 Everybody in Loria, I love your tree. It's very, very sweet. Thank you. Thank you. So first up on the agenda. We have. The agenda itself and followed by the meeting minutes. Are there. Any suggestions? Minutes. We have two sets of minutes. Right. They're fine. No, I'm good. So Bob, did you make a motion? I did not. I move. I move that we accept both sets of minutes as presented. Mr. Shagman. Hi. Mr. Herring Dean. Hi. Mr. Moody. Not here yet. Commissioner Stevens. Hi. Commissioner Whitaker. Hi. Thank you. Next up, we have the public forum. I'm wondering if there. Any attendees. Lori, if you could share with us, whether or not you see anybody. There is not anyone from the public. If anyone does happen to do. You're welcome to. Place a comment. I'm getting. I'll be different formats. You're welcome to reach out and we will identify a way to let you speak. Thank you. Thank you. I'll have a few questions later on. Did she drop off? I don't hear. I don't see her either. Maybe we should all. Sign off and sign back on. I wonder. There she is. It's the second time. That's why I was a bit late in being visible. I'm not sure why, but. I had just asked whether or not there were any. Comments from. Okay. I'll just, I do have one comment, which is. I am sworn in. To be a state rep for the south end of Burlington. On January 6th. I have connected with Eileen Blackwood. The city attorney to find out. I'm not sure why, but. I had just asked whether or not there were any. Comments from. The city attorney to find out what I should be aware of. Are there things I should be aware of. In terms of potential complex of interest. I'm also going to connect with the legislative council. At the Vermont state house to find out from their perspective. If there are any items that I should be aware of. I think it kind of depends on which committee. I'm assigned to. If I'm assigned to a committee that is directly related to. Like, for example, energy and technology committee. Then it could become. You know, a questionable vote or whatnot. So just trying to figure that out and wanted to alert. The commissioners as well as everybody else that I am doing my homework and I'll let you know, but it doesn't appear as though. There should be any. Potential issues. That being said, we'll see. So we'll move on to. The general manager's update. This is an oral update and then followed by the financials and Darren. Thanks so much. Great. I am going to. Start off by trying to share my screen. To share something with all of you. So hang on. I've gotten kicked out of the meeting a couple of times myself. So hopefully this doesn't cause that to happen. So just, I think teams. Did an upgrade upgraded there. Something on Monday. And so for me, I had all of these problems earlier in the week. But I do think it's related to teams. And so at some point, if you reboot your computer and restart teams, you might have all the new functions, but I don't think that's going to happen. I don't think that's going to happen. I don't think that's going to happen. I probably have them and otherwise don't and. I am. See, I'm going to try to share again. Let's see. Looks great. Can you see that on the screen there? Yep. But there's no in this picture. And that is entirely misleading. So that is the updated net zero energy logo. And so we're going to be updating the data. So we're updating the feedback that we would like to include some people. In the artwork. And Adam removed some of the scenery to make this possible. And then added in some. We've got people in the car on the bike and running. And we also have a heat pump in there, which was new if you see it next to the building. So I wanted to share that with the commission. Let you know that we've been working on this and. We're going to update some of our materials, including our placard and our PowerPoint. Thank you. Let's see. I'm going to try to stop sharing. Come back to the meeting here. You should no longer be seeing my share screen. Is that correct? Yes. Excellent. That's right. Okay. So thanks for allowing us to share that. In terms of the update itself. I'll start with the budget. Obviously Andrea, I'll go into more detail. We've had a reasonably good four months of the fiscal year. Since we've completed the. July, August, September, October, and then we are going to hopefully get the November numbers over the next week or two. We've had a good first four months, but we've had a lot of challenges that we see. Similar to what we saw, you know, in March and April of last year, we're seeing some similar challenges on the horizon here. In FY 21. We are experiencing lower sales to customers. By a not insignificant margin. We expect that to continue. It may even be more volatile potentially in the future. We are seeing. Capital projects being disrupted. For a variety of reasons. Some of them are customer capital projects where we would have had a customer contribution to help with labor costs. Those projects are being delayed, which means not only do we not receive the customer contribution, but the labor costs that would have been capitalized or coming back to the operating. Statement in that case, if that happens, we have a few significant areas where that may be the case. We also have supply chain disruption that's causing some challenges for our own capital projects where things we might move forward on. If given the chance, there's a lack of ability to get a vendor to provide the materials needed in the timely manner. So, you know, last year for FY 20, we had an accounting order to help address some of these items. It's possible based on one of the other items in the update, the LG ER grant that the city applied for and BED was a part of that application and we were successful and we're submitting receipts for that. Now, if we receive those funds, we may be able to reverse the accounting order treatment for FY 20 because we'll have received some compensation relating to some of the labor costs that we were challenged with COVID related. But it's also possible that for FY 21, we may be seeing some of these same challenges. We may want to again consider whether accounting order treatment is appropriate if that plays out. We are being proactive. Our forecasting capabilities, I think, have come a long way under Andrea's leadership and we are seeing, you know, the opportunity now to plan ahead, remove items from the budget if they are not necessary, if they can be delayed, if they're not a safety or distribution system necessity, for example, we can delay them at this point. And we are trying to cut items from the budget and bring them to FY 22 if they're capable of being moved. As a proactive effort to guard against the potential volatility that we see coming from COVID. So we'll obviously be keeping you posted every month on our financials, but that's a couple of the kind of key items that we're focused on, you know, related to COVID. We are being cautious with the potential for the post Thanksgiving spike that was alluded to. We've moved back to appointment only at the Wastewood We delayed some in-person training in some of our generation facilities that would have