 So the meeting is now being recorded. All right, thank you. We're missing Laura. So I will be sharing today. And I do see that we have some attendees so we do our. Review of the minutes. We'll take public comment. We also need a minute taker. Oh, that's right. Laurie, I see that you are supposedly. I did it last week. Oh, that was from last week. Oh yeah. Okay. That was. So the next name on the list. If you look at the minutes. It's just looking at where to go. I can open them up too. That bounces back to the top. So, so. Yep. So, oh, so bus Sue, if you're sharing, then bus Sue. Would be the next person. Okay. Yeah. That's fine. Thank you. Okay. So the minutes from last week. Do you want to put them up? Sure, I'll share. But hopefully people have already reviewed them. And we can move through them quickly. Are there any changes that people want to make? I had the clarification. I thought it could be clearer. I was only on for the very beginning. But I'm looking at the. Update. Particularly under. Anna's. Reporting in. For the fourth thumb. Wasn't sure if. That was. Clear. Yeah. Cause at one point it says. In the middle of draft utility disclosure by law. I think that means rental. