conservation fund. So awarding the grant. Thank you. John Odom, you got that? Okay. So, and Jay, you're okay with that? Of course. And John's okay with that. Great. Okay. Okay. Any further discussion on this? Okay. Oh, Lauren. I was going to say, that's really exciting that grant came through from the Forest Service. Congrats and great work team. I mean, number four in the country. That's really impressive work. So very excited and appreciative for all the work that went into that. And thanks, Paige, for the putting this before us tonight. Thank you. Yeah. Okay. Any other comments? Okay. So there's been a motion. A second. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. And opposed? Okay. So the motion carries. Thank you, Paige and Alec. This is very exciting. Thank you. Thank you very much. Yeah. Thanks a lot. Okay. Thank you. All right. So now on to the water resource recovery facility phase two project discussion. And I think I saw some members of the public works. So should I just turn it right over to them? Bill, did you want to say anything first? We'll just jump in here quickly and then turn it over to Kurt and DPW. You know, we embarked a couple years ago on our waste water resource recovery facility project phase one, which has been nearly nearing completion. It's won a national award. It's been very successful from a technical standpoint and a financial standpoint as we had hoped. And one of the goals of the city had was to move forward to phase two, which would result in energy production. And we had initially had high hopes when we, especially when we got the grant, $5 million grant that we would be able to do so with the initial bonding authority. But as you know, costs have risen and as we have new information, it's going to be a little tighter. So I think what we're going to do today is Kurt is going to walk you through where we're at and what some of the challenges are and what some of the options may be so that you are fully briefed and you can perhaps provide some guidance to us as to if you have any preferences or if you want to proceed along with evaluating all the alternatives. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Kurt. He does have a presentation. I'm sorry, I know it's late and you've been through a big tough issue, but this is also pretty important to I think our energy future and our infrastructure future. So there we go. Kurt, please. Okay, thanks, Bill. So I'm Kurt Modica, Deputy Director of Public Work and City Engineer. Tonight joining me is Larry Doyle, who's the Senior Business Development Manager for Energy Systems Group. It's our partner on the phase one project of the plant. And Chris Cox is here as well, who's our Chief Operator of the facility. They're primarily here to answer questions that might pop up that I may not be able to address. That I will share my screen if I can. Oh, I need some permissions to be able to share my presentation. Yeah, but I just got named. Hold on, I'm now the Bill, go down to the bottom where it has security. Got it. Then you can check next to it, share screen. I got it. Awesome. Just figured it out, I think. Should be able to do that now. Okay. Folks able to see this? See the presentation? Nope. Nope. I'm still not able to get in, Bill. Yeah, I just did it again too. Cameron, you're killing me here. Well, there should be a check next to allow people to share screen. There is a check next to share screen. There it is. All right. Now just make it a full screen. Beautiful. Okay. So thanks everybody. We'll just start out by saying, you know, this is a joint effort with ESG and the City Monthly Republic Works. ESG really compiled the first 13 slides of the presentation and then DPWs generated the last five. So the things we're going to cover tonight, what's been completed to date on the Phase 2 effort, which is combined heat and power. So that's generating electricity from the methane and also getting heat recovery off the engine of the generator. We'll cover the objectives of the Phase 2 project and what the scope was, sustainability net zero outcomes, the financial outcomes, and then one alternative that DPW has recently looked at that they wanted to share with you, which is a solid stirring. So the work we did under the Project Development Agreement with ESG includes the Standard Offer Program Award for a power sale agreement. That was awarded in December of 2020 and through that, there's a 20-year term. The rate that the City was offered through the food waste set aside is 20.7 cents per kilowatt hour. And under that agreement, there's a completion date required of December of 2023. Additionally, we completed the interconnection agreement application process. That's with our local utility, Green Mountain Power. So that agreement is all set up, has not been executed, but it's all drafted by Green Mountain Power with what improvements would be needed to the grid in order to support the sale of CHP. And then the state permits required for CHP was the air pollution control permit and which covers the entire facility and also, which is the larger, more challenging one, was the certificate of public good. ESG also completed design drawings and basis of design report, a secured pricing from subcontractors, major equipment pricing, and design. So we just recently received a contract amendment. If the Council ends up going with a CHP project, we received that at the end of April. There was a 60-day response time noted in the Project Development Agreement. We've since talked to ESG and I think they're willing to be flexible on that, so that June 29th is not a hard date. It's just a really kind of a target we're looking at as an initial path forward for how to utilize the methane. So the scope of work includes a 400 kilowatt generator. We have to treat the gas, clean it in order to run it through the generator equipment. There's heat conversion, which is the recovery of the heat off the engine to put back into the heating loop at the plant, and then the electrical transmission upgrades related to Green Mountain Power's work. And just rehash kind of the phase one project that really set us up for utilizing the methane at the plant. The high-strength waste that the city is currently taking in, we're still ramping up that waste stream, but we do anticipate the 21,000 million BTUs of gas annually, and that would allow the plant to generate twice, nearly twice what the power uses from the grid currently. And we're just about wrapping up that phase one project, anticipated the end of this month. There's really just a few bunchless items, final paving, and a few other items that need to be addressed. So the phase one project essentially rebuilt the entire plant, except for two equipment, pieces of equipment. One is the screw pumps, which you just approved on the consent agenda. That's coming out of our operating budget. It's about $100,000. It's really just the bearings on those large pumps that bring the water, the wastewater up to secondary treatment. The bigger project that still remains is the secondary clarifiers. And that one is going to be, we've got preliminary quotes of $1.1 million for that. So I just wanted to highlight that's treatment of the wastewater coming in the plant is top priority. And that equipment will need to be upgraded in the relatively near future. So I have to keep that in mind as we look at financial impacts from these options. And so one of the great things about phase one, and there's a lot of them, there are some pictures that we'll be posting on the website. This picture is on the screen is one that was just taken last week. I can see the new methane dome on the largest digestor and really kind of an overall view of the facilities that's been upgraded. But also we did all this work with really essentially no financial impact beyond what was budgeted within the master plan. So because of the grant money we got, because of the new revenue stream from high strength waste and energy savings, all of this work was done with essentially no impact, which is really great for the sort of ratepayers. And then of course, as we recently, like council know, this project was awarded the public works progress of the year under the environmental category. So for small communities, but we're really excited about that. There's going to be an award ceremony, I believe at the end of August in St. Louis. This is a graphical of the methane gas production at the plant. So the blue line is what will be utilized. I'll start with the red line. The red lines are total projected gas production, methane production at the plant. The green line is a combination of phase one and phase two utilizing the gas. So that's the generator and the heat loop at the plant being used. Blue line is just what is used under phase one. So the combined usage would result in only about 15% of methane being flared at the plant. And some of the environmental benefits of the project, we're looking really estimating 2.8 million kilowatt hours per year of electricity, which is a two equivalent of 22,000 tons reduction. Green out gases from 41, 441 passenger vehicles or emissions from 4,600 barrels of oil. So there's just kind of all different comparisons of the environmental benefits to producing renewable energy as opposed to fossil fuels. And then the carbon sequestered of 32,000 tree seedlings growing over 10 years of 2,400 acres of forest. And then the heating benefits, a lot of this is really captured in phase one. We're already utilizing some of the methane, as I showed you in that graphical, that's equates to 145,000 gallons of oil per year. That's not actual savings to the city, but that's the equivalent of what the methane, if it was all used for heating reduction would show. So the food, the power sale agreement the city was awarded is, was related to act 148, which is really diverting waste from landfills. And there is a requirement under that power sale agreement that 50% of the waste stream going to the digesters has to be categorized as food