 Okay, so we are now recording and welcome to the March 29, 2023 ECAC meeting. We do not have either our chair or our vice chair present this evening. So we are going to start with an election for a chair pro tem for just this one meeting. So I will start by asking, is there anybody who wants to self nominate before anyone gets into nominating somebody else. So if anyone would like to self nominate themselves, please identify who would be interested in sharing this one meeting with not a heavy agenda. I'm trying to sell it. I'll give it a try. I nominate myself. Excellent. All right. All right. Second. I third. And fourth. Okay. Let's have some competition here. I'd like to see it like a campaign poster or maybe like a one of those videos where you're like shooting a car. What's your platform, Steve? Okay. All right. Okay. I can't call for order yet, can I? Not yet. So we still have to officially, I'm sorry, but we still have to officially, you know, go through the election process. Is there anybody else interested in sharing this meeting this evening? Great. Okay. So by voice vote, I will please unmute yourself. And by voice vote, I will call your name and you can say yay or nay. Allison. Yay. Selman. Yay. Roof. Yay. Rose. Yay. Breger. Yay. Draker. Yes. Yay. I thought you was more celebratory. More exciting. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your support. Do we have an agenda? I'm not sure I saw an agenda. You do. I sent a packet. So you. I did. Oh, well then I'm sorry. I'm just saying no, but I'm pretty sure it's posted. It's definitely posted. Yeah. Okay. Then I might be need a second here to scramble for that. Cause I did not get it. Let me, I can share, you know what, let me share the screen. Let's just make it easy. That would be fastest. I will just share my screen. And if I didn't, I sincerely apologize. All these meetings you all threw at me this week. Plus I've got the solar bylaw working group this week. So I was trying to keep track of who's doing what. Are you seeing the agenda now? Yes. I am seeing it. Okay. Then everyone is seeing it. Okay. Have people. Been able to review the minutes. Not if you didn't get a packet. That's what I was thinking. Okay. So we can put off reviewing the minutes till next meeting. You can, or we can do them. I mean, I can just scroll through them. Sure. What that was a kind of a focused meeting. So it was a one hour meeting. Yeah. Very short. Why don't you, if you could bring those up, Stephanie, we'll review them quickly. And put those to bed. All right. Just bear with me while I play with my. Taking notes today. Jesse is. Stephanie assigned Jesse before I was boss. Well, he was supposed to be at the last meeting and he didn't have his computer. So he was, he was the default for today. Yep. Okay. So I'm just going to scroll. And if I'm going too fast, let me know. Okay. Next meeting agenda. Oh, sorry. Somehow I must have moved. Can you see it now? Yes, we can. There we go. Looking at the items for next meeting, which would be today. Okay. Does anybody have any questions or comments or corrections for. Minutes from last week's meeting. I moved to. Approve. That's the word. Is there a second. I'll second that. Okay. Stephanie, could you take the voice vote? Yep. Let me just close out these. I'm sorry. I'm taking notes while I'm listening. Doing this. Walking and chewing them. Okay. So a voice vote in no particular order. Alison. Stay. Selman. Yes. Is that a yes? Sorry. Yes. Rose. Yes. Breaker. Yes. Dr. Okay. Stephanie, could you take the voice vote? Yep. Let me just close out these items. Sorry. I'm taking notes while I'm. Okay. I'm taking notes while I'm listening. I'm taking notes while I'm listening. I'm taking notes while I'm listening. I'm taking notes while I'm listening. If I abstain, are we going to be in trouble here? No, you have five. Okay. I mean, you can still, I think you can vote on the minutes. You can. We've talked about this before. Yeah. Up scene. Okay. Yeah. I mean, it's just a majority. And if. Yeah. So it's fine. Legally, it's fine. Thanks. I'm going to move on to the next item. I'm going to move on to the next item. You can. You can. So you have. All right. Minutes are approved and we can move on. Great. Can you bring up the agenda again, Stephanie? I can. I have to open it again though. So just bear with me one second. I'm assuming you're seeing that. Yes. Good. Thank you. Okay. So it looks like we're at the moment to. Take any public comments. If you have any public comments. If you would like to. Make a comment. Please electronically raise your hand now. There are currently three members of the public. Attending. In addition to our seven. Members. We don't seem to have any public comment. At this time. Okay. And let's move on. Peace update. Don, are you. Able to give us a pace update today? Yes, I am. I don't know if I can hear you briefly, but I can tell you that Stephanie and I met with. The executive director. Of the chamber. Claudia. And we're kind of all in agreement that we are going to put together an event. You know, somebody from mass development that Stephanie is in contact with. She can fill you in on. On what she's done to reach out to them. And it would be a co-sponsored by the chamber. At. Did we decide exactly where it would be, Stephanie? Was it, was it at. Kurt Shumway's place. At. Right there on route nine courtyard. Yes. I think she had mentioned that potentially she was going to reach out about it. But I think she mentioned that as a potential location. Yeah. And so we're in the process of reaching out to mass development. And then picking a firm date and we'll move from there. And when we reach out to mass development, we'll, we'll also discuss with them the appropriate. Informational package. I won't call it a flyer. I'll call it a. Info packet. I don't think it's going to be available for the participants. So that is moving forward. To have an event. For business people and developers. In, in the Amherst community. Question. Go ahead, Andre. I'm sorry. I spaced a little while you were saying where it is. Is it in a place. Where. Some of the features of a high performance building could be demonstrated. I don't think so. I don't think courtyard is a high performance building. If you have a suggestion of a high performance building that would also have. I mean, I don't think it's fixed. So if we could come up with a locale that had. The ability to have. You know, enough seating and enough availability of space for. You know, or durves or, or whatever is going to be. Available. Certainly I'm prepared to discuss that with Claudia. If we had such a space. You know, the Hitchcock center comes to mind. It's a potential location. Now that you said that. How many people Dawn, did you say you hope. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I just didn't. Turn out. I mean, I think we're planning on. What would you say, Stephanie? I don't remember how many she said, but I think. As I recall, it was like 30, maybe, maybe, you know, I, I don't know. I mean, she was thinking about a decent number. And I think she was also thinking of it in terms of events that they. Typically have done or do. So she's got sort of a format. I think what we had talked about for. An event was to have. A business owner who has done. Has used the pace program. And is, you know, implemented the, you know, the. Project project. And so that they could maybe present. As an example. So even if it weren't held in a space that could be touted as being a, you know, a pace demonstration project. It might be that we would have somebody, a business owner who could actually do a presentation on what they did. That was part of the, the idea was to sort of have general information and a presentation. But I think. And it was only, you know, not a very long event. It was sort of like an hour for mingling cocktails, appetizers, and then an hour for. You know, the sort of substance of the, of the event. That's how Claudia laid it out. So we were kind of really, you know, we were sort of looking to her as to how she thought it would work and go. I'll follow up with, I did reach out to mass development. The woman that I met during the MMA conference. And did not hear back from her, unfortunately, however, we actually have a person that we dealt with when we became a pace community. So I'm going to reach out to her directly. Instead, I was kind of going through this woman because I felt like I should, because she gave me her card and said. I will pass this information along, but I think it'd be better if I just reach out to the person we dealt with. So I will do that. Probably tomorrow. I can reach out to her. All right. Well, I think the idea of a location that is in a high performance building is nice, but not critical. And then perhaps a future event could be a tour of a high performance building, perhaps the one in Greenfield that we heard about earlier this year or last year, I guess. Any other questions for Don on the. Pace. Meeting. Tell me again, when did you say that was scheduled for our plan for. In May, but we didn't come up with. Yeah, we didn't come up with the final date. There were a few. Dates that we were proposing in May. So mass development is really, it's about their availability. So. Okay. So when you get back on that. Yeah. Will it also be available like live streamed or zoom for people who can't be in person? We didn't discuss that. It depends on the technology that we have available. Right. Yeah, just curious if it's something that maybe I could lurk in on. Or drop in on remotely. I might just be curious. You could actually drop in on. Physically. Sure. Take advantage of those cocktails and orders. Okay. That sounds good. Any other questions for Don on the pace. Panel. Great. Sounds exciting. And Dwayne. Some solar updates. You're muted. Okay. Yep. Every time. Sorry about that. Yeah. Also I have, I don't have a formal update either. But I will. We'll provide some updates on the. Soda bylaw working group where we stand and in our. Time frame going forward. And then just also open it up to any other ideas of what we as ECAC should be working on or might work on next with regard to solar. That separate from the, from the work that is going on with the Soda bylaw. So I guess the. The charge of the bylaw working group was to. Come forward with a draft. Zoning bylaw by and the deadline was May 31st. Which is. Fairly fast approaching at this point. It's been become apparent. That that would be a really tight deadline for us to meet. And the town manager has recognized that and has. Bestowed an extension to on us. And. And so the, especially, you know, there was some concern raised also in the working group. About getting feedback from the. The, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the GCA survey and public, public, public perspectives and so forth that we wanted to incorporate. That's going to not be available until the end of April. I think timeframe. And so the whole timing was a little bit off kilter for that as well. So. With that, and the fact that. We've been working diligently, but. can really provide to us and she's done tremendous work, but she's also been short staffed. And so we do have now till the end of this summer is it stuff and I haven't blocked on the exact date. But sort of end of summer, September, say, timeframe, amongst our work group we don't necessarily want to take that long. We want to keep moving expeditiously to get something well prepared to report back as recommendations to to the town manager and the council I believe. We won't necessarily plan to take till the end of the end of the summer but finish it up as quickly as we can. There were comfortable with, I guess sometime during the summer, obviously becomes harder times to get all together in the summer as well but we'll work through that. I will say that to date, I think the, the drafting of the language and we're going through a section by section. There's a lot of the drafting the land language and review of that and the method method is really the Christine and her group or drafting language for us to then review in the meetings. That's all been going fairly well. I think to date, a lot of what we've drafted has has turned into some interesting discussions but not a whole lot of areas that we really had to discuss debate and try to reach consensus. I think, and that someone on purpose we've started with some of the easier, more cookie cutter stuff I guess. We do recognize that there's more in front of us. That will become more interesting. In terms of discussions within the working group and the public. Part of this will be see what the constituents have to say or their perspectives from the survey and what we can learn from that. But there'll be a lot more more coming forward. You know, we do, obviously we've seen and we have reviewed the maps, the gza maps that ecac has as well in terms of the, the land that we have in Amherst, the sort of two thirds that are kind of off limit for various different not off limits but just technically not feasible or by regulation not feasible, leaving a relatively smaller portion of Amherst that would really be subject to this type of zoning. We did have a good meeting. We've been filling in not necessarily every week but every number of meeting we meet every two weeks but not every two weeks but often we have an expert to inform us about certain things. Lat last working group I believe I believe it was last working group, the town conservation director, Dave Zomac gave us a lot of good information and map maps and so forth of the conservation land and and I should say that the history of conservation in Amherst, and how much effort and unusual effort in Amherst has taken place with regard to conservation. Over the over the years, to the extent that there's a lot even even beyond what the gza map showed. There's even additional lands that are, you know, technically off limits because they're conserved conserved by by the town, or by agreements of chapter, chapter 61 a I believe it wasn't so forth or not, not chapter 61 a but the various different programs that the state has with regard to keeping some lands, not from development in the city. And so that's also taking into account we we sort of recognizing that the remaining parcels or areas of Amherst for solar development are starting to look relatively relatively limited not not strictly limited much of that much of the town is kind of not feasible for various different reasons for solar development so that's something else that we're, you know, talking about and considering as we as we move forward with with the discussions on on the zoning zoning itself. So I guess that's what I can report. We meet every two weeks on the same weeks as the as ecac. And so people are in the middle of the day 1130 to 130 generally so people are invited to to attend as well. And I know some of you do what what day did you say Steve are doing. Sorry Fridays. Yeah, 1130 to 130. Yeah, yeah, I mean, sometimes there's a aberration to that but that's generally the time. But they're posted as well. So happy to answer questions or take some input from anybody. As we move forward on that. I can also open to if we want to have a discussion or just or table it for the larger group when we get back together on anything else we should be doing on solar. In the meantime, are there any questions for Dwayne kind of lead off. I had one that came to mind. So assuming at some point the whole proposal will be submitted for legal review. Will that be before your group brings it to the town manager, or will that be after the town manager receives it do you do you know that yet. I don't but I saw Stephanie, going this way. Yeah, actually. I think once. Yeah, I think it'll probably happen fairly simultaneously. Once the final draft is done, then it goes to the legal counsel for review, like the top basically