 We're four and seven and being and tonight is going to be another phase in our hybrid experience because we're going to attempt to moderate the meeting in person here at the Miller Center. So we have a microphone here in addition to the camera. So for anybody who speaks here at the Miller Center, we're going to use the microphone to make sure that you can hear us well, even though we have masks on. And if that gets to be sort of a limitation then raise your hand or speak up or say so and we'll work our way through that. Okay. So Kirsten, our CTO liaison is working to let everybody into the into the meeting currently. So I think we're just about ready to go. And I'm sure we're all familiar with the rules but first and foremost is the goal of being respectful during our conversation. And I would add that that doesn't mean we can't disagree with each other or ask pressing or difficult questions as long as our debate is respectful. So that's really the ultimate goal. So with that I guess we'll start introductions and I'm Jeff Comstock, board seven and I'm a member of the four and seven MP steering committee and I'm going to start by passing the microphone around here at Miller Center. I'm Peter Ireland, board four. I'm Mark Barlow, board four and North District City Councilor. Hello, I'm Emma Mulvaney, I'm a state representative for Chittin and 62, I'm technically living board three but it covers board three, board four and board seven. I'm Kirsten, I'm a gay public engagement specialist at CTO. Hi Darren Springer, general manager with Burlington Electric and board seven resident. Very good. I didn't realize you were a neighbor. Good, good. Glad you're here for both reasons. So, the other thing I wanted to mention is during the course of the meeting. If you have a question or want to make a comment, please either wave your hand at your camera or use the raise hand function at the bottom of your screen and I and the other steering committee members will try to keep tabs on who's in the queue and who would like to speak so. Alright, so with that, I guess we'll go to start with the bar. I'm Jeff Clark, ward four steering committee as well. I will be timekeeper this evening. So when you see these numbers. Two minutes, one minute, 30 seconds, and times up. Please be respectful of those we want to keep to the agenda this evening. Thank you. Next, Eric. Eric Corbman, ward four steering committee and my wife Karen is listening but not on camera right now. Eric, you can follow the next person in the queue. So just to keep us moving. Sorry, I just started. I'm Evan Litwin I'm more for and I'm a member of the steering committee with these great folks, and I'll pass it to introduce Sylvia night please Sylvia night I'm in Ward seven at clear point. Not on the steering committee. And I'm so he's had been listening it. Ward seven. Your name. Right. So Sylvia, do you want to pass it to someone on the passage to Sarah carpenter under folding you. Carpenter Ward four and city council. Sarah, can you pass it to Bob. We'll get this down. Yeah, it's hard to get this down. State rep from out here in the new north end. Ward four and good to be here. And I'll pass it over to Robert. Who's in the center of my center of the secret squares. Okay, I'm, I'm Robert Bristol Johnson and I'm Ward seven, and even farther north and clear point. I guess I'm on the redistricting committee but there's nothing else to say. Pass. Oh, I don't know. I don't know. Okay, it looks like Matt, you weren't called on yet. Hey guys, I'm Matt Robert Ward seven steering committee. And I will pass to leecher hewn leecher hewn Ward four. I'll pass to Olivia, Olivia Taylor Ward seven on the steering committee. I will pass to Monica. Hi, my name is Monica Vonchage Ward seven and also Ward seven school board commissioner. I'm just not used to logging in and being an attendee must be a new way of doing things for this NPA. I'm happy to jump in and just start naming folks who haven't introduced themselves yet so Darren Springer, do you want to introduce yourself. Oh, yes, Darren's in person. Thank you. I guess that's everyone is there anyone who hasn't introduced themselves that would like Steve. Wonderful. Stephen Hamlin are you can you hear us. Yes, I can I'm Stephen Hamlin resident Ward seven. Thank you. I'm going to get through the roster from the looks of it. Is there anyone who has any would like to make any announcements this evening. Okay, hearing none, I guess we'll move along. We'll get started with our elected officials segment and I think. I think we'll start with the legislators this evening. And so I'm going to ask the microphone to Emma. My first hybrid so I don't know what camera I'm on so we also have this funky thing happening right now is that we're using the speaker so the camera keeps looking at the speaker so if you want to try maybe even not using it I think it will pick up on just like turn it off and see how it changes the camera. I think we should be good on that. All right, let's try this. Enough. Okay, I'm going to just wait somebody waited a minute here. There's a lot of people are going to people there. Again, I'm a little bit Hispanic. I'm one of the state reps who represents the southern portion of the New North and and the west side of the old North end. I serve on the House Commerce Committee, obviously we're off session right now with the work of the legislature keeps going. I thought I would touch on three very brief things tonight. I want to make sure that Bob will touch on something and if Carol joins us she'll join but she'll certainly add on some more. So one of the issues of jurisdiction for House Commerce is unemployment. So unemployment has been a real struggle for a lot of her mentors for months now. And one of the things that came out of the session was a bill that created a study task force to look at the unemployment system as a whole. And one of the works that folks should just know that they're in the middle of their work. They have three meetings allowed between now and December, when they're expected to issue report. And what they're looking at is how to make essentially the system work better for employees. The bill itself included a tax, a tax reduction for employers because the way the formula works there was a large expected to be a large increase in what employers have to pay into the system in order to refill the coffers for unemployment. Since thousands and thousands of her mentors are on unemployment for the last several months. But the other side of it is the system. So how the Department of Labor interfaces with her mentors, ways that we can look at delivering benefits more efficiently, deal with appeals more efficiently and all of the other working parts. It's a pretty complicated system but the task force is trying to look at other states, look at other models that might be possible. One, one important piece in that bill that we did pass from the governor signed was that we were expecting benefits for folks on unemployment to go up by $25 a week. That was part of the bill again passed by the legislature and signed by Governor Scott. And the US Department of Labor determined that that was not an appropriate use of unemployment funds. That was a surprise to the legislature. You might have read a little bit about this in Digger and other news sources. That was certainly not our intent. Our intent was to essentially do an added benefit much like the federal government did where folks on unemployment got anywhere from $300 or $600 a week. So we acknowledge that, you know, working folks need help recovering from this pandemic as well. So the task force is trying to look at that, although they don't have the authority to fix it on their own. So unfortunately, we're going to have to wait until the legislature be convened in January to remedy that, that, that, I think, problem, we have to be better for workers. The second thing I want to do is just quickly the per people weighted study that the University of Vermont put out in 2019, I believe, has now a task force looking into it. So what this means is looking at the education funding system in Vermont. So looking at how all the moving parts, the formulas, this per people weighted system formula, the categorical aid formula, and just really determining if the system that was created 20 plus years ago is still really delivering an equitable, an equitable funding formula to fund schools. And a lot of us myself included think that the study actually points to a more equitable way to fund education that's reflective of who students are today we have a very different student population of Burlington, and elsewhere in the state than we did 25 years ago. They have different needs. We have higher costs for delivering education for a lot of students in Burlington. And it's a better way to do this so I really encouraged by the study and I hope the task force really starts to dig in on that more and looks at that reconfiguring the weighted formulas for those pupils that would help students who are English language learners which we have a lot of in Burlington would help students who are from experiencing poverty. And there's some recommendations to also do some related for small rural communities. This one interesting policy area where Burlington have a lot in common, these funding wise with small schools in the kingdom and other places in the state. So that's a big interest topic here so the next hearing is on October 20, and then folks can call in and testify will be a virtual hearing so people can testify for two minutes. Also, I'm going to be organizing an event just to give some more basics and information on the 13th October 13, I'll put that out on course form and mentioned a few more times in various ways. And anyone to tune in if you want to learn more about a really fun and complicated world of education funding but I'm really committed to trying to really explain things for folks and help people understand how Burlington and students in the whole state can really be better off if we look at our education funding. And last and very quick thing, as I mentioned in the beginning I'm on the House Commerce Committee which looks at economic development and supporting businesses and the workforce. And I'm going to be holding a listening session for with businesses and business owners with Main Street Alliance, which is an advocacy organization for small businesses in Vermont. And we're going to be hosting that on October 4 in the morning trying to figure out the right time this is just the first time so we can try different types but on the morning of October 4, 830am at Santiago's which is the new ish place over actually north, north day on North Bay and the Econallan Park, Econallan shopping plaza, short and air so all anyone's welcome to come it's geared towards listening to businesses and how to help those continue to get what they need to recover out of the pandemic and find workers and all that kind of stuff so it's really an open ended invitation, more on that in other rounds as well so I'm happy to pass it over to you. So, I guess you're up next. Thank you so much. On that last point and since I'm going to probably leave because I'm heading for Pennsylvania tomorrow to my aunt's 95th