involved having McNeil and Pine Street personnel together. We're trying to keep those different buildings separated as much as possible. Limit exposure. And also COVID related, we actually learned this week that the city is going to be able to provide, including to the ED employees, a one-time hazard pay of $1,200, which is going to show up in folks eligible folks paychecks this week and next week. For the city there's a whole list of criteria. It's based on state criteria that if you were working more than 50% of the time between March and December in what's considered an elevated risk scenario, which for us would primarily be folks who had to work on site as opposed to remotely, then they'll be eligible for this one-time $1,200 hazard pay opportunity, which we're appreciative of for our employees who have been keeping the lights on and keeping our facilities running safely during this challenging period. On the kind of the energy innovation side of things, we are continuing to see, and we're very pleased about this, a very strong uptake on some of our green stimulus-related incentive programs. Heat pump adoption is up more than 4x compared to pre-green stimulus levels for residential heat pumps, and we are seeing contractors booking out well into 2021 at this point, and we are working hard to assess how to keep that program going. It was meant to be a program that might end in 2020, but given the continued economic recovery needs, and also given the fact that it was very successful, we'd like to keep it moving, and we're working on some options related to that. We also have had some uptake on our appliance incentive programs related to the green stimulus, and we have at least one building that I'm aware of where we may be able to apply our 100 percent incentive for affordable housing electric efficiency upgrades in Burlington as well, so we'll keep you updated on that. Kind of related to that conversation is we have been continuing to file documents with the PUC and the Act 151 docket and proposing programs for how we might take advantage of this flexibility to utilize a portion of EEU funds for measures in the thermal and transportation sectors that reduce emissions, so we're believing that that will play out into February, and then we'll have some clarity as to how the next three-year period budget will be treated relative to Act 151, and it may be that we can kind of build off of the green stimulus with some of the proposals that we've outlined for the Commission in that process. A couple other things. I mentioned the LGER grant, which is terrific. We're pleased that that moved forward and we're pleased to, you know, pending the receipts, be able to provide a positive for our budget with the LGER grant. District Energy, we, as you know, had some disruption from COVID and then some disruption from the network outage with the hospital in moving that process forward. We were able to reconnect with the hospital team last Friday and all of the partners, VGS, Evergreen, Burlington Electric, we are in the process of wrapping up Phase 2 of the District Energy system work, and we're hopeful in January to be able to outline where we stand and what our next steps would be, pending the commitments by the various partners. So more to come on that potentially as early as January. I know it's a topic of great interest and we'll keep the Commission updated as that work continues. And then, you know, final item here is we've had some additional kind of process and policy development around our new building's discussion with City Council. It's kind of led to a, there were some concerns raised by the City Attorney about the earlier proposal lacking certain authority in the charter. So we've come back with our partner departments permitting and inspections and the Office of Planning and in conjunction with the Mayor's Office. We've come back with a proposal that's really a two-prong proposal, one part of which we've proposed to the Ordinance Committee and the City Attorney's Office is drafting language around which would be requiring in the building code for any new building that the primary heating system be renewably powered and be sized to meet at least 85% of the building's heating needs. And the proposal is to keep that technology neutral essentially and allow for all manner of heat pumps whether they're cold climate or centrally ducted or air to water or geothermal or VRF, allow as well obviously for any sort of biomass heating system and any type of renewable fuel including renewable gas and biodiesel provided that those are through a long-term binding contract and not something that could be utilized for one year and then dropped. And then as part of that we would propose an exemption process where if somebody asserted the requirement was uneconomic that would be evaluated by permitting inspections with whatever consultation needed from BED looking at the least cost of those options that I just laid out from the renewable side inclusive of all appropriate incentives comparing to a fossil fuel conventional system inclusive of a $100 a ton price of carbon externality calculated on the fossil fuels. So that's the one piece of the proposal. The other piece is that we presented to the ordinance committee and the city council will be considering on December 14th is a charge change proposal that would allow the city of Burlington to regulate thermal energy systems in buildings, new and existing buildings including assessing alternative compliance fees based on those regulations for the purpose of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. So that would be a broader opportunity to add a new regulatory tool to the toolbox for the city. And given that that's an enforcement item that would be housed in permitting and inspections I anticipate they will be more prominent in the conversation going forward and we may have done most of the work that we need to do on this and we may be stepping back a little from that proposal as it moves forward. But I feel like we've done quite a bit in the policy space to advance the conversation. And obviously we have Jen Green and Chris Brains also been participating in the rental weatherization standards discussion and ordinance committee as well. So quite a bit of natural energy policy for the city council process. I have one question. Sorry I might have been sleeping at the switch here. I understand that you just discussed the change in the charter. But you did talk about potentially working without that for this renewable requirement for 85% of the load and all that. I think that's a good point. Which makes sense. And then I believe the last minute I heard you mentioned the carbon fee again, which I think is the thing we talked about last time. That's out. Right. The ordinance committee proposal, but could be allowed under the charter change. If that was to advance. Okay. Got it. That's it. Thanks. Any other questions at this point. Okay. Charter changes, I believe are usually. If not controversy, at least somewhat slow. Any timeline expectations here. Right. So the, the timeline would be. If the city council advances it on