waste. Greece, unfortunately, in Vermont is not, does not fall under that category. But it does sort of change how we set up our contracts with haulers because we have to hit that threshold in order to comply with that agreement. And there will be annual inspections, according to our agreement with VEPI, where they will kind of verify that that's occurring. So that would represent 38,000 tons diverted from the landfill. And then on the graphic, you can see the yellow line is what the plant currently uses for power. And then the green bar on the left is what is what would be produced under phase two. And then the energy is the the far right column, the heating energy. So just a little bit on some financial projections. So there's two ways to look at how the finance, what the financial impacts will be under this project. One is what the projected cash flow will be. And that is 90% of the digesters being filled with food waste. And then the other way is the other method or it's really related to the project development agreement contract that we have with ESG is the guaranteed cash flow. So that's that's the threshold under which if we don't meet that there would be ESG would be responsible essentially for covering the gap between the guaranteed cash flow versus what the actual was if it came in under. ESG feels there's a high likelihood that we'd be able to hit the 90%. But again, that's not a guarantee for the city. So under phase one, we ended up with about $11.9 million of debt. Not all debt because well, that is our current borrowed amount, but we have offsets with revenue. So we're not actually making payments on that amount. We got a really low interest rate from USDA 1.5%. And then under phase two, we're looking at somewhere between a $5.7 million to a $6 million project cost with a little bit higher interest rate, assuming we go through the municipal bond bank. And then it includes annual on M costs, which is made up of generator maintenance. We'd have a contractor come in and do the major generator work and adjusting valves and changing spark plugs. And then the city would just be responsible for oil changes. And then there's a electrical load from the heat loop and the pumps associated with recapturing that hot water off the engine. There's gas government equipment maintenance costs. So you have to change out the media at regular intervals. I think it's about three years. And then there's air testing requirements. So as part of the air permit, we'd have to verify the emissions levels that would be coming from the plant. Just want to make it a quick caveat that this summary is slightly different from the charts that you're going to follow only because USDA had made some assumptions that were just a little bit varied from these numbers. And there's also a category called deferred maintenance, which is basically doing the aging infrastructure pieces of the project earlier than what we had projected in the Supermaster Plan. And so that's a savings from escalating costs. But through my discussions with finance, we also have to account for depreciation. So that bar that you'll see on these charts and in the tables is somewhat is really offset from an actual balance sheet perspective. So I can explain that as we look at those. So that green bar deferred maintenance is what I was just referring to. You know, I think in viewing these, we probably could omit that amount. But as you can see here, this is projected cash flow. So again, it's a 90% fill on the digesters. It's a catch positive. And this is looking at the project with combined phase one and phase two revenue and savings. So if you look at the total project, both what we are just about to complete, and if we added CHP onto it, this is kind of representation of where we'd be financially. And then this is that a similar table or that graphical put into a table. Again, this is 90%, filling the digesters at 90%. You can see on the net benefit of phase two economics, there is a positive cash flow over a 20 year life of the generator. We would be looking at roughly $630,000 cash positive project again at 90% fill on the digesters. So now this is looking at what the guarantee levels would be through ESG. So this is kind of worst case scenario. Again, the deferred maintenance bar really probably shouldn't be represented here because of depreciation impacts. So this again is also a combined project of phase one and phase two. So it is looking at this, I think it's slightly, you know, if you take the green bar out, it's slightly positive of that last number I was just referring to. This table is showing a combined project again, phase one and phase two, and revenue of a total project, combined project of about $2 million over the 20 year service life of the generator. Again, if you take that $330,000 annually from deferred maintenance savings, it does come out a little bit negative. I think it would be if you summed it up for the full 20 years, it would be close to a $4 million negative financial impact. With a lot of numbers, but kind of get to the end coming here at the end. So this graph or this table or other shows a breakout of phase one and phase two. So you can really look at them separately. And this is at again, guarantee levels. So this is worst case scenario. And really the focus is on the net benefit. And this is why DPW has some concerns with moving forward with CHP and that over a 20 year life, if you look at phase two CHP project as a standalone project, at guarantee levels of waste streams coming to the plant, we would net a negative 3.6 million. So this is really why DPW has started looking into other alternatives for utilizing the methane. And this is not to say that this is how the financials would turn out, but we don't have any surety or guarantee that they would be better than this either. So it's just something that I wanted to point out to cancel. And then just a quick summary of, you know, after we've completed this project development agreement with ESG, just going to want to summarize some of the accomplishments and some of the challenges we're facing. We signed this agreement in March of 2020, so it's been just about a year. Like I said in the beginning, we did receive the standard office, standard offer power purchase agreement for really a high rate on the kilowatt hours exported from the plant. That's from the Public Utility Commission administered by VEPI. The project's fully permitted, so we have all our permits, including the certificate of public good, which is a fair effort and it is a shovel-ready project. We could absent financing, you know, we are ready to start this project. The financial impacts we are looking at right now, a $5.7 million project costs. Because we have to do a bond vote, there's going to be some time delays, regardless of when that bond vote occurs. So, you know, I think it's likely there be some escalation in construction material costs. So that number, you know, I think we're looking at more like a $6 million number likely before the project would actually, or the contract would be signed if council moves forward. And just to kind of touch on some of the cost increases related to the project, there is a slightly different cost related from the conceptual design is what ESG provided, based their numbers on back in March of 2020. And now we have final design, so it's a lot more detail. So that was part of the cost. Also, the interconnection fees from Green Mountain Power, the infrastructure they need to install, notice support, this power export is more than what we anticipated by over $100,000. So last time I came and presented to council, we talked about negotiating with the ESG to see if we could reduce the project cost and fund maybe the difference with operating revenue and the sewer fund. We were able to negotiate a $300,000 reduction roughly, but because the gap is so big, we cannot cover the difference with operating funds. So that means we have to do a bond vote. And right now, just for assuming we use all of the remaining bond capacity from phase one, we'd be looking at roughly a $1.5 million gap. But again, just point out that the secondary clarifiers also need to be completed roughly in this time frame. So I think you could add another at least $1.1 million onto that. So in the project development agreement with ESG, they essentially performed this analysis, this work at risk. And under the, you know, sort of the outs for the city, if the guaranteed levels do not cover the cost of the project, you know, the city has the option to not move forward with it and is not responsible for the cost to ESG that they've invested in this project. That's our interpretation of it. At least right now, we haven't really discussed in detail with ESG, but that's, and I have discussed briefly with our attorney, but we feel because the guaranteed levels don't cover the project costs that were not responsible for the PDA fee. The city's investment on this project is right now about $30,000. That's a lot of the permitting fees were not included in the ESG of scope. And we had some legal fees associated with development of the CPG. As I noted, under guarantee levels, there's a potential for a negative financial impact of 3.6 million over a 20-year period. And that's if you look at phase two as its own project, as a standalone project without factoring in the benefits from phase one. If we hit projected levels, then over the 20-year period, they're estimating a $630,000 cash-positive project. And then just one sort of intricacy related to these two projects. Because the Empower Sale Agreement requires food waste stream, it changes how we structure our contracts with haulers because we really sort of have to reduce our price on food waste to incentivize them to bring that waste stream to the plant in order to meet the requirements of the Empower Sale Agreement. So there's a little bit of a competing interest between the phase one and phase two because of that requirement. So that was a lot. I will stop there for just a