 Okay, we are now recording. Okay, so welcome everyone to this January 31st meeting of the Energy and Climate Action Committee. Remembering that our goal here is to try to help speed along the energy transition and greening of Amherst. By giving advice to the town and doing a lot of outreach. So that in mind. Let's go ahead and get started with the today's agenda. First thing on the agenda is just to look at the minutes, but actually the very first thing always needs to be to get a minute taker. So Steve, how do you feel about Steve's not here yet. Laura, Jesse, Don, I think it might be back to you Don. I mean, I'm okay. Just did it. Oh wait, we're not on the list anymore. Oh, but we don't want to get. Oh, Laura's here. Laura. Laura, how would you like to be our note taker today? Um, yes, I can do that today. Okay, cool. We have to next week we'll have the two new members on the list. So the first thing we always do is this is pick a note taker, and we usually just go down the list of members to where is next. So come prepared to take notes. Laura will do it today. Okay, so with that, the first thing on the agenda is always to look at last week's minutes or the two weeks of minutes from two weeks ago, and I can bring them up. Is that them? That's them. Let me go ahead and share my screen. I can find everyone. Although hopefully everybody has looked at them beforehand. That's the idea. We nonetheless always pop them up for a moment. Okay, so there are some minutes. I'll just scroll through them slowly. If there are any comments, corrections, questions, pace updates. So Stella is not here this week. So we won't be following up on that. There's a follow up to do on that that will put off for a couple weeks. Update on CEO or a report from COP 28. And the very exciting CCA coming up. Any, if there's no comments, then we look for a motion to accept minutes. A second. I can second it. Yep. Or was there a motion. I'll motion then. And a second. Okay. And then I need you to stop sharing, Laurie. Okay. Everyone on screen. Stop share. Great. And then via voice vote in no particular order. Whether or not you approve the minutes. Goldner. Yes. Breger. Yes. Allison. Yes. Yes. Kissing. Yes. Drucker. Yes. And it's her approved. Okay. So we have a couple of minutes have been approved. Next is always an opportunity for public comment. And we do have. A couple of members of the public. Sarah or Martha. Do you have a comment for us? Sarah does. I'm allowing her to speak and Sarah, you can go ahead and unmute. Hi, friends. This is Sarah Ross. I know several of you. Nice to see you all. Thanks for doing this work, Lori. Thanks for chairing this committee and this important work. I'm a resident grew up here and I'm on the. Part of a nonprofit called undaunted K 12. That's focused on helping schools embrace climate solutions. And be part of the change we're looking to see in the world. We're a national nonprofit, but I'm. Right down the road from you here in Amherst. And I wanted to. You know, I'm going to come to ecac today and let you know about a new initiative that we're. Working on statewide, but also with folks in Amherst. Around working with our school committee and school board to introduce a climate resolution. For the district itself to embrace climate action. You know, you, you all know that there are many pieces to this in particular, end up kind of falling out of. You know, municipal action since they're their own body. And so we're working with sunrise Amherst as kind of the anchor in a coalition of local residents. And we'll be working to draft a climate change resolution for the school board to adopt. And then, you know, hoping to support them in implementing that. Climate change resolution, you know, might cover everything from. You know, electrification of the, the busing fleets and the HVAC and building, installing solar. It can also include curriculum, you know, other, other cities across the country have included food and, you know, career and technical education. So it's has the opportunity to be a broad, you know, kind of resolution covering lots of areas. And so we want to let this committee know about that very nascent work. And, you know, I didn't give you a heads up as a agenda item, but would love to maybe have as a future agenda item, a conversation about how members of this committee might want to be involved in that work, support that work, or just what thoughts you have for us as we shape that work going forward. Sarah, thank you very much. That's very interesting to hear about. I suppose since you're working with sunrise. You're working with sunrise Amherst, right? Yes. You probably already know about the Amherst Climate Action and Climate Action Adaptation and Resilience Plan, the CARC. Because that might be something to draw on in, in putting together a resolution for the, for the school board schools to consider. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that, you know, if you've seen these resolutions before they start with a bunch of resolutions, and then we're going to do this thing. And so part of the warehouses might be referencing, you know, the CARP and referencing our state, our state goals, referencing our national goals, referencing the impact on young people and their mental health, you know, lots of things will show up in those warehouses. And certainly the great work that this committee has done to come up with that plan will be one of the warehouses. Right. That's great. That's, that's fantastic. Thank you, Sarah. Any other questions? Sarah, I just wanted to comment that one of the things we're going to be talking about tonight is where we've launched a new community sustainability dashboard. And when you start getting this effort up and running, please let me know, please contact me. Because there may be ways I can get that information up on the, on the dashboard as well. What kind of information are you thinking about, Stephanie? Well, so this is ways in which the community can participate and help. And so, you know, just eat, or even it's just informational for folks. If you haven't been to our sustainability dashboard, we had a press release that just went out that has the link to the dashboard. So you can take a look at it, but it uses the CARP as kind of the framework. But again, we can talk offline about this, but just there's ways in which I can help get that information on the town's website. If it would be useful to you all as you do this. Yeah, no, we're at that. That's very appreciate. Thank you, Stephanie. We're at the very beginning stages in the first step, you know, this process is to really build a team. So while I mentioned, Sunrise Amherst is kind of the anchor tenant, you know, we have aspirations to make this a, you know, multi-generational really diverse coalition of folks that are interested in having our schools become more climate resilient and to decarbonize. And so one of the things that, you know, I don't know whether that's appropriate, but you know, there's a form for folks to join this coalition. So the Amherst coalition will be part of a statewide. So we undaunted the non-profit that I'm a part of is partnering with Mass Audubon on this. So it's a joint venture between Mass Audubon and Undaunted to do this statewide. So we have teams emerging in Lowell and in, you know, other parts of the state. And so building a team is the first step and we would love Stephanie, your help and others help in, to have some view on the team as part of this effort representing the work in Amherst. Okay, that's great. Thanks again, Sarah. Thanks. And good luck. Thank you. We find ways to work together on that. All right. Next on the agenda is any more public comment. First of all, Martha. No. All right. So in that case, let's spend a moment introducing ourselves again. And introducing and getting to know our new members, Michael and Tony. So Stephanie, how do you think we should do this? Just go around and say a few words about each of us. Yeah, well, or maybe let. I know Michael was here last time, maybe let Tony have an opportunity to introduce himself and give us background. And then you can quickly just sort of say who you are, where you're from, maybe a quick background. Okay. So Tony, why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself? Hi, I'm Tony. I'm very happy to be here excited to see what I can contribute. I'm a three year Amherst resident. I'm a PhD student at UMass. My work is an interdisciplinary approach to the ecological entanglement of social behaviors and marginalized bodies. As a context for developing and implementing green world initiatives and environmental justice initiatives. I'm also a member of Elevate, which is an on campus interdisciplinary graduate cohort of people that specialize in energy transition and clean energy implementation. And I'm hopeful that my position here will also find a way to bridge those that organization with the town in hopes of helping Amherst become more green. Thank you. Great. I'm familiar with Elevate. And I'm really glad we have you here. Thank you for being willing to join us. I think Michael, you should introduce yourself again too, because I don't think Tony met you and I'm not sure who else wasn't here last week. Maybe. Yeah, I've met everyone. Well, go ahead and introduce yourself again. Anyway, this is the more formal moment to do that last week was sort of ad hoc. Anyway, yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah, my name is Michael Ising. Also a fellow three year resident of Amherst, similar to Tony, moved here from the Phoenix, Arizona area before, before moving to Amherst. I'm a mechanical engineer. I work in the realm of energy efficiency, building optimization and kind of working on energy consulting for commercial, industrial residential properties and building. So I'm working in the private sector, but definitely interested in the experience in kind of the government education sector as well. But yeah, excited to basically, you know, apply my knowledge in energy and engineering and how we can help, you know, how I can help facilitate and work with Amherst community on, you know, decarbonizing, creating a more green community in Amherst. And thank you. Glad to have you here too, Michael. So we should probably each say a little bit about ourselves. Why don't we, Stephanie, why don't we start with you and just go for, for Tony and Michael's sake. A few words about each of us. Go ahead. Sure. So welcome Tony and Michael. I know we met during the interview process, but I'm the director of sustainability. I've been with the town since 1997. So I've been here a long time and I'm based currently out of the conservation department, but also we're working to make sustainability potentially its own department. So I'm very happy to have you both be part of this group. It's great group. Glad to have you. Dwayne. Yeah, hi. Welcome Tony and Michael. Great to have you. Dwayne Breger. I'm. I mean, you're 20 plus years in Amherst. And I'm at UMass. I'm an extension professor and direct the clean energy extension at the university. I have faculty in environmental conservation. Tony, good to know your connection with Elevate. I'm a affiliated faculty, I believe with the Elevate program. So great to have that connection. Look forward to seeing you