 Evening everybody welcome to the ward 5 neighborhood planning association meeting for November 2022 We have a couple of items tonight coming up We're gonna talk about parking services and build building electrification. I'll show the agenda in just a moment Could you put the slides up just quickly and I'll run through like real fast those cool. It's working All right, NPA ward 5 So the second one so our we like to run through this every time just to kind of introduce what this organization is about What we do here is we provide a safe and welcoming forum that might start to Try to make this meeting accessible and one of those things is having an in-person and an online space and we want to engage with as many community made and community members as possible and Minimize the barriers that that could exist and participating here Although, you know, it does have to be at a set set time So it is the third Thursday of every month and hopefully that's convenient for quite a few people We try to be respectful in our discourse here of cultural and economic differences and value all the perspectives that are that are brought forward We'd like that we'd like the meetings to be fun and we add creativity to our sort of agendas and sometimes we have topical meetings Which we'll probably continue to do in the in the new year here and We we don't actually endorse any political candidates. So we're a non-partisan organization. So that's our That's our front page. I think the second one is just a list of the steering committee members So right now we have six steering committee members. I might be the only one on the meeting right now We have we have a lot of reasons for that Billy is planning to join a little bit later tonight So the members of Billy Clark Joe Derry, that's me Nate Lanieri Terry Rivers Andy Simon and Nancy Stetson quite a few of those people are from the five sisters neighborhood So you might know those names And we put our websites up here the easy one is NPA 5.org We also have the Burlington Vermont gob website There's a quick slash NPA 5 to access our sort of agenda in minutes. That's the official place for that sort of legal content and Thank you as always to Sam Heinrichs for setting things up in here as well as Charlie behind the camera He's recording for CCTV tonight. So alright, so now we'll go to the agenda Thank you. We could go back to the webinar if you if you want forgot about that page. Thanks, Sam So this is how the webinar works if you're new to this you should have a raise hand button. There's different views There's a presenter view. There's a view when you first start, but either way you'll have a raise hand function and If you're given the option you can unmute yourself using that little microphone icon Okay, that's the that's the quick version. So tonight we have public forum up front for for 20 minutes At 720 we're gonna talk to or Jeff page is gonna talk to us about parking services and at 740 We'll be talking about building electrification policy that's being proposed and Hopefully will be finished by 8 o'clock. So a little bit shorter than some meetings. Maybe you like that so I guess we're ready to Jump into public forum. I have a slide about public forum. I don't know if we'll really need it. Oh, I'm sorry There's one more but And I could probably remember what it says. It just we just ask that you limit the kind of remarks to say five minutes We'll try to remind you of that after a few you know keep track of the time So we don't go way over the 20 minutes and just please identify yourself and and whether you're a worldwide by presidency and If you like what street you're on and whatnot All right, I guess we're ready to jump in as anybody have anything they wanted to bring up for public forum Lucia has her hand up there Thanks, Joe. Hi everyone, my name is Lucia Campriolo and I am your neighbor down on Pine and Lyman Avenue I have two young children who are students at Champlain and My partner's name is Joe and he's been at these meetings before I'm also your elected school commissioner for Ward 5 and so I'm wearing that hat in this moment for this public forum I wanted to thank all of the voters here in Ward 5 and really throughout the city who Helped last week's bond pass so successfully We are so entirely grateful for your support And we recognize that not every voter voted yes on this bond And so the school board and your district leadership remain committed to seeking additional funding sources outside of the bond itself so that we can hold our commitment of spending up to $165 million on this bond and hopefully bring outside funding to it as well So look forward to continuing to visit in this space as well as in many other spaces that you can find us That's your school board reps that is To make sure that we are bringing the most current information and project developments to you otherwise, you're also welcome to Find information about the project on the school district website, which is BSDVT.org like Burlington school district VT as in Vermont org And there is an entire page dedicated to the project with a whole bunch of information So again, thank you so much for supporting the bond last week and look forward to being in touch again soon Thanks, Lucia Evening Jason I see your hands up Yeah, thank you. Good to be here. I'm Jason van der Ische. I live on Caroline Street and Recognized a lot of the names that you read off there. It's good to see so many neighbors involved I'm just stopping by briefly tonight Because I just announced earlier today that I'm running for city council To represent the South District Which comprises words five and six So this is an obvious early stop just to check in and say hi I'll be coming to NPA meetings in the future as well but Literally hot off the presses. We sent out the press release at 2 p.m And I'm really glad that I could make my first stop here at the NPA So I don't want to take up time with any electioneering just wanted to let folks know and there's more details on my website, which is Jason for Burlington.com That's it. Thanks Jason. Sorry, I was writing down the website Appreciate you coming in to announce Do we have any anyone else that I don't know? We have like the other participants as well, maybe but all right From anything from in the room you wanted to bring up Lucia beat me to the punch. I was gonna thank the the people for voting for the high school bond because In the neighborhood I live in there's there's a lot of talk about the cost and and you know other aspects of Running a city and running a school and at the expense and I was a little worried but I'm happy to see it go through because we need a high school as has been Printed on many pieces of paper across the city. So I don't