minute and see if there's any questions. So that was a lot. I'm going to stop there if there's any questions related to that. So I have a few questions. So I want to make sure that I'm understanding this. I want to make sure that I'm really clear on this. So at the lowest guaranteed levels of revenue, is it still a net positive for both projects? Well, it depends on if you factor in that deferred maintenance cost or not. Right. Yeah. So because it looked like in that one slide where the benefit was lower, it looked like if you took the deferred maintenance portion out, just based on the thickness of that section, it looked like the benefit would be less than the cost. But I mean, I believe it is. Yeah. Oh, thank you. No, thank you. Yes. So what that deferred maintenance number represents, so that's the aging infrastructure work that needed to be performed at the plant. So absent any of this organic energy project, that is just a real cost that would be realized by the city in its budget. So for the purposes of the cash flow is being presented as a savings as a capital cost avoidance. So without this project, that's a cost that would be incurred anyway. So the net effect would be to, if you took it out of the savings, you also want to take out the $12 million roughly that that cost and just judge the project on the organic energy components. Does that make sense? Yeah. In other words, the organic energy revenues, I think through phase one was able to almost cover a lot of those costs that otherwise would have just been dead. So it's a balance. I think if you take it out, you also need to take out the capital associated with it to see the true value of the project. That makes sense. Yeah. So it's like we would have to add in other costs for that deferred maintenance somehow elsewhere. Yeah. You could treat it as those are costs that you would experience in any way, whether or not we were here. Okay. Yeah. Okay. I think that's helpful. Just quickly, if I may interject, just for new council members, this is Larry Doyle from ESG here. Not everybody knows Larry. It's been a couple of years since you've presented. I've been able to come up for a year. So. Lauren, go ahead. Over. Yeah. Thanks. I was just wondering, what are the major drivers you showed us kind of best case and worst case scenario? Like what would be the difference? What would be changing, whether or not we're hitting closer to 90% or more? Sure. No good question. I'll try to make it a short answer. The 90% represents, we model the project based on, you know, our expectation of, can we fulfill these digesters, which we do fully expect to be able to do. I mean, right now, we started our performance period, I think doesn't start for another six months, but we're starting to ramp up. And I think under contract, at this time, we already have approximately 60% of the capacity filled with two to three year contracts right now. And there is a good supply of additional, so our expectation is within six months that we'll be filling the digesters. Now, the guarantee level represents, well, take a step back. Kurt talked about the interactions. One of the things that, you know, that's important to consider is that the food waste is the fuel for the generator. And why they're interconnected and while we're treating them together is as we have been developing the project, what we found is in the market, the tipping fee for food waste has, market has gone down from what we initially anticipated. Whereas some of the tipping fees for brown grease, fog, and other items still remains high. So what happened is it would work against each other, where on phase one, we would want to overdrive and just bring in revenue. We could focus our waste efforts on less on food waste. Food waste has a cost to treat. It has more solids in it that has to get land filled, you know, or other treatment costs, chemical costs. Grease has a good energy component, low cost to treat. So the difference is what we looked at is if you think about it, for each gallon of waste, when you have phase one and phase two as a financial value of a tip fee plus an energy fee. So there's energy revenue now. So although the food waste has a lower tip fee, it is worth the 20 cents a kilowatt hour from energy. So it's hard to treat both of these separately. So we combine those. And what we did was we looked at the project and with the guarantee, our proposal was that we needed to guarantee the cost to the city, which was the city's debt service plus the annual operation and maintenance cost. And from that, we derived that we would need to fill 60% capacity of the digesters. And that would equal roughly $100,000 more than what the city's costs were from the combined project. So if you, so one way to think about it is, you know, phase one might throw off $500,000 a year of positive cash flow. And with phase two with the guarantee level that lowers that from 400 to 100. I don't have the exact numbers in front of me, but at the guarantee levels, it brings the positives down from 400 to 100. At the projected levels, which we feel is reasonable to project, it's going to maintain roughly at that same cash flow level. Hope I'm not confusing it. So, yeah. So phase two, in a sense, is hitting a policy objective. We think that the waste, we use the term projected because we have, you know, high level of confidence. We wouldn't provide any guarantee if we weren't confident that we could roughly bring in twice that amount. It would just be too risky. So it's a view of our view of the market also. However, our guarantee is a contractual mechanism that we're offering. I would consider that. You could look at that as a floor. You know, so that would be the floor. The ceiling would be 100%. We're just showing confidence that 90%. You could pick other numbers too. You could split the difference, 1600. You could say 80 is a planning number. So it gets arcane because a lot of these models, they get very intricate because there's eight different classifications of waste. And a lot of the data is based on actual sampling because we've been able to run, we've been running the receiving station and pretty much all the different types of waste we're planning on receiving. We run through there. We have analytics for each sample. We've monitored the methane content of the gas. If you're a member in phase one, one of the reasons for holding off on phase two was to get an idea of how much gas we're going to produce to this process in terms of percent methane. And we are projecting at about 60 to 62%. We're finding now we're getting 65 to 66% methane content. And that's a reflection of the digesters working like they're supposed to. I mean, the new systems, I can't say enough because the Kurt and the treatment plant staff have had, earlier talked about people adopting the change. Well, they'd have to adopt the change. A lot of new equipment, new control systems and they've been great to work with. And this project isn't even commissioned yet and those digesters are performing and we're bringing more and more waste in there as it gets ramped up. I'm digressing a bit, but it's so 90% is what we're comfortable. We think is the 60% is the floor. And without combining them, we'd be working against our guarantee because if they weren't combined, we would want to bring in more high revenue or high strength organic waste. But that would be a deficit to the energy production. So we're trying to combine things and hit triple bottom line, you know, it's policy, financials and what's the right mix. And this is what we came up with. Sorry, yes, way longer. That wasn't a short answer, but it's not a short problem. Yes. Dan, go ahead. So being a little bit math-phobic, if I'm underprivileged actually, the 60% is hold on a second, Larry, would you mind muting yourself and or possibly Kurt? Okay. All right. So yeah, go ahead. Go ahead, Dan. Sure. So the 60% capacity is basically a floor that we're thinking that would be guaranteed that no less than that amount. And the expectation, perhaps not the ceiling, but the expectation is that 90% is much more realistic. Is that I'm understanding that correctly? Yep. Yes, that's correct. Yes, correct. So one of my other questions is what happens if there is no phase two? Well, that's the second half of the presentation. Okay. Don't spoil it for me. Oh, there's another half. Maybe we should hold off and hear your second half. Sure. I just wanted to take a break and talk about the CHP option before we moved on. Well, I do have one question about that, which is, so I heard you say, you know, you're looking at other options because phase two alone is net negative, right? And so, sorry, go ahead. Well, at guaranteed levels, it's net negative. Right. At guaranteed levels, it's net negative. That causes a whole other string of questions for me. So that feels like going back a few steps in terms of what to do with that methane, right? Looking for a new plan, which I think brings up questions for me about the timeline, and if there's this deadline that we have to be using, or like the project has to be completed by 2023, it seems like there'd be some more pressure. Like, does the rest of the deal fall apart somehow if we don't get it done by 2023? Does that make sense? Right. So the deadline is through our power sale agreement. And that deadline, like I said, is December of 2023. That's when we have to have the system up and commissioned, or we lose that 20.7 kilowatt hour sale, our power sale rate. We have to, if we do CHP, we're going to have to do a bond vote. And I think if we did a March bond vote, so we don't have to have a special election, the project timeline from when I hear from USG is 13 months. So if we had a bond vote and March warned at the end of this year, we're still on track to hit those deadlines. So I think, you know, what DPW is proposing is to evaluate one other alternative between now and the end of the year, and then decide what's the best path forward for the city. And that would still give us time to put something on the, if we wanted to still put something on the March ballot, we still could. Right. The end of this year, you know. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions about the combined heat and power part? Okay. Right. Go ahead, Kurt. All right. Okay. So like I said, you know, we anticipated under the CHP option that we would have a guaranteed revenue that matched the cost of the project. It just didn't pan out that way. So just in the last two weeks, so this is very high level. But just in the past two weeks, DPW has just looked at wanted to look at what is the other option for utilizing methane at the plant? I mean, it is an asset, an asset that was created through the phase one project. And we want to utilize it. But we want to utilize it in the best way possible for the city, my player and the sewer rate payers. Sorry to interrupt, Kurt. Could you get bigger? Oh, sorry. Yeah, no worries. There you go. Great. Thank you. Thor looking at is a waste type low temperature dehumidification system, which is really a way to improve the solids content of the bio solids from the plant. So every time we take in whether it's septage from residential tanks, or high strength waste now, or even, you know, the waste that comes down the patch from multiple residents, all those things result in a solids component. And those solids currently are all brought up to the landfill in Coventry. So what we're looking at is two units, two of these dehumidification type units, which are able to dry out these solids, the capacity of 110 gallons per hour. So if we had two of these, we'd have redundancy where each of them could handle what we're estimating for demand on the system to dry all the solids from the plant. And what some of the other equipment would be required would be a hot water line from the new boilers to run through an exchanger to heat these units and dry out solids. And additionally, you need conveyors to, you know, bring the solids from the new screw presses, which gets our solids down to 25 percent. I guess the 225 percent solids. We'd have to bring that convey those over to this new equipment. And then some way, once we do have a 90 percent dry total solids level, we need some way to store this material. So some of the nice things about the system, it's a low temperature, about 165. There's no open flame like most traditional drying systems are. So you don't need to spring clear in the building. It can get to a class A biosolid. There's an opportunity for order reduction because this is an enclosed system as opposed to our open boxes that we dispose of in with now. Like I mentioned, you can go from 25 percent to 90 percent total solid. So that really reduces the disposal volume. And it can can run in automation 24 seven most of those most other drying units. Really, you have to have a staff present because of the fire hazard. Financial benefits associated with this, we pay about $250,000 a year to dispose of our solids at the landfill. There is, we've been talking to one company that's represented locally here. They offered to take the the class A solids and they were they gave us a budgetary estimate of about $100,000 a year cost to manage those solids for us. They would no longer go to the landfill and be turned to beneficial use. It allows us more flexibility in our leachate rates right now because all of our all of our solids go to the landfill and their leachate comes to us. We've had price stability in our disposal costs. If we were no longer utilizing the landfill, you know, that gives us the option to raise our rates on leachate. So there's just one cent on the leachate rate and we haven't raised them in many years. I don't think at least in the last 10 years it down up because it would just cost us on the on the disposal side. But just raising them one cent wouldn't result in an $80,000 a year annual revenue increase. There's also, there's also a potential for revenue from the sale of the class A. Again, this company we've been speaking with, it's RMI, they offer their profit sharing from the sale of this material. And then like I spoke to earlier and Larry mentioned, you know, it just gives us that flexibility where we're not trying to, you know, reduce our price on food waste in order to get that stream, you know, focus on that waste stream in order to meet the 50% digest or feed requirements. I've also spoken to some folks at DEC and they've they indicated there's a very good likelihood that this project would be eligible for some grant funding. We got a pollution control grant on phase one. That grant program is very specific to solids handling, which would this dryer would qualify under. And there's also under the loan program, there's there's funding design subsidy money, which essentially grant money for design work. We've really pushed to try to get at least some sense of what the equipment would cost. And for the two units that can each handle the total solids generated from the plant, when they provided a cost of $1.6 million. I just want to note that's not total project costs, you know, there's a lot of other items, design costs, and all the other equipment, the conveyors and things in the trailer that I mentioned. So I don't know, we don't know yet, this needs further evaluation, what the total project cost would be. But I think there's there's it's worth looking at this closer because of one the grant, you know, the grant opportunities. But also, you know, just the major piece of equipment is a fairly, you know, low number compared to some of the other options that were looked at early on. If you remember, you did a very high level analysis of other alternatives and CHP was, you know, by far the most attractive option. But we're taking a little deeper dive into this. And it's also a relatively new style of dryer, which has a lot of benefits that the other ones don't. So environmentally, we'd be reducing our disposal volume from 3,600 wet tons to 960 wet tons. And no, you know, no longer have the trucking all the way up to Coventry. Right now we're moving, I think four boxes for trailers every week from the plant to Coventry. Again, this is a way to utilize the methane generated. And one of the attractive things about the dryer is that our peak need for solids drying is in the summertime. And that's well offset from our heating needs in the winter. So it really has the opportunity to provide a good energy balance where you're getting year round utilization of as much methane as we can. And then again, you know, we do have a water resource recovery facility. This is one product that is not recovered. This, I know the solids from the plant, you know, project like this would allow us to recover that project and turn it into something beneficial to the to the community, you know, to the region by turning into a Class A material. And lastly, you know, we spent a fair amount of time discussing PFAS at the plant, you know, by taking away our reliance on the disposal costs or reliance on Coventry for disposal of our solids. You know, we have more flexibility to really evaluate whether or not we take leachate without as much of a financial impact. We do generate revenue from receiving leachate, but we wouldn't be sort of hit double by increasing our disposal costs and losing the revenue from leachate. If that's a path council wants to take in the future. So some of the facility benefits, you know, we're not locked into a 20-year contract. That's a really a long-term commitment that which is part of our power sale agreement. You know, things change and that kind of duration is a little bit concerning to us. It also allows us to be better prepared for what the regulations may be on sludge management in the future. There are changes, you know, land applications getting more and more reduced, you know, and even landfills. And we only have one landfill in the state. So it really kind of sets us up to manage all of our own waste ourselves rather than relying on outside entities. And then because it's all enclosed, there's no air permit required. So it's just one less permit that we have to manage at the plant. And as I mentioned, it's one company we've been talking to and, you know, we'd really want to evaluate all our options for this style or type of dryer. But that's Resource Management Incorporated. They're affiliated with the ShinSea USA. They are currently piloting three dryers. One, Bratterboro Bells Falls and Hooksett and New Hampshire. Our staff are Chris Cox and Matt Lanson, who's our assistant chief operator. They went down and visited one of these facilities yesterday. And, you know, they were impressed by the equipment. But there's not any, you know, just one caution is that there's not any currently fully operational in the region. Like I said, it's a relatively new technology. It needs to be evaluated. But it does look promising. And as I mentioned earlier, this company are my offers, Sol's Management Services. So they will guarantee to take the Class A material that we produce, you know, and manage it for a fee. And how they manage it is by taking this material, taking the Class A by solids and turning it into a beneficial product, you know, for agricultural type of benefits or municipal highway projects. They even fill old-abandoned mines with this type of material in other parts of the country. So our recommendation as a department is to look further into this Sol's drying alternative. You know, it's, like I said, we only had a couple of weeks because we were still working under the CHP project, you know, on negotiating costs with ESG. But, you know, just at a high level, look at this. We think that there is some potential here. So we'd like to refine the project scope, you know, really dial in the total project cost, which we do not have yet. Verify the savings and the revenue associated with the project. Look into the grant funding opportunities. I have not spoken with USDA yet. There's potential there. Look at the gas balance. So ESG has indicated that if we do