birthday party. You might want to touch base with Jim hallway there's been a group out here for months that have been kind of dedicated to small business growth, and they. Has been involved in it Carol, I've touched base a couple of times might be a structure that already exists. As Emma mentioned we're not doing anything officially although there are committees meeting education met this week. There's a lot of stuff going on. The motel program was scheduled to end for homeless people and since COVID has basically come back with a vengeance and we're experiencing worse incidents of infection and we were six months ago and some respects. So I think it's a good indication about keeping the motel program going Scott administration pushed back on it fairly seriously. But this week they relented a little bit and decided not to end it for another 30 days so they could have a review period. A lot of homeless people are well served by that I think I'll mention that I think front porch forum just dropped today from me and I ask you all to get some feedback to me on a couple of things. So, don't hesitate to redistricting is going to be one of the big issues that comes before my committee next year. It'll be the state level senators and our representatives I don't think our population has changed too significantly here in the new north end but there might be some pushback from the population growth that has happened in the old north end and the old orphanage property so we might have some conversation about districts changing a little bit. I had a conversation with somebody today about voting sites and if you have any opinion on where we vote and how we vote. I'd like to hear it because it used to be convenient vote now it seems to be somewhat not housing is a big issue but another issue that we might talk about here is the city put in a bunch of charter changes last year. There were four that we had in government operations we really only dealt with one and that was the airport and it got held up in the Senate. I have no idea what's going to happen next year because of redistricting and a bunch of other stuff, whether they will get picked up, or, or not. So, if there's anything in particular it's going on and those charter changes that you're interested in. Feel free to give me a call. The last thing I want to talk about is, since there are so many people out here that probably are qualifying for Medicaid Medicare, excuse me. There's there's this new thing happening where people are getting transferred over to the Medicare Advantage programs, sort of without their knowledge by large group medical practice changes. And that's something that I just heard on Tom Hartman program earlier this week. And the health care committee chair has talked to me about a little bit getting ledge council involved. There will be a webinar tomorrow at nine o'clock at night to throw a flag up for people to let them know what's going on. You, you get transferred into this automatically you have the option of transferring back out to your regular Medicare, but it's, it's kind of a convoluted process from what I understood. I'll throw a link up to the webinar on my website. Or my Facebook page website Bob Hooper dot org, and it's tomorrow at nine o'clock in the evening so if you want to get involved with it I'd say, sign up for it quickly. And people waiting is going to be a big deal it's going to be money that comes to us or doesn't come to us we certainly have demonstrated that from an educational perspective we have need. So, I'm keeping a close eye on that. I don't know how much influence we're going to have it's definitely is a rural versus urban sort of thing. Appreciate your input. Anybody that has any questions, feel free. That's why we're here. So, and Jeff hasn't held up the two minutes sign yet so I guess we're good. So first in is Carol already signed in yet. Don't see that. Okay, so if Carol's not on that then I'll go back and have a question. Bob. So, you talked about redistricting and the voting sites question. So, that's sort of a two part decision between where we vote for a municipal election versus. Yeah, that's 100%. I just had a conversation with somebody today that brought up the issue of since we're becoming so much more diverse. I actually have an issue with going into a church to vote, and the schools are there but there's a conflict now. COVID and school was in session usually several reps have talked about making voting day a state holiday which might take care of that issue. The two things are a little intertwined but not intentionally intertwined they're very separate issues. Can I just say something. We actually in word for both that the marks looked into it and because with mail in ballots. It seems like we might be able to consolidate perhaps in the middle of center, and I understood it to be that we actually have to get a charter change to change polling places. If it's not in our district and it for has some limitations as you know, as do other districts. So I do think it's something we want to maybe loosen up a little bit with the change in so many mail in ballots. And we, we could, you know, I say this, hesitantly, at the state level we could change that without a request for a charter change just by doing a blanket. You know, vote where you find it to be the most convenient sort of thing. Well, I was told eight years ago that the polling place didn't necessarily have to exist in the ward, even though it looks better when it does. And that's, that's when we were, you know, slugging through this whole ward eight thing and where word eight and word six was going to vote. So I don't know what is in the charter about that but I was told it didn't have to be connected. I didn't have to be geographically connected. So we used to vote at the middle school, and you'd, you know, go in a different line, and then something changed so that we were bored based I don't really remember. Well, well no, when we were voting at a middle school Ward four was still voting at at the at the St. Mark's fellowship hall wasn't they weren't they. Okay, so I guess the point of my question was trying to get some clarity about the voting site question and whether whether that will get answered on a municipal level and the state district level at the same time or those are actually separate conversations. And as I tried to say earlier but English isn't always my primary language, they are definitely separate issues. Okay, thank you that's, well, yeah, but that's a good place to leave that for now until we get into the ad hoc committee discussion a little bit down the road. Okay, I think, are there any other questions for the legislative reps. I would ask a question if there's not other folks that have their hands up I don't see any. If it's okay. I was wondering Emma, if you had heard anything since you're connected to some of the education funding conversations that are going on. If there's any conversation going on within the legislative representatives circles around emergency funding to support the site the new BHS that we desperately need to get built by the three year contract and at the former Macy's property. So on the state level, and I'm not beyond what we looked into as a kind of a cohort of state reps from Burlington early on in the session around the ARCA money before all the ARCA money started getting sliced and diced and moving all sorts of places. But at that time, we were able to get correct me for my I think it was about a million dollars from the governor agreed to your mark that for Burlington, but beyond that, you have it, there's no other additional funds it starts to get into COVID, especially with ARCA money and here's that money you have to prove that there was a pandemic reason. And so when things get a little loose or a little mushy around that there's a real liability about having to pay that back at the city as a municipality at the school district as a state and there's all sorts of layers of money coming through with that said I know and I'm sure the school board reps can get more honest because I believe there's money that's been earmarked directly to the school district and nor the city so I'm going to stay out of that zone and kick that one to school board. I guess that. Yes, so that's kind of my cue to call on the school board reps to sort of follow up. It looks like there's one more question right now. Sylvia, can you squeeze in a question. Yeah, I wondered what the mechanics would be of deciding who gets you know which which municipalities get money for wastewater treatment system upgrades from the federal monies coming in. How does that get decided. I don't know if the city councilor is even on marriage to the water division director. I do listen to her when she talks at home but I don't I don't actually have the accurate answer to that. So I'm going to kick that to Sarah or Mark. Mark may be more knowledge on the committee that oversees it. I don't know that we've decided the city gets some money and the state gets some money. And I'm not sure either have been apportioned out, but Mark may may know more. And I don't think we've gotten a big federal ward of. No. So I don't think we know where that's going to go. I mean, to some degree it's like every budgetary process, it, you know, gets pushed around a lot. The school thing, I don't think there'll be any serious discussion about money coming someplace until there's a decision actually made about where the school is going to be. And, you know, planning and costs and things like that come out. So I think there's a question that growing to just going to get sewer upgrade money, but how much is always the pushing shove of different priorities that manifest themselves at the last minute. Before we lose the previous thread. I'd like to try to jump back to this, our school board reps. And so I know Monica is on is Martin on this evening. Yes, me this evening. All right. Monica, it's all yours. And I did want to thank Emma for mentioning the equity funding, the state funding formula for distributing money to different. There were 40 of us who gave public comment the day after Labor Day. And everyone who spoke was for reconfiguring the waiting the way the study. People intended at UVM. And even though all of us were against categorical aid, I hear that the task force is still considering using categorical aid. So that's very disappointing. I know the next hearing is October 20, which is a little bit off. But, you know, we do have the email addresses of the task force, and we need to be reaching out to them. So the school year has been off to a great start. I think I hear good reports from the downtown BHS. There's been minimal class disruption due to COVID. Maybe one or two classrooms, you know, shut down. So today, some of you might already be familiar with what decisions we made with the high school. So at our school board meeting a week ago, we voted to narrow the three sites down to three sites down from, I think originally it was 16, and then forward immediately thrown out. So it was essentially 12 sites. So the three finalists are the south side of Institute Road, most likely in that field that is closest to North Avenue. The next site would be the north side of Institute Road, and