the 14th. It could be placed on the March ballot. For voters to consider. If voters approved it. And then we would have to move on to the next step. So that's just my understanding. We would have the remainder of the 2021 legislative session, as well as the 2022 legislative session to seek to advance it. In the legislature. And then obviously seek to advance it to the governor. So part of the rationale for the two pronged approach. Commissioner Herndy and exactly what you're describing. Even under the best case scenario for the charter change. We have potentially, you know, a lot of the issues that we have. And we wanted to make sure we use the existing regulatory tools that we have to make some progress in the meantime with the renewable heating system requirement. Great. I do have a question on something separate. But if you have more of your overall report, please continue that and I'll follow up. That was the rest of my report. I know I'm also up in a few minutes to discuss state and state of the art. Okay. So questions from other commissioners broadly. Okay. So I do have one comment, which is. In light of our discussions about how the strategic direction dashboard is perpetually evolving. I'd love to ask Emily if she could think a little bit about how we might present. I'm not sure if you're aware of that, but I think it's a significant part of the project that we're trying to prevent. But I think that we're also a goal. So, for example, you know, particularly, we know that our heat pump sales are increasing, but if you don't know what the goal is, we don't know where we're at in terms of percentage of goals. So I do see some of these in terms of emerge customers. But I think it's important for me as I skim through this to have a sense of like, okay, if this is our goal for our 2030 zero energy city, you know, initiative, how are we doing? Because yes, there's a huge increase. But how does that compare to what our goal is? I would just offer, I see Emily is on as well to answer. I would offer that we should keep in mind that we have goals relative to something like a heat pump. So we have, you know, top of my head, we have EU targets that may be relevant. We have tier three targets that may be relevant. And then we obviously have, as you mentioned, the net zero targets, which Synapse does have some year by year kind of projections based on the pathways. So they're not, they're not year by year goals, but they're year by year barometers for different technologies. And we can look to those in some respects as a, you know, as a guidepost. We also, I just want to remind the commission, we have Synapse contracted to update the net zero energy roadmap baseline. We had the 2018 data was in the roadmap. We will have 2019 and 2020 data released in March of 2021, probably around town meeting day, if not exactly on town meeting day right after that. Let me turn it to Emily as well. Yeah. If I can step in though, just first site, chair for about prerogative. I would vote for understanding that this is not what the ED can control. I would vote for the net zero city goals. You know, we have all these different regulatory structures and proceedings and requirements. And that makes it very challenging. I think at times to align the direction that we're trying to go in, but ultimately what we keep seeing from folks who live in Burlington is they do want us to keep working on this. And therefore I feel like it should be from a comprehensive viewpoint of how are we getting to our end goal, which relates to climate change. Yeah. I agree Gabrielle. Cause I feel like it's so complicated and there's so much misunderstanding about what's happening and who's doing what and why. And you even hear it from city council people who don't know what BED is doing. And I get it. They have to cover a lot of topics. And so I think like picking one. For the external communications, maybe. Or, or there's a different level, but that there's some kind of high level dashboard that's measuring a handful of things that says, this is what we're doing for you to help with climate change. And we don't worry about tier three or like all of that. Sorry. I'm getting echo. But just, yeah. I like the net zero energy target. And let's just talk about what our goal is and how much progress we've had and people want to have good news. They want to understand stuff. They want to know that BED is doing something to come back. Climate change and you are, and I just feel like it's lost in the. Techno. Well, and I might add that you could, you could have a few aspects that say, you know, scroll down to the bottom of the dashboard that says, BED, all of our goals. And some of these goals are outside of our purview, but we're reporting on them because I wouldn't want this, this dashboard to come back as why hasn't the BED done more when perhaps you can't drive. Homeowners who are heated by gas. So I am welcome to, you know, Emily, your creativity in terms of how you present this, but just having some sort of. Compare contrast. What are. I have a question about that. This kind of, let's say, prods the city to become specific. About what it wants. If that's what we're going to make the fundamental metric here. Which is fine. I think. I would like the city to become specific. So, okay. Good conversation to be having. I think the one piece to be aware of with the net zero energy goal that I always like to remind everybody of is. It is the most ambitious goal anywhere in the country. So the numbers. You know, we may have a forex to all of your points. We may have a forex jump in adoption on heat pumps, but we may still be trailing the current year number of what we might need under the net zero energy strategy. And we've always made the point that progress may not be linear. It may be, it may be in kind of big jumps with technology and with price and with adoption. So I think we can always find ways to report. Even more context and more kind of useful information. And certainly we want to do that. So I think that when we have a maps update in March, it'll be a great opportunity to kind of track a couple of years of progress against our net zero goals in a very comprehensive way. But for the dashboard, we can try to incorporate them as well. But just to, to all of your points, we don't want people to get discouraged if, if we are not completely hitting the most ambitious climate goal in the country every single month, because in all likelihood we'll have months where that's not the case. We got to ask the voters for their support on something and they're just, I mean, maybe they'll see the word climate change and say yes or, but the education and I think it's just hard for them to understand what the issues are because, because we haven't communicated a handful of clear things. And Darren, I hear you, I hear your concern. That is, that's why I said, you know, Emily, use your creativity and you can use some asterisks to clarify just how much is being done. But 2030 is nine years away. So, you know, I believe we all have kids and some of us have grandkids and if voters care about this, then we need to start being clear. And