on campus as well. And I'll say that I also. Prior to coming to UMass. In 2015. I worked for the state department of energy resources for 13 years. And I'm working in heading up their renewable energy division there. Thanks, Dwayne and Don. Yeah, hi, Tony and Michael. I'm my name is Don Allison. My wife and I. Moved to Amherst from Washington DC in 1988. So we've been here a real long time. We have four kids who all went through the Amherst school system. And are now all over the place. I'm a lawyer. I don't have any. Other than defending general electric and a power plant operator and my previous incarnation. I don't have a lot of the, I have a lot of experience with power plants. If you, I know lots about power. But other than that, I'm simply a lawyer and I enjoy being on this group. And Laura. Yeah. Hi, Tony. Hi, Michael. I'm really happy to have you both here. Laura Drucker. I'm one of the original ECAC members here with Dwayne and then Steve and Jesse, who you'll meet next time. We were all part of the original crew that started in 2019, I think. But I've been in Amherst. It'll be 10 years this year, which is sort of crazy to think about. Moved up in 2014 from the Washington DC area as well, where I was working for an environmental NGO called the World Resources Institute. I moved up here to take a job as the director of sustainability at Amherst College and I did that for about five years. And now I'm back in the NGO space working for a company called series, which is based in the Boston area. And we work sort of supporting shareholder advocacy on climate action and companies. My expertise is in like life cycle assessment, carbon accounting, science-based targets. I'm also the vice chair of the technical council for the science-based targets initiative, which is an initiative that sets kind of the standards for which companies should be setting science aligned greenhouse gas reduction targets. Two kids both at Wildwood Elementary. And I think that's it. Okay, thanks, Laura. And I'm Lori. I came up here in 2008 to be a professor of physics at UMass, where I still am. But a few years ago I got interested in, well, getting up there in age and thinking, what am I going to do as my retirement job? And I've always been an environmentalist. I wanted to get more involved in it. So I've been training as an energy electrification coach. And I've been involved with the energy transition Institute at UMass and got involved with this group a couple of years ago. So I'm, you know, this is ramping up to eventually do this full time as a quote unquote retirement job. So I'm very happy to finally be and very heartened by all of the grassroots efforts I see ongoing to make this energy transition actually happen. I also have an interest in science policy. And I've sort of been coming at it from, from both ends. And I'm much more impressed with what I see going down, going on from the bottom up, and I am from what's going on from the top down. I'll leave it at that. Okay. And thanks again for joining us, Tony and Michael. Yeah, yeah, it's nice to meet everyone officially. Okay. Let's move on to updates. Okay. I think Dwayne you're on first. Updates on the solar bylaw. And Laura, maybe. Yeah. Don't want to sound like a broken record week after every two weeks or so, but unless Stephanie has any additional news, we're not really expecting too much action on the bylaw. It's out of our hands. I mean, the solar bylaw working group is, I presume, formerly disbanded. Yeah. Because where our work is done. Obviously we're interested in, in. Providing any. Serving as a, as a sounding board or anything else for the, for the town and the town council as they look through it. But there's no update on any of the content. I'm not sure if there's been any movement on the. Procedural aspects, but Stephanie could inform us on that. Yeah, Stephanie, especially for our new members, maybe you could give us a little overview of where things are now. And so the solar bylaw is in progress. There's a link. You can look at it and read it. And I think comment on it at this point. Or maybe not yet. At some point. You see AC may have comments on it, but I think the time isn't quite yet. Why don't you give us a little overview, Stephanie. Sure. So we had a group of residents who. They represented different committees. So there was a member Dwayne represented the easy AC. We had Laura Pagli, a ruler representing the conservation commission. We had another member representing the water supply group. And then we also had another member representing who was the fourth committee planning planning. So, and then we had three ad hoc community members. Who had scientific backgrounds and or research. Related backgrounds that were a part of this working group. And we met for longer than we were supposed to for over, I would say it was over a year to develop a draft bylaw. And there was a lot of community participation. There was a lot of opportunity for bringing in experts. And various backgrounds, some related to forestry, some related to agriculture. Some related to conservation. So we had folks come in, talk to the group. And then they drafted the bylaw using other bylaws as the model, primarily. Bylaws that were, they tried to sort of focus on those with the kind of in this area, but also using other templates from, you know, from UMass and from others as well. So I think, you know, in the end, I think they put together a pretty solid draft. So that draft got passed to the town council. So that, well, the town manager and the town council so that they could do further refinement of the bylaw. So the community resources committee is likely to take it up at some point and we'll look at it and probably open it up for some more comment and drafting and refining. And that will be an opportunity for folks to weigh in when we know that that's happening. If you all want to weigh in, you can certainly have a look at the draft and do so at that time. But it hasn't happened yet. So I'll just keep you informed when it, when it does. And I think the link to the draft is certainly in some of our older minutes or packets. And I could just send it to you. I can, I'm making a note to myself. We've certainly been sent it before, but with new members, maybe it's good to send it again. Yeah. Yeah, that would be appreciated. Sure. I'll send it. Okay. And this is in regards to, you know, where zoning essentially around solar arrays around the solar, you know, where solar can be cited. And really was an enormous amount of work done on it. And Dwayne actually has also been running a forum on, on solar. Development on solar in general, through UMass that has been extremely informative that. Yeah. I think that's a good point. If folks don't know about, they should, there's recordings of the, of the first. First set. And I think there's another set of workshops coming up. Yes. To be determined. But yeah, there's recordings of four, our four sessions on our website, the clean energy extension. Just on the, on the Amherst solar by law. Zoning by law. Do keep in mind that. Is applicable. The by law is applicable to large scale solar. So, you know, the, the, you know, the solar roof top solar to about 250 kilowatts and above, I think was the threshold, but generally. Projects that would be more ground mounted. Okay. So there's nothing else on solar to talk about now then Stella's not here today. So there was going to be a follow up on the letter that was, we had published a letter in the Gazette about idling laws and about reminding people they're not supposed to be idling in school areas. They shouldn't be idling their cars in the winter for more than a minute at a very 15, just to keep it warm. And Stella was going to take that letter and send it to different other groups, educational organizations, parent teacher organization and stuff like that and Amherst. And I don't know if she's going to give us an update, but since she's not here, we'll put that off till next time. And Don. Yeah, I guess what pace is and for the, for the new members and give us an update. Sure. Paces up for the new members, paces of financing program. For. Well, it started out for basically commercial. And multifamily projects where there were all sorts of incentives to do either retrofitting or, you know, or an overhaul of in connection with the project. It's been extended to new construction. And we've had some trouble getting guidelines out of mass development, which basically runs the application and approval process. The program was modified as, as I indicated, gosh, over, I guess over a year ago now in the summer for the purposes of extending it to new construction in any event where we are is trying to get guidelines out of mass development so that we can put together some sort of a program for developers and businesses here in Amherst to. The unique financing piece of it and I don't want to get down in the weeds is, is that it, it's an assessment. It's like a real estate hacks assessment to pay back the loan you get. So it runs over a number of years. It runs with the land as opposed to being a particular note mortgage that runs to a particular party. It's, it's, if we can ever get it going. And, and there haven't been a lot of successful projects in the area, but we did hear about one in Greenfield. That I don't know where it stands now, but at the time there was a lot of excitement about it. In any event where we are was Stephanie was attending the mass municipal association conference a week and a half ago where she was going to once again meet with or hope to meet with individuals at mass development who, who run the program so we could get some in to finally get up the ladder to learn something about, you know, how the implementation of these new guidelines was, was going to occur. She got a name. You want me to jump in? I will say, so one thing that Don and I did do prior to the change in the guidelines was that we were trying to secure someone from mass development to give an information session for the business community. And not just in Amherst, but kind of regionally, and we had reached out to the regional chamber of commerce and they were interested in holding and sponsoring that event. However, with the change in the guidelines, when we reached out to mass development, they said now's not the time because we're changing. So we don't want to give out a whole bunch of information that's going to be different by the time people want to implement. So we put it on hold, which is why we were waiting. And I did in fact make a connection with someone at the MMA conference and I did get a business card, but I haven't called them yet. So I will be following up hopefully tomorrow actually is a good day for me to, to see if I can connect with them. But they have updated the guidelines so hopefully we'll be able to circle back to trying to schedule this event with the chamber. Yeah. And the way of a little history, even before the change, you know, this is a pretty exciting, this is the sort of financing thing that has to happen if the energy transition is going to happen on a wide scale. It was pretty exciting. But the fact of the matter was there weren't that many examples. We were just trying to get one example in town. I think there's one. Was there one building