know. I didn't make a little slide deck this time But I had understood that they're done blasting our Road just down the road here in front of the city market. So that was kind of some Welcome news for at least my little neighborhood. I live down on Ferguson So we were pretty happy to see that although it's it's pretty it's pretty messy down there along Briggs It's kind of like one gigantic road made up two-inch rocks. So I Guess we'll see how that goes Frozen parts of the year, but at least it's making some progress All right, I took my I took my chance at the end here. So I don't think that anyone else is Raised their hand so we could move on to Jeff. So I think he's been ready for a few minutes Trying to share my screen here see if I don't screw it up Yeah, so Jeff Padgett of The Department of Public Works Parking services. All right. Yeah, so thanks for having me. My name is Jeff Padgett I'm the division director for parking and traffic for the city of work in DPW and I'm also a ward 5 residence. So this is Very comfortable place for me and Charlie our cameraman is a parking service agent works in my group, so Very cozy. So anyway, we have been very very busy Reinventing what parking means in Burlington for the past couple of years And we haven't gone around and sort of bragged a little bit about it. So that's kind of what I'm here tonight to do is to You know gather input, of course always happy to hear but also just you know Shine a light on some of the pretty dramatic changes we've made. So there's a lot in here There's only about seven eight sides. I will go quickly. Please interrupt me But I want to be sure to sort of just hit the hit the wave tops and give you the flavor So with that We have a motto and it's safety and equity we have we realized that Every so that we're talking about tonight is parking services So what that is is the folks that write tickets on the streets They used to be called parking enforcement now They're called parking services and we have a motto of safety and equity So every ticket that we write is either because there has been a violation of a safety issue So you've parked too close to a corner you've parked in front of a hydrant you've blocked somebody's driveway Or there's an equity issue. You've parked in a handicapped spot You've parked in somebody's front yard or something like that where you've taken advantage of even taking advantage of something Even staying over a meter if you stay beyond the time that you said you were gonna stay at the meter You're denying the next person who's coming into town the opportunity to park in that meter So we look at everything we do from a safety and equity lens Which I think is somewhat radical and definitely fresh and new and has taken some real Shifting in our in our thought process and how we operate So, how did we get to this parking service safety and equity stuff? I'm gonna step back up a minute So parking services group works within the parking and traffic division and there's three parts There's parking services, which we're trying to talk about tonight. There's parking facilities, which is actually the lots Parking garages and there's traffic, which is all the parking meters And they actually run all the signs and lines and signals Crossing guards and crosswalks and all that stuff. So what's really important to understand is everything we do is Not supported by taxpayer dollars. It's all fee based So parking tickets pay for parking services parking fees in the garages pay for the pay for the garages to stay up and The meters pay for all the signals and signs and lines So we we run our own show which is pretty exciting except when something like COVID happens and You have a massive reduction in revenue because nobody's parking. So just an overview of our general structure I want to really focus on parking services tonight Because that there's there's a lot of interesting stuff there. So our goal Although we want to Although our motto is safety neck We are our two real goals are to minimize ticket and ticketing and minimize towing We do not want to write tickets tickets are merely a way that we educate people That they did something wrong and hopefully they don't do it again And we really don't want to tow people But if you're parked in somebody's in front of a fire hydrant or you're blocking somebody's driveway That's a real safety issue and ordinance is written that allows us to move your vehicle we do everything we can to avoid tickets and towing and I Know that's a hard thing for some people to believe but we are working very hard at finding new and creative ways to avoid tickets and towing So some of the structural changes we've had to make to make all this safety equity and minimizing happen Is we actually moved all of the parking enforcement officers that were in the police department into public works and retitled them as parking service agents so and We also moved all of the staff from the garages the folks that used to work in the booths They are now parking service agents also so Because we because in the garage as we took the gates away and the garages run on park mobile and kiosks now so So we've moved staff from VPD over we've merged them with all the parking garage folks We've retrained all those staff Members on how to do the job and actually specifically on customer service. We've had specific customer service training and As a result we've gone from coverage. We used to have five parking enforcement officers now We have 14 parking service agents which means that instead of having a pool of five We had one person on vacation one person sick That left you with three people and you had two in the day and one in the evening Now we have a full slate of five during the day a full slate of five in the evening and we're headed towards overnight which means If you have an issue that you need dealt with the two o'clock in the morning You don't have to call the police. You can call us Which I think is a real sea change. We're not there yet But that's what we're heading towards So those are sort of structural changes that we've made So some of the innovations that we've been able to achieve through these structural changes and mine shifts as we're headed towards a one-stop shop if you Want to know anything about parking in Burlington? You can call us and we should know and if we don't know we will figure it out One of the big changes we made is we reformed scoff When COVID was here scoff was suspended Scoff is when you get your car towed because you haven't paid your parking tickets scoff The scoff threshold used to be seventy five dollars Which meant if you've got one ticket for a snow plow for a snow band And then you got another ticket your car was towed you were one and done