the town manager gets it in the town manager it will be sent to legal counsel. And then it'll likely go to likely go to CRC. So there'll be other stages, you know this is really the initial draft is what this group is putting together the initial draft. It's not the final. Yeah. And I will say that my sense is that it's definitely can open here as well but is that as we're deliberating as a working group if we have it if we're trying to make some sort of decision or understand something that is sort of on the precipice of whether it's likely to pass legal muster. We may have the opportunity to just bounce a specific question off the legal external legal counsel. And when you mentioned that you started out with the easy issues and working perhaps towards the more, I think you said, interesting ones. What are some of the more interesting ones that are coming at the group to grapple with. I think it may be hard to say but some of them that I think have been raised so far is, for example, should there be a cap on the size of any any particular project, or, or bite by megawatt or by acreage. I think that's that's one. I think the whole issue of, of, of, you know, is there's, is there language to be had with regard to land clearing. And, and, and, and whether there's any anything that zoning would say about that, or should say about that. Those are those are kind of some of the key issues that, you know, we're all kind of aware of that are at the crux of a lot of different perspectives. There's the issue of, you know, I think that the issue of what you have citing solar and batteries near water supply. Part of that is pretty clear on the gza map because, you know, those sort of watersheds are well defined and sort of all limits anyhow but then there's the, the well, the wells of residences and perhaps businesses that are dependent on wells and whether there's anything that zoning says about that. I think the, you know, the zoning will need to say something about setbacks from property lines for example. And so that that'll be a discussion and so forth but you know those I think you know some of this we're drawing from what sort of precedent in zoning anyhow for other things. Others will have to sort of deliberate on the good interesting issues to have conversations of that. I just want to add to that about agricultural land was also another prime topic of discussion. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, was was gza mapping out agricultural soils was that part of their task. They identified. Yeah, they, they didn't map out and identify I think land use. So they had sort of the general mapping and then they had categories for land use. So, I think, you know, those that were under APRs are, you know, identified as restricted so, you know, they've, they've gone through anything that can't be developed is in black is blacked out. So when you look at that map anything else, and it could potentially include agricultural land as well and there's, you know, there'll be layers that you can turn on and off. The map isn't done yet. The base map is done. It now has to go to the town and our GIS expert is going to turn on and off the other, you know, layers so that when somebody goes to the site and uses this map, they'll be able to see, you know, other information. Even APR land, I think, if I recall correctly, and we'll have to double check on this there. There's not a complete prohibition on solar, but it needs to be set aside on more the marginal areas and also know more than two times the energy use on site. So it's unlikely to have had the opportunity for large scale development on those on those sites, but still, I don't think we would absolutely. I don't think I mean it's up to it's up to our working group but my sense is we would abide by sort of those state rules around solar development on a PR land. And you'd have to. Yes, that's the other thing we were you know we had the right act read to us by the external council with regard to you know you can arbitrarily zone against solar. Unless, you know, you can demonstrate welfare, you know, the need to protect social welfare, public health and safety. That's where there's a lot of there will be some discussion to be had in terms of what those things mean, and whether there's sufficient, and there's been lawsuits that have upheld that very strictly. And so, I think a lot of this discussion was with regard to defining to the extent that we want to define and articulate values in Amherst that have been expressed that might suggest some impacts that solar might have on public welfare for example. But any other question for Duane's update on solar and Dwayne you asked if people might have here might have other ideas or topics on solar did. Did you have anything in mind that we might want to put on a future agenda for ECAC discussion. I'll be frank with you haven't had time to think. That being said, I feel like, you know, solar is one of our topics and, and I feel like, you know, we did, we did, and I took sort of the lead on with others but on the on the assessment we did on on sort of our fair share. If there's something else that would be helpful. We can look at that so I didn't come with any ideas and it sort of just dawned on me that, you know, obviously, I'm involved with the, with the bylaw working group but if we're working through the solar group and ECAC, then unless the work on the solar bylaw takes that but but I'm happy to, you know, work with others to see what else if there's anything else we could do that doesn't need to wait for the for the zoning bylaw to really get settled out that would be helpful for for this group. And then we can put that on another, maybe the next time I'm up for a status update. We can have a discussion about that. Okay. I have a question. I'm looking to see if I can find it. There's a bill I think it might even be sapidosa and Cumberford bill on solar sighting. It's putting a, I think a cap on size of solar that can be in forested areas. It would be good to at least know about that and perhaps that would give a guideline if the bylaw committee wants to consider that. I'll try to find it. Yeah, if you find that, let us know under that I'd be interested. Andrew, if you send that to me, I can forward it to the working group as part of their meeting. Okay. Stephanie, when the map becomes available, will we have a chance with GZ a comment to one of our meetings to give us a preview of that or we just know it online. I'll send you all the link to it when it's available, but Gza is they'll do a final presentation with their final report, but they won't be specifically doing anything about the map. Okay, they're kind of done with that piece. Honestly, that's they're moving on now. And do you have anything to report they think they finished their couple of presentations in town. You know how those went. Sure. Yeah, I was going to do this as my step update but I can do it now. Okay, so the, so the all of the three events were completed we had about 21 people attend the virtual meeting we had roughly 25 people show up for the two events at the Jones library that were in the Woodbury room. They're a really nice sort of display and it was great because people could just sort of come and participate as much or as little as they wanted but I think we got some good feedback. I will say that at this point the surveys the survey responses and it on Friday this week on the 31st that's the last day for people to respond to the surveys. If you all haven't done it and it's funny because I feel like the people that haven't done it yet are all a lot of the people that are involved in a lot of this. So, including here in town hall to people have said oh I've been meaning to do that so my reminder is everyone needs to do the survey, but we have over 500 responses. So, we've had a pretty robust. Yes, I still have my card, your glossy card. So, it would be great if people could respond but yes we do already