in Northampton, I think that used it. It's the, there's the one in Greenfield, Carol Collins came and gave us a presentation. That's right. It's Greenfield. Sorry. I was confused. Yes, we got it. We got a presentation on that one, but they're few and far between. So there's a lot of work to be done on this and we're chomping at the bit to do something. So if you need some help, Stephanie making phone calls or, you know, let, let us know, let me know. Let me know if you have any questions. Maybe Don can help out, but whatever needs to be done to get this going. It would be great. That's why we've been sitting on a while. The biggest obstacle just finding. The right information. Finding the right information and then connecting it to somebody who's interested in making use of it. Right. Who's, who's planning a big retrofit. And it's, it was a problem of they have to be early enough in the process. So it's a little hard to, you know, to consider this, right. In which case it's hard to find them. If they're too late in the process, it's easy to figure out who's doing his big retrofits, but they've already got their architect involved and they're, you know, they're done with their planning. So it's, it's a little hard to. To find them at the right time, I think. And get folks interested. And then there's the problem of the. Getting the rule straight. All right. So if they're, if we're done with the updates. Excuse me. I'm not sure what is. The educational series. Regarding solar on the built environment. So we had a, a. A presentation last time when I wasn't here, I did, I did watch the meeting. Asynchronously. And I understand it was not terribly well. Attended. So I wanted to suggest that as we continue doing this. I know Stephanie is without, you know, we had a bunch of people leave the town, right? So I think Stephanie, you're without the usual folks who do the. Social media work and the publicity work. So I think we're going to have to step in for that. And make sure whatever we plan to do next, we get a flyer really quickly and we get it distributed to, within our networks. I mean, I'll send it to the Gazette. I'll post it on Facebook. You guys should too. I'll send it to the Gazette. I'll send it to the Gazette. Let's do what we can to get the word out. These things do stay on YouTube and people do tend to listen to them later, but it's nice if we can get a few people actually at the meeting. So. Yeah, it helps with asking questions. Yeah. Q and a is way more interesting when people are there. So. Yes. I will say too that we can just use the last flyer and just kind of change it up because it's also on solar. So do we have somebody coming in two weeks? Yeah, we have sun bug. Coming on the 14th and they are going to present on. EV. Charging stations and also battery storage. Charging stations and battery storage. So it's everything you wanted to know about the charging stations and battery storage for your home and car. I believe so. That sort of thing. Yeah, I'll double. I just want to clarify with them, but, but I can just easily update the last flyer. Can you do that as soon as you can and then just send it to us. And we've got two weeks to get the word out. So. As soon as that comes out, you guys, we're not allowed to meet. You know, we can't. Remind you all that we can't exchange emails back and forth as a group outside of this meeting. But when you get this poster, you know, this flyer, you'll know what to do with it, right? Send it to your contacts posted on your social media. You know, if you have a mailing list, you belong to, if you have a neighborhood group, you belong to send it to them. Let people know about this. And we'll see if we can get a few more folks. Go ahead. I think Stella may be our best connection, but in terms of. Outreaching it to the schools. Not only for the kids, but I'll think if it can get into their packet of stuff, the show to your mommy and daddy. They might be interested in attending. Or, you know, so it just seems like an audience that we might try to. An outreach mechanism we might try to reach out to as well, but I'm not sure. Yeah, I can ask Angela Mills is the executive assistant to the town manager. She'll, she'll help me get it out and she will definitely get it to the schools. If I ask her. She has all the contacts for everybody. So. Yeah, getting it into a school newsletter or something like that. Not, I think nowadays most things go out by email to parents. So. Which is better because it's easier to distribute. You don't have to make a thousand copies of it, you know, right. Yeah, so every basically every Friday we get a. Letter. A post in this parent. Thing. It's posted by Debbie Westmoreland. And it usually is a letter from superintendent slaughter and then below it has community events and things like that. So I think you can get something to Debbie. Yeah. I think she probably won't get on it for this week, but for the next week. Yeah. Okay. So, so Laura, you want to be responsible for getting it to Debbie then. I think Stephanie said she was going to send it. Angela. And if, but if happy to help Stephanie, if Angela would hear that I send it. Yeah. Sure. I'll ask her. Maybe she just has an email list that it just, everything goes out to everybody at once. Sorry. Sorry. No, I'm just wondering if there's some way for us to coordinate without meeting. Is there some way for us to just send an email indicating who we've sent the thing to so that we're not duplicating effort. Does that make sense? Is that, or is that. Email you. Could just email me. Yeah. Okay. And then what do I do with that? I can send an individual email to someone asking them to, okay, send it to me. And then I'll, if I don't see Debbie's name on there somewhere, you know, if I don't see the Gazette on there somewhere else, I'll take care of the Gazette. I guess I'm not sure how to figure it out. So Lori, I can, that's what I'm saying is if I give it to Angela, she has one big PR list that she sends it to, and it goes out to everybody. So I can, she basically can do pretty much what Brianna had done. The only difference is that Angela wouldn't do the social media posts. Okay. Then I can get it to IT to do the social media post. Okay, but we should, we should also be doing that. I think, I think that's a big part of what you kept should be doing is outreach around these sorts of things. So. Well, I'm thinking more like the people that you know, you know, like the, the paper and stuff we can do, like we, we are internally, it's an easy one button click for, and it goes to everybody. I think what you want to do are the networks of folks that you have within the community that you know organizations, that kind of thing. That's who we want to reach like sunrise or, you know, other groups. Okay. Good idea. I can certainly send to local energy advocates. I'm not so connected with sunrise, but, but Andra is and we can write to Andra and ask her. No, I can do that. We don't need that right. Right. Okay. In that case, I just asked that folks send me a quick note and let me know who you sent it out to. So I will fill in any gaps. All right. Anything else on that item five. If not. We are on the item six, which is the new sustainability dashboard. Yay. I am so very pleased to announce that we now have our community dashboard up and running. So if you just bear with me one moment, I will share my screen and give you a little tour. And I think you also should be able to find it. I'm going to share my screen so that people can. Sorry, I'm just moving things around so that people can. Hopefully take a look at this and. Be able to navigate it a little bit themselves. So, so when you first go to the dashboard, this is the page that you will see. And as I mentioned earlier, I believe to Sarah, the dashboard is broken up mainly by the components of our carp. So when you go down, you will see that the sectors are all listed here. So there's governance and communications. Buildings, renewable energy. And then land use and natural systems. Transportation and infrastructure. I'm not going to go through every single one of these, but I do just want to use one to illustrate the components of each page. So you can navigate right from. This main link to the rest of the page, or you can actually go to each section. So. I'm going to just use this link. And so it shows those, those other three categories that were under the main link are right here. And they're all below. So each one is below. So there's just a little bit of information. A little bit of background or like a little factoid. For each sector. That's that is introduced here. And then there's these three sections. That have something about, you know, what we're doing. A project that we might be working on. And then there's a little link here for what you can do. So this is the way that residents can get engaged in what we're doing. So. So the first, we just talk about engaging the community. And it's our introduction to our lovely ECAC. And I, one thing that I really wanted to make sure was that our. Our committee was represented. So originally there was just some. You know, photographic from the web that was just kind of like a generic photo. And I was like, I really want us to have the people who do the work represented. So, and we can change this. Like we can, you know, we can keep this up for a while. We can change it to a more updated photo of the group. Maybe perhaps the photo from last year sustainability festival. I know that there was one that I think somebody took, which I couldn't find. I didn't have it. But if someone has it, maybe we can, you know, update that, you know, six months from now. So we have the ability to sort of change the images and can change the content. I'll be working on that. I'll be working on that. I'll be working on that. I'll be working on that. I'll be working on that. But I'll just sort of change the images and can change the content. I'll be working with Kim Lundgren associates is the organization that we. Contracted with to develop the site. So they did a great job. So here we have, from our education series, people can actually just click on this link and watch some of our education series videos. weatherization, so again, links to our education series. And then we were just talking about what happens here. We wanted to talk about the MVP program and projects and the work that we did through MVP and what that's about. So there's a link about the program, but then also I'll show you there's links to reports. And then, you know, how people can best prepare for emergencies in the event of climate, climate weather events, severe weather events, and then ways people can get involved. So we can like maybe just link here, you know, so what you can do to get ready for, you know, the winter time. See, and here, where we have our emergency alerts, so people can click on to see where the emergency alerts are. And then let's see. And then if we go up to the top, we have a link directly to the action plan. So this is just a little introduction to our climate action plan and sort of breaks down information about it, give some information, and then there'll be a link to the plan I'll show you at the end. What I really love is this actually breaks down each category, gives you some very specifics