that would include potentially tearing down the current school and building there, which will be more time consuming than say building in the parking lot or the bus turn around loop. So, you know, there's lots of property on the north side that could still be considered aside from tearing the old school down. And then the third site that made our list was the quote unquote gateway block downtown that borders Main Street. I think when you ski have Union Street and college and that includes Memorial Auditorium. So, so that's one of our finalists. The 12 sites that were remaining after the 16 initial ones, they were ranked according to a list of weighted criteria, including things like expected site work building costs or cost of land acquisition, or transportation access, potential environmental risks, expansion potential distance to the existing athletic fields. And I think most everyone knows now that the athletic fields are staying on North Avenue, no matter where the school gets built. The other one is potential for partnerships and zoning and permitting risks. The two sites on Institute Road were ranked as the first two and Letty Park was closed behind while other sites were scored significantly higher. And at our meeting, the superintendent proposed to also move the gateway block forward despite its lower rank. I think it was number eight out of 12. There's been a, you know, a lot of support for a downtown high school taking advantage of proximity to UVM Champlain College, local businesses downtown. And for some families, especially on the south side easier access, you know, by for dropping kids off or busing and walking. So, as you probably know, Mayor Weinberger supported the site, including using Memorial Auditorium as a mixed use facility. So, if you go to board docs from our meeting a week ago, you'll see the letter that the mayor sent the school, sorry, the district, the board, essentially. And you'll also see the scored rankings. And I don't, some of you, some people still wonder why we took city place off the list. I think more commonly known as the pit, although we're not supposed to call it that anymore. But that property is slated to be developed with housing units that would bring a lot of property taxes into the city. So, so essentially that's off the list of potential sites for the new, you know, the new BHS. And then our next board meeting is October 5th. And we will discuss the sites a bit more. However, we likely won't make a decision on the final site until our November. The first Tuesday in November, that meeting, perhaps it's November 2nd already. But thank you, you know, for reaching out and being involved. I'm open to answering any questions that you might have about these sites or about the process. Thank you. I'm, I'm hoping there are some, some questions on this topic. And I see a hand in the room. So we'll start with Mark Barrow. Thank you for that update. I was wondering on the north side of Institute Roadside site. Is there a possibility that we could reuse part A building? I've heard that the PCB levels are extremely low in that, in that building. And it would seem that would save a lot of construction costs to some of the most expensive parts of the school, you know, the gymnasiums and the auditorium and the food preparation areas are in that building. Is there any discussion around trying to salvage any of the current building? I think Martin did bring that up at one of our board meetings. And you're right, the PCB levels are lower. You know, Vermont has this strict level for PCB standards, airborne for high schools and, you know, I'm afraid that when we go test all the schools in the state, half of them will have to shut down. But I think we're shying away from saying that we can reuse the A building. I think that's the one you're referring to right with the gym and the cafeteria and the cafeteria, at least the kitchen is still being used today. I think we're concerned about discovering even more PCBs. You know, there was a plan to remediate the PCBs, like taking out the ballast and the fluorescent lights. Or, you know, getting rid of the caulking or whatever structural objects that had PCBs and then, you know, now are generating them to be in the air. So there's been mention of that, but I think we're steering away from reusing that building. I think, you know, I don't know the way buildings go. I guess there would have to be like a cost analysis done, you know, if we tear it down and just build from scratch, how much would that cost versus trying to save a building and then build around it, which is kind of what we already tried, I think, with the re-envisioning. Thank you. Are there any other hands up there? Matt. Thanks, Monica. First, just a comment. I love the idea of keeping the school where it is using the north side. The fields are already in place and they're wonderful. There's lots of woods in the back, which could probably be also developed. I have this wild and crazy notion and this is part of my comment of the city selling gateway block for profit and having that site be redeveloped by developer funds going to the school fund and then new tax revenues pride into the city. So I put that bug out there because I've got the year of a couple of city councilors right now. My question is, when you were talking about what I believe you're referring to is Act 60 and redistribution of tax funds for school purposes. You used a term, categorical aid, which I've never heard before. Can you just explain in 60 seconds what that is? I think the categorical aid is, they decide which districts need more money than others. And so they would just give a blanket amount, but it's not built into the formula like the waiting formula is kind of built in. And then categorical aid is more kind of like a patch, like a band aid, and it's not money that districts could rely on long term. I hope that sheds a little bit of light. I'm definitely pro that, you know, the, I think the waiting formula would be great if it works, but districts like ours who have a lot of kids below the poverty level. And, you know, kids with special needs and especially kids that qualify for EL services, English learners. We, you know, that takes a lot of resources to educate these children, and we're not getting enough. And meanwhile, other districts like Essex Westford, South Burlington, they have all kinds of sports options, you know, that we don't have, they're getting a lot of money, I would say. So that money needs to start flowing into Burlington and Winooski. And then the way the formula works, I believe a lot of the outlying regions like Northeast Kingdom. They also lose out with the way the formula is being used now. Excuse my foggy glasses, but Leigh, do you have a hand raised there? Yeah, I wanted to ask in regard to the siting of the high school. Have the students been surveyed? That's a good question and I'm not certain that they have, although we, you know, we've been making a concerted effort to try to involve students in decisions. But that's a good point. I'll have to bring that up at our next meeting. Okay, I have a question if, okay, and then if anybody else sees a hand up there, let me know and then we'll come back to Emma. Yeah, has there been any conversation at the board level related to the discrepancy between the state and federal risk standard for PCB and whether that discrepancy is going to impact availability for federal funding towards the school because the site doesn't actually meet the federal risk standard. Has that conversation come up? No, and that's a good point. That conversation has not come up. But I, you know, I think you raise a good point in that the federal standard is, I believe 300 nanograms per meter cube while the state standard is 15, which is a stark difference. I just wanted to add briefly, Monica, to the question on catapultable aid, there are specific events for their topics. So the catapultable aid goes for transportation needs, special education, and small school grants, which applies to other parts of the state. I mean, not garland teams, we have large schools. So there are four specific issues and you're right, it is outside the regular funding process. We don't vote on that at our first school budget, which is why it's a little tricky to have do any tweaks to that. I don't think it's going to create more equity because it's a whole different way that it's a whole different track of funding basically that comes to schools, but there are specific categories of topics for which those funds are dedicated to. I just wanted to add that. Okay, thanks Emma. Yeah, and sounds like it doesn't include EL services. Those are the back goes that's one of the weighted per people weighted topics is that English language learners, poverty secondary, because high school kids are more expensive to teach. So they are in a weighted category and then the report suggested adding once for rural schools but that does not exist right now. I was just re teaching myself that today. So that's only my question. If it's okay, I didn't raise my hand since I'm helping with the hand looking. I did have one question for you Monica thank you so much for the helpful information you did mention in October 5 upcoming school board meeting. And I did wonder if. Well first I guess personally I would I would also support what Matt said, I have concerns about the high school being located downtown. And I don't know if folks have really thought about in great depth, what that could mean in terms of exposure to drugs alcohol, you know, the default just kind of activity that's going on throughout the day downtown. Next year we're going to be launching a cannabis retail marketplace. I don't believe we have any zoning ordinances in place at this time about where those types of things can be located and I think downtown Burlington is going to end up being a prime location for the state for various shops like that so I have my own motivations for why I think the high school property is really the best. But I wondered for the benefit of folks who are here for the benefit of people, maybe couldn't join tonight. What is the best way to get feedback about the sites to school. School board members, both in the most time sensitive way and also is that October 5 meeting an appropriate place for people to bring up their concerns or their questions about those sites. Thanks for that Evan yes, the October 5 meeting would be great. We start the meeting always with public comment. So definitely an appropriate time to bring your comment. Because some of the concerns you raise about having the high school downtown are real. You know, I don't know someone wrote me about her girls were being followed by some creepy guy and there's more chances of that downtown than out here on North Avenue. The other thing is you could email us. If you want to reach all the members of the school board at once it's bored at bsdbt.org. So we're taking written comments and actually the district has made a superintendent Flanagan has cat has, I can go to a shared Google doc and see everyone's letters that you've sent about the high school location. So, so I'm appreciative of that because I see the different residents had written in and I know Matt Hurlboro, you