that doesn't mean it's BED's fault. So use your asterisks. Thanks. I appreciate that. I think, I think the point is very valid. I think obviously any kind of performance metric, right, measuring something is the start, but then establishing a target is just part of the good practice around that. So completely agree with the need to take this a step further and have targets. I also think the, in terms of public awareness and kind of communicating to the council and other stakeholders around, you know, the context of our net zero goal, I know that is something Darren was aiming to do in the presentation he gave to the city council and this commission in July, you know, summarizing progress to net zero and sort of putting that in context of the greater policy levers that, you know, in some cases need to be pulled in terms, you know, what's in our span of control and what is not completely within our span of control. And I think that that, you know, something that Darren will, you know, intends to do on an annual basis in that forum, right, using the updated data from Synapse every year, as he just mentioned. And we'll continue to use our annual performance measures report, which comes out on town meeting day as another venue for transmitting and communicating this data. And my comment also is not due by January. If you want to mull over this. And as you see Synapse report come through in February and March, you know, good data is good data, bad data is really just not worth it. So, yeah. I would say in some cases, actually, because we have the Synapse report, right, and for the net zero, it's perhaps a bit easier to decide what the target should be because it's been done for us. Some of these metrics are not related at zero. They're internal operational metrics, which prompts a really good internal conversation around what should our target be for some of these. Some are externally defined, safety Katie, for example, and the customer care call response numbers, but others are really, we've decided to measure this because we think thought it was important and an indicator of how well we're doing, you know, an internal conversation on what is, what reflects success in terms of this process or this outcome is a good conversation to have. And it will evolve. So I trust you guys have made a note to this. Other questions regarding the general manager's update. No, okay. So let's move on to the financials with Andrea. Hi, everyone. I'm just going to share my screen. All right. I will walk you through the October financial review. So the month of October, we had a $1.3 million net loss versus a budgeted net loss of 900K. So unfavorable variance of about 400K. Just starting at the top and working our way down, sales to customers was unfavorable, 150K. And that was driven by commercial being down 230K, offset by residential being up about 80K. Power supply expenses were higher than budget unfavorable, 205K. Fuel expense was above budget 300K, largely driven by McNeil production was up 39%. And similarly purchase power was then under budget by 200K. And transmission expense was above budget by 95K, primarily relating to Velco and the 91 VTA expenses. Operating expenses were above budget 22K. There's lots of ups and downs within operating expenses. But one of note is outside services timing is starting to flip. We've seen a favorable variance so far this year. And now that's starting to reverse. Other income is unfavorable 55K. And that is largely driven by customer contributions and a little bit by interest income being below budget given the market that we're in. And year to date, that brings us actual still ahead of budget by 286,000 year to date October. Now, Darren gave a great forecast update and just to kind of tag on to his update. So we budgeted our net income for the budget for the full year is 1.9 million. And we've been doing a lot of work on forecasting. And while we can't exactly quantify where we're going to end the year because there's lots of moving parts, I can talk a little bit more about the areas of volatility, which would include sales to customers due to COVID, energy prices also would be impacted by COVID, the market customer contributions and the non cash portion of pension expense. So this is one we talked a lot about as we wrapped up FY 20. We are expecting probably in the ballpark of a million dollars of additional pension expense compared to budget. So right off the bat that brings, you know, this number down to 900K. And then any capital project delays, of course that could help our cash position, but to the extent that capital labor came back to the income statement, that could lead to unfavorable income statement impacts. But on the positive side, Darren mentioned the LGR grant. So we're hopeful that we'll hear by the end of this month of what that means for the ED. And also the VCAP program, which is the program from the state of Vermont, which helps with customer arrearages. While that doesn't help with our income statement impact today, it does help with our customers pay their bills, which helps with our cash position. Any questions on the income statement or the forecast update before I move to capital and cash? So capital is lagging budget by 750K. Production is above budget, and that is largely driven by timing of McNeil projects, the boiler rate overhaul and the mechanical field rebuild. We did those during the month of, or we've done those during the fiscal year. They're budgeted later in the fiscal year, and that is offset by the backup boiler feed, which was budgeted, but we haven't yet completed. And then general plan is below budget 700K. 500K of this is driven by the IT forward project. And you guys will talk more about the IT forward project later in this meeting with Emily. And the remainder of that variance is related to the data center, data center grade and vehicles. Cash at 1031 was 11.4 million, which is 2.6 million above budget. Again, related to that $3 million ban that we received in July. It wasn't budgeted until December. And cash at 1130, not presented here, but I do have an update on that was 10.5 million, which is still 2.6 million up from budget. Debt service coverage ratio and adjusted debt service coverage ratio down about 0.03 from where we were last month. And that's really because this is 12 months ending. It relates to last October falling off in this October coming on. And days cash on hand 127. This is down from where we were last month at 154. And that's going to be driven by, we made a GO bond principle and interest payment November 1st, which the cash went up the door at the end of October. Any questions on capital or cash or metrics? I have one question and it's probably not for you, Andrea, but first of all, I greatly appreciate all of the efforts to communicate about the many ways that folks can access relief to paying their utility bills. I wonder if there's any sort of broad viewpoint or perspective or insight in terms of, are there things that us five commissioners can do to help spread the word that there are grant programs available to help people if they can't pay their bills. And COVID in