to our targeted actions. So what I really love about this site is that you can really spend some time getting lost in the site and delving into the information. Again, this just takes the ways to get involved from each of the separate sectors. It kind of populates them in one spot. So if somebody wanted to, they could just go here and get all the information that's already populated in the other sectors, but they could just quickly get information going here. And then I asked to make sure that we had something that had all of our reports in one place so that people don't have to go hunting all over the website to find them. So we have our summary of findings from the MVP process. This is one of the documents that kind of was like an initial document that led to us developing the Climate Action Plan, then leading to a development. Sorry, how did you get to that page? Oh, so this is under reports? Under reports, but. So reports, so if you click on reports. Where's reports? That's what I'm trying to find. At the very top of the, can you look at my screen that I'm sharing? Yes. If you look up at the top, the menu bar here at the very top. Oh, menu bar, there it is. Got it, yep. So reports and all of the reports are here. So we have our MVP report. We have our carp. We have the inventory that we just had our, that we had our intern do back in 2016, which was the baseline emissions data. And then we have our solar report that was done by GZA and then we have our solar site suitability analysis that was done. We have the feasibility assessment, which is actually the tool. So people can actually link on that and actually have access to the tool as well and the town's master plan as well as the state. So we moved into some of the state plans as well. So that way this is kind of like a one-stop shop for the reports that people would be most interested in. I think one of the other ones that we need to include is probably Melissa Hoffer's climate report. So we'll probably add that as well. So anyway, so this is kind of like I said, the one-stop shop. So there's a lot of information here. The dashboard is kind of the main, sort of the main featured aspect of this where you can really delve down and get into more information and more actions. And I think the one thing that we really wanted to talk about when we, or that we did talk about when we were developing the site was just how to make this a place where people can find out the things that they can do because people are often saying, well, what can I do? How can I make a difference? So this is a place where people can go and get some of that information. So like scheduling a free home energy audit through Massave takes you right to Massave to be able to do that. So it's very, I think it's actually fairly easy to navigate. I think it's a lot of information, but really this at the very, very top, this menu of items at the top is really kind of like, it's really these four sections. It's the dashboard, the action plan, ways to get involved in reports are kind of like the four main links of information. So it's pretty user friendly. There's a lot here. It's very rich with a lot and we're very, I think I personally think they did a fantastic job. And so we have, we'll be assigning an additional agreement with them to do more upkeep and we still have some ARPA funding at least for next year. There's a few things that they can do that I've asked them to include, which is like they'll have a calculator tool that will be available for people for home assessments and EV charging. So we'll work over the year on creating and developing that tool to be available on the site. We're also looking for them to help us, you know, on the backend with loading more data and updating the site. I've got some training, I'll have more trainings on how to do that as well. But we'll have the opportunity to add more over time. This isn't static. It's obviously gonna be evolving over time. So there's a lot of potential here and I'll be interested in hearing more feedback from the group as you all have time to navigate through it and have a look and give me some feedback about more that you'd like to see and, you know, what you think. I'm really thrilled that it's up, Stephanie. I can't tell you how nice it is to have all that information. I was poking around a little bit over the weekend. The one question I have is there are things coming online this year like the CCA and maybe the heat pump program. How do we front and center and even the PACE program once we get our heads around that, right? How does that fit in here? Where would it go so that people can find it easily and find how to get involved? Yeah, I mean, for some of that, you know, it'll be on here but that's not gonna be the primary way that we get information out about those programs. I mean, that's gonna be news releases, workshops, events, you know, it's gonna be way more than just having it on the website. So it'll live here because it's an easy place to link to. Okay. But it's not, you know, it's not gonna show up on the very first page. But we will be doing press releases and things that will link people to coming here. So, and there'll be social, I mean. The information will be there somewhere. Yeah, exactly. And we'll just link to it. And the one thing about, especially the CCA, is that, you know, there's regulations that require us to make sure that we do the outreach that we said we were gonna do in our outreach and education plan. So we have to do everything that was in there. And it's pretty robust, it's, there's a lot. So this is just like another place to put the information. So hopefully people will start getting more familiar with the site and we'll think to come here for getting updates and getting information. Tony and Michael, do you know what the CCA, what we mean by a CCA? What does it stand for? Community choice segregation. Okay, yes, I do know. I was like, I've heard of it, but yes, community choice segregation. Yeah, I generally know what that means, but specifics. It's basically municipal power. Yeah, so it gives the community an opportunity to have more control over their electricity supply. So we still would go through, so MRST uses ever sources our utility. So the energy is still distributed through ever source, but the supply itself, we have more control over where we get that from. And that means we have more control over the amount of green content. And we can potentially offer residents different options. So that application to become a community choice aggregation is currently being reviewed by the Department of Public Utilities. And we are hoping to hear back and be able to launch this program sooner than we anticipated initially. But we're also, we're working with Pelham, the town of Pelham and the city of Northampton. Many communities do this on their own, but we're kind of working with them in part because we had a group of residents that advocated for doing an inter-municipal community choice aggregation. So that's what we've done. Okay, thank you so much, Stephanie. Are there other questions about the dashboard or comments for Stephanie or? Anything you wanna see? Are you good? No, I mean, it's pretty impressive in my mind. I really like the dropdown lists on the carp in specific aspects that kind of like lists it very clear and concise of what the tasks are at hand. So I thought that was really cool. I looked at it earlier today, so. Oh, great. Yeah. That's great, yeah. I mean, the whole idea is really to be user-friendly for the public, right? So people who don't know a lot of the information should be able to get on here and have a better understanding of what it is we're doing and what we're talking about. I'll just say a big thank you to Stephanie for all the time and effort and hard work and many months of work to get this up. Great to have it. Thank you, Duane. I mean, for me, it was more getting, I'm gonna stop sharing it, that's okay. For me, it was more getting the information to KLA. It was a lot of meetings and a lot of verifying information and then reviewing content, but I mean, obviously they really, I can't really take credit for some for the content, but really they, I mean, they worked closely with me, but they sort of had the idea, the vision of how we could use our carp to sort of break this all out. Organize it, that's great. And organize it, yeah. It's great. I'm really happy with how it came out. Leveraging a lot of good work by Laura and the original members of the, and Duane, I guess, absolutely. Right, it really does. I feel like it was all of your, all of the committee's hard work, which was a collective, collaborative effort, because that's also reflects the town staff too. Everybody's work is reflected here. All right, so if we have finished with the sustainability, oh, go ahead, Laura. Sorry. Yeah, no, thanks. I definitely agree with everybody. Is there, keep in mind, of course, that you're down some staff on comms. Is there a plan to kind of release this in any way publicly or do a post about it or? I did, there was so, there was a press release done. And so it was in the Amherst Indy. It was in the Gazette, I think, the recorder. And it was on the town's website on Monday. And then I went back today and it was gone. So I've asked IT to make sure that they get that back up again, because it needs to be visible for a while. So I think this will help. What you're bringing up, Laura, is a good segue into our next topic. Okay. And maybe it could be a, we could do like a learning power hour, or sound it's called, that's my word. Whatever it's called. Education series, we could do on this, on the dashboard. Oh, yeah. We could do something for the public. Or alternatively, we could also just, again, play the same flyer trick, right? Why don't we send a little announcement to post it on your social media, send it to your local community groups, do whatever you can to get the word out this thing is up and just let people play around on a little bit to see what's going on. Might be useful. Cause I don't see the press releases either. I don't. Yeah, they were, I mean, again, it got, you know, sent to all of you. Yeah. I know, I know that it went out in the press cause I saw it. And it was featured prominently on the Tons website for about two days. So I've asked that it go back up again. So I think that'll help too. Was the link in our packet? Yes. Well, yes, because the press release is in your packet. Yeah, okay. And the press release has the link. Oh, okay. Okay. How did I miss that message from? It says press release. I just didn't download it for some reason. My fault. I usually just download everything and stick it in a folder with today's date on it. But somehow I missed this one. Okay. Anyway, it's easy to find by Googling. So good. All right, I will look at that press release later and send it off to my, put it on my social media such as it is. All right. So with that, if there are no other comments, let's move on to the next item, which is a sustainability festival and the letter that was sent to Stephanie that I feel strongly that we should reply to. So let's see, how should we start? Stephanie, you wanna tell us a little bit about the sustainability festival? Maybe we should start there. Sure. So I honestly don't remember what