and my guess is I that was as of maybe the beginning of the week that we had 500 or so so it's probably even more now. So, we've had a really good response rate and it's hopefully it will be even more. But as we said they're done with the assessment. Now they will take that community feedback they also will get the responses off of engage Amherst and any sort of written comments that was sort of outside of the survey. All of that will be compiled and be part of the report as kind of like an appendix will have all of the, the sort of more written responses that were outside of the survey. All right, that sounds good. Any other questions on the solar updates before we go on to the next item. Okay, it looks like our next item is to discuss the gas pipeline. Okay. So, I can present for Laurie and it's sort of ideas. It's, it's not something we're ready to actually promote but what I need to do, Stephanie is to log in on my computer, so that I can share my screen. Or send you the link for you to share. So, which, sorry, I was muted. I was saying just you can email it to me. I'm just going to open up my email and you can send it. All right. Take a minute. Yeah, especially if mine won't share. We might have to do it the other way. I'm going to log in. Okay. So, I'll get it up. And so, what Laurie wrote was what I consider mostly the background. And the idea just remind people was to ask the town council to resolve that Amherst would the ask that the governor declare a halt to expanding the gas system. And so I think what we would want to send would be a packet with information. And I'll just show you that there's a number of resources that Larry collected. And, and then I think we might write a sample resolution. But I'm not sure about that. So what do people think about just the, how to proceed in that. So the general idea is to ask the Amherst town council to vote in favor of opposing this pipeline development or something along those lines. Yeah, I think it would be, you know, to whatever the right words are send, you know, a letter to the administration. And our legislators or whoever we, we identify to express support for this. There are, there are a lot of models that resolutions we could just copy. So some of this would be in whereas is, and some would just be background information. So I think of it. But bottom there the suggestion we suggest instead the funds be put towards mini splits is, is that a coordinated effort, or is that something that you and Lori came up with. I'm not sure where that came up. And who's. What money are we talking about isn't asking for money. So instead of putting in the pipeline, putting it. Whose money ever sources. Well, I mean, it's ours. It's the taxpayers who will, who foot the bill in the form of rate hikes. Well, that would be one question I have is who's at risk for this investment. Of this, of this pipe. You know, I don't think it's a localized tax burden or rate burden. But I'm not sure about that. I think that it's just, you know, the whole, you know, how the rate structure goes. The, the gas. Come, you know, utilities have their divisions. And so improvements that they put into the. Yeah, but there is, there is division. I think the rates differ. By region. It's not necessarily the case that the utility and I'm not saying it is or it isn't, but it's not necessarily the case that the utility can rate base the investment cost. Their investment cost of that infrastructure and be guaranteed to get it paid back to them, regardless of how much gas they actually sell. And I guess that's, you know, I would have a much more serious concern. About it. If, if they, if ever source was guaranteed through. To recover their investment cost. Yeah, yeah. Through rates. My understanding is that that is the guarantee that's one of the motivations to doing these upgrades. Because they obviously would, they can't make a profit on the product that they sell and make a profit on the maintenance and growth of the system. But I would like to have that confirmed to. Yeah. Any comments or thoughts from other members. I mean, another thing maybe to, again, if I was a town council and trying to figure out whether to resolve to voice an opinion to the state government. I don't know if this or not. I'd be curious to know what the government of Long Meadow thinks. Yeah, no, all of the government of Long Meadow, all of the legislators in the area are strongly against it. The state legislators or the town. Yeah, both, both. I think that should be referenced and cited in some way in a letter. Yeah, I agree. I think that's, that's important if we're asking the Amherst council to join with the city council of those of Long Meadow or this area affected that's more powerful. I would suggest that bit about redirecting the money that seems a little vague so maybe that's not part of the ask it's maybe the ask is focused on a resolution against that gas pipeline expansion. I think that's an opinion that should be made pretty clear at the beginning of the letter what you are asking the town council to do. And then you can drop back into that background and the, and the descriptions that you have there but the ask should be quite clear at the outset. Yeah. Yeah, just agree with Dwayne's point about noting with the other, the other groups and politicians on the local and state level that are against this. I don't think you necessarily have to take out the cost thing but we could say like the money could be used better elsewhere for example in this way. Right. So, so I think we can just give those suggestions but we don't have to, you know, stay at state it quite so. Resolutely, I guess. I'm not super comfortable with the specificity of. I think at delivering energy and less carbon intensive way or something. I generalize that I think would be more appropriate. Yeah. All right, does that give you some good feedback on that you can talk with Lori about and come back at a future meeting with a revised letter. Yep. So I think you're up next as well. Yeah, but I didn't make any progress on it. So I was going to write a draft of a letter to the governor or the DPU congratulations on wonderful new commission. And since you're going to make climate so important, here's some suggestions. And one of the, you know, obviously one of the things that motivated this was the long line to get through the DPU for a municipal aggregation application. But it's, it's so much work. They're not talking about it. And, you know, it's like 300 pages of. Just screenshots of posted meetings and you know it's like so much. And there are six week limits in other states to review this. Clearly they do not have to provide that level of scrutiny in reviewing applications if they can turn it around that fast. You know, we might not get into the weeds that much in this letter, but it makes it so much harder for a community like ours, trying to do something that's not just standard. You know, the consultants put in the same exact thing for every town. For the most part, we're asking for more and more different and that just makes it a huge lift for the staff. So it really shouldn't be this hard. Okay, what sounds like I look forward then to seeing when you have the time, your draft letter that we can discuss and review and vote on in the future. It won't be at the next meeting. Okay. All right, then, then, yeah, when you have a sense of when it might be coming forward that would be good to let Stephanie and Vasu know for putting it on future agendas. Okay. Moving on the agenda then the next item is heat pump panel planning. Who's who's in charge of that. Sounds like Jesse said you Jesse. Oh, Laura. Oh, there is. Oh, you muted. Oh, your microphone's not working. Can't hear you. That was Lori. And I don't think she's here. Oh, okay. Well, Lori was working on that. And I couldn't tell if Laura was just simply trying to tell us that, or if she had more to say, but it looks like she has logged out. She tried to