Now the ticket the route the threshold is two hundred seventy five dollars So you can get four or five tickets and you have the opportunity to pay it down We've also changed ordinance to make it explicit that we are not allowed to hunt for cars that are in scoff I don't think I don't know if you've heard about communities where the police go around You know looking for their quota and they're typing people's plates in just trying to find somebody who's in scoff We changed the ordinance to make it explicitly illegal. We cannot do that We could only somebody is only towed for scoff if they're already over the threshold and they get another ticket That's when they get towed for scoff so that so Because scoff came in and scoff was changed we introduced another program called fines for food at the same time so this was all around turn of the year last year and We said okay. We're changing that we're bringing scoff back We raised the limit, but how can we soften the blow even more so we created a thing called fines for food Which said if you have overdue parking tickets and you pay for your parking tickets during the holiday season We'll take half of that money and we'll give it to feeding Chittenden So it's a way to incentivize people not only you know, we didn't just have the stick of scoff coming back We had a carrot of giving a donation to charity It generated eighty thousand dollars in Overdue payments, which meant we cut a check to feeding Chittenden for forty thousand dollars. It's pretty spectacular And we're starting that up again next week. We should Press releases should be going out early next week program starts up after Thanksgiving and runs from Thanksgiving to Christmas Or I'm sorry to New Year's Speaking of the holiday season we actually run a free holiday Two hours it's two hours free if you use Park mobile at any city-owned parking asset So any of the garages anywhere on street any of the parks parks direct slots You'll have you'll see on Fridays and Saturdays during the holiday season. It's two hours free parking We did it last year one hour free every day We learned a lot about how people used it and what was actually beneficial and we Changed it a bit and we think this will be as effective and a little more efficient We are working with Burlington high school to provide them parking while they're at the Macy's building We've off we offer them discounted parking Where we have supported them very? Holy on an effort to put a rooftop garden on top of the downtown garage and We're currently supporting car share in their efforts to electrify not only on-street spaces But spaces in the garage which is actually a little trickier than it sounds because they are actually a third party So it's a sort of like a private entity putting a private asset in a public entity So there's some complications in there that It's work. Let's just say that so so those are some of our sort of community base how we're trying to take parking and Turn it back on the community and say, you know, this isn't just about putting cars and spots And this is about how can we make the community better for resources that we have we have cars here now So doesn't that's our community approach? product and services Residential parking anybody lives in residential parking. We have gone fully digital If you have one of those big green stickers on your car, you shouldn't you don't need it anymore if you Are scared to take it off come down to DPW you talk to the people the window make sure that everything's set But you should not need a green sticker on your car anymore Which is it's huge We one of the other issues we have in resident parking areas as contractors I've heard lots of feedback from contractors. They don't want to work in Burlington because it's hard to park They park their they park their truck in their trailer and resident parking area And they don't have the guest pass in there They get a ticket on the truck and the trailer because they're both licensed vehicles. So it's a big ticket. It's bad So they get frustrated so we created a program for them But they can actually pay us and they get a permit for the year and they can go and they can park in any Resident parking zone and do their work. It's only for when they're doing their work This is not a back door into getting a resident parking ticket. It's actually more expensive than a resident parking Permit and we have the ability to audit it. So this is not a back door to getting RPP permit We created whoops program so if you come to town and You let the meter run out by accident. You didn't have park mobile. You forgot to feed the meter whatever you can In your appeal process, you can just put in there I want to whoops this I made a mistake and we will void it you get one a year and This program actually replaced the blue chip program if anybody lives in RPP They used to have a blue chip program where you'd get these little stickers and you got like four or five a year So if you have friends that make a lot of mistakes, you know what you ran out, right? But now, you know, all of your anybody who comes to visit you Can use this program they only get to use it once they got to learn But now it's it's a much broader scope and it applies to people that aren't just in RPP It applies to anybody visiting the city We already talked about the increase in staffing from five to 14 which has dramatically changed how we approach our work and I think improving service And we talked about additional customer service trading. That's that's something that you know Parking enforcement officers never were considered as a customer service position. We are aggressively Defining it as a customer service position So we're and we're doing training to support that See where are we So more to come I had talked a little bit about the 24 7365 service our goal is that if Is it some of the burden off of the police right now? I thanked the police chief yesterday personally for the support that they've given us until we get to full force So but we're headed towards a world where we want to see the police not having to write tickets They have plenty to do we can take care of the tickets We have ongoing digital permit upgrades coming We have a new back-end system coming now that's handling all of our permits and all of our ticket writing It's actually literally just went live this morning. This is like a huge innovation for us This is dramatically improving how people will buy their permits and how they will appeal their permits We have so drifting a little away from parking services into some of the facilities stuff That we're doing marketplace garage is very old 50 years old. It's at its end of life We are holding on to keeping it running and we have this year. We will