year we're on, but it's maybe like 12 or 13. But we have an annual sustainability festival that's primarily the purpose of it is it's an education event. We have vendors that are selling goods and we have entertainment in a stage, but that's really not the point of the festival. The point is really that we have advocacy groups, we have state agencies, we have the ECAC, we have town departments, we have lots of other folks who all gather on the town common. It's a one day event from 10 to four on a Saturday in April. And I'm sorry, I should have had the date right off the top of my head, but it's usually like the third Saturday in April, right around Earth Day. It's always right around Earth Day. And so we've been doing it for quite some time, but we did stop during COVID and last year was the first year that we had it up and running again. Before COVID, the last event that we did before COVID, we had over a hundred vendors. So it was a very robust event. Then after COVID, the Amherst Farmers Market, which has been meeting on Spring Street on Saturdays for well over 40 years now, had moved the market is actually on the common now. So we actually have to share the space with them so we can't have a hundred vendors. So last year's event was really scaled down. I think there were maybe about 45 vendors. We still had the stage and we still had the entertainment. We still had a central demonstration area. We had folks from the community garden come out and do some demonstrations on gardening practices that you can do. And we always offer an opportunity for groups from UMass to come and do some kind of a workshop during the day. So we had all of that last year. It was just scaled back a bit. So we had probably like 45. And I would imagine I haven't sent, I was waiting for this meeting but I am gonna be reaching out to all the vendors again. I usually have a list of folks and I just go back to the list from the previous year. So I'll be reaching out to all those folks again. And I think to the point of the letter, I mean, it's a lot, but it's not impossible. And especially at this point, I've been doing it for so long. It's just the two weeks before they got particularly crazy. And then I'm very, very focused on it. But prior to that, it's mostly email communication and coordination. But it is kind of the primary focus of at least that one month. When April starts, it's very much about the event. But it's not all. I have time to do other things. It's not like all other work completely stops. The only time it really completely stops is like the week of then I might have things that I've got to really focus for the event. But it's usually pretty well attended. Folks look forward to it. Some of the vendors have been with me prior to the sustainability festival. We used to have a fall renewable energy fair. That's really kind of how it started. And we did that for about four years. And that was in October. So then we sort of wrapped that up and did this sustainability festival. It was kind of bigger and we moved it to be around Earth Day to replace the Earth Day event. So it's been around for a while. Some of the vendors have been with me since the Renewable Energy Fair. I can think of a handful that have been there every year since the beginning. So people enjoy it. It's a really feel good event. And I think it has a purpose, especially as we have some of this programming. I think it's a really great place to have a table set up for the CCA. Have a table set up for the heat pump initiative that's being launched. Have a table set up with a computer to show people how to navigate the dashboard. This is like the first, this year especially, we have some really big things that we really wanna promote. Also, we're looking to get our bike share program, Valley Bike up and running again. So again, we wanna probably try and have our vendor there once we secure one to sort of promote memberships to get people to sign up for Valley Bike. So it's not a frivolous kind of just feel good thing, it's really, it's got a purpose. And it's a fun way to get people typically might not come to a workshop, if you tell people we're gonna have a workshop on CCA. That might sound like the most boring way for somebody to spend a Saturday afternoon. But if you say we have a sustainability festival and, hey, did you know about and we can wrote people in and tell them about it, great. Yeah, it's a big draw. I think for me the, Amherst in the summer and in the spring and early fall is every weekend there's something going on in the comments. And people just come out to be there and listen to the music, look at the vendors. And I think this is really important because the problem is there's sort of two sorts of people that are involved. Well, as far as the energy transition goes there's already a certain percentage of the public. I think it's something like 30% maybe that sort of knows that they have to do something and have a vague idea what they're supposed to do but have very little idea for where to start. This is what the energy electricity coach thing is all about, right? How do you help people get started? Where do you start with the energy transition? How do you get a heat pump? What does that even mean? So there are people who already know that climate change is a problem and wanna do something and don't know where to start. And then there's the vast majority of people who know that climate change is a problem and just haven't had any time to think about it at all. There's the folks that wanna help that think they have some idea where to start maybe and there's the folks that just, yeah, there's climate change, what can I do? I can't do anything about that. And those are the ones that I think, both those sets of people, the ones that really don't know anything at all, don't realize that they can make a difference and the ones that wanna visit a mass-saved person so they can figure out how they get an energy audit or what is a heat pump anyway and how do I find one and who's a contractor and they just wanna ask their questions. I think it's really important to have a forum where they can just show up and do that in a formal sort of way. I also think that there's a different sort of message. So one of the things I've been getting out of this work I've been doing with rewiring America recently is if you haven't, I'm gonna recommend a book by Saul Griffiths called Electrify, or Electrify Everything, I think it's Electrify. And he's got a great attitude. He points out, and I was gonna make some suggestions. I'll probably write to you separately, Stephanie, for small changes in language on the website. He makes the point that the energy transition that most older folks are familiar with is the 70s, right? And it meant deprivation and it meant higher prices and it meant being cold in the winter and driving slowly on the roads, right? And that's not what's going on this time. This is about better, more comfortable, less troublesome vehicles that don't need oil changes. It's about a healthier home. It's about less expensive, paying less for your electricity, for your heat. It's about improving our lifestyles. And I think that getting that sort of message out is something that's very hard to do, especially when you're fighting lots of media that seem to say otherwise. And it's the sort of thing you can do at a festival. It comes sort of naturally at a festival. This is a fun thing, right? And this is why. So I just, if you haven't read Saul Griffith's Electrified book, I'm still working my way through it, but I get the message, I'm about halfway through it. It's like, okay, it's getting repetitive already, but I understand what he's saying and it's important message to get across. So anyway, that's what I've been thinking lately. It makes, I just, yeah, I'll leave it at that. Any questions about the Sustainability Festival before we get to the letter and propose response? Okay, so one comment though, Stephanie, wherever you do it is fine with me, but is it one thing maybe to consider is doing it on a Sunday instead of a Saturday to avoid the, have you thought about that at all, or is that not possible? No, I don't, Sunday's not gonna be better than a Saturday. Okay, all right. Okay, never mind, just a thought. All right, so in that case, let's move on to this letter that arrived from signed by Lydia Vernon Jones, but with the sort of an odd signature that just said it was from the leadership of, without saying that it was the work of a particular group. Should we share that or has everyone seen it? Should we just go to a proposed response? How do folks wanna do this? Maybe just go to those. Go ahead, Don. It's difficult to respond to something if I don't know what it is I'm responding to. Okay, it was in the packet, but let me, let me. Oh, it was in the packet. I got the response, but it was the letter in the packet, the original letter? It was a Gmail, yeah. It was sent in the, it was, yeah, it was sent in the packet. It was like an email file. An earlier email. Okay, I'll see if I can find it. Yeah, but it was attached as an attachment, but it's an email file, I don't know. So the icon looks a little bit different. Yeah, you have to actually open it from within your email or it's very hard to see. Oh, do you? So if I can find the packet, let me just find the packet. I've got the packet. Oh, there it is, email. Yeah, if you click on it from within your email, usually it pops right up. Yep, there it is. Where? It's in the email from. I've got Stephanie's email. It says, ecac meeting packet for 131 24th, the subject. Email message from Lydia Vernon Jones. I see that. Attached to it at the bottom. Yep. Should be message from the Amherst Climate Justice Alliance. That's it. Okay. Yep. Okay. Okay, it's in the packet. There we go, no message selected. I'm gonna open it up in email. Yeah, you have to open it up from your email. Okay, I got it. Thanks. In short, I could just say that the request is that, so last year when, there's a little history here, which is last year when the Sustainability Festival planning was going on, we were also waiting for the CCA. The CCA paperwork was in Pelham's hands and we were just waiting to get it back. And some folks were bent out of shape because it was taking so long and somehow that got translated into, oh, it must be that Stephanie's too busy with the fair and that wasn't the case at all. And I think that might be where some of this is coming from. But basically the leadership group of the Amherst Climate Justice Alliance is asking that Stephanie not put her time and energy or any other staffer interns into a sustainability fair again this spring. And they think that this is not a priority, should not be a priority. It's been necessary in the past as a way for Amherst and surrounding town folks to wake up to climate change and other environmental issues. It helped advertise local environmental groups as sustainable businesses, but they think it's outlived its usefulness. And I disagree pretty strongly with that. And was pretty upset at the letter itself. So I felt like we should respond in support of Stephanie and the Sustainability Festival. So this has got, yeah, I think it's just sort of unfortunate. I do think that it requires a response in particular because email was