my mind and I am not any sort of expert whatsoever, but I prefer to help set my own expectations. So I'm thinking like maybe summer of 2021 will feel a little bit more minimal. So to that point, I wonder how the commissioners can perhaps help spread the word that there are these grant programs available. And then similarly on the other side for BED, what does it mean of, you know, how small or how large a percentage budget impact is it to see, you know, larger and more arrearages. Darren or Mike, did you want to? Yep. I can help with some of that. Mike might want to jump in as well. For the VCAP program, and I do want to commend our customer care team, communications team has done great work calling individual customers who are eligible and reminding them to apply. We've done some news stories. We did one with WPTZ press releases with the water department, which is now also eligible. Water customers are eligible as well for this assistance. So we have had over 500 BED customers and well over 200,000 in relief that's been delivered through VCAP. The program eligibility ends, the application process ends on the 15th. So we have just a precious few more days for customers who may be in this situation to apply. And, you know, I invite Mike's thoughts here. Certainly, you know, front porch forum posts, for example, by commissioners reminding folks of this program and linking to our website could have some value. I don't know, Mike, what do you think? I agree with everything you said. Just as an example, just this evening, Katie Dory from our customer care team and myself were emailing with one customer that still didn't understand that they can apply for both of their accounts because they have two different location IDs. So we were helping them get that done because we saw that they had applied to only one. Adam Raven and I have a plan to do more social media on this as Darren pointed out, the application deadline is the 15th, which is next Tuesday. And we learned recently from the department that they're getting close to the allotment of funds. So it's even conceivable that folks who apply later this week or Monday or even Tuesday may be out of luck. So we're going to keep pushing it. But I really like Darren's idea. What I can do is helpful. I can send you commissioners the language of an email or the language of a front porch forum post that we've used before. If I were to email that to you folks, maybe you would be willing just coming from a different avenue than BED proper. If you as a commissioner could post perhaps to your front porch forums, that would be great. That would be helpful. Yeah. And when you see us post to social media again, feel free to share. That's helpful too. But we really, we've had tremendous increase in people applying over the weeks. It's been nice to see. But we're trying to do everything we can as you would expect prior to the 15th. And to the second part of the question, Andrea can correct me if I have this wrong. Because we've looked at these numbers during different periods of time. But my sense was that the arrearages that we have that are above what would normally be occurring during this period of time has been at least 1 percent rate impact equivalent, if not a little bit more than that in several cases. So that's I gave testimony on that to the House Energy Committee when they were looking at this around that time. I know it was around a 1 percent rate impact. I think it's maybe fluctuated a little bit. But that's roughly I think what we're looking at. So Darren, I'm going to put you in the spot for people who watch us at 2 a.m. God help them. Can you explain 1 percent rate impact in terms of someone's bill? Well, yeah. Yeah, I mean, in terms of a bill, you know, it would depend quite a bit on kind of what they were using in terms of energy. In terms of money for us as a utility, you know, roughly a half a million dollars is a 1 percent rate impact. Let me also ask if I understand what that means. Basically, you're saying that we're only pulling in 99 percent of our bills these days. Well, Andrea should jump in on this too. We usually have an arrearage amount. I mean, we're never perfectly aligned with what is owed and what has been paid. But that arrearage amount has been, you know, more than doubled from what would normally be the case because of these COVID related circumstances. Andrea, do you have more context? Just so our noncurrent receivable balance is up about 153 percent compared to where it was last year at this time. And that's about seven hundred and sixty K. Okay. And that's for the four months of the fiscal year. But that's where we were as of the end of November. Okay. All right. And keep in mind that an increase in our income statement, but it is impacting our cash position because we're not collecting that cash from customers. Okay, but I guess the question is if we just take the amount of money we never collect and we have to cover some other way for a year. How much is that typically and how much more is that these days? Typically, right? Andrea, we would be maybe having arrearages around what four hundred and fifty five hundred thousand total. And now we're seeing you just suggested we're at an additional seven hundred and fifty seven hundred and sixty thousand on top of that. And keep in mind that would be over two hundred thousand dollars worse without the V cap program. Right. Okay. So if I add those two together, is that an annual loss sort of thing that can be compared with our fifty or sixty million dollar budget? Well, when we when we talk about the rate percentage, the rate impact in at a point in time, you would compare it to our to our budget just as you're suggesting, you know, the fifty five to sixty million. Obviously, the year is dynamic. So that number may change by the end of the fiscal year. We're certainly hopeful that we'll be able to bring that number down. But if you were to take it at this moment in time and compare it to our annual budget, that's where you would get the percentage rate impact. Okay. Thanks. So thanks, folks. I know we're running late. I also I was mindful of the December 15th deadline. So wanted to put a little light on this. Mike, if you could share that with us, that would be very helpful. And I'll also reach out to friends who could perhaps repost because neighbor to neighbor posts are red or everybody else's will. I would encourage other commissioners to do the same. If you have friends that are in a different Burlington neighborhood for front porch form, please ask them to repost on your behalf. So other questions from the commissioners otherwise. Thank you, Andrea. Much appreciated. And I am not hearing a response. Next up agenda item number six, state and federal policy update. This is a discussion. Darren Springer will be leaving it. Great. I feel well prepared to have this conversation because of the V can conference that I participated in last weekend and the Rev conference that Jen Green and I participated in today. There's a lot of conversation. We also had an event around these topics. So there's been a lot of conversation. There's been a lot of