be starting a visioning project for What the community wants to see happen in that location? It's a prime location right downtown There's lots of demands on that space and we understand that so That will be starting probably January February time frame We are doing we have a plan right now for a whole new garage signage Wayfinding making the garage a really nice place with pretty signs and you always know where you're going Problem is it's a million dollars to install So we put a pin in that we have it on the shelf, but that will be coming in the next couple years And the downtown garage the big garage. It's behind the Hilton and the hotel Vermont courtyard Nobody knows what that's called used to be called the Lakeview and College Street garage complex, which is a mouthful So we rebranded at downtown garage. There's new signs up It's much simpler for the public to understand that if you get a permit in the downtown garage It's downtown garage and it's downtown and that's part part of what we're right We understand that there people from out of town have concerns about parking. Where do I park? Well, we can say you can park the marketplace or you can park downtown garage It's just simple so Anyway, so that is my sprint through some pretty major changes were up to I don't know if anybody has any questions happy to Talk about any bits of that What online go first? Oh, sorry Thank you Jason Thank You Jeff. That was super interesting and I learned a ton from but it's really nice to hear a lot of a lot of things going on That we're completely not on my radar Two questions one. It's really interesting what you said about how your Parking services folks, I'm probably not using the exact right name, but this crew of folks who you've now consolidated are available Throughout the day and the weekend and soon overnight I'm curious what your thoughts are on Other services that they might provide just taking advantage of the fact that we have, you know trained people on the streets representing the city What's your thinking on on other ways that they could add value for the city above and beyond Parking as they're out and about right well They're they're already doing that to a degree because we we took the gates off the garages So the way that we enforce payment in the garages is they go around the garage and they're patrolling So they're actually whereas they used to be just in the booth and people could always go the booth and ask questions Now they're actually out moving through the space and creating energy in the garages and they do answer questions People say how do I pay? Where do I go? Where's church tree? So, you know they used to be called ambassadors when they work in the garages and we couldn't call them parking service ambassadors Because ambassadors already a job description at the airport in the city So we called them parking services agents and the goal is to have them be Just as an ambassador. So we want them to be not sort of the person You know, they're walking down the street. You're not running to your car to try to run away from them You see them and you should be they should be welcoming and answer questions. That's our goal We're not there yet, but that's our goal. This this customer service concept is that they're a friendly presence in the community and they somebody that You want to see And then related to that In the marketplace garage And in particular, well actually let me back up the garage that has an entrance off of St. Paul Street, that's by the key bank. Is that a city garage or is that privately owned? St. Paul by the by key bank No, right across from the Baptist church. That's not ours That's not a city garage. No, okay Good to know I've heard significant safety concerns in that garage and I'm trying to learn more about how that garage is is managed and who's it is I believe it's handy Okay Yeah, okay great. Thank you in that case not relevant since it's not your garage We're just all we are is the marketplace garage the downtown garage the main street lot The one that's on st. Paul street under the new Champlain building. We manage that they own it. We manage it We manage the park slots for them. They take care of the property. We help with the payment processes They're said main street pearl street The one by the behind city market If you don't I'm talking if you go through city market back there on the other side I think that's it All those have like park mobile is that the payment you can sort of tell almost by that everything owned by the city is park mobile parks And that's why we manage some of the back end for parks because it's all through park mobile So we manage all of that and then we split the money You see if anyone else had had wanted to ask a question I had two two follow-ups quickly When is the when is the holiday season according to the parking services? So Friday two hours free friday saturday starts on black friday. Okay, and it's friday and saturday through The new year, so i'm not sure when the last And then and the uh The fines for food programs starts on black friday also. Okay, you're thinking about same season Yeah, you're thinking about paying your parking ticket today. Do you want to help feeding jitnin? Just wait a week And then you have to pay half of your money will go half it'll be Double your money and in case anybody's concerned about finances We did this last year typically in a typical month. We bring in between 40 and 50 thousand dollars in Overdue parking tickets people that have overdue tickets paying us So we last year it was our inaugural year. We got off to a late start We brought in 80 thousand dollars cut that in half 40 It's basically the same amount of money we were bringing in anyway But we were able to clear out people's accounts Remove exposure to scoff and give money to feed each other. So it was like win-win-win So that's great cool Well, the other thing was the contact information for the so like you said there's 24 hour Coverage, I didn't know how to people reach you or your team. The best way is to call them 540 2380 That will get you straight to the parking services office If it's after hours, you can call police dispatch, which I always forget their number But if you call the police dispatch and you tell them it's a parking issue, they will dispatch to our team Unless it's the middle of the night where we don't have staff yet parking Community service officer So there are there is parking service available overnight. Thanks to the police Great. Thank you. Great. I appreciate uh the time and uh, yeah Most of you know how to get it holding me one way or another so My email is uh jpagit p-a-d-g-e-t-t at burlington vt.gov Welcome any and I'll feedback email whatever here to make things better and