sent to Dave Zayamek as well, who I think is Stephanie's direct report, right? Report your report to Dave Zayamek. So I think it's important for Dave and others to hear that and Lydia Vernon Jones and this leadership here to hear whoever leadership is. It bothers me that it's just leadership and it's not like the group elected to send this note. It's some little group of people who we don't know elected to send this note. So I think we should respond to them directly with a copy to Dave Zayamek and leave it at that and maybe perhaps draft a separate letter from ECAC at some point in the near future just lauding the Sustainability Festival and encouraging people to come and learn. But that would be I think for a little later. So with that in mind, I drafted a response which Stephanie has also looked at now. Lori, just so you know, I don't know if you can see it, Laura has our hand up. Oh, sorry, Laura, go ahead. I didn't notice, my apologies. Yeah, no, thanks, Lori. Yeah, I agree with you. I think this warrants a response. I also share your frustration with the lack of transparency. This is not the first time some incarnation of this group has sent ECAC letters. In the past it was me getting berated written by some leadership group with no names which I find to be inappropriate. I also take issue with the tone of this letter. I think it's extremely patronizing even though it's written by women. So I would say the only comment I would say to your response is that when I look up the information from the sustainability fair last year, it does say at the very bottom that their financial sponsor was Berkshire Gas. So I'm assuming that's what's being referred to. I do not think that that constitutes the claims made in this letter. But I just wanted to flag that because we should probably speak to that. Maybe we should address that as well just to let folks know. But I think that was through, I mean, the problem is that Massave is funded by Berkshire Gas and Eversource and all the other companies. I think you might just need to mention that Berkshire Gas specifically since that's the site. In the past, to be honest, it was both Eversource and Berkshire Gas. In fact, in the history of this festival, they have been the two primary sponsors, which we couldn't have had it without them. And to quote Senator Markey, who spoke at the MMA conference in response to someone asking a similar question about what happens when utilities and others who are contributing to the fossil fuel industry want to sponsor something. Ed Markey said, why wouldn't we take their money? So why wouldn't we take their money? They've been, there was several years ago where all of a sudden, I don't know, someone saw the banner up above Main Street or South Pleasant Street and was all up in arms and got several people to reach out. And everyone started emailing and was angry and said, why are we having utilities sponsor these events? Because they're the ones who gave us the money to do it. We couldn't do it without it. And as Lori noted, the representation from those two companies was the MassSafe table, the MassSafe groups that administer the program. So that's who we have there. It's not, we're not promoting the fossil fuel industry we're promoting MassSafe program. Yeah, I agree with that. I think, yeah, I mean, I think we're operating if we were operating in a system with by which we didn't, we weren't in a monopoly with Eversource and Berkshire Gas, maybe that would be different. Berkshire Gas also does not supply new gas to our area. Anyway, so it's not like they're trying to get new customers. I think we can be honest about, I mean, there's certainly, so the free advertising seems a little bit of a false claim because we don't have a choice. If you have a gas hookup, you use Berkshire Gas, you don't use electricity, you use Eversource, except using MassSafe to save energy and doing solar, both of which Eversource has to put money into because of the state's requirements, right? So anyway. Don and then Dwayne. Yeah, thanks. I don't recall, I mean, the advertising, Laura, is there, other than a booth that says MassSafe, you know, is it simply the name Berkshire Gas or MassSafe on the bottom that we consider to be the advertising? Because I- It's on the banner too. It's on the banner that goes up along the street and we have to do that. If they're giving, you have to advertise your sponsors. You have to put who's sponsoring your event. So that's really the biggest, you know, most visible display of who's sponsoring the event is the banner. But the day, it's on the website and then it's also on the day of the event, we have the sandwich boards that are on either end of the common. And at the bottom, there's a thank you to our sponsors. I think, I mean, to me, I think people, and maybe Lydia is speaking to this, they confuse sponsorship or money with some sort of ability to control or direct what's gonna take place at the festival. And that just doesn't exist at all. Yeah. And I don't know, but I just don't see any problem with taking Berkshire Gas's money to put on a festival if they don't have any control over what, I mean, the whole festival is about getting away from Berkshire Gas. And to be honest, that might change this year because Eversource had been sponsoring us up until last year or the last event. So they may not sponsor us anymore. And that might be true with Berkshire Gas too. I don't know if they'll fund this any further. In which case, then I'm using sustainability funds and it's not, and before people get all upset about using sustainability funds, it's not really that much. At this point, I would say we're maybe at the most $5,000 to $7,000 to put on the event, but it might even be less than that now, to be honest, because we will have a smaller event. So it's not a lot. It's really not a lot. And maybe we can also look to other sources for fundraising this year. Maybe we can all brainstorm on that a little bit. It's just been nice to have two big, reliable sources over the years. They have been consistent for over a decade and it didn't require a whole lot of work to do that because that's getting a sponsorship, getting all those sponsors, it's a lot more work. And then that would be a lot more work for me or if you all want to do it, but it's a lot more work. If we can just get the one sponsor, one or two. Well, the other big players in town, of course, are UMass and Emerson College maybe and both have a stake in sustainability. So maybe you want to wonder, both of those would like to put a little money into it. Well, because the town taps those resources for other things. So I don't, Emerson College actually did used to. It was way in the beginning, actually my position before my position was our official position, it was funded by Hampshire College, Emerson College and Eversource. Okay, it's interesting. Okay, so do we want to, I'm going to share the response letter now. Oh, Dwayne. Sorry, sorry, Dwayne. Sorry, yeah. I was just going to mention one, a couple of things. One is, first of all, I think, you know, one of the reasons I love living in town is going to town commons on a beautiful spring day to be with the community. And so in my mind, there's no question whatsoever that we should have the Sustainability Festival, it's one of the highlights of the year, provided it's a nice spring day. So, and then just on the merit of this letter, I would give, you know, that Stephanie's, they shouldn't be telling Stephanie how she should use her time, that she can use her own judgment on that. Second, this is an educational opportunity on sustainability. It's not talking about the past, it's talking about the future. And then the greenwashing, I would just, you know, one thing maybe Stephanie is that, you know, this energy transition, we need the utility company, we need poles and wires, we need more transmission. So I have no problem with Eversource, I'm not sure about Berkshire Gas, but Eversource, you know, they're the ones that keep the poles and wires up in the transmission line. So, I have no problem them being part of this energy transition. And they are, and importantly, they don't pay for mass-save, rate payers pay for mass-save. And so they administer it under the oversight of the state. And so it's an educational opportunity, I think also for people to recognize or to learn about what the role of these companies are, I'm not suggesting they don't have other bottom lines and so forth. But I am wondering, Stephanie, if the sponsorship money that they're providing is coming from mass-save dollars, I don't know if it is, but if it is, would they be willing to not have their name for mass-save as the sponsor? I don't think that's the case. I think the sponsorship is coming from the utility. From the corporate, yeah, okay. But they're the ones who administer the mass-save program. So that's why they ensure that someone from one of their companies that help administer the program on their behalf is there. So we've had Center for Ecotechnology there several years running. And sometimes they would have a table themselves, but when they did, they would have a table with, at the time, like LED lighting. So they had a company that they worked with for years that would come in and provide really affordable LED lighting and lamps. The lamps were $10 and they were usually pretty nice. And just in terms of other sponsors, and maybe ECAC could help you out on that, but I'm thinking of the likes. If it's $5,000, I mean, UMass 5 comes to mind and then some of the solar companies that we've been talking to. Yeah, UMass 5 makes a lot from the heat loans, right? So maybe they would be interested. That's a good idea. Yeah, I can do some of the more of that, but I don't have a lot of time. Oh, yeah, I know. I, and also because COVID happened, one of the, you know, there was a year that the festival got put on hold. So there's still some residual funds from I'm very frugal when it comes to the festival because I anticipated that there would be a time when the support from the utilities might go away and Eversource did. So I do have some funding still in a pot that's specifically for the festival. And I would say it's probably like half of it, you know, for this year's event. Next year we might wanna do more and start earlier, you know, depending on what we do, you know, next year. Laurie, Michael has his hand up. I have a question. You go ahead, Michael. I guess in terms of timeline, when do you start, Stephanie, when do you start reaching out for sponsorships or when do those responses start coming in? If we were to investigate alternate funding opportunities, how much time does that really give us for this year? Well, you could start now. I mean, the thing for me with the utilities is that because I had worked with them for over a decade, I could send them, you know, requests in February at the end of February. We knew that it was happening in April and they would just send me a check for the event. So, but now would really be the time. Now would be the time and we would wanna know how much we have really by the end of next month. So we'd have about a month maybe beginning of March at the latest. I would give it like four to five weeks. So do you mind, is there any reason why we as ECAC members can't just, you