conversation among the various energy policy and environmental groups in Vermont about what is coming at a state and federal level in terms of energy policy. And I just wanted to offer a few thoughts really based on those conversations. I'll start at this state level. Obviously the global warming solutions act was enacted. The climate council has been formed. And they have had one meeting already and they're having another one I believe in the near future. There's been some discussion that the administration may want to seek changes to that in the legislature and or may challenge that law in a judicial context. So we'll have to see how that plays out. But left to its own devices that council is supposed to come up with a plan over the next year for helping to meet the state's climate goals. That'll be of interest. Certainly the distribution utilities have a representative on that panel in Liz Miller from Green Mountain Power. We are obviously we talked about Act 151 in the efficiency context there's also a longer term conversation about providing a deeper amount of flexibility and more opportunity for efficiency utilities including us and efficiency Vermont to invest money in greenhouse gas emissions reduction. So we expect there to be some conversation around that in the legislature this year. We expect as well or we've heard that there's some interest still in modifying the renewable energy standard to get to 100 percent by 2030 and doubling the tier two obligation. As of now neither of those requirements would directly affect us but we'd be watching for changes that could directly affect us in that conversation. Other utilities would likely be heavily engaged in that. EV rebates the state EV rebate program is working I think very well and complimenting the utility rebate programs to help more low and moderate income customers get access to a electric vehicle or plug in hybrid vehicle. So certainly that as well as weatherization funding will likely be topics for the state legislature and you know overall of that is whether or not there's any sort of federal COVID relief that would provide funding to state and local governments and what form that would take. And if so whether there are opportunities with the state share of that to do things like the VCAP program again or other programs that might affect you know Burlington Electric. At the federal level I think that's obviously a key point of discussion. We get updates on the emergency operations center calls for the city each week from John Tracy who is Senator Leahy's state director. He's been providing us with you know context for the federal discussions around the stimulus and recovery bills. At the federal level as well with the new administration coming in there are a few pieces that are moving that are of interest. You know there's a number of tax policy items that affect our work here at Burlington Electric that could be up for discussion. Whether electric vehicle incentives continue to be phased out for different manufacturers or whether there's some stability to that policy. Whether the solar tax credit is phased down or is able to continue at the 30 percent level. Whether there might be some sort of a climate bill it sounds like depends quite a bit on whether or not the Senate has a Democratic majority or not. We've heard that in a variety of contexts. If there is a discussion there it's an open question it sounds like whether there's one big climate bill or whether climate change bills get inserted into different moving pieces of legislation as opposed to having a comprehensive climate package. So that's something that we'll be interested in and watching for and there's also continues to always be some discussion around carbon pricing at the federal level but there seems to be some interest in the Green New Deal framework the investment related framework that's been discussed. And last item I'll just mention is obviously federal fuel economy standards impact quite a bit on what type of market there is for electric vehicles and how states can advance. And Vermont is one of the states in partnership with California and others that's tried to have strong zero emissions program and strong standards. So obviously if a new administration comes in and advances you know stronger federal fuel economy standards and or provides a waiver opportunity again for states to go further that could have a meaningful impact on our work related to electric vehicles. So these are big areas of discussion I know we only have a few minutes so I try to summarize them as quickly as possible and glad to answer questions or discuss further at the commission's pleasure. Well I personally could talk about this for a couple hours but I won't. I know Bethany you would ask specific questions about this previously and Bob you've come back to the screen so folks other commissioners questions follow up knowing that this will be an evolving dialogue and we can also continue with this. I mean we could just check in regularly although typically once we enter the legislative session Darren does give us a regular update. Bethany? Yeah no I thought that was a good update my I have the same kind of when you were listing all those things I was kind of like how did all the pieces work together and it does feel like there's a lot of things kind of thrown on the wall but it's good to hear that they're you know that we're back on starting to move back on track and I do think you know at a federal level the indications are there's gonna be a lot more emphasis on climate change. We're certainly encouraged by that absolutely. You're on mute. I'm good. Okay. Thank you Darren you're trying to catch us back up aren't you. If you can if you can just plan moving forward Darren you know brief updates regularly I know you always do it for the state but you don't always do it for the federal and you know last four years I don't think we've needed to have a federal policy update per se given what the what the what the administrative what the administration's interest was but moving forward if you see things percolate that would be very helpful. So next up we have agenda item number seven McNeil station 2021 calendar budget this is a discussion and vote and Dave McDonnell please. Good evening everybody I believe everybody's aware we do do two budgets at McNeil we do a fiscal year budget for BEDM we do a calendar year budget for our joint owners. The draft calendar year 21 expense budget is twenty seven million hundred and sixty five thousand seven hundred and sixty three dollars as compared to a calendar year twenty expense budget of twenty six million three hundred and sixty thousand two hundred and ten dollars. The calendar year 21 budget is approximately eight hundred and five thousand five hundred and fifty three more than the approved calendar year 20 budget. This increase can be explained mainly by an increase in the fuel expense of five hundred and twenty three thousand one hundred and ninety two dollars. In calendar year 20 we budgeted for four hundred and nine thousand five hundred and eighty tons of wood and twenty seven dollars and fifty cents a