Keep things peaceful. Sounds great. Thank you. Great. Thanks a ton All right, so the next item that we have second item for tonight is the Burlington electric I don't have the agenda for me. So I'm going to mess it up, but Darren springer jennifer green To talk about building electrification policy proposal Exactly. Oh, yeah Very good. Yeah. Good summation. Yeah. Are we ready to kick it off then? Yeah, so do we have to um, does sam have anything that you wanted to share or No, verbal got it. Yeah, just verbal and I know we don't have a lot of time. So we we do appreciate it I don't think we'll need a lot because Um, we really have a sort of short raison d'etre for being here We're really interested in hearing what people think About some of the thoughts we have regarding a building building electrification policy But before I kick it over to darin To talk a little bit about that I was going to frame it up Remind people that we have a net zero energy Strategy for the city So essentially now that we have our clean electric grid achieved in 2014 Through biomass, wind, solar and hydro We're excited now to transition away from fossil fuels in the built environment that generally uses natural gas in Burlington Although some unregulated fuels as well and then the ground transportation sectors So while we offer incentives and rebates and technical support And help in that regard the city council Is aware that policy is going to be an important element to achieving that zero So we have been requested to to provide some thoughts and comments to the city council On how we're going to further advance Some of the electrification policies that are already sort of in in the books So we've been meeting with stakeholders and we're here to to meet with the npa's Ward 5 npa in particular to hear what people have to say And so now I'll kick it over to darin who can sort of bring us up to speed on where we are with with policy Existing policy and then formation Thanks, gen Good evening everybody. I'm darin springer general manager with burlington electric As gen mentioned, you know, we've been doing a lot of work on policy development This particular item stems from the town meeting day vote In 2021 when the community voted by about a 65 percent yes margin To approve a charter change related to regulating greenhouse gas emissions and buildings And that went to the legislature and the governor Earlier this year and it was approved by the legislature and signed by the governor And in may we had a city council resolution that gen had referenced that asked us and the department of permitting and inspections to look at Ways we can make additional progress with buildings We do have already on the books a couple of ordinances that are critical in this regard One that requires rental weatherization standards over a period of several years And another that requires for new construction that we have a renewable Primary heating system for all new construction buildings Those were enacted last year and are beginning to make an impact positively in terms of our net zero energy 2030 vision with the community What we're looking at now is specifically what additional progress can we make In terms of new construction? What can we do in regards to existing buildings and city buildings? And in in specific with existing buildings, we're looking at the largest buildings in the community Those that are 50 000 square feet and larger We're not looking at residential. We're not looking at small businesses. These would be larger buildings perhaps less than a hundred of them that would be subject to this initial regulation and Really when you think about it to be a number of entities that might have multiple buildings within that Including uvm uvm medical center the city the school district shampling college and then some others And what we've been thinking about Is for new construction perhaps going beyond just requiring a renewable primary heating system But actually saying that if you're going to build new That the building should be fully renewable And that includes all heating water heating cooking and appliances and the way we've defined renewable in burlington ordinance so far has been quite broad it includes electrification options like heat pumps or Geothermal heat pumps air source heat pumps air to water heat pumps Variety of those technologies as well as advanced wood heating systems as well as conventional systems that have a contract for renewable fuel So that could be a conventional system that has a contract for renewable gas or for biodiesel for example So the idea would be with new construction you have to build renewable Or if you don't there would be an alternative compliance Carbon fee that the city could charge essentially at the time of permit that would look at the total Fossil fuel use that's going to come from that system over the life of its Operations and charge a one-time net present value carbon fee at the time of permit Part of the discussion will be how do we utilize the funds that would come from that There was an advisory ballot question that the community also voted yes on in 2021 That advised that we want to make some of the benefits of this policy available To those who are lower or moderate income And so one thing could be whether there is an effort to use portion of these funds to support Energy efficiency or renewable energy projects for low-income households and for low-income renters and affordable housing There are other options as well such as helping to support the city's own transition to renewables in its fleet for example But that generally is what we were thinking about relative to new construction For existing buildings large existing buildings We'd look at something similar although a little bit different in a way because We would say that if you are going to pull a permit for a heating system or a water heating system So not every use within a building but just those those two largest energy uses Then the same rules would apply you have to be renewable Or use a renewable fuel or you would be subject to the carbon impact fee So that's kind of a brief synopsis of of what we've been considering We've been working with a national group called the building electrification institute which works with cities around the country To explore policies and compare options and do analysis We've had a variety of stakeholder meetings as gen mentioned and we've met with the wards two three and one eight mpa's We're glad to be here at ward five and we have ward six and wards four seven coming up a little later this month and very early next month so With that we'll pause and glad to take any questions that folks have or Hear any feedback that folks have about those ideas I'll just mention we're going to present these a final report to the city council on the 5th of december which would Potentially kick off a process by which if they and the mayor agree They could put a question on the ballot next town meeting day To authorize the carbon impact fees the charter change requires that those Proposals go back to voters for subsequent approval before they could be put into ordinance by the city council So glad to take any questions or hear any feedback that folks may have looking online I have a question if nothing else comes up I was wondering if you have any idea how those fees Would compare to the actual kind of renewable system costs, you know like a minimum renewable system cost We've been it's a great question We've been doing analysis on that in some different examples trying to use like real world examples here in burlington of buildings that have Either been existing buildings that have retrofitted or new construction buildings and I think what you look at is a lot of times the Renewable option is fairly close to being cost competitive or maybe cost competitive On its own But if it's not if it's close to being cost competitive the carbon fee has the ability To level the playing field essentially and to say we're going to charge you for the fossil fuel pollution That's coming out of the system Once you do that the delta for the renewable systems becomes much more favorable in the analysis that we've looked at And that particularly true when you look at the rebates that are available As well for heat pumps or ground source heat pumps or other technologies So this could really tip the balance in some examples where maybe the upfront cost was close But not quite there the addition of the carbon fee might get somebody to say okay instead of paying that Let me look again at this renewable option and see if that's more cost effective for me. Sure. Yeah Yeah, it's kind of you're Describing like it could be for all the carbon you use on the lifetime of the system like that could be a Huge number like it depending on how long you think it's going to last 20 years 50 years Whatever, you know, right a lot depends on a lot of factors like that. It does it does in some cases it could be A relatively small fraction of the baseline system cost and in some cases it could be a much larger fraction You know could be 5 additional cost or it could be 75 additional cost depending on how long the system would run How efficient it is how much carbon it would put out But it would provide some economic rationale for really looking harder at the renewable choices that are out there Yeah, so I don't know if it's really if you're basing it on some, you know math about the you know the carbon and what Kind of a set standard for what that is is worth in terms of dollars Or if you're looking at it more like well, let's try to make this a tie breaker, you know by scaling the feed or whatever to kind of Fits the various situations We are looking there are communities that we've looked at New York, denver, boston for example that have Utilized carbon fees and burlington itself is already utilizing a carbon fee in a way At a hundred dollars a ton for our own fleet purchases within the city We we do exactly this type of equation. We take the conventional vehicle We add the carbon fee net present value for the lifetime of the vehicle and compare it to the electric option And I think we've moved from having very few electric vehicles within the city fleet to now One of the more recent procurements. I think we had a third of the vehicles were electric And in fact just today just up the road at the shellburn roundabout We had several electric vehicles from the city that went through to help open the grand opening of the roundabout I know it's been open, but I was glad to drive one up burlington electrics evs through the roundabout today It's part of that but So yeah, we've seen ranges from a hundred dollars a ton all the way up to two hundred and sixty eight dollars a ton Which is what new york uses So we're still evaluating what the right number would be for this type of policy proposal. Okay. Thank you Do I ask three times and then I actually got to a number a range Yes, that's not what I was trying to do appreciate it. Of course on naples street and we're at five very grateful for all of your Rebates and incentives have been taking advantage of them I'm excited about the potential for a charter change that Make sure that all of our new construction is renewable, but I'm concerned about the inclusion of a renewable gas I've never met a gas that's renewable. I'm curious how you're defining it Sure, so currently Vermont gas has a program where you can sign up for a tariff and you can say I want to essentially pay a premium To support a renewable gas project that's essentially become part of their system The different technologies that provide that There are a few that i'm aware of one is there can be kind of a farm methane Digester type project which they have I think in addison county Where you're you're looking at using a digester and providing a renewable gas that way that can be put into the system There's also I believe landfill gas capture that can be used as renewable gas There may be other technologies as well But that would be the the idea behind it is to say you can't just use a conventional system and Use conventional fuel you have to pay the additional premium and claim the renewable fuel and that has some additional cost to it Whether that's more cost effective than paying the carbon fee or more cost effective than the other options Really varies by scenario in some cases. It might be in some cases. It wouldn't be In some of the analysis. I was just mentioning that we had done The electrification options for the existing building retrofit that we looked at the electrification option was the cheaper option so We certainly as the electric company we support electric options obviously, but we try to be I think in the city inclusive of various renewable fuels and options Thanks for talking me through that and you know that that sounds good, but I'm curious about the How how able We will be to actually enforce that, you know, is it just making sure that when someone Builds something new they pay the premium the first time like what's the oversight? of that in the future just on practical level and does the The kind of bonus of including gas and being inclusive on that front really outweigh The potential risk that you're just creating a weak hole. No, it's a great question. We've given that a lot of thought I think there's two ways to do it in terms of the renewable fuel One would be that the customer Provides evidence at time of permit of a long-term contract With the fuel provider, which