know, inquire at UMass5 if they'd be willing to make a donation toward the and then put them in contact with you if they are? Yeah, just direct them to me. Yeah, if you all are willing to do some outreach and engage even if one person, you know, each of you did one location. Yeah. Or even four of you did one location. It's more than it's enough. I've done this sort of thing before for workshops and it's pretty easy to just ask. So I don't mind, you know, I can reach out to UMass5 for example. Sure. Figure out who to ask there. Sorry, and if people are asking for amounts like for a larger organization, you know, I find it challenging to cobble together like $500 donations. That's really not all that helpful. So a bigger chunk of like, you know, $2,500 or $3,000 is more what we're looking for. And a couple of those will get us easily through this year. Okay, good. Sorry, is there like a email or pamphlet or brochure that you would send out to sponsors or? I think if you just, sorry, Michael, I didn't mean to interrupt. If you just have the contact, then they should get in touch with me and I would send them a letter because the letter should probably come from the town. Yeah, that makes sense. You can certainly look up the, there's probably a web link somewhere for last year's festival, for example, that you could use as a, or we'll find something from last year's festival, Stephanie, that we can send around just so people know what we're talking about. Yeah. Laura? Yeah, just on UMass5 in particular, and I can connect with you offline, Lori, because I've had some conversations actually with the president there about sustainability stuff. They may even want, and maybe they have in the past, Stephanie, but they may even want to have a booth. They have the heat loan, the zero interest heat loan. They have bike loans. I don't think people actually realize that you can get a bike loan through UMass5 and a couple other things that I think would benefit from getting the word out about. Yeah. Yeah, I don't think they've tabled at the event in the past. And we've certainly, I mean, we've certainly done a lot of outreach. You know, some organizations that seem like they would be a natural fit don't always want a table. So, you know, it's sometimes harder to get them, but I mean, they are more than welcome. Any organization, business is welcome to have a table at the event that's local. Yeah. Okay. So if there are no more comments, what I'd sort of like to do is just bring up the response letter and as much as I just spend a few minutes of our time wordsmithing to make sure it sounds about right. There was already one suggestion from Laura. I'm trying to figure out how to include, but let me go ahead and share this, okay? So we can get a, we're gonna, what I'm gonna want, I think is a vote to see if we are all okay with this letter, so that when I send it, it's not coming from leadership, it's coming from ECAP and anybody can look up who that is. So, let me go ahead and bring this up. And I think this is the one that you edited more. Stephanie, no, it's not because it says fair and not festival. So let me fix that. I'm sorry. Let me stop sharing and find it again. I thought I had it. Don't save. Hold on a minute. I need to go back to my email then because I thought I had- Do you want me to share, Laurie? I think- Yeah, why don't you go ahead and share it? Can you edit it as we're talking? Yes. Okay, in that case, go ahead and share it. I wanted to tell you what to say. Yeah. Hold on. I think the one suggestion I heard is that we should somehow get Berkshire Gas name in there and maybe indicate that Massave is paid by ratepayers and I had made a little tweak to the one I was editing and then I just, it just killed it. So I can probably fix it once you- Hold on, I'm almost there. Hopefully this doesn't take us too long. If you can jump right to the last paragraph and start at the bottom, because that's where the participation of, I would say specifically the second sentence in the last paragraph, the participation of Berkshire Gas and Eversource. So Berkshire Gas- Oh, I didn't say that. Berkshire Gas is not- No? Well, Eversource is no longer. So- Right, so I was going to say that while the festival has in the past been funded by Berkshire Gas and Eversource- Okay, hold on. We're going to add a phrase before that. So let's fix that right. While the festival- Um, mm-hmm. I would use- Or while in the past, while the festival has, comma, in the past, been funded by Berkshire Gas and Eversource, their participation in recent years has been limited to MassSafe, which is funded by ratepayers, as someone pointed out. That MassSafe is administered through energy companies. I got the hand moved over one there. Um, administered, sorry. Through the energy companies is not ideal. But it is how business is done in this state and folks who want rebates and incentives need to know how to navigate it. Meaning MassSafe. So- Do you want me to scroll up or is that, I mean, that was the only change that you needed? That was the change that I was noting from the comments that people were making. Does that, is that what you wanted to see, Laura? Something like that? Whoops, you're muted. Yeah, I just anticipate if we don't mention Berkshire Gas, we'll get a response back that- Right. They're mentioned. They're funded by Berkshire Gas and Eversource. I mean, this is picky-une, but I just don't like the word while. I think if the word was although, it's a little bit more powerful. Also not to be picky-une or do too much editing, but I think repairs is one word. Nope. And then also, I guess I would suggest which is funded by repairs and overseen by the state. By repairs and overseen by the state. Anything else? So there's nothing else in that paragraph. Let's go back to the top and just take a quick look. Okay. Is there a reason that you capitalized Sustainability Festival in sentence one and not in sentence two? Probably should be capitalized everywhere since we're talking about the Sustainability Festival. Yeah, I can just go back and take care of that piece after. Okay, so let's just make a note to do that. I'll make a note in the last paragraph, there was the use of the word festival alone that should probably be capitalized as well. Oh, we say we have a heat pump program that will facilitate, we don't have it yet. So we should say something like we will have maybe or we anticipate. Or we are developing. Yeah, something like that. Oh, the new sustainability dashboard has been launched. Yep. Instead of are in the works also are also in the works, I think reads a little better for us in the next sentence, reopening of the electric bike program and new charging stations are also in the works. Can I just, because we say festival a lot, can I just say great discussions they had while attending? While attending, yep, sure. It's a little long-winded, but it's what I had time for. The less time I have, the slightly longer-winded things get. I think it's clear enough. So if there's, yeah, if there's, and I can, I will sign it, I usually, so I did this when I sent the letter to the Gazette, I signed it Lori Goldner for ECAC, and the headline was Lori Goldner, so idling at schools, and then the ECAC was at the bottom. So this is a personal letter, so we won't have that problem. I'm not sure whether I should just sign it as ECAC or Lori Goldner for ECAC or all of our names. I think normally, I feel fine signing it as chair. I just wanna make sure that everyone knows it's from all of us if we accept it. Can I suggest maybe it's more powerful if you all have your names on it? So if you all are willing to have your names on it. That'd be great. Yeah, I would say either that or provide a link to the website where it shows all of our names. It's also a different option if we don't wanna do that. The only other point I'll make is that I thought it was either Dwayne or Don, sorry for not remembering, but someone made a good point about the fact that these sponsors don't dictate what is included or not and they're at the festival, like they don't have any say on the content. We may wanna just like add that point at the bottom. And how sponsorship money is important. Yeah. Maybe we can edit that. Just let us edit that into this letter. Yeah, I think that's fine. Because I think we need to sort of think about how to word that all. There's one sentence that probably has to become two. And that might be a little hard for us to do in limited time online. So if that's okay, we'll make that change and the change for the capitals and festival. Is there a move? I think we need a voice of individual vote for this folks want to put their name on it. I'm gonna stop sharing. Is there a move to go ahead and send this letter with our names on the bottom? Laurie, so you should probably be the one to send it. So I'll make the final edits. I do think actually rather than linking, I think it would just be good to list your names. Yeah, so let's, if that's okay, let's have a motion to that effect. Yeah, are we okay committing since we have a quorum committing the names of the members who are not here? You could just, I mean, you're sending it on behalf of the committee and the majority, if you all vote, you're the majority vote. So essentially the committee is supporting it. I feel a little bad putting on the names. I think we should sign for ECAC, but only the names of the people who are here voting on it because, okay, if that's all right. Yeah, or you could also just ask the few that aren't here if they have any problem with having their names included. They may want to. Yeah, so. That's a good idea. I will take care of the final edit, Stephanie, if you'll send me the version you have now and I will take care of contacting the two or three. Steve, Stella's not here and Jesse's not here. So three folks who weren't here to see if it's okay with them. And with that, do we have a motion? I'll provide a motion that we send the letter on behalf of ECAC and have a sign it that Lori has drafted and we all just reviewed as amended today. Seconded. Oh, it's got a second. So I think we need a voice vote. You want to do that, Stephanie? Yep. So in no particular order, Goldner? Yes. Breger? Yes. McElrath? Yes. Pissing? Yes. Drucker? Yes. Okay. Okay. Now let's get back to real work. Stuff like that I feel like we have to respond to, but it does, I think, take away a little bit from what we would rather be working on, which is maybe drafting something to promote the sustainability festival, which will grow out of this letter, I think. So hopefully it hasn't been, the effort will be used again in that sense. So staff updates, we have 15 minutes, roughly 15 minutes left. Go ahead, Stephanie. I won't give a lot. You already know about Sunbug. So we had a few responses to the RFP that was sent out for the bike share program. So we're going to be reviewing those and hopefully finding a provider to get it launched again this season. Also, I wanted to announce that legal counsel has approved the release of the RFP for the heat pump program. So that finally, that literally just came in on Friday. So all of this time that we were waiting, I was not sitting on it, it was really legal counsel review. But it was complicated because it was ARPA funding and so they