ton. Excuse me. We're in calendar year 21 we increased the wood ton budget to four hundred and nineteen thousand and eighty five tons and the price per ton to an annual average of twenty seven dollars and eighty five cents per ton to accommodate the current wood chip market. The capital budget for calendar year 21 is one million five hundred fifty two thousand three hundred and twenty eight dollars as compared to a calendar year capital budget of two million one hundred and ninety one thousand three hundred and seventy eight dollars or again for six hundred and thirty nine thousand and fifty dollars. The main reason for the reduction of our capital budget is we are not planning to have an overhaul in calendar year 21. Due to the COVID-19 related delay of the schedule April twenty twenty overhaul in September of twenty twenty. Our next schedule overhaul is tentatively scheduled for April of twenty twenty two. This budget was approved by the McNeil joint owners at our quarterly meeting on Monday December seven. Any questions on the budget? I guess. Wait, wait, hold on. I have a question. This is Bob. I was wondering about the increase in charges for management and what the terminology is. Let me check my notes. Hold on. Supervision and engineering in one case in operation in operations went up. 250 K to five hundred sixty K twenty two percent increase. What is there an explanation for that? After talking my head Bob I don't know. Can I get back to you on that? I can't remember. I don't know. Do you remember why that happened? I have to talk to your head. No, I apologize. I do not. I believe we can get back to you very rapidly on an answer, but I do not know off the top of my head. Okay, I was just comparing some of the other increases, you know, two percent, five percent. No, and this one's twenty two percent. So it kind of stuck out. It's five hundred. On the. That would be helpful. Get back to you. Net reduction. I wonder if. How the commission members feel moving forward with a follow-up from the staff with regards to Mr. As usual, I'm okay with it. With that. Others. Yeah. Yes. Okay, Lori. I need a motion. If staff could definitely get back to us, that would be helpful. Do you have a motion? Somebody else. I. Can you give me some language and I'll make the motion. Approve the budget. The calendar year. Budget. Regarding. Station. Or something to that effect. I moved to approve the calendar year. 2021. Budget for. McNeil station. Second. All in favor. Hi. Commissioner Shagman. Hi. Commissioner Herrington. Hi. Commissioner Stebbins. Hi. Commissioner Whitaker. Hi. Thank you. Thank you. Before I leave. I just came back from a near. It could be related to a fifth shift supervisor. That we're intending to hire. Right now we have four shifts supervisors. Most of our crews. Five. So. We got that word back. But we will check it out. And we'll get back to you on it. To verify that. That is it. Thank you. That would make sense. Given. What that lump sum is. Thank you. And this is entirely inappropriate. But do you do Santa Claus? Like. You'd be perfect. I know. The grandkids love it. I'm sure. Thank you very much. Moving on. Solid waste district. McNeil. Agree. Thank you. I would make sense. Given. What that lump sum is. Thank you. And this is entirely inappropriate. But. Do you do Santa Claus? Like. That would make sense. And this is entirely inappropriate. And this is entirely inappropriate. And this is entirely inappropriate. McNeil agreement. This is both a discussion and a vote. Betsy Europe. Okay. We've had an agreement with. Chittman solid ways to. Operate our waste with yard at the. McNeil station since. 2006. The current agreement is. Expires at the end of this month. They. Are looking to extend it. They're looking to extend it. This says I have poor quality. Can you hear me? Yeah. Okay. Internet's going to crap out. They have. They have. Presented. To the. Contact with. Just two changes. The previous contract was a five year. Contact. They are looking to do a three year. Contact with the option of. Two. Possible one year extensions to. Make it a five year contract. Depending on. How everything happens after the end of three years. The other. Issue is the. Leaf and compost. Bunker. Right now where it's located is where we want to put the. Solar test site. So everyone's. Okay to move it as long as it's the state same. Cubic foot volume. And they can take. Take in the same number. Cubic feet of leaves. Those are the two only two changes in the contract. They will still. Subsidize us at $60,000 a year. For each year of the contract. And then it's a little background. On the wastewood yard. We've been averaging about. 4,600 tons a year. Going through that yard. We've been doing that for a long time. We've been doing that for a long time. Add an average cost to us. With the grinding cost of about $12.85. A ton. When we compare that to. The tons that it offsets. Over the last 14 years. We've actually saved about $135,000. In. Wood fuel cost. Because those tons are much cheaper than. That's what we're doing. That's what we're doing. That's what we're doing. That's what we're doing. That's what we're doing. Excuse me. That a total amount over the period or one hour per year. Period. That's an average savings over the last 14 years. An average per year. I'm sorry. Yes. Per year. Yeah, that's the number of savings per year. Like this. That's my summary. Are there any other questions? No, I think that's that's a good argument. You might worry about is if. You think they should be paying us more. But if we think 60 K is good. What's what else to worry about? That helps. It helps offset. Operator. So I guess, you know, I always say what's the downside of this? Is there a downside? I don't see any. It's actually a great community service. This was the biggest problem when we were shut down in the spring for COVID. We got more calls from everybody about the wastewater yard than anything else. So the community in the whole Chittenden County community really depends on it. And Chittenden Solid Waste doesn't have room anywhere else besides the station to take in this volume of both clean wood and leaf and compost. And this is just not food scraps but just garden compost. What would be the other option if this were to be not approved on January 12, 2021? I would say that if it weren't approved, we wouldn't really want to operate the yard and take on the entire expense. Having them subsidize it at this $60,000 a year has been really beneficial to us. And for Chittenden County and generally in the solid waste department? They don't have the capacity anywhere else to handle this volume of wood or leaf and and garden waste. When we were closed in March and April, they realized how overwhelmed they were that they can't take in this amount of wood. So they really want us to be still in business. Questions from other commissioners? Thank you, Betsy. I'm going to ask if someone could make a motion. Yep. I know that we approved the contract with Chittenden Solid Waste for the McNeil Waste Woodyard. Second. Lori, Commissioner Shagman? Hi. Commissioner Herndon? Hi. Commissioner Stebbins? Hi. Commissioner Whitaker? Hi. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Betsy. Thank you. Thank you for approving it. So next up, we have the ITP award, I think, and the approval of your contracts. And this is for anyone who chooses to view. This is a discussion as well as an expected executive session. And Emily, you're up. Hi, everybody. Thank you. Just give me a minute while I get queued up here. I have some slides to share. Right there with you. They've been quiet for two hours. And yeah, now it's the time, of course. When you're presenting. That's right. Just a minute. I apologize for the delay. You should be able to see my PowerPoints. Excellent. Okay. So we are at a sort of culmination point of a over two year process, I believe, with IT forward. So this was a the right time to bring this item to the commission. Our purpose tonight is to both give you an update on the status of the project and what's been happening over the past year, as well as to seek your recommendation to bring multi year contracts to the city council and board of finance in January for approval. So what I'm going to do with these slides is essentially sort of walk you through the main highlights of the memo that was provided or sent out to you all on Monday. So we'll follow the same basic structure. So IT forward. Bethany, Commissioner Whitaker, I know that you joined sort of after this the commission after this project launched. So just a little bit of background, which other commissioners may already be aware of. But IT forward is what we've been calling a project to replace or upgrade our core business systems. So there's several kind of in the suite right now meter data management system, which stores all the interval data from the AMI meters that's collected through the AMI head end. The financial information system, which also includes our payroll module and our work and asset management system. So you can think about maintenance, equipment maintenance, inventory of assets, purchasing, procurement, AP, GL, AR. That's all within the FIS WMS. And then our customer information system, which our customer care team uses day to day. It also generates our bills and records our credits for AR. And then finally the customer web portal, which interfaces with the meter data management system to display usage and consumption to customers, as well as offers a way to pay your bill, report an issue, those sorts of things. So the overall rationale or business case for the project, our MDM was installed originally when we did the smart grade project back in 2012. It needed upgrading I think five years ago at this point and exploring that at that time it was quite expensive to do. And so that led to exploration of alternatives. At the same time, our CIS FIS platform is a legacy system. It's over 20 years old. It's built on fairly old IBM technology. It requires very specialized support. And additionally, because of the legacy systems, it limits our ability to really provide the customer service and the customer experience that our team aims to provide. And also limits our ability to implement some net zero energy programs in an efficient way. A lot of the things we're doing, we're doing manually to kind of work around these legacy systems in some cases, thus improving operational efficiency. So the history of the procurement process, BED Engage and Organizational IT Consultant early on in this process to sort of establish a roadmap and work with the team to identify needs and sort of set this direction. With their help, we prepared and issued a request for information in 2018 to sort of assess the state of the market, get a feel for the vendors who are offering solutions in this space. That involved vendor demonstrations, scoring sheet. It was fairly rigorous for an RFI. And then followed up the following year in the spring of 2019, we issued a formal request for proposal. Again, that went through, I think BIDS were scored based on several objective criteria. There were a number of vendor demonstrations in the teams. There were sort of two teams of employees involved in this project. One was sort of a working team of frontline employees. And then there was a core team of supervisors and directors. And the working team of the frontline employees put together very detailed scenarios for the vendors saying, please show me how you would bill a group net metering system with this configuration, for example. The team also did a technical review with each of the vendor finalists, sort of our IT team talking with their technical teams to answer technical questions, cyber security issues, those sorts of things. And we called, I think, 7 to 10 other utilities who were references provided by the vendor finalists to hear about their experience with these companies. And the culmination of all of that work was the working team and core team recommending to executive management their preferred vendor last October. And I think what I will do is pause there. I would proceed to share with the commission the recommended or preferred vendor, the pricing that has been proposed, and the structure of the basic commercial terms of the agreements that would be seeking approval or recommendation to bring to the Board of Finance and City Council. But I believe that might best be done in an executive session. Thanks, Emily. Lori graciously sent us the wording. A little bit of while. If someone would like to read the two different documentation paragraphs. Sorry, a question about Cloak and Dagger. We have a memo which names names. Was that a confidential memo? I didn't know that. I think anything we produce is public employees is potentially just subject to public records disclosure. That would be one that under the term within the RFP process. So bits are considered confidential under that process until we notify all participants about the decision we've reached in the RFP process. So yes, I would say that should be held confidentially. Thanks. Would you like me to make a motion? I moved to find that premature general knowledge of potential contracts would clearly place the Burlington Electric Department at a substantial disadvantage per Title I, Section 313A1 of the Vermont statutes. I moved that the commissioner, the commission enter into executive session with the ED staff to discuss potential contracts under the provision of Title I, Section 313A1A of the Vermont statutes. Do we need two votes or one? Normally two votes. Did you just move both things? Oh, did she? That was the first one. I did both. Yeah. No, she did both. So does anyone want a second? The first one? I'll second the first one. Thank you, Jim. And then, okay, we'll call the first one. Okay. Commissioner Shagman? Hi. Commissioner Herrington? Hi. Commissioner Stebbins? Hi. Commissioner Whitaker? Hi. And now we have a second for the second. I'll second it. Commissioner Shagman? Hi. Commissioner Herrington? Is your Herrington? Hi. Commissioner Stebbins? Hi. Commissioner Whitaker? Hi. Okay, we enter into executive session at 6.53. So can we tell the CCTV guy he can go? And then everyone else can. Is this an executive session with staff present?