go this route, they are interested in partnering with the city and evaluating, you know, the getting the methane usage, which really we don't have the expertise to do in-house. So we would need outside support. And then the state has indicated that they are very interested in pilot testing equipment. And they have even indicated they would cover the cost if there was one associated with piloting different systems. So, you know, one of the many reasons phase one was successful is that we did pilot a lot of equipment on dewatering. We really got to see all the different styles out there. And, you know, I think I can speak for Kristen saying we feel like we ended up with the best possible option there. So there's, you know, always, it's always a benefit to try before you buy kind of thing. And then as we noted earlier, we have to have a bond vote. I don't think it compromises. Sorry, I know it does not compromise the construction schedule or CHP. If that does turn out the path council wants to move forward with, we have essentially till the end of the year to sort of make a decision of which path is best to move forward with. That is the end. Kind of the word for questions. Thank you. That is, I think that's very interesting. And I guess I'll just start us off by if you wouldn't mind muting yourself Kurt, sorry. Sorry, thank you. Thank you. I think that second option is very interesting and looks worth looking into. I have a lot of physics related questions, maybe chemistry related questions, like, you know, does the process of drying break down? Things like PFAS, I assume the answer is no, because it is low temperature. Anyway, and also, so that means that things like PFAS would be intact in the Class A biosolid. And if you're using it in agricultural purposes, like, is that problematic? But all of that is sort of maybe not, it's not exactly our, well, I was going to say it's not exactly our problem, but it's, but you know, it is something that I feel like is important to know. Do you have any thoughts on that? If we're creating a Class A biosolid that might have things like PFAS in it? Great. So, it does not, it's a system that doesn't want to destroy the PFAS. They're, you know, they're, there is a system that they're... Kurt, Kurt, I'm doing really wrong with your audio. Yeah, it's doing the super choppy thing. You got Tom Wade's going. I was going to call in, you're going to call in on your phone. Got you, okay. Perhaps while Kurt is doing that, other comments or questions on this part of the presentation? Lauren, go ahead. And yeah, I was, I was also going to ask about that. I know that like Maine, for example, they've been doing a lot of testing of land application of biosolids and they're basically finding PFAS in every sample. I was just pulling up a study. It's like 93% with PFOA, 65% with PFOA, like it's really high and they're finding it in farms and they're finding it in milk and they're finding it like I, if I like was going to bet on it, I think we're going to have regulations around not allowing land application of PFAS containing sludge sometime in the next few years. So I would just want to be really thoughtful about if we were investing in something that was then going to become a problem for us to figure out how to handle because we're down the road. I mean, I think it does seem really interesting and if that issue could be dealt with somehow, it's, I mean, there's probably there might be other contaminant issues too. I just had seen some studies on the PFAS in particular because I know it's been a big issue in Maine. So I definitely would want to understand that and what like RMI and others are doing about it, because I assume it's a problem everywhere that they're operating. So maybe they have some solutions or alternatives that they're looking at to deal with that. Just a couple other like questions, I would definitely be interested in like learning and maybe it's part of a MEAC or our net zero, like what are the pros and cons from our meeting our net zero goal of the two alternatives that we're looking at. It would be good to know what that looks like. I was also curious or just noting, I mean, there's going to be really unprecedented water infrastructure money that the state already through the American Rescue Plan Act is setting aside. It's still in negotiation, but it's like a hundred million dollars and we've got some really great local allies in the legislature. So this kind of project, maybe either of these projects could be interesting, but seeing maybe trying to get a sense of if there's opportunity there. One of the few things that was called out in ARPA was water and sewer infrastructure. So there might be money that's not normally available. So just would want to make sure that we're obviously exploring all of those possibilities and just one other conversation that's been happening at the state house, like the standard offer program. I think there's talk of it going away in the next couple of years or trying to get a two-year extension. I just, I don't know for it certainly would be an open question in my mind if we like punted on it, if we could get that ever again in the future. So I think it would either be like act under that now or at least be a very open question if that specific program and opportunity and maybe they would replace it with something else, but this might be kind of the shot. So if we could figure out, you know, if we decided we wanted to move forward with that, it might be like have to get it done in that 2023 timeline. And I don't know, it would be worth maybe finding out if they would like grandfather in projects that they or something if there was some extension or some opportunity to reapply. But I just know that that's that program seems to be kind of on its last legs. So just noting that. Thanks. Kurt, did you want to respond? Are you in the meeting yet, Kurt, on your phone? Nope. Oh, maybe. Do see a number. But I also saw, Larry, you had your hand up. Do you want to respond to any of that? Yes. No, just to the PFAS issues. So, you know, first it's ubiquitous. It's regional problems. I think the regulators understand that each individual community or municipality can't expend the capital to put in treatment systems. And it's high temperature thermal, right? It's not incineration. Actually, Massachusetts, they have incinerators. Those are places where they're trying to get rid of them, but they're actually, you know, a dichotomy of being able to destroy PFAS, but I met CO2. So I think those things are going to be handled regionally. With thermal drying, the basic benefit you get is you have a lot less of what you're having to deal with. You're just evaporating water. So right now, the material is 75% water. That's what's getting trucked in landfill. So just the premise of thermal drying is just evaporating that water. So you have less of a material to worry about disposition. And what we're seeing in Massachusetts and other areas are starting to see utilities or municipalities start to discuss together regionalization, you know, share the high capital cost of, in biosolids management, you know, Kirk brought it up. It's not just savings today. I mean, this is future risk management. So it's a big unknown and we're seeing utilities or municipalities making the decision that they want to control their own destiny moving forward. And part of that is having a class A material always gives you more options on what to do and having less of it gives you a whole lot more options. So the value of having those options, having a higher quality material and less of it sets you up better for the future. We have a project that we're doing thermal drying now and it was driven because it was a customers in the Chesapeake Bay watershed and they're land applying a good class B material for years. And just last year, they lost two or three of the five farms that they're utilizing because things are getting more stringent stringent with Chesapeake Bay, but also PFAS concerns and they made the decision. We're going to move deep to a class, a dry or reduce our volume and go to a class A and they're making it original. So they're going to bring in other municipalities. So short answer is yes, it's a problem. It's all over. It can't paralyze decision making. But when you have a better quality material and less of it, it always sets you up better and gives you options. That's all. Yeah, I appreciate the possibility of being less dependent on the leachate. That's also interesting. Other or Kurt just checking in. Oh, I see. Oh, multiple hands. Jeff and then Kate, go ahead. So neither one of these guys have patted themselves on the back enough and you haven't patted yourselves enough on the back enough for the success of phase one. And I just, I need everyone to focus on what's happened here, which is a huge, huge win for the city and success for ESG and the partnership that was forged two years ago and is now almost completed. It's pretty incredible when you look at the numbers. And before we begin to deal with the problem of what to do with all the gas that we're going to be producing, we need to understand that we made a really, really great decision. And you guys were the drivers for it. And ESG was the amazing, you know, environmental contractor that helped the curtain, Chris, make it happen. I mean, if you look at the photos, it's pretty amazing what we did. So I just want to pat everyone on the back for that because it's truly a remarkable achievement. So then we turn to what are we going to do with this gas? And I mean, it's really, this is another win-win situation that we have here. So we have to figure out whether it's more cost-effective to do this drier than it is to do the CHP. That's really, because there's so many environmental benefits. I mean, Lauren, you brought up what are our net zero goals. I mean, we do have to think about the trucking that we have, the disposal costs that we have. CHP is really not going to help us get to the net zero because we're giving