would match the lifetime of the system So if it's a 25-year heating system, they provide a 25-year agreement to purchase the renewable Fuel that's one option. The second option would be At the time of permit you say, okay, I'm going to purchase renewable fuel Then every year the department of permitting and inspections would require a certification from the fuel provider that you've actually purchased that fuel And if you didn't then you could be subject to a prorata Portion of the carbon fee that you avoided up front. So I think there's a couple different ways to ensure actual compliance and avoid Having somebody say they're signing up for renewable but not actually follow through with it because Certainly you could imagine a scenario if you didn't have the enforcement where somebody says, oh, yeah I'm gonna I'm gonna purchase and they do it for a year, but then they stop and then the policy has been undermined So we would envision a continuous enforcement and monitoring if somebody doesn't have a long-term contract right up front Appreciate that. I'll be to hold a second question if other folks have questions, but doesn't quite seem like that So I'll just go ahead. I'm curious. It's kind of slightly switching tracks You'll mention that you're focusing on building greenhouse gas use I'm curious about if there are policy shifts if you're collaborating with GMT, etc in the future to work on Not just arriving at net zero, which is You know kind of a complicated Number to get to and it's really different from actually cutting emissions I'm I'm curious about what you all see in the future in terms of incentivizing public transit and getting people out of cars And doing that kind of efficiency work Yeah, maybe I'll just touch on on the buses for a moment And then Jen may have some items to add just kind of more broadly as well But we're big fans of electric transit buses We helped in 2020 to provide incentives and grants for the first two Electric transit buses that GMT is operating and we've been communicating with them And I think they have desire to purchase additional electric transit buses and we've let them know that we're happy to continue Providing incentives to support the purchase of those buses obviously working with them on the Infrastructure to charge those buses try to charge them off peak when we can Charge them more cheaply and save money for the transit system and for the electric system And obviously fuel them with 100% renewable electricity in burlington So we've made a little bit of headway with the first two We'd like to see many many more come into the transit fleet and support electrification of transit that way, but Jen, maybe you have some thoughts on the broader Sure. Yeah, lina. Thanks for bringing that up. So if you were to go to the bed website and click in the upper right hand corner Our little net zero energy logo. You'll find the roadmap and you'll see in the roadmap that Reducing vehicle miles traveled is a key part of our strategy in addition to building electrification So in addition to the buses that Darren mentioned We are supporting car share and helping car share in their electrification Which we think is is uh is important We don't expect everyone to buy an electric vehicle as a matter of fact You know, we really hope that we can reduce vehicle miles traveled by transitioning folks to to public transit And through better biking and walking infrastructure and car share is part of that I'll also mention our support of e-bikes. So we've invested In local motion. We're helping local motion with their lending library There's an e-bike lending library in case you're not aware The idea being that you can go try a variety of e-bikes and then either buy online if that suits you best or Even better yet buying an e-bike locally and then of course we have and i'm looking at jason because we are on the Old spokes home board together We're really encouraging Conventional bikes and we're lucky to have partners like old spokes home and partners In the in the credit union space who are offering very generous incentives To make buying bikes conventional or e-bike possible for so many folks And just one last thought i'm really excited about the electric buses I live in the champlain college area and they're still driving around those big nasty school buses They're painted green but they still belt some wicked exhaust and just would love to love to see incentives Either for them or just making them versus electric buses because it's so much pollution from them as well Yeah, no, it's a great point and i would say if you if anybody has conversations with It doesn't have to be green mountain transit if there are other providers of of transit services or transportation services Even if we don't have an incentive program that's available We have the ability to design a custom incentive for customers as long as the vehicle is registered here in burlington And is going to charge here in burlington So we'd be really happy to work with work with them or anyone else to Get more diesel buses off the street and get more electric buses transit buses or otherwise onto the street so Totally agree with you. We're for it and we're happy to help so Please send them our way or we'll try to initiate some conversations where we can as well Thank you All right. I don't know if we had any other I can't see everybody that's on the on the phone there, but Even anyone else on line So while we've got you here, I thought I'd I'd ask you so as far as the burlington electric department is concerned So what is your greatest challenge at this point? Is there anything that you're frustrated about or anything? And what are the things that are happening at the burlington electric department that you're most proud of? I know you've mentioned a lot of things tonight, but is there anything in Either that you're frustrated with or what's your biggest challenge or what's your Thank you. Yeah, it's a great question Yeah, in terms of our our challenges one of them that we share with pretty much every utility in brahmont every utility in the region is There are significant amount of volatility in winter energy prices right now On the new england grid and we're fortunate in burlington because we're 100 renewable because we have the mcneil Wood chip plant which can store fuel and run during the winter time We can insulate our customers from a lot of the rate impact and cost impact that the winter prices have So I guess one thing that's it's a challenge, but it's also just kind of letting folks know How important the mcneil plant is to us right now? We had a 3.95% rate increase in fiscal year 23 We're seeing utilities around vermont and around the region that are looking at double digit in some cases triple digit Rate increases because of these winter prices So in addition to being an important part of our renewable portfolio of generation resources It's also really important from a price standpoint. I think that's something maybe that people aren't aware of that It's important for us to share And in terms of things that we're excited about I couldn't be more excited about the community's embrace and enthusiasm of the net zero energy Goal and mission. We just had Last night calendar contest celebration with fourth graders from the elementary schools around the community who help us make the artwork For our net zero energy 2023 calendar It's great to see students from around the community be engaged in You know with art on things like wind power and how to save energy using Closed lines and how to we had several electric bus pictures in there We just had our first net zero festival This year, which was just down the road here at 585 pine street And it was really just another opportunity to share with the community Our enthusiasm for electric vehicles and bikes and heat pumps and all the different technologies And it's it's great to see people who are supportive of that And who came out to support our revenue bond to help with electrification back in december of 2021 so I think we're grateful for the community's support Around these issues. Um, I don't know Jen. Yeah, what do you think? Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more daren That was that's probably what I'd say. I might just add On a more micro level. I think the supply chain has been frustrating for some of our customers We know folks are eager eager to buy electric vehicles We're in constant communication with the dealers who supply electric vehicles And they are frustrated that they can't get what people want so Not much we can control there, but that is a frustration nonetheless And I think in addition to what daren's saying about community support, which is so paramount to success Are the various tools that we have in our toolbox for change So how fortunate that we can be thinking about policy coupled with The technological support we can offer and the financial resources as well. So That's a good thing Low that's going to be coming because of the electric vehicles and lawnmowers and bicycles We can we can we actually have have a good amount of room in our system currently And the revenue bond was really about creating some additional investment So that if there is uh, which we hope there is lots of new burlingtonian Customers who are using heat pumps using electric vehicles electric lawn equipment We're going to make improvements to the grid to help accommodate that and as long as people keep adopting these Technologies, we'll keep making the investments in the grid to keep pace with that and that'll be something that's not only good Environmentally, but it'll be helpful from a rate standpoint as well because it'll mean we're using the system Even more but in a way that's beneficial in a way that reduces fossil fuel use So we're excited about that future and definitely interested to make those investments provided The demand is there Yeah Try a question. Yeah, I was wondering if you're anticipating a lot of upgrades in 2023 and beyond from the kind of federal government incentives or rebates or whatever whatever kind of framework they put around those like Personally, I was looking for my small house that has a hundred amp service Maybe should have been 90 amp service with the kind of wires coming in Uh, it's that's not going to work. We have an ev hooked up already and we can't Write a heat pump and whatnot. So I think there was something for panel upgrades or certainly something for Solar and ev is going forward too. I wonder if you're anticipating a big jump there or help, you know Tailwinds from that Yeah, that's a great question. And you know, there's there's different There's a couple different packages that were passed at the federal level There's an infrastructure bill that has a lot of money for ev charging that's starting to roll out through the state There's the ARPA legislation during the the pandemic that really Created some new opportunities. The state for example has $5 million to help low-income vermoners With changing out to heat pump water heaters There's $20 million at the state level for exactly what you just mentioned helping folks with upgrading their electric panels To accommodate new uses and then the inflation reduction act has significant tax credits and funding rebates for heat pumps for solar For upgrading panels. And so we definitely see it largely as creating a tailwind and adding to the Incentives that we offer and that the state in some cases offers for the technologies In the ev space it actually could be in the near term That it's harder to get the federal tax credit because they put some parameters around it In terms of where the vehicles assembled where the battery and materials are assembled So as the automakers switch production, hopefully more towards The united states or north america more evs will qualify But in the near term there may actually be it may be harder to get the tax credit on the ev side On the flip side, there's never really been a tax credit or or funding At the federal level to support heat pumps or to support panel upgrades and now there will be so We're still waiting for the rules to be written by the various agencies at the federal level on how these programs are going to work We're hopeful we can communicate with customers sometime around january about what types of incentives are going to be available and how they can access them But yeah, that example is a great example. We have a lot of burlingtonians with 100 amp service and That might be adequate if you have just traditional uses at your home But if you're going to have an electric vehicle if you're going to have a heat pump or a heat pump water heater You may need a better service 200 amp service That can be expensive or you might need to be able to upgrade your panel That may cost a thousand or two thousand dollars And so having some incentives and funding to support that Enables more people to look at a heat pump and look at an ev and say, yeah, I can do it Yeah, thank you. Yeah That will be a big expense and not looking forward to but maybe a little help understood But yeah, hopefully there's some help on the way I appreciate it All right, anything else come up here All right, well, thanks a lot for for coming and talking to us about this. Thank you so much for having us. Yeah, thank you We appreciate the invite. Yeah, great to be with you Good evening too Everyone online too. Have a good evening Thanks for calling in Have a good night. We'll talk to you next month