jump back in Stephanie do you see her in the waiting room or anything. She's reappeared. Potentially, we can see your name Laura, but we're not hearing you yet. Oh, no, we disappeared again. Stephanie, do you recall was that a Lori item. You are muted Stephanie. Stephanie, your voice came in really soft just then. That would be why. We're having quite a night. But did you hear what I said that it was Lori. Yes. I think Laura is contributing. Hi, Laura, we can see you. I am back. I don't know what happened. Anyway, sorry, I couldn't hear most of the rest of the last five minutes, but back. We were just the next item on the agenda is the heat pump panel planning. And I was asking if there was anybody here that was doing that, or if that's a Lori item. And that's where I saw your hand go up. So I wasn't sure if you were jumping in. On that item. That's funny if I just like accidentally volunteered myself. No, I was putting my hand up to say that I couldn't hear you. Okay. And could you hear me? I don't, I have not gotten involved in helping to plan that. I do believe I said, I said I would participate on the panel. That's all the information I have. Okay. Yeah, I think it was primarily Lori. Okay. Well, let's push that one to the next meeting then when Lori can attend. And that brings us to staff updates. So my first big update is that unless the state legislature makes it official that we can extend remote meetings. It expires on Friday. I have not, I won't. I won't sort of be able to. Maintain our remote meetings until I actually get notified by the town manager's office. So when I, it becomes official for me when I hear it from the town manager's office. So that means that our next meeting will. At least right now, tentatively be or actually will be in person. I will send you the information. I have to, I had been reserving rooms and I had had it on the calendar for the longest time, even through COVID, but I'm not sure if I still have those reservations maintained. So I'll have to, I'll get the information to you as soon as I know. Which room will be in. It will be in town, although I believe. So, and that will be two weeks from now. I think that's, is it the 12th? Sorry. Sounds about right. Yeah. Yep. Cause I was thinking about the solar boiler working group too. It'll affect them as well. So. Yep. So next meeting is in person. Do you know if the legislature is trying to renew it? So what happened is that both the house and the Senate. Have. Extended remote meetings. However, their language differs. And apparently. There needs to be some reconciling of the language before it can. Be official. And that's where I think things are being held up a bit. Hey, I don't, I haven't had a more recent update, but that was my understanding. So. You know, it's frustrating because, especially for us, because we're all scrambling to make sure that we have rooms reserved and that people are aware ahead of time. You know, it affects people, especially those with children or jobs or who can't necessarily get, you know, get here. So it's frustrating that this is the second time. That we've run into this happening at the 11th hour. And if you recall, we did have one remote meeting. The last time it was, it was expired. And then they extended it. And now we're at this point again, and you would hope that they would have gotten it together. A lot sooner than this instead of having us all scramble. So. That's, you know, my understanding is the intent is certainly to extend it. I think what we've seen is that we get more. We get more representation on committees. We get more public participation. So there's a lot of reasons why as much as we'd like being in person, it really has worked. For us to be meeting remotely. And from my perspective, less carbon intensive, people aren't driving their cars to get here and we're not running. The buildings are operating less because we're not having night meetings or as frequent night meetings. So, you know, I don't know if the staff sometimes stays here later, like I'm here later, but I'm one of the last. People, you know, who ends up leaving. And so. You know, we have a lot less energy use intensity. By meeting remotely. So. You know, that's, that's my sort of promotion for, for why we should continue. It's just like it's so much less carbon intensive. So, you know, it's just like, you know, it's just so much less carbon intensive. We're around. May, April, April 12th. See whether we have to drive in our cars or hop on our bikes or whether we can stay home. Thank you. I will say though that. Because I know this is always an issue for, for Stella in particular has brought it up. That she has challenges with being in person. Because of childcare issues. And so. You know, you know, you know, you can have a quorum in person. But you can have a few members. Attend remotely. We just have to make sure that we're in a room that has a hybrid setup so that we can, and not all rooms in town hall. Can accommodate that. So there's, you know, people are vying for the room that has the ability to do so. So. One or two members would be able to, you know, be in a room that has a hybrid setup. You know, it would be, but it will need the chair to approve. That participation. You'd have to make it fill out a form. There's a form to request, which I will send it to you all again. But you'll have to complete the form to request remote participation. The chair needs to sign it. And then it goes to the town clerk's office. So it's not as sort of straightforward as just showing up. And the chair has to be in person. So. Do you have other updates, Stephanie, other staff updates? Just, there's so much is sort of. Coming together right now. So it's been a crazy time. A lot of contracts. Being sent out and signed and approved. We've got a contract now being signed for the community dashboard, which will be on the town's website. Again, something that was in our carp. We have now secured two fellows. They're fantastic. I'm really excited about working with these two. Miguel is going to be doing, and I'm sorry, I'm blanking on their last names at this moment, but Miguel will be working on the building inventory. And he'll be working with our facilities director as well as myself. And then we have a woman named Caitlin who's going to be doing a remote work. She's going to be doing a remote work. And they will be here in June. And they'll be here through August. They will have some time that they'll be off. For vacation time, but. And they will primarily be, I think. Mostly located here, but, you know, at some point, they'll be able to do some remote work. You know, at some point where they're really just crunching numbers and doing the data stuff will, you know, I, they've asked if they could be hybrid. And I didn't see a problem with that. So, I'm really excited to be working on securing spaces for them here. Really excited. They're the caliber of people that come through this program is really impressive. So I'm really excited to have them both here. What else? Let's see. So the dashboard, that piece. I feel like I signed another contract too. The, the effort with the rental survey is moving forward. I've met with the folks. Family outreach is basically overseeing that. That project and I'm checking in with them to make sure it's moving forward. Again, we've got this project was funded through the mass CEC clean energy center. It's an empower grant. And so they are meeting, they are meeting pretty regularly. It's been a bit of a slow process to get up and running. They've drafted a survey. They're kind of, you know, doing the survey. And then I sort of gave them some feedback. So it's come to me, but it's basically still sitting with them. I haven't seen the more recent update. I think they're trying to schedule their community meeting. They're trying to figure out when they're going to be going around to the different apartment complexes to sort of post flyers. They're going to be having people that go through family outreach for services. They're going to give them the survey to see if people will sign it. They'll be given an incentive in a $5 gift card. So, you know, the program is kind of fleshed out. It's just a matter of like the next steps getting each step has to be sort of very carefully reviewed and gone over before we move to that next phase. So all should be said and done by. The end of October. So by then we should be like completed with the survey. And getting the information. And again, this is just for renters specifically to sort of, you know, sort of gauge where they are on if there was some kind of building efficiency rating system. Would that help influence them? Do they feel there's a need? Would they welcome that? How do they feel about, you know, how do they feel about that? Things like heat pump technology or retrofits happening at their buildings. There's definitely been the concern that I've heard and we've all heard expressed before people are really worried about if these kind of technologies are implemented that. It will reflect in the cost in their rent. You know, so just sort of getting their, their feedback and not to sort of have any response to that just to find out what it is people are concerned with. And I think that would be the, you know, by the mid fall, I would think. Can I ask a question? Yes. Is there any way we could review it before it's the surveys finalized because we're the ones who are going to be using this data. And if we don't have input into the way the questions are going to be. Yeah. I think part of this was also. Like this. Was very much we were explaining to people what we were doing. And so that's why I've been working with them, but really were. This is really sort of being led. By. These community captains. And so I'm sort of, I've been guiding some of the questions and I can share it with the community. But I think it's taken them so long to sort of get to this point where we have something drafted. I've given my feedback based on what we're doing. I think I have a pretty good handle on it. So I, I don't know that it has to go through. Committee review on top of all of that. I just think we're needing to move them forward. Well, just, just, you know, Surveys are tricky. Wording really matters. I just think that you need to get one response. If you word it one way and another, if you word it another way. And so. Things like, you know, If this. Upgrading the energy. System. Or insulation could be done. Without. Disruption, you know, or with less than a week. it's you get more nuance, right? Instead of you know just not knowing if they're imagining a whole summer of people coming in and out of their house and so they're against it. I haven't received the the latest version yet so I would be happy if you want to sort of me to send it to you and you want to give me some feedback but I really don't want to have it be this big discussion because I really feel like it also takes away empowering people to do this. So I really want to let I mean that was the whole point of it so I don't want to take that away I feel like that was you know absolutely yeah I'm with you on that but also it's I don't know if there were are there going to be materials for educating people letting people know what you know I don't know. We haven't gotten there yet like it's very slow moving and it's been hard yeah no I hear you and I yes I mean we're just like I said we're getting through the just the survey getting that developed at this point like we're trying to get that forward that'll be like a next step and I don't even want to get ahead of it yet because when I have met and start talking about things it's people just get really overwhelmed and it's a lot because it's a lot it's all new a lot of this is very new information I mean we all it's easy to have these conversations in our group because we all know what we're you know we know the subject matter but introducing it for the first time to people it's like trying to keep it as basic and simple as possible it's not they don't you know people don't need all of the you know sort of academics of you know heat pump technology and all that and no no they just need the sort of you know we're trying to just get people to understand the basics of and put it in terms that are you know the people can understand that also everything is being translated um so we don't want to lose things if you will in translation as well so yeah but I was thinking more like you know here's this um street in new york that was completely upgraded all in a week and here you know show a picture yeah that kind of really concrete stuff it's funny because I don't think that's been people like of all the questions that people sort of generated disruption was not a big one at all I really the biggest concern is just financial for people that was one of the biggest concerns yeah I haven't looked at the questions for a little bit so um I you know off the top of my head I can't tell you the focus of of all of them but um they were sort of more about like you know what what are people you know what are people's um knowledge level about about this a little a lot none at all like you know those were some of the questions and they were all the questions were multiple choice answers that were very sort of straightforward great and will they be able to identify people who are interested in learning more or getting more involved that was another one of our hopes right yeah I mean I think maybe when they do some of the more direct outreach because they're going to be doing some outreach at the complexes themselves um I think they'd be able to um gauge more of that than just through the surveys you know I mean I think we'll be happy if people complete the surveys there there is an incentive tied to it so you know that's part of the the hope that people do them because there's an incentive and then maybe we can find out but given the challenge of getting people to you know to do this piece um you know has I you know getting people engaged I think is not easy it's just hard okay good thank you I I agree that it's the empower grant let's leave them with the power and not not metal too much I think did I announce last meeting that the town um CRC removed the energy efficiency language from the draft rental registration bylaw I know I've talked about it once or twice but from what I've understood they've removed the language that we had recommended they voted to strike that following I think concerns from building owners about increasing costs that would be passed on to the tenants so that is no longer in the language it was also a little bit peripheral and some people had raised questions whether the original whether that sort of thing was authorized under the rental registration so that's a little bit a little bit that's a fair bit disappointing we put a fair bit of effort and time into that but I think we can step back and regroup and think about how we want to continue sort of trying to say how can we work on this issue of energy use and rental buildings where the tenants don't have so much direct control over that and how can we do that in a way that benefits them the most yes definitely um yeah I think in some ways it it got very I feel like that piece of it got lost because the rental registration bylaw the updates to it are there's so much it's been expanded so broadly and so that energy efficiency piece was it was great to have in there to get it in there but I just it just seemed like it was just lost with everything else and it didn't elevate it to the um I would say the um visibility that that particular topic should have so in some ways you know it gets back to the discussions that have been had around creating some kind of you know um building efficiency rating system and you know I know just you know in looking you know even in other countries and you know rating codes come up for you know housing and rental apartments and you know and they just and these are you know some places overseas and I feel like if if that's happening it could happen here too and it does in some states so why can't we have something that just makes it easier for people to identify the energy efficiency not just of rental units but broadly you know all buildings like there should be some kind of a way to to report out so um I just I know that there's been other communities and that was part of the group that I was participating in through NEAP was you know looking at can the state sort of move towards can we recommend that the state move towards creating something um or if there's the effort that's underway can we support that it's been tried in every single session Governor Baker put in his own bill to try to pass it and the real estate industry shoots it down every time every building in New York City that has any work being done on it if you get up to get a building permit you get this done it gets posted right on the window there's A's there's B's there's C's I didn't see any D's I think if the you know if the Realty Association is pushing back hard then everybody else has to push back harder you know it's just it seems like there's a you know there's definitely a desire for it not just here a lot of other communities really want this there is a provision in the law that was passed this past summer the act driving solar and wind development that all large buildings will have to report actual energy use and the agency in charge of that they have a year or two to develop the the regulations around that I believe at the moment its large building is defined as 200,000 square feet or larger I think and it will be reported the general idea I believe is it would be reported through the EPA energy portfolio platform and it would also require the utility companies to report the energy use for those properties so both the electric and the gas utilities would have to report so having the utilities report takes a bit of a burden off the building owner to collect all that data that might make it a little bit more palatable it's not clear to me at least I haven't I couldn't find very there's very little information about it and how it's developing you know whether that 200,000 square feet could apply to one of the larger apartment complexes in Amherst you know if they're adding up all of the living space some of those apartments could fall over that threshold if it's just a footprint size or if it's a per building things then maybe not but anyways that's coming down probably in a year or two at the state level so I think that will make people more aware of it and then hopefully they'll realize it's not so horrible and they'll be more amenable to some of these other approaches which the building rating systems which again are not direct energy use but more a function of the building's insulation and envelope and structure so that's coming along the way Laura and then Jesse yeah thanks for that update Steve um yeah that is disappointing and I think it but I like your approach your positive attitude to regroup and reframe I think the takeaway for me and Stephanie I think you're right like we could potentially end up with something more direct and better suited to our needs but it sounds like we're gonna have to push against local property owners in town um I had a conversation with the parent that owns property at a sporting event this winter who immediately jumped down my throat about how it's gonna cost more money and what about affordable housing and blah blah blah blah so like you know I think it's an uphill battle there so I think this the pace event is one opportunity um but I do think trying to figure out how to talk to and get information out to as many building owners and homeowners as possible multiple homeowners as possible see if we can get a few folks on our side will be beneficial uh Jesse you had a comment then Stephanie yeah unless Stephanie is a direct response to Florence it was actually I was just gonna say I think like anything else getting people who are in the industry like other property owners who have implemented this successfully as you know providing example is always the best way to sort of educate everybody including the existing property owners I know nothing about that building on spring street but I did notice it has solar on it the other day that's been the one that's being built so and the one where am I over there is uh is going to be passing past the next to the Amherst college field there and it's actually been a great I don't know if you drive down route 9 regularly that is a great kind of lesson in envelope design and what like a simple attainable air sealed building and good window installation it's that building should perform very well it's like a the service to volume ratio it it's been fun watching that go up as compared to some of the more complex and poorly built buildings I've seen go up another possible opportunity of this sort of information gathering is you know as part of the new building code renovations now will have be required to have energy modeling and hers rating and various things done and all of that I think may be public information as part of a building permit which is public information and so while it doesn't cover all the existing buildings there could be ways to certainly work with that data set to just make that you know make that information public one of the ideas that we've all kicked around it's like just post your hers rating on the on the inside of your electrical panel and then someone who is potentially buying a house or renting a house can see then you know it exists it's a number we could all get used to it's easy to gut check on this is good this is bad like miles per gallon etc and then if we are are we in to ECM AC member updates right now is that what this conversation is I think so Stephanie did you finish with your staff updates I guess I I guess I led the way into ECC number updates with my update a moment to go so if you have an update Jesse go ahead just a quick one yet great segue the I was at the Nessie Building Energy Conference yesterday and I saw Lori Goldner there absorbing the sort of fire hose of information comes out of that so and I just want to say it was inspiring I don't know if anyone else was there or went online and caught the keynote the keynote the theme of the conference this year was scalability and in particular talking about bringing into the building code and having that happen across the state at a real scalable level and you know Lisa Lisa Cunningham and Jake Cook-Noels who I'm sure you've worked with Lisa before it was good it was and I just a lot of inspiring conversations and and concrete work there so I think we may ask Lori to and I maybe we can report back on some particularly relevant stuff more so than other years very relevant to the work this group is doing and I'll be at the better buildings by design conference next week in Vermont which is similar but less Massachusetts based but I think the takeaway is we are not alone there are people doing this work actively and aggressively all over the state and having excellent successes and life and and turning failures into successes as well like this like you we talked about with the efficiency language and how can we do it better so just a great great conference and sorry I wasn't able to go there again today but I think very relevant to the work we're doing right thank you andra yeah I'm going to be reporting to the building electrification accelerator group you know and and you know one of the things I'll report is the disappointment that our energy efficiency wording whatever language you didn't get into the bylaw and just so people know that was the result of like like nine months or a year of our learning and you know going to monthly seminars and just you know getting a lot of information about building electrification and choosing