had to make sure that we had mechanisms to deal with a financial piece. Anyway, I am going to review it one more time though, and I need to go over it with the person who's overseeing the ARPA funds and the ARPA program here in town. And just to make sure there were a few things she wanted me to edit and add. So I want to make sure that I put those in, she's okay with it. And then I will be contacting Lori, who has been pretty much the person representing ECAC in this initiative. And I'll have Lori take one last look at it and then it'll go out. So all of that sounds like a long time, but I'm hoping that by midweek next week we'll be getting this thing out. Right, and again, the point of this is to fund folks who don't have the money to front for a heat pump system is to find a way to fund heat pumps in low-income households. Correct. In Amherst. Yay. Anything else? Those were the quick ones that I wanted to make sure you knew about. Staff updates or other ECAC member updates. Anyone have any updates? Go ahead, Dwayne. Not really an update for me, but I just, I'm not sure what the state's doing sending this email out the day before, but there's an email about a presentation from the state either tomorrow, February 1st, six o'clock in the evening, or February 2nd at one o'clock from the Climate Office, the Master's Office of Climate Innovation and Resilience. I believe that's Huffner's office, but they're providing a presentation and community engagement session for input on the Climate Pollution Reduction Program and grant, I guess, that they have and they would like your input. So I'm not sure if other people got this announcement. I don't think I got that one. So why don't you go ahead and forward it to all of us, Dwayne, or forward it to Stephanie. Can I choose better? I'll send it. Stephanie, did you get this? I think I just saw it this morning. Yeah. And as I looked at it, it's like tomorrow. Tell me tomorrow. Tomorrow. Two days. You have 48 hours. Yeah. Just send it to me anyway, Dwayne, just to make sure. Yeah. Okay. And I'll go ahead. I don't know if it's announcement or just a thought. Well, first, something that has been kind of on my plate, but also on the back burner for a while has been this idea of. Figuring out how to do some outreach around. So. Build environment solar. I mean, we had the environment. We had the educational session last time. Last. Meeting. But the idea was that we would help some of the. Ingeos, communities, buildings, other people that are now. Well, get are qualified for this direct pay from the. Inflation reduction act to make sure they know about it and. Know how to access it. And maybe if they looked at solar in the past and found it was too expensive because they're non-tax paying entities, they could benefit now. So. I think when we looked at it before it was a little bit too early, so maybe I'll. Put myself back on the. Agenda here to. Look again, and maybe it's something we can do at the sustainability fair. Or figure out other ways to do it. Which brings me to just a thought for you, Lori, to consider, which is whether or not we should try to do. An ecac mini retreat of some sort. Now that we have our two new members. Yeah, it might be hard with Stella leaving going on leave. But it'd be great if we could get together in person. I agree. Just do some brainstorming on how we bring our new members into the fold, what. Are areas we want to focus on moving forward. And all that good stuff. All right, I will work with Stephanie, I guess to try to find the time for that. And your times that might work for that. But I agree. I was going to mention to that. I think now that we have our full compliment of members, it's time to do another retreat and brainstorming about what we want to do next and how we want to do it. I'll send out a doodle poll actually with some dates and times, but Lori, I'll coordinate that with you. Great. Thanks. Any other updates. Items to the next agenda. We have the. Transportation update from Stella. I think we have a meeting next time. Perhaps there will be something to say about heat pumps. That might be nice. Something more to say. So those things can go on the regular updates, I guess. We're having, it's a short meeting next time because we will be having a presentation by sun bug. Which we're all going to advertise. So that's on everybody's agenda for the next two weeks, the next week. Okay. What else needs to be the, maybe to talk a little bit more about a retreat when we can do that from up a time. So we did have that. Public comment from Sarah Ross. I don't know if that's an item for next agenda or maybe we just need to connect with her about. I can reach out to Sarah and we can find a time, but I don't think the next meeting with a. I don't know if that's an item. I don't know if that's an item. I don't know if that might not be a good time to do it, but maybe the following one. Yeah. It depends on her availability too. So let's put that down for a future meeting, but maybe not the next one. Yeah. And I think it would. Like, I think we would want probably. A resolution that they've drafted to look at. So. If that also made. Yeah. A draft resolution would be a good thing to look at. I agree. What else do we have? I don't know. I don't know. Hopefully we'll have some more updates on pace, but that can be done. I think as a. Staff update from Stephanie, maybe, or Don, if you have something, just let me know and we'll stick it on there. I'm sure other things will come up in the next week. But if anyone has anything they want to see on the agenda, just send it to me. Ideas for things we should be talking about or doing. All right. And I think that brings us to public comments. Martha. Okay. Thank you. And first of all. Congratulations on the sustainability dashboard. I haven't personally looked at it yet, but it looks terrific. I really think that's excellent. So congratulations. And we need to spread the word and hope it will be something that is really useful for us. Yeah. Okay. Next thing just want to point out there was a big article that was published yesterday's Wall Street Journal on page three all about heat pumps and how. And how good they are. And boy, they work at low temperatures and everything. So that was good. Yeah. And then I wanted to say a word about the sustainability festival. I prefer it by saying, I never saw Lydia's letter. And it's not about that at all. Last year, you know, I was there. And I just wondered if we were really saving any souls. And I, it seemed a little, what shall I say, diffuse maybe. And so I would just wondered about suggesting. Whether. Oh, we could focus it. Any more this year somehow on, you know. Sort of cluster. The places where there are ideas of what people can literally do. Or, you know, maybe. Kind of a sign of here. Here are the simple or. Or whatever things you can do. And also I didn't see any solar vendors last year. I don't know if there were any, but. You know, later I went to the Hadley asparagus festival and there were two or three vendors, solar vendors that were, you know, calling people in and handing out brochures and telling how great it was to put it on your rooftop. And so I would like to suggest that we really focus on trying to get. Solar vendors there. And so I would like to suggest that we really focus on trying to get. Solar vendors there. And as I say, maybe try to make a little more focus. On the, the what people can do and here are your tools aspect. Martha, there were solar vendors there. They're, they've always been every year we've had. I walked around, but I didn't see them. So I guess, well, that was. It might just be it was someone, I don't think. PV squared has been there almost every single event really since their renewable energy fair. I can't remember if last year they had a conflict and it was the one year they couldn't make it, but there was another solar provider that you probably just didn't know. Cause sometimes we get some other obscure people that show up. Yes. Yes. Okay. Well, I guess the word, the best description I can, I can make is it seemed diffuse. I don't know is that that's any help, but you know, any, any way that people could be, you know, pointed a little better or the publicity or something was just my reaction. So yeah, we did have people clustered by groups like there were advocacy groups. They had specifically asked to be together. So advocates were put in one section and I tried to sort of group things of that way. The town, town departments, like I think leisure services typically has a booth. I think they were there with some other town departments. So they are grouped, but you know, for many, many years I made a map. And if you came to the information booth, which is right at the head of it, we had maps and people don't take them. And plus it's more paper. So I've really scaled back on providing that because people don't really take them anyway. So I think people just like walking around for the most part. And I don't know how to make that different. I mean, maybe if people had actual signs of who they are, maybe we could make just, you know, signs for each booth. We could do that, but that's going to be more time. No, no, we don't want you to have to, you know, invest more time. That's just anyway, that's just my feedback for whatever it's worth there. It is worth something and very much appreciated. Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you all for all that you're doing. And I see you another time. Thanks, Martha. I appreciate it. I've also been thinking about ways that we can interact more at the sustainability festival. I was thinking now that we have a, we'll have a couple of heat pump coaches by the end of the, we can have a heat pump table, you know, just offering advice to people on where to start or electrify everything table where we could, you know, just talk to people about it. Those were the best conversations I had last year were with people about, you know, what it was possible for them to do that they didn't know about. So that was, that was, that was worthwhile for me. It would be great if we could get a boat or another provider to actually table at the event. I think now is the time for them. They need to be doing that kind of thing to get to people. Yep. Yep. Maybe even just one of the local like Western mass heating and cooling the guy who gave the heat pump. Talk maybe, maybe they wanted that. Maybe they want to have a booth there. Well, and whoever our provider ends up being for the heat pump program, you know, I'm hoping that we can really encourage them to have a presence at the fair or the festival. All right. So something to talk about more next time perhaps for the agenda as well. Talking a little bit about the sustainability festival. All right. So with that, I think we have come to the end, which is good because my dog is going to explode if I don't feed him. All right. So if there's nothing else, shall we adjourn? Move to adjourn. Yes. And I just want to thank you all for the time that you spent on that topic on the festival topic. And thank you, Stephanie, for all of your work. Just go ahead and send me, you know, the copy of that letter that you have. We'll do. All right. We'll do. Take care. I'll see you in two weeks. Thanks everybody. Thanks. Bye.