up the wrecks. So basically, CHP is generating revenue that would allow us to buy wrecks. That, from the net zero city's goals, we need to look at that from that perspective. If it comes out to 90% that Larry hopes for and ESG thinks, then there's going to be probably money available for purchasing wrecks, but that's what you're talking about. You're still going to have those non-avoided costs of transportation and the sludge disposal costs. So I mean, from, and I'm a MEAC member. We haven't been able to have a committee member. We haven't been able to meet as a committee since all of this new information's come out. So I'm speaking personally is basically what I'm saying. I'm not speaking for the committee, but it only makes sense to me that we need to explore this drier option. We just need to explore it. I love the fact, Larry, I got to say I love the fact that you guys are on board to also explore it more and work with us on it because you've been an amazing partner. So I've talked too much. That's that's what I've got to say. I think we need to explore it and we need to come up with the best option moving forward on using the gas. Thank you. Yeah, go ahead, Kate. Okay, Stevenson, Montalier Energy Advisory Committee. So I echo a lot of what Jeff said in just how great this project has been and how much we value the partnership with ESG. You know, one of my questions, Kurt, is you said that, you know, you obviously need to work with ESG as an outside consultant to look at the methane utilization, but I'm curious if you have any sort of back of the napkin numbers yet on what you think the percentage utilization would be. Because one of my concerns all along is just, you know, how much are we talking about flaring of the gas and it just feels like a waste. So but I don't know yet what the thought is in terms of how many BTU that takes per gallon to to dry it. So I'm curious about that and just want to also encourage us to remember that that we are in the process of building the city's net zero 2030 plan for municipal operations. And we will be bringing a draft of that to the council in the next six weeks probably we're shooting for the end of June. And this is an important piece of it. The dollars are important, obviously from an operating budget perspective, and a funding perspective, but I also would just encourage us to look at the overall net zero goal, the carbon impacts of these different options. You know, that wasn't really part of this presentation, but I hope as we if we decide to take the next six months to dig into it further, that we're looking at the emissions impacts of these different choices and taking that into consideration as well. That's it. Yeah, yeah, thank you. And Kurt, you know, if you're in the meeting, you know how to unmute yourself. Oh, yeah, looks like you got it. I'm here now. Okay, great. Well, here's one that I would like to follow up on while I was unavailable there. First, the PFAS issue. So all right, this equipment that we're looking at currently does not destroy PFAS, but there is a technology out there that does, it's for paralysis. And in order to run the solids through the paralysis unit, you have to first, you have to first dry it. So this would be a step towards that if the council, you know, wanted to, you know, make that a goal in the future, it could potentially be regulatory, I think it's probably a ways out as far as requiring municipalities to do it. But this is a step towards that process. We actually did speak to one company that provides that type of system. And, you know, they gave us some budgetary numbers on cost of both units, the dryer and the paralysis unit. And it was the equipment alone is roughly around $5 million. But that system that they have does not really utilize the methane. So that's why we decided to take a step back and look at the other option as sort of the step one. So that's kind of my comments on PFAS. On the financial, you know, Kate just mentioned, you know, the financial impacts are not the only thing, and I agree absolutely. But I do want council to be aware of the many needs within the sewer funds. You know, we have eight sewer pump stations. Most of them are built in the 60s. They're getting scary, you know, they're 30 feet in the ground. They're probably at least a three quarters of a million each to replace those. So there's some big, big dollar investments that need to occur in our system. Also our pipes are almost all clay tile. You know, there's no gaskets in them. So the groundwater just runs in and that contributes to our sewer overflows. And, you know, that is also a very big environmental concern. We don't want, you know, we've been working for a long time toward eliminating sewer overflows, you know, and any any financial impact that takes away from that is going to delay that goal and that environmental benefit by eliminating CSOs. So I just want to, you know, just give you a kind of high level that there's a lot of needs out in the sewer system. And then Kate, you mentioned methane use. So ESG, again, they did a very preliminary look at methane utilization from these drivers we're looking at. They think there might actually not be enough gas possibly to operate these in winter months. But again, we really need to dive into the details. So, you know, I think there's a good chance that most if not all the gas would be utilized, but we can't say that with certainty at this point. It was just a lot of work to do to figure that out. I think that answers the questions that came up so far. We'll turn it back over to other concerns. Any other thoughts, comments? So I see, Dan, I also just want to add that there is a part of me that loves the possibility that this is a step towards pyrolysis. I'm just gonna put that out there. Dan, go ahead. Well, I guess my sense is that it's well worth exploring the second option for phase two. You know, in large part, one of the things that I think is attractive is what Jeff was saying about the idea that these represent actual savings to the environment. Fewer truckloads recycling actual material as opposed to the wreck credits that really are paper and aren't necessarily improving our footprint. Maybe credits, but I think it's a substantial, it's worth exploring. And I think it's ultimately worth comparing. And it would be nice to have sort of once we have those costs and effectiveness fixed to sort of look and compare the two projects. But I'm certainly supportive of this drier option. I like what it actually does for the products that we are accepting and currently processing now and the potential impact that it would have on the immediate environment. So I just want to be conscious of the time here. If other folks have comments, I certainly want to let you chime in. I'm getting the sense that people are in terms of providing feedback and direction to Department of Public Works that sounds like we should be exploring this other option. I don't think we need to vote necessarily. I'm seeing some thumbs up. And it also sounds like we're going to talk about this in the future. And I apologize, of course, talking about energy. I could just do endlessly, which is dangerous. So any other thoughts that folks want to share on this? Donna? Just great appreciation for all the information and how they presented it. Thank you, Kurt and Larry and Jeff, Kate. Thank you very much. You all make it make sense. Thank you. Yeah. Yes, thank you. And I also want to thank Jeff and Kate for sticking around. It is nearly 1030. You are awesome. Can I just make one last comment? Yep. Okay. So the next step, if we're going to evaluate the driers to develop a contract with ESG, maybe one of their engineers, that'll be the next time you see something on that, hopefully relatively soon, you know, we're going to have to spend some money to evaluate that. So I just wanted to put that out there that there will be a cost to looking into the driver a little further because we don't have the expertise in how to do that. And just to be clear, that will be covered by out of operational budget or that'll come out of the existing bond or what do you think? You would have to come out of the wastewater budget. Okay. And that's that's a hit you're prepared to absorb. I think we can manage it because the Phase 1 project is doing so well. Okay. Okay. Great. Okay. Do you need anything more from us? No, I'm all set. Thank you. Okay. Larry, go ahead. Just to request a travel budget for Kurt because we're going to be presenting Phase 1 at a lot of conferences. So you're ready. And other than that, thank you, Council Mayor, for taking the bold step and having faith in the project and the idea because it's really appreciative of it, showing faith in us. And it's it was, as Jeff said, it was a really important decision that really puts I think this plant in its class is one of the top plants in the country now in terms of what it does in terms of resource recovery efficiency and how they're managing biosolids. So just thank you on ESG's behalf. Really like working with you. That's it. It's great. Very high praise. Thank you so much. All right. So unless folks have more things that want to say, we're going to move on. I do get the sense that we should not jettison topics, right? Even though it's late. Jay, did I see a hand there? No. Okay. Just checking. Okay. So we're going to keep moving on then. Please, Supervisor's contract. Bill. By the way, this was on the agenda last week and you asked us to look into one section of the one, you know, one sentence in the contract. As I mentioned, this is a Supervisors Union is a new union. So we were creating a base contract for them to work from, which was derived from the patrol officers, but altering some language to make sure properly reflected supervisors versus patrol. And our agreement going into it from both the union and city was that we would not make any substantive changes. So we did look at the sentence that was raised by a resident last week. And I think, you know, the conclusion