gave us a great letter about it. Thank you so much that's super helpful and I don't see any more. Oh wait, I do see Sylvia has a hand up. I just wondered if the front porch forum might be a vehicle for seeking feedback, providing the proper emails for people to write into about the opinions on the school location. That's all I had to say. And Kendra Sowers just posted essentially what I spoke about today on front porch form I think it was the one that came out yesterday. But sometimes, you know, I don't have time to look at all the front porch forum input for for all my words so we. I mean all the different front porch form groups. So it's best I think to email the board directly. I see your question. We're just eating into your 15 minutes for the city councilor so if you would still like to ask a question and use your time. Go ahead. I have really a comment and I want to make people for the people understand that it will be the school board that makes the final decision, not the city. And in fact the city council has had no discussion about the gateway site. So, just to understand that dynamic. Obviously the school department owns the Institute road site. Not fall within our jurisdiction. I presume the gateway site would to the degree that we have control over it now that would then involve the council. And as I said, we've had no no conversation and sort of outside of that. I mean, there is the big financing decision which which we all will be very involved. All right, with that, we're going to move on to the city council portion and Sarah you wanted since you got the screen you want to go ahead. Sure. I haven't, to be honest, had a chance to talk to mark about who wants to talk about what and welcome him to China chime in. It has been a chaotic. Last few weeks for those of you who watched we had some very intense meetings dealing with the director of aviation and followed on the heels by a very contentious resolution, which many of us that was real. So that really took up huge amounts of time and huge, huge input to all of us. On the BDS resolution, I must have received over 2000 emails. I mean, that's not an exaggeration that is actually accurate. So that was withdrawn. And in my opinion, I hope it stays that way. So that's sort of been an occupying a lot of our time earlier in the month. A lot of things on the docket we're going to talk about the BD bond. So I won't go into that. There is right on its heels and still under consideration. A bond for capital improvements that will come to the council on our meeting on the 27th. There were still some outstanding questions that we're not quite sure how that will trigger out the result of that means we're going to probably delay the vote anticipated in November to probably early December. Kind of other things on the docket, and I can let Mark talk about, I mean, we've got a proposal relative to short term rattles that we expect to see sometime soon. There's several proposals in the charter change committee, which Mark sits on so he can, he can talk about those. We got a brief overview of the census data at our last meeting. We still don't have it. It's a very, very fine detail, but we hope that will happen maybe by the end of next week from that ward four and word seven, say pretty stable. The changes were more in the center city wards, and that is it is available on somewhere on the city website or I can certainly send it to anybody who's interested I'm hoping or as I understand it. The city attorney is supposed to be organizing the redistricting committee as we speak. One other thing and I sent this to a number of people what I want to alert you that the parks department is looking and trying to reach out and make a focus around accessibility to water and waterfront and they had a meeting on it. Last week, I believe, but they're still trying to get input in as part of their capital planning for the next year and I bring that up because in fact, in our ward, we've got quite a bit of beach property. And in particular, I've expressed my concerns about improving accessibility at Letty Beach. So the degree that any of you have thoughts on that I encourage you to get pass those on to the parks commission. Abby Duke, one of our neighbors is our newest member on the park commission from from this end of town. I believe Mark, she took Mark spot I think Alex Farrell is also still on the commission from this end of town as well. The other thing that's been occupying Mark and my time to a big degree is listening to tax appeal. Over 600 of them to listen to in the next. We've already started in three months worth of it. So it's a lot. So I'll leave it at that and happy to answer questions. So Mark, why don't you go ahead. So just to follow on what Sarah was talking about. Yes, I hit on the tax appeals. Yeah, we were into week three I think we've plowed through a bunch but we anticipate we'll be listening to tax appeals. And there's three boards of form for members or three panels of four members each listening for six hours of panel per week and will be deep into November before we're done with this. So it's a big commitment and it's taken up a lot of time. Additionally, I wanted to hit on one other thing Sarah mentioned which is the infrastructure bond was on the agenda for our last meeting. And because of concerns various counselors raised. We gave the administration more time to to work on it. And I'm hopeful that we'll have a lot of those issues address. I specifically had questions about making sure that we would prior since it's an infrastructure bond if there's other sources of money that become available. We looked to those other sources and not the Burlington taxpayers to to fund infrastructure that might be funded in other ways and not to then have money available for other things. I mean, we should only spend it if we need to spend it. I think that those things have been accounted for in the next result iteration of the resolution which I hope to see on Monday. Another thing I wanted to talk about is I confirmed today that we will have a consolidated collection resolution on what is agenda and it will be for a municipal option that would be that would mean that the resolution is going to ask the council to consider taking all the trash and and and compost services that are currently provided by private dollars and making a new city enterprise to do that and so that's that's sort of a big deal. I don't have concerns or opinions on that issue. Now is the time to be expressing them to the entire city council, certainly to Sarah and I. Ali is not around I don't know that he is, he's in France right now so I don't know if you reach out to Ali if you will get back to you or not but I mean, it's a big deal and I would encourage everybody to to state their opinions on that and I'm just noticing the time I don't want to want to live some time for questions so I'm going to stop right there. Mark, may I say something on the trash just to have folks understand that you really need to reach out to all the city councilors. I believe Mark and myself now really are have not been supportive of the public option because of concerns about risk to the city so. But we also believe that at least half of the council does support that option. Okay, well, while we're waiting for some other hands to appear. Let's talk about do you know where the city's current bonding limit is how close are we to that ceiling at this point in time. What I can say is that that specific question was asked by Councilor ball during the board of finance meeting. And their CEO shadow did not completely answer the question so I would imagine that we can answer this this next iteration but because the grand list room. One, one of the points that was raised during board of finance was that the the bonding limit was also raised. We do know that prior to that I was in a two meeting where they said there was an additional $30 million of city bonding because there's a debt policy that involves both. We're going to school district funding and city funding there's a memorandum of understanding between the city and the school district about how much of that bonding capacity and its entirety that the city has that each entity would use. That's the point, Jeff, because I think any school proposal that comes forward, it's going to be significantly more expensive than the bonding that we did for the re envisioning project. And there will be real questions that we need to answer about cash payer ability to absorb that extra bonding and, and the ability to stay within the current city debt policy to do it. So, and so the bonding cat is expressed as a kind of a percentage of the grand list rather than the first. Yeah, it's a percentage of it's the amount it's in order to maintain a bond rating. They don't want to have, they want to have the debt limit to be a function of, you know, the city's ability to repeat. Right. Thank you. I just, yeah, hoping that that concept wouldn't get lost among some of these other conversations. It was quite a bit of discussion about it at the last finance and I would say those interest that should listen to the finance committee and whenever the 27. And that means that right directly before the main city council. Yeah, thank you. Evan, are you finding any raised hands in there. I don't see any. All right, are there any. I just want to mention a fun little thing, which is, we had a request from a group of parents to put a bike rack by the fire station on North Avenue so that the kids that are west of that. They had to travel up to North Avenue and now have to take the bus have a place to put their bikes. And I just want to say both the brilliant fire department and local motion for just getting it done. And so that was just a nice little thing that happened. I wondered what they were doing there. Thanks Sarah for sharing that. Okay. Thank you for that flexibility and we'll sort of continue on with the agenda and then if we have some time at the end, maybe we can circle back to anything that you didn't get a chance to cover. Okay. All right, our next speaker is. Darren springer is the general manager with Burlington Electric Department and Sarah and Mark have talked about the net zero bond. That's pending so Darren is here this evening to give us a presentation and talk to us about that and answer any questions so Darren. Take over. Okay, thank you so much. It's great to be with everybody. Again, Darren springer general manager with Burlington Electric Department. Before I get into the and I have some slides. Before I get into the presentation on the revenue bond. I did just want to raise a couple of items of information. The bills are struggling at all with paying their energy bills. There are several programs that are available. You can visit our website Burlington electric.com. We have a temporary energy assistance program for income qualified residents that's running for the entirety of our current fiscal year. We have two different state programs that are active right now for a rearage assistance. So if somebody has fallen behind other bills due to the pandemic. There's both a rental assistance program and a utility assistance program that are linked to on our website so if anyone knows anyone who has a need for those programs please share that information at Burlington electric.com all the links are available or give us a call and we're happy to help. So I'm going to share some slides here I'm going to go to the share screen functions. Just a moment. Okay. So Burlington electric has proposed a net zero energy revenue bond that would be on the ballot as I think Mark and Sarah suggested probably at December instead of November. I wanted to talk with you all about it tonight. First just a little bit of background again on Burlington electric. As folks know, we're municipal utility owned by the city of Burlington. We are over 100 years old. We have 118 employees, including McNeil station and interval, and we're the third largest utility in Vermont where the largest physical utility in the state of Vermont, and relatively unique. We have among our residential customers about 60% are renters that's relatively unique at the state. Three quarters of our customers are residential and about one quarter commercial and industrial but when you look at our energy use. It's actually flipped it's about 75% commercial and only about 25% residential. So we're running with McNeil, which is the largest energy plant now in the state since for my Yankee close but we also have a number of other plants. We have a number of solar facilities around the city of Burlington and I'll talk a little more about our portfolio of generation but it's been 100% renewable since 2014. We were the first city in the nation to to reach that goal and that really led to what are we going to do going forward now that we're 100% renewable and the net zero energy goal has been the next step. We have a roadmap that was adopted by the city council in September of 2019 that laid out some pathways for achieving the net zero goal and the last bullet here. We obviously went for 12 years without a rate increase. We had after the pandemic, our need for a first rate increase in that 12 year period. We had residential rates and overall rates that are lower than the state average, even after that rate increase would take effect. It's currently on customer bills as a surcharge and spending at the public utility commission during the next few months. So shipping gears to the revenue bond itself, just some background here on the Burlington electric revenue fund. This bond would require approval of a majority of voters. It's not a two thirds requirement. It would be repaid solely from the revenues. This is not a city general fund bond. This is not funded with property taxes. This does not affect your property taxes. This is a revenue bond that Burlington electric pays with our revenues does not affect the city's debt policy. I know that came out earlier, or it's that ratio. And we've used revenue bonds for a number of different projects in the past. The one that really comes to mind here is being the most relevant is the energy efficiency bond that we did in 1990. And I'll touch on that here at the next slide. Back in 1990, we had an 11.3 million dollar revenue bond that was fairly groundbreaking at the time. And it really jumped started our efficiency investments as a city. Today, we are using over 8% less electricity than we were in 1989. This is a result of efficiency investments and Burlington electric and our customers invested over 70 million dollars in efficiency and customers are saving about 10 million a year through avoided costs because of those efficiency investments on their electric bills. So the net zero revenue bond really builds on that initial success with energy efficiency. The net zero energy goal it's it's the most ambitious goal really in the nation. I think a few communities have now followed in our footsteps and harbor Michigan and others that are trying to reach the same goal. But basically it means that we want to be 100% renewable not only for electric generation but also for our building energy use our thermal and our ground transportation. And those are the two sectors that have the largest emissions in Vermont and Burlington. So we're focusing our efforts where the where the carbon emissions are. Importantly, this proposal would invest in our infrastructure in a way that would maintain and enhance our reliability. So we've got really outstanding reliability at the city we've got a very quick response time when there are outages and a portion of this investment is really going to be going to continuing them reliability and a portion to help meet the net zero energy goal. So we've set up some of the specific areas of investment for the revenue bond, which is $20 million proposal in terms of the grid about 12.3 million of the revenue bond 20 million would be going into the grid and infrastructure for our distribution system. 7 million of that would be for reliability and about 5.3 million for net zero energy projects. When we talk about the net zero projects we're talking about investing in enhancements that allow our system to accommodate growth in electric use as more and more folks hopefully are reaching to cold climate heat pumps and electric vehicles and electric lawn equipment and electric bikes and other clean electric technologies and away from fossil fuel. The grid will be built in a way to handle some of that new load. In addition, we have aging software and aging technology systems that we're looking to replace and enable some new customer focused options there as we do so in terms of new rates and new options for load control. That's about 3.9 million technology system investments about 2.2 million would go into maintenance for our existing renewable energy plants like McNeil and one hydro facility that you see here the photo. And also we have a proposal here to convert the gas turbine, which is a peaker plant which runs on oil and moved out away from oil and over to renewable biodiesel. And then lastly, about 1.5 million would go into net zero capital investments. New EV charging stations around the city demand response technology is including working with a local startup company called packetized energy which is helping us with demand response technologies all throughout different areas of our portfolio. So the numbers here kind of reflecting what I just ran through so I won't linger on this slide. All of the documents on the slides and all the documents are available for docs website for the last city council meeting. So if you're interested, you can certainly view them there on board docs. One of the key pieces here as well is that by investing in the revenue bond BED is typically provided $3 million annual bond that's backed by the general obligations but payable by BED. So every year we have about 3 million in bond that comes in that we use for infrastructure under this proposal we would be able to free up a portion of that about 5.3 million. And use it to help double funding for our current incentives that we offer for customers. We've done in just the past few years we've launched incentive programs around heat pumps electric vehicles plug in hybrids electric lawn mowers electric bikes, electric transit buses, and so many other technologies. And we've actually had customers use more than 1350 rebates to help with projects. We've seen really strong growth in rebates for heat pumps and for electric vehicles for electric lawn mowers in particular. And by boosting the funding for these programs, really doubling the funding over the next three years, we can reduce emissions by an additional 47,000 tons, and we can not only support our customers, but we can also create some revenue return for the utility that will help pay the debt service on this proposal. And I'll talk about that in just a moment. We're showing a representation against our state requirements under the state renewable energy standard, which is represented by the dotted lines there those are a compliance obligation and then a double compliance obligation. You can see the blue line representing the ease incentive program uptake essentially what our customers are doing. And you can see that up until we launched some of those programs in September of 2019 with the net zero roadmap. And then when we launched our enhanced programs to the green stimulus in June of 2020 as response to the pandemic. You can see the growth really took off. We've seen about a 10 x increase in the number of heat pump installs over the last year, and we've seen almost a doubling of our PV and plug and hybrid rebates during that time. The jump that you see in the dark blue line represents the two electric transit buses that green mountain transit was able to purchase with the incentives, and also a significant geothermal heat pump installation at the new office complex which is down in the south end. So really what we're seeing is customers of ours are using these programs. And so the, the doubling funding to support those continued uses is justified by some of the data that we have. Going into the financial aspects of the revenue bond. Obviously, as I mentioned, we had a seven and a half percent rate increase in a fiscal year 22. What we're seeing is if we want to do all of the things that we have talked about terms of capital projects, in terms of that zero initiatives and try to maintain the days cash on hand that we need for our credit rate, which is f y 23 projecting 110 days cash on hands. If we do that with the revenue bond what we're seeing is about 4.9% upward rate pressure. That's not a 4.9% rate case just to be clear. That's just our projection, if everything was exactly as we project. That would be the amount of upward pressure you could see a number of factors will come in in terms of the energy markets and operating expenses and other things that could move that number. So we can compare that to what we would have to do without the revenue bond, and you see 23.7% of upward rate pressure. We have no intention of ever doing any type of great case that would be at that level and I don't think it would be justified. But we really can see that with the revenue bond we can have moderated rate pressure. In the next five years we've done a financial model and that rate pressure with the revenue bond gets lower each of the next five years. So even if we need more frequent rate adjustments. They can be much more moderate than what we saw this year with the 7.5% rate increase. And just for context, the 7.5% increase is roughly $4 and change on a residential bill, and about $6 and 60 cents on an average commercial bill. So that's the impact at 7.5% and obviously if we can reduce it to 4.9 or 4 or 3.9 or two, then we can have even less of an impact for customers. So, one of the things I should mention here is that we just had our a three credit rating affirmed by Moody's. So that's a positive development as we go for revenue bond. That means that we can potentially benefit lower interest rates with a higher credit rating and save customers money on the repayment of the debt that we would be incurring. So just getting to that as kind of the last piece of the presentation here that I'll be delighted to answer questions. This is our current revenue bond debt service schedule. And what you can see is, we already have built in because of a maturity of an existing revenue bond. Almost 700,000 in savings from 2025 to 2026, which represents capacity that we will have to help pay the new net zero energy revenue bond. So almost 700,000 there. And then this is the proposed debt repayment schedule, or at least a proposed debt repayment schedule with some assumptions on the net zero revenue bond. And you can see when pull repayment would begin in 2028, you would have that 700,000 to dedicate to it. You also would have a skip ahead of slide here. You also would have incremental net revenues from those customer incentive projects which use more electricity and help with sales of approximately 467,000 from FY 2532. So when we think about the new debt service relative to the new revenues and to the savings, a substantial portion of the debt service is going to be covered by those two pieces the maturity savings and the revenue return. That means that in future years 2028 and beyond this repayment of this revenue bond will put relatively minimal upward rate pressure on for our customers. In this projection it would be a little under 1% potentially, which is relatively good outcome given the investment that we would be looking to make. So I'm going to stop there and end my screen share back to the main screen here and just want to thank everyone for the opportunity to present. I'm going to be going to all the different MPAs I think over the course of the next month. This is the easiest one because as I mentioned words at the resident so this one's local for me. And we are, you know, very, very pleased to be able to present this we had unanimous approval at the city council and then our election commission to advance the site. And glad to answer any questions. So the rest of you are thinking. I have one to start us off and excuse me, Darren, could you elaborate a little more on the distinction between rate pressure and an actual rate increase because I think that's probably a modeling concept that the rest of us are not familiar with. So when we think of upward rate pressure it's really looking at what our budget would be in a future year and what our needs are in terms of financial metrics for things like days cash on hand. We try to maintain a rating financial metrics, including for days cash on hand. And if there is a gap between those projections and what you're looking to have that creates some upward rate pressure in the model as you mentioned. That's not the same thing as filing for rate case because when you file for a great case you have to justify a number of things under my utility law. And so you go to the public utility commission, and you have to be able to show the rate need in a particular way. So when we project 4.9% that doesn't mean we would file exactly that. It might be just a representation of how much pressure we're seeing on our budget. The other piece to kind of keep in mind is, there are a number of factors as I mentioned between now and when we would submit a budget for fiscal year 23. What are energy prices for the wintertime? For example, it's going to be a big question. We're seeing some swing and movement there and energy prices, the renewable energy credit markets, those effects, our budget, how much we can maintain a low operating cost, which we've done pretty consistently over the last number of years. And really coming out of this year, what does the pandemic impact on sales look like for the next year? Because as folks may be aware, we saw at Burlington Electric a $5 million impact on us from the pandemic in terms of lower sales overall in terms of arrearages, customers being behind under bills, and in terms of capital projects that we have that were canceled or disrupted. So going forward as we see sales begin to rebound, the economy begin to reopen, things getting back hopefully more to normal, that will impact on our rate pressure and rate needs as well. Jeff Blair? Yeah, I thought Bob Cooper was first, but I will go. The McNeil plant, does that burn wood? Yes, it's a wood chip facility, that's right. So that qualifies as net zero if it's burning wood? Yes, so McNeil is qualified as a renewable energy resource, both in Vermont and at least one other state in New England. It is biomass carbon accounting is one of the most complex issues that are out there in terms of climate change, it's something that's being debated. What I would recommend folks if they're interested in learning more about McNeil, we have a forestry page on our website that has some detailed facts and myself and our chief forester Betsy Lesnickowski wrote a commentary for digger earlier this year trying to lay out some of the climate pieces along with the economic pieces for McNeil. We have four foresters who are on staff, which is fairly unique for a utility that has a wood chip plant, and they have standards that they put in place for any type of site that we go to for wood chip harvesting, because really we want to keep as much as possible, a beneficial lifecycle effect where even though you are emitting carbon when you burn wood you are sequestering carbon, when you are regrowing at a sustainable rate. And what we've seen in Vermont with McNeil is that we've been able to maintain the state forest cover and we are really, we're really looking at the low value wood. The utility is going into a forest to get higher value wood for something like furniture, for example, we are able to take the waste product and use it for energy that would otherwise potentially be discarded have very little value so we think we have a good operation and a good case to make an employment standpoint with McNeil, but folks have varying opinions on biomass. And the other one you mentioned GT is moving to biodiesel. What was that one. That's right so folks may or may not be aware we have a peaking plant which only runs a handful of times a year when the energy grid is at a very big strain. And it's on the waterfront, it's essentially to gas turbine or jet engine type of plant. And it runs on oil even though it's called the gas turbine runs on oil. And as part of this move with the net zero revenue bond, we wanted to be able to convert that to run a renewable biodiesel that we can hopefully source locally. It's not really part of our being 100% renewable, because we're actually more than 100% renewable work we're closer about 108% renewable we have more renewable energy to meet the need. But that plant is the last plant that's involved with the that uses fossil fuel as the generation resource, we would like to switch from oil to renewable fuel for that plant. I also mentioned solar. Are there. What are the solar locations that contribute to the Burlington grid. Sure. Yeah, with solar we actually we were named the top city in the country, or not in the country in the Northeast excuse me, two years in a row per capita per solar by American America. Right here in the New North and the South 40 site is the largest solar site in the Burlington area it's about a 2.5 like a lot site that's located here in the New North that that's not our project will be purchased power from it so that contributes to solar in Burlington. Right at the airport and solar on our facilities at the number of city buildings, including 585 pine street, and we also have solar from a number of different businesses and residents around the community who have signed up for that theater and have installed and then they contributed to Burlington Electric so we're about a 60 to 65 megawatts system overall and solar is more than nine megawatts in the city of Burlington. It's obviously not producing a full output 24 hours a day. It's not producing a full output in the winter relative to the summer, but on a hot sunny summer day. And you might see solar contributing something like nine plus megawatts of energy for the needs of the community. And that substantial growth we had almost no solar 11 years ago. It's really all of it at that time that we've seen that rapid extension. And we just have a few more hands up. We'll help with that. So we've got Bob Hooper and then Robert Bristow Johnson and then Sylvia Knight. Thank you so Robert, Bob Hooper. Thank you. Hey Darren you've been on my list to call. Not unlike Jeff I have several questions. You know this is laudable stuff here. It's a clean atmosphere is our ultimate goal so you know, I think we should be contributing as much as possible. Although the idea of a Volkswagen bus with Burlington Electric written on it going around the Chinese restaurants, getting their cooking oil so we can run our turbine to sticks in my mind for some reason. Have we ever considered actually, I think I might have talked to you about this once a decade ago or something. Buying in bulk solar panels and selling them to our community members for on their roof so they don't have to go through commercial. And, you know, basically turn everybody's roof in Burlington into a generating facility. It's kind of question number one. Question number two deals with the incentive programs. And there are a lot of them and unfortunately I've been bumping into a lot of people within the last three or four weeks that have been interacting with them. Somebody that bought a bike but wasn't eligible to get the incentive because they didn't buy it locally. So, you know, I have a problem with the electric car rebate thing on the state level because it's qualified based on income. And if we want to clean the atmosphere that income shouldn't be an issue. So that's sort of the perspective I'm looking at it and it, it branches out to the heat pump and a lot of the other stuff too because the heat pump thing you have to buy it locally you have to have it installed by somebody that doesn't live in Burlington but it's local. Otherwise you don't qualify. If you get an electric car you can get a rebate on your charger for your in house but because BED only recognizes to one of which is low amperage and the other one which is probably 40% more expensive than some of the ones that come commercially people end up paying a lot more for the stuff they're doing heat pump bicycle. Electric car because of the little in incentive caveats that are in the program. That's kind of what I wanted to talk to you about and thirdly, when the bond is paid back since you highlighted and I was grossly unaware of the difference between residential and commercial usage of power in our system. Is it going to be paid back on a kilowatt assessment basis or is there going to be a break for commercial and no break for residential so there will be disparate payment to the bond. Sorry to have so many questions probably wish I would have called you. Let me take them maybe in reverse order. Thanks for all of those in terms of repayment of the bond. It will be through our general budget it's not attributable to a specific customer class so our rates are set, you know, in a particular way our residential rate is different than our commercial rates and they reflect the energy usage, and we have different commercial rates for small and large customers. So our rate structure is different based on each customer class contributing a fair share to the total. But the bond repayment itself will not be an assessment of any particular customer. It'll just come through our general budget and operating. We repay that currently, we have revenue bond debt that's outstanding