our project and this was it and it went to the town committee and died there died there so what's the lesson learned more education was needed perhaps you know I and that's one of the things that that they want people to share so your suggestions are welcome yes Stephanie um yeah one thing I wanted to say was that I think there was um there was concern from staff as well about the amount of work that that was going to add to what they were already having to do with their checklists for efficiency um and and I did share that in the beginning when we talked about it so I think it's not that and it's not that people were opposed to it I think they just felt like that wasn't the appropriate place for it um so again I don't I don't think it was a sort of very negative um overall negativity internally about something like this and in fact when I heard when I found out that that was what had happened and I reported back to Steve I think I also shared with Steve that my response was well and I hope we'll be open-minded about some kind of an efficiency bylaw being moved ahead so um you know to say that we got that close means that there was certainly some interest for having some kind of a rating system right so I think you know I just think it just it wasn't really the it wasn't totally the right place for it so keeping all of that and all that work is for not is not for not it's you know it can be utilized in sort of a next you know a next approach right yeah good learning experience and we'll keep pushing and we'll keep educating I think this this around help educate at least town council members on the CRC they learned more about the need and the methods for rental building energy efficiency improvements are there other ECAC member updates Laura yeah just a quick update from me that I did submit our letter to the gazette yesterday I haven't heard back from them yet um I will probably submit it as well to the nd um but thank you all for your feedback and thanks jesse for your co-authorship on that I think it turned out really well so um looking forward to getting that published great well looking forward to seeing it in newsprint yeah and great and Laura thanks for spearheading it I I just want to say that I think ideally we're regulars like you once you know maybe once a quarter or something like and we you know it would be great if our voice got to be known in in that way so yeah jesse um as you were just talking earlier about the building on route nine I was thinking man it'd be great for jesse to write a letter to the paper about that because normal people I don't say that negatively but that don't know about envelopes are not wouldn't have had that same experience going by the building but I think and it looks great like it's a beautiful building so um that's all I can see from it but um anyway yeah I totally agree I think that's something we should think about okay if there's no other updates uh items for next meeting agenda I'm sorry I'm gonna need to go to another meeting okay thank you we have a couple of items that Andra will be bringing forward that would be the updated gas pipeline letter and discussion on that and then if she has the time for a future meeting then the letter to the new dpu commissioner um oh Stephanie we did not talk today about the sustainability festival planning is there anything that we need to discuss at this point not for you what lauri has been focused on you all I mean I'm just I'm sort of doing the whole big yeah you know picture so um lots going on but I will say that I um I've heard from emers college we have support for vendor parking only vendors in two of their lots um usually we just get one but it's sort of and as we can get space kind of thing so I'm not sure how that's going to you know it's in the past we've sort of had quote unquote reserved space but I think it'll work out I think it'll be fine and I guess we'll wait at our next meeting lauri can report about staffing ECA members staffing at at the booth whether she's found a um a tent no sort of things that we talked about at the last meeting we'll have time to revisit those at our next meeting which is before the festival yeah okay so that'll be a next meeting agenda we'll be reviewing our plans for the sustainability festival other items that people can think of to put on the list for the future meetings okay well um we could continue this discussion about I don't know if we need to do it next time necessarily but the discussion we were just having about the energy efficiency rating and what our next step should be there yeah that's a good one for for me it might be a month or so from now after the end of this semester I'll be able to re-engage in that and plan a new new activity in that area yeah that sounds good so maybe we can just put it on the in the meeting minutes is something to pick back up right the future okay well I guess we're at the nearly at the end of the meeting um any if there's no other items for next meeting agenda at the moment then we can go to public comment so any members of the public that would like to make a comment please electronically raise your hand and Stephanie will bring you into the meeting so Martha you can go ahead and unmute yourself hi everyone it's Martha Hanner I'm in district five I just wanted to remark on the subject of the gas pipeline I mean we know we all of course are you know eager to decrease and then get rid of fossil fuels but I know there's a concern at the present time about the deterioration of existing gas pipelines and therefore the increasing methane leaks after all you know natural gas is methane and so I just wondered in the case of this particular one that you're discussing I hadn't heard your previous discussions whether this really was meant as a new gas line for new customers or whether it was meant to replace a deteriorating gas line for existing customers because I think that is a statewide concern that that if natural gas operators say oh what's the point of investing in new pipelines if we only going to need them for another five to ten years and so they don't fix the old ones which are just you know that is such a great question Martha I think if I can take this I think it's opposition to expanding the pipeline uh-huh yeah I think fixing the leaks we would be in favor of yes that yes yeah well thank you and I also just wanted to to make one more comment regarding the challenges with with renters and and upgrading have you all read Alicia's Walker's comments in last week's finance committee meeting she talked rather eloquently about the challenges that renters face when the the rents go up for whatever reason she was referring to taxes but I would recommend reading it because it really does bring in to focus some of the challenges that renters face and you know for for all these things like like the importance of the efficiency upgrades and converting to electricity for for rental buildings you know how those costs are handled is really something that that's that needs to be investigated from many points of view yeah anyway okay well thank you keep up the good work thank you Martha and Jesse will you make sure Martha's question about the pipeline gets put in the note the minutes so Andra can and Laurie can address that in the future yeah that's great that's great thanks Martha as always right any other members of the public would you like to comment at this time if so you electronically raise your hand all right I see none at the time just reminding members of the public you can always send comments as well by email or good old-fashioned pencil on paper letters send those to Stephanie and those will be distributed to the committee all right then I think we are done with today's meeting any motion to adjourn okay there's a motion a second playing seconds all right all right thank you everybody we'll see you in two weeks good job sharing yeah we're going to see you this is great thank you super proud of you