I got talking to other folks and talking to union people and attorneys is that this was, you it's not giving the police or the union carte blanche to ignore any city ordinances. It talks about if there's an ordinance that's in direct conflict with the contract, and we don't really have a lot of ordinances that deal with personnel issues other than, you know, the personnel plan I think might be considered an ordinance, that the assumption would be the contract would prevail and that if if there were a found to be a conflict, we would try to resolve that. And the intention behind that isn't to allow people to ignore, you know, to not have to follow ordinances. It's actually to protect the collective bargaining process. You know, in theory, we could propose something at the bargaining table and, you know, not reach agreement on it, so settle a contract and then pass an ordinance imposing it. And that is completely outs, you know, that is not what is supposed to be happened. So I think, you know, this clause, and also mind you that clause, as I said, we haven't talked about it in the 26 years I've been here. So it's not like it's something new. It's it's it's there, particularly integrity of the process. I suggested language that talked about an ordinance pertaining to mandatory topics of collective bargaining, that would just clarify what those ordinances were. And I don't think there was disagreement, but the basically the supervisors union said, hey, we agree, we aren't going to make any substantive changes. We think this is substantive change, we'll talk about it when we get to the table. And, you know, that same language is in the patrol officers union, and it's in the fire officers. So I intend to make that propose that change with all of them. I think it keeps the same integrity of what's intended to mean and clarifies it. But my recommendation is that we get this one taken care of so because we have to start bargaining with them for the next one very soon. So that's Jack, go ahead. Because the proposal to approve the contract was laid on the table at our last meeting, I think the proper thing to do now is to motion to take it from the table and I make that motion. I'll second. Motion and a second any further discussion? All in favor please say aye. And opposed. Okay. So that is now up for discussion Jack go ahead and move we approve the contract. Second. Okay we got a motion and a second. I would say I agree especially with the The commitment from the city manager that he is going to bring this amendment or propose change language when it is up for further debate, which is very soon. Other comments. Okay. Dan. I'll just say I'm assured by the fact that the attorneys who interpret these contracts on a regular basis have offered that same interpretation that it is of limited importance. So I think that's, I feel comfortable voting for it with that opinion as well. Okay. Okay. Any further discussion? Okay. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed. Right. So that passes. We're on to the summer schedule. I do actually suspect that if we wanted to, we still could jettison this one. We do still have time to. You could, although the schedule that we put in there basically work for just about everybody and it still would allow you to get rid of one meeting. So we could wait, we could wait another meeting, but I will say from our perspective, the sooner we know the schedule, the sooner we can like tell people when to line up contracts and, you know, so it's always earlier is better, but you know, certainly if there's going to be a debate about it, let's put it off. If it wasn't okay with the dates. Yeah. Fair enough. These are fine with me. Other thoughts. Good. One thumbs up. Yes, Donna. I'm just a little disappointed that we don't lose one. That's all. You can. You can. It's summer. A block of time. That's all. Yeah. I think that's a good point. I'm not saying that those are the dates that worked for everybody, but if you all want to drop one. Pick one and drop it. Well, how about, I think that is a. Something that we should discuss, but maybe we don't have to discuss that right now. What you're going to do is you're going to move to accept the new schedule as the calendar and then next meeting, talk about which one to drop. I like that. Okay. Okay. Is there a second. Second. Okay. We got multiple seconds. Any further discussion? Okay. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. And opposed. Okay. Great. Right. So. We can do this at the end. The executive session. And have to be super long. Okay. So we'll do. Council reports and then we'll likely have a. Executive session. Around. Collective bargaining. So it actually lists the mayor's report first. So I'm going to go first this time. Cause that's what it says. That's what it says. Okay. Okay. One is that I constituent call. This week. From a fellow who was interested in us going back into. Regular public meetings in person. Visibly as soon as the governor allowed, which is may something, but that is. I think the understanding was that the, the, we could go back to in person as soon as. As soon as some, some date in May, which we're in right now. Is that your understanding as well? Bill or Cameron. I think so. I'd want to double check that, but. We had opted. Because we were also trying to figure out if we could do some kind of hybrid. Right. Yeah. But like July, we would be, you know, We're supposed to be fully open anyway, but then the question comes out. We just getting more participation. Or is it, you know, so. We're trying to sort that technology stuff. Your call. Well, is there any interest in revisiting when we start to get back in person? Okay. I'm seeing some shaking of the heads or not. Okay. Okay. All right. That's, that's clear. Thank you. Second thing is that. So our, our my ride program has been super successful as we heard earlier today. And it's been so successful that capstone is interested in. Replicating. This program. But also including servicing Barry. And they were interested in a letter of support from us. And it would be going to. One of the earmark. Pots of money through. I think it was Sanders's office. I'd have to go back and look, but. Any, any thoughts or objections to. Any other comments? Okay. Okay. Tagging on to our, my ride program. Okay. Seeing the shaking of the heads. Any other, just want to check any other thoughts. Is it fine? There too. It wouldn't be just them doing it. It would be linking them. So people could get rides back and forth. Right. Right. Okay. All right. Great. Seeing thumbs up. Great. So that I think is it for me. Thank you. Thank you. Well, actually, I'll just say one more thing. Again, just very grateful for all of you. So thank you for your brains. And your patience. Okay. That's it. Donna, are you good to go next? Yes, really quickly. And I mentioned it because I may need. A letter of support from the council, or at least through the mayor. I just wanted to say that the council, I think is working on a grant for the earmark that Leahy and Sanders are offering. And we wanted to include in that earmark money for the. Simocast system that capital West is proposing. The console that Montpelier and Barry are new consoles for them. Barry and Montpelier and a new built in system of communication with Barry and Montpelier. And we're going to be putting that in for both Sanders and Montpelier. And we're going to be putting that in for both of those. So it got to me like a couple of million dollars, maybe more. And we've talked to, I talked to Bill. So far the city has not put in an earmark for that. So we're hoping we can do a regional. To make it more forceful. And I would hope that they wouldn't oppose the council wouldn't oppose if Anne wrote a letter supporting us for that earmark. The public safety authority board. It's all last minute. I don't know what's going on. Allegies is doing the 21st. Short window. Sounds fine to me. Cool. Great. Okay. Seeing some thumbs up there. Thank you. Right. Oh, Connor. Right. Couple of quick things. Just a heads up. I did get a request again. I mean, it was a really good idea. I think, you know, Noel was saying it would be nice if we could do a Juneteenth. Problem is we're gonna be ripping up like state straight over the summer, right? So it doesn't make much sense to paint it, rip it up and paint it again. So I'm trying to throw back some other options, maybe doing a banner that could be hung at the state house in the meantime, but just so you guys know that might be nice and not controversial last time. So it might be on the horizon again there when we pick a date. Otherwise, homelessness task force today, again, pretty staggering numbers. We have 238 adults in hotels in Washington County, 48 kids as of today. And 112 of these are eligible for those hotel rooms only because of COVID. So again, when this goes away, we're in for a bit of a rude awakening as a state and county and city. So just had a good presentation by the director of facilities in Montpelier High School. I was an adjunct professor at Norwich. Had his class actually designed some day shelter designs from Montpelier, which were incorporate showers, bathrooms, lockers. You know, it was really creative thinking and certainly no prices attached to this, but a lot of cool conceptual stuff that I think the committee's gonna continue to look at, you know, as time goes on here. So I'll keep reporting on that, but that's it for me for now. Great, thank you. Jay. Yeah, just a couple of quick things I wanted to acknowledge Alec and Parks Commission on the work that they're looking ahead towards, particularly some, I think there's a lot of energy and vision around improving Blanchard Park, which is, you know, tends to be, you know, it's so close to so many folks, but tends to be somewhat forgotten and appreciative of some energy being put to that space to make it more accessible and something that the city can better utilize. And then the other thing is, I just, I've had occasion for whatever