that we repay currently, and it's just part of our overall budget that we do each year. In terms of the incentives. So, with the electric bikes we offer a $200 rebate and we we offer it at a variety of area stores but we haven't provided a rebate if you buy, let's say on Amazon or out of state. We support the local bike shops but also we are trying to, you know, make sure that if folks have a bike that isn't available locally they can contact us and we'll try to look at that, you know, nobody in the area none of our local bike shop sells a particular electric bike. I'd encourage folks to reach out to our team and say hey the only place I can get this is online and then we can look at that and see if there's, you know, merit trying to expand the program that way. In terms of the EVs and the heat pumps I know you mentioned not having an income qualification. That's the case we do not have an income qualification to be able to take advantage of the EV rebate or the heat pump rebate. We do have enhanced incentives for low and moderate income customers so if you're getting an electric vehicle Burlington Electric will contribute an $1800 rebate. Or if you're getting a plug-in hybrid it's $1500 on the sale of the vehicle or the lease of the vehicle. If you're getting a used EV it's $800. And in addition if you're getting a new electric vehicle as you mentioned will contribute $400 to the purchase and installation of a level 2 charger. We used to have three different companies that could do the charger. Now we only have two, one of which is Chargepoint which is a national company and one of which is Pactapize Energy which is a local business that I mentioned. So we used to have Flow as well which is a Canadian charging company but they're not currently up on our partner list at the moment. So we're happy to try to expand that. We want more chargers, more partners. The thing is is that they have to be able to communicate with our system because the way the rate works is it's a Wi-Fi enabled charger that then communicates back to Burlington Electric. It says this customer is only charging during the off-peak hours and therefore they're going to get a discount on their electric use for the charging relative to other electric use. So that's been one constraint that we've had. It's a frustration of mine I wanted to and still would like to also have level 1 just regular charging cords that were Wi-Fi enabled that we could hand out to customers who want to slower charge but want to be on the rate. We've tested with a couple of different companies and tried to verify that their technology works and our team hasn't been able to find one that actually works because if we could find those, those are an even cheaper solution. You don't have to do any changes to your electric panel or any type of upgrade, you could just plug in. So I share the frustration there with some of the availability of the technology. But we definitely are trying to make sure that if somebody is low-moderate income, they're getting a bonus on top of the 1800 for the EV. They're going to get 2400 if they are getting a heat pump. A single heat pump right now, we're covering up to two thirds of the cost for a residential customer and if the customer is low-moderate income, they can get up to three quarters of the cost covered. So we have really outstanding heat pump incentives at the moment to try to move the needle on all of these different areas. And going back to solar, we had a program that was partnering with a bunch of the solar developers called Solar Shopper for a period of time. We did that as a pilot. We're not doing it currently. A lot of the solar developers have really kind of learned the local ones and some of the ones that operate here have learned how to stockpile. Like exactly like you were saying, get panels involved, try to get cheaper panels doing it that way. There are all kinds of trade issues around solar panels that changed the pricing over the last few years. We looked at this and we haven't found that it would be something that we could really do as part of our core business. And we don't want to, as a utility, as a regulated utility, we don't necessarily see it as our role to compete with the private market actors, the different solar companies that are working in Burlington or in Vermont. It's not really our core business expertise to go out and install solar panels. We definitely support solar and we've tried to provide support for the different types of folks working in that space. But we haven't done anything in terms of like a bull purchase program at this point. But I appreciate the suggestion and it's definitely compelling and it's something that I've talked about with other folks. If there was a way to do it in a partnership model, that could be something that would have some value for us. So Bob, has that triggered any follow up thoughts? Only thank you, Darren. Thank you for the image of the Volkswagen and the restaurant. Robert. Hi, so I just, I just wanted to maybe respond a little to Jeff Clark about the burning wood and the carbon implications of that at least as I understood it as as an electrical engineer. That that burning wood is carbon neutral compared to letting the wood rot in a forest or something. It's in both cases, the wood is in the atmosphere. The difference it is with, you know, coal and oil and the fossil fuels is in, you know, over hundreds of millions of years. This small amount of life of carbon was sequestered gradually year after year, but over hundreds of millions of years and built up and then we're taking in 200 years, our species is taking what took hundreds of millions of years to bury. And we're releasing into the atmosphere. And that ain't carbon neutral. But burning wood compared to not burning the wood, whatever else would happen to that would accept a varied minute percentage will get sequestered naturally, as it did over the last million years, burning wood compared to letting it rot is pretty much carbon neutral. Well, I mean, I think that's a great explanation. I think that's very consistent with what the state natural resources agency discusses and it's annual emissions inventory is exactly that point that that there's a difference between fossil sequestered carbon and short term sequestered carbon and trees and biomass and so I agree very much with that with that assessment, I think the state agency of natural resources has agreed with it and EPA as well as termed biomass managed sequestered carbon control. We definitely think there's a benefit to having a sustainable forestry program at McNeil that helps ensure that we're managing and harvesting sustainably and in a way that allows for the forest to grow up and keep the cycle intact. I have a kind of a general concept question about the net zero energy policy. So to me that the concept of net means you have a plus column and a negative column. And so I'm sort of curious for us what falls into the plus column. You know, because I will admit I'm very concerned about the concept of eventual elimination of natural gas, you know, for heating, you know, you know, it talks about the elimination of fossil fuel for heating and ground transportation and obviously ground transportation is primarily gasoline and diesel but home heating is primarily natural gas so if the long term goal is the elimination of natural gas. What else is in the plus column. It's a great question. So, and getting to the point about net. If we think about kind of what direction we're heading. If we move towards electrification of some of the heating load so we have more heat pumps, not just today's heat pumps but new newer heat pumps, including air to water systems that you know we have. We have ductless heat pumps in a portion of our home and then we have a boiler that runs on gas and at some point there there's technology that's coming. That's going to put a heat pump in that can connect your boiler run a 90% of the time. And so your boilers not running and your boiler becomes the backup for example, as opposed to the primary. Similarly, there are centrally ducted heat pumps where you can have a furnace system and use the duct work and heat pumps running a good chunk of the time and the furnace is running less. So there's a lot of hybrid home options or hybrid business options. When we think of the net and this is consistent with Vermont gas, they're, they're kind of public climate, they're trying to add more renewable fuels to their things like renewable gas, which could come from landfills or methane digesters or other projects they have on a I think they just launched. So the idea would be we want to reduce significantly the amount of fuel that we're using in Burlington, move to renewables as much as we can. But if there's a portion that we can get rid of. Then that portion being renewable being a mix of other renewable fuels, hydrogen other things that Vermont gas may make available. So the concept that it really comes in is those fuels may not be literally in Burlington, they may be part of the Vermont gas system and we're purchasing a portion of it to come to Burlington, for example. You know, if somebody wanted to purchase that today, they have the option of their gas building and say I want to be 100% renewable gas. And it's not that the molecule of gas delivered to their home is renewable per se it's that they're paying to have an injection into the of renewable gas to offset the amount they're using. And so that's I think where the net concept comes in is we're not saying it's an absolute that there's literally no fossil fuel anywhere in the city of Burlington we're saying we're going to source at least 100% of what we're using from renewable sources whether it's a heat pump whether it's renewable gas those types of things. I hope that wasn't overly. Alright, I got to digest that little bit. Sorry about that. Any other questions out there. Just curious what is renewable gas that comes out of the ground. So my understanding is for Vermont gas they're they're thinking of renewable gas as being methane that's produced from, you know, a digester system or methane that's produced from a landfill that kind of thing. Yeah, they actually have a fairly large, they collaborated with a number of farms in Addison County and they're actually collecting a lot of anaerobic digester methane. And currently a lot of portion of that is being typed to the Middlebury College campus correct. And then their goal is to actually expand back to residential distribution. That's right. Exactly. A quick question if I can jump in. It's appropriate. Thanks Darren for your time tonight. I know that there have been a lot of federal tax credits for panels. I wonder if there still are and with this push by the city. Are there new plans for future incentives for both homeowners and even for landlords for smaller large buildings. If the city wants to go this route, what are they doing to buy it. Absolutely. In terms of the tax credits there is still a federal tax credit for solar. And my understanding is legislation that's pending on this very large bill that's pending on investing in a variety of areas including clean energy could potentially expand some of those tax incentives or extend them in some cases. There's