reason in this past like seven to 10 days to have interactions with various city staff. And in each of those occasions, they have, without going into details, have really gone above and beyond what might be expected and were faced with challenges where they could have easily said, you know, we can't really deal with this now, you know, we're getting caught up, we're short-staffed, all of that, but they did the opposite and they, you know, took an approach to solving problems and helping the community. And I apologize for the vagueness, but Donna DPW and dealing with an ongoing issue that's been plaguing some homeowners for over, for multiple years, Zach dealing with constant water issues and Arnie being able to support a local youth soccer teams and club and helping with the equipment and gear. Like all things that could have just been like, you know, we can't really deal with it, but they've all gone above and beyond. And so I just really wanted to acknowledge how, acknowledge them and Bill and know that, you know, we hear a lot about, you know, folks who have challenges with city staff, but so often I'm reminded that they are doing everything they can and going above and beyond. So I just wanted to acknowledge those folks for all they've done and all they do for the city. That's it. Thank you. Make sure they know. Yeah, thank you. Dan. Three quick things. First, picking up sort of maybe on Jay's last note, I had the opportunity to take a, finally take a tour of the fire station and the chief Bob Gallans let it and had an opportunity to discuss some of the issues that the fire department is going through. And again, just amazing work that our staff is doing and really walking out of there, proud of the department and, you know, the systems that they have put in place. The second thing is response to one of the earlier public comments. I did actually follow up on the complaint that Steve Whitaker had made regarding a resident of Montpellier Housing, even though, you know, they have their own board and authority and it's a complicated situation like all of these. And, you know, I think it's one of these things where this particular gentleman, you know, is in a difficult situation and the housing authority to my understanding has given him lots of options or not lots, but options. And so, you know, I think it's always careful. I was taught as a philosophy student to not necessarily believe the worst in the philosophy you were reading because that was always easy to do, but to try and hang with them a little bit to understand what they were saying. And I think in a lot of these situations, you know, we have city staff, they're dealing with difficult situations that are far more complicated than we first hear. And it's always, I think we get, like Jay said, good responses if, you know, we have, we work with the people because we have a really good set of people that wanna help and that are in public service for the right reasons. The final thing I'll say is that, you know, the pool, I saw that the rec department is looking for volunteers to help with the pool, getting it back up in shape. And, you know, I'll be looking to put my money where my mouth has been. And so I hope others will as well and sign up for it because it's very exciting. And I actually had the privilege of an acquaintance reveal that his grandfather was the one who designed the pool. He was a federal engineer and highway engineer and designed it when it was the world's largest asphalt pool. I think it's now only the second largest, but a really cool piece of history. Thanks. Great, cool. All right, Jack. Best night. Okay, good. I am also gonna pass. Okay. All right, so I think that needs us to John. Oh, I don't have anything more to say than all my emails about Moldova. So I'll have more news about that next week, end of next week and I'll let you know. Okay, Bill. I do have a couple of things before we go and I'll try to keep these brief as well. Number one, I put in the weekly memo. If I mentioned 1216 Main Street or the Moldova property, whatever, so the good news is you can see that work is getting done there, that road is being built and it's finally cleaning up that mess. So that's great news. But also we have received, I don't know where a couple of inquiries about potential wanting to know if the city is gonna sell that property or could it be developed, those types of things. And as you know, we had talked about that, well, initially it was going to be sold and redeveloped as part of the initial deal and then it wasn't, we purchased the land. I think at one point, the council indicated its preference for keeping it as green open space, but also we were going to then do a public master planning process. We went through that and that master plan indicated that they thought its best use was in commercial resale, then, excuse me, commercial use, construction developed. Then of course the pandemic hit, and I think the only focus we gave was buying the property and we've agreed, we've come up with a plan to buy the property and part of that thinking was it did have market value if we needed to sell it to get the money back. So you don't have to do anything tonight, but I think we'll probably have this on an upcoming agenda because I think we need to be thinking about what we want to do with that. We, our first payment is due by the end of June. And if we were to take proposals, what would those be? I think we'd have to run a public process, but could we make quick conditions like there has to be a public bathroom attached to it or some of those kinds of things. So that, are there ways to think creatively about meetings of public needs as well as private needs? So again, just that's a heads up that's coming. We did have public records mentioned earlier in the meeting as well. Two things I want to say about that. One is to not ignore the appeal the documents were provided. So I felt there was no need to address the appeal because we gave them what he asked for. So that, I thought that resolved the appeal. So if I didn't, I guess that's on me. Secondly, because of confusion about requests from this one individual, but also from other people, we've actually created a new way to do it. And we have an email call and it is public recordrequestatmopulier-vt.org. And it'll be on our website. We're going to do some PR around it. And what we're trying to do, it's one of the things that happens, especially when we get somewhat casual email public record requests, they go to a person, the person may or may not see the email or see it in a timely fashion. So what this does is actually sends it to multiple people so that we all get a chance to eyeball it and make sure that the right person's made aware. And also we're going to start keeping a public log of all the requests so the public can see which requests we're getting and who we're getting them from and how they've been responded to so that we can all keep track of where we're spending our time on public record requests. So we have certainly taken this issue pretty seriously, talked about it at our team meetings about how to improve on this. And particularly in, as I said, some of them come in very formally and some of them come in quite casually and they're not always as clear. So we're going to try to deal with that. And then Dan mentioned the fire station tour. Just you should have gotten an email from Mary that we're setting up group tours as well for all the different facilities. So keep an eye on that. I don't know if it's gone out to you yet. It may have been out to our staff. I'm sorry. Now that I think about it was the scheduled dates but it's coming. So you'll be getting something with dates, tour dates. That's the end of my reports. Okay, thank you. All right, so I think going into executive session to talk about collective bargaining and I assume Bill, this is something that we should do tonight and not put off. Is that accurate? Or can you put it off? It would be better to do at least quickly. Okay, is that okay team? We're going to have a question. Question 11. Yes, Jack. Assuming we are going to do this, I move pursuant to one VSA section 313 1B that premature general public knowledge would clearly place the city at a substantial disadvantage regarding labor relations agreements with employees. And so it... There's a second. Okay, good. So I just would say that there's no expectation you'd be voting on anything. Now what we've been doing is keeping this meeting open and then coming back in. Torture. On the host, when I close out of it, I'm going to close out of the meeting. I could go in on a separate device or do we do it like we used to do the old way and just say we'll take another one when we adjourn? Yeah. Yeah, go ahead, Dan. I suggest we just simply adjourn. Obviously, if we did have to take any action, I think we're foreclosing that by doing it this way. But given what... Yeah, the high unlikelihood, then I think what we're essentially saying is that we're closing out the public meeting and we'll just simply take a note when we come out of executive session. And there's no need to further sort of keep people waiting whoever they may be, either here or out in TV land. Okay. So with that understanding, is there a motion? So we will not be coming back to this meeting if we go into executive session. Is there a motion? Well, we have a motion. Oh, I'm sorry. To make it. That's right. I forgot that we didn't vote on it. Okay. There's a motion, a premature knowledge placed city at a disadvantage. Any further discussion? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. And opposed. All right. Now is there a motion to go into executive session? Yes, Jack. Now we go into executive session. And there's a second. And we already have the understanding that we will be adjourning from there. We'll note the time, but we will not be taking any further action. Any further discussion? Okay. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. And opposed. Okay. All right. I'll see you all.