a lot going on at the federal level in terms of those incentives and how they might be treated for future years. And we we definitely at the local level are looking at expanding incentives as well. You know really we've got dozens of them that have just launched over the last couple of years, but we're looking at things like how do we help. In terms of if somebody is building new construction multi family or rental or whatever it might be. How can we go in with incentives both for energy efficiency for weatherization sometimes in partnership with Vermont gas, and then also for things like heat pumps. We're seeing a lot of new construction buildings we're going with heat pumps can be very cost effective right off the bat. We're also looking at retrofits, both at the, you know, individual homeowner as well as, you know, property owner standpoint, commercial standpoint. So we have some new programs that are going to be rolling out. I mentioned geothermal, we'll talk about that as much but geothermal is really ground sourced heat pumps. They're very efficient, great heating and cooling year round hula in the south end is using it for their campus. And we're going to have some resources to help other property owners or businesses that want to explore geothermal usually have to drill a test well and see if you have the appropriate resource on site to be able to put in a system that costs $10,000 or $15,000. We just had a program approved at the public utility commission that will help with those test well costs, and help maybe get more people over the hurdle of okay, I want to do a test well. BPD has some funding to help me out. I can go figure out if my property works for geothermal and that will obviously come in with additional incentives, if the property owner decides they want to invest in geothermal. We don't have all those programs. We don't have all the answers either so folks know of a gap and something that we're doing. Please reach out to me or reach out to our team. We're always interested in good ideas. Yeah, I just wanted to put a plug in for all the great work that they are doing at BED around, around rebates and incentives for electrification. I actually was one of those people who, like many in the New North then, was concerned about this movement away from use of natural gas for heating, but this year I actually was someone who put in a centrally ducted heat pump at my home. BED made it really easy to get the, get the rebates connected me with installers. We used it to air condition our house over the summer and I plan to use it all the way into, you know, the shoulder season here to heat my house. And I think it will be good down to like 35 degrees at which point my gas furnace will automatically kick in. So I'd encourage everybody to sort of look at some of the technologies that are available through BED. They're really super affordable. Not to shamelessly plug BED, but I think you guys are doing an awesome job. I really appreciate that. Thank you, Mark. And, you know, we've seen we've got, as I mentioned a 10x increase over the last year now we've boosted some of these incentives for heat pumps. So, more and more folks are looking at them. I know I have neighbors who have put in heat pumps and are looking at the technology. We have new construction projects that are putting in heat pumps. We have all types of applications for it. It's a good, you know, beyond all the benefits from a carbon standpoint from an energy standpoint from a financial standpoint. Doing this supports local clean energy jobs, whereas, you know, if we look at the kind of bigger picture with fossil fuel we send a lot of money out of state and with these types of technologies we're keeping a lot more money in state and that's benefiting the economy as well. All right, I'm going to offer a last call for questions. Anybody else out there. Okay. Well, thank you all for your participation. This evening. I've been a good conversation. And, oh, one, one quick thought. So, Robert Bristow Johnson as so our ad hoc committee member who logged in tonight as far as I know you have not been contacted by the city attorney yet so you don't really have anything to share with us yet. I've been contacted by someone at CEDO or something, both Kirsten, Kirsten someone and then Bridget someone now I can't remember their last names. We haven't met yet. And the other NPAs only elected their members. I think last week. And I see I've gotten an email with email addresses on it so I know their email address, but I don't even know the names of the other committee members other than Jim hallway. There's one thing I did have a chat with Jay Appleton. And with with with all with all due respect to our counselors when they were talking about having a mapping specialist I think that they were talking about Jay Appleton, but I've got sure. But he was the guy that was the facilitator in the last remat the last redistricting I had, I had a good chat with him and I think that you've seen them articles I imagine that seven days and and Burlington free presses had such, but there was an article in the digger about how the city population has changed. And after that in my chat with Jay Appleton there's, I can report a couple of things for you guys just from what we see on the landscape in the horizon. And the thing that I can report is we can almost guarantee you that things will be different, very, very different, whatever we have now with the eight wards is not going to be what we're going to have. In the future because the population shifted so much eight years ago, you know what, when you have a part of the city that's growing not as fast and then another part of the city that's growing much faster. The part of the city that's growing faster has too many people in it. And so if you're going to kind of keep the populations the same you got to shrink those wards that are growing too fast, and grow the wards that aren't growing faster grow those words, geographically, but the other thing that's going to pass in the new north end is we went as far as we could go and that is the railroad tracks that you mentioned Sarah, we can't grow the new north and any farther than it is and stay out of the old you know and and Lake View Terrace. And so I think we're going to have to accept that the that a quarter of the city's population that the that the new north end is less than a quarter of the city's population. And in the future city council, the new north end is going to have a less than a quarter of the representation and city council. Because if we try to keep that that same amount of chunk, we're going to mathematically, we will have to grow into the old north end and I think that that's not going to be acceptable to folks down there. That would be asked to drive up to the Miller Center to vote and stuff like that. I'm just, I don't know but I'm just telling you be prepared for it's going to be just totally different. I think that I think that Ward seven will probably cease to exist a a a ward that has the number seven attached to it will probably cease to exist. Just because there's just no way that we can keep keep it at even similar to what we have, given the population changes, unless we were willing to nudge lines into the old north end. And I gathered from Jay Appleton, and from also these news reports. It's like a, that sounds like a less than objective place to start but the math, the Alyssa man you have math to argue with. I just, I just wanted to say I think this is really early to have this level of a discussion about this, considering there's been no meeting of the ad hoc committee whatsoever. I, what I would do is I would refrain from offering that Ward seven is going to cease to exist with quite a few members of Ward seven on this call and Ward seven representative on vacation. And so I will just invite us since this wasn't really a warned topic for the agenda, not to go down this road. All right. I'm just, just, I'm just saying. I think it's a counselor. The counselors wanted to ad hoc committees to get in, you know, input from the, you know, the NPA as well. I think it wasn't just kind of reporting back but it was getting information from individuals at the NPA meeting to Sarah. Well, and I just want to make sure that we understand that the ad hoc committees role is to really take it up enough and talk about what's important. How many counselors should we have, you know, is the current system working. Should we go back to one or two things we've had in the past, we really are not ready to fixate on the lines. We really need to fixate on the concepts of, you know, what, what is an, and we know that neighborhoods are important. So that's needs to be reaffirmed, but I just caution us, we're not close to moving lines yet we're looking at what's the structure of the city. But I think that the structure is going to get completely dismantled. I don't think this district thing and ward thing is not going to survive this redistricting. I don't see it doing that. Okay, well, the reason that we the steering committee added this as a contingency agenda item was if we had time left over was simply because the the recruiting process for the ad hoc committee ended a week ago on September 16 and just in case there was any communication between the city attorney's office and the ad hoc committee people. I wanted a chance to fit that in but it just sounds like where there's nothing substantial for us to talk about yet. So, thank you. I do hope and it's, you know, it was aggressive. We don't obviously don't have a lot of time tonight, but at our next meeting. I think we do need to leave enough time to have some open and conversation. Again, on the on the bigger picture, you know, nine counselors 12 counselors 14 counselors 16 counselors. Any counselors at large do we do them all in the wards. I mean, I think we, we have to have these conversations and not focus on lines, but what gets us the best governance in a theory and start there. I wasn't trying to focus on lines other than to tell you that it's not going to be the same. And that is unavoidable. All right, well, we are hoping that that the ad hoc committee will have conducted some of its business between now and our next meeting at the end of October, certainly so hopefully there will be a meeting a week from today. How do you know that this woman named Bridget somebody I have to look at my email but from CEDO I think it was are from something. Well that was essentially the question I asked you in the beginning that if you'd have any communication from not from the city attorney. Okay. I think that CEDO is going to help with the coordination. So they may be the person who's going to do the administrative work. Set up the meeting days for the committees, we have to have at least two public hearings we have to have a place to have. So they're going to do the administrators. And then I think the city attorney will provide guidance to the committee in terms of a staff support but I think CEDO is charged with logistics, I want to call it that. All right. Thank you. So I think it is time for us to adjourn. I thank you all for your participation and we will see you out and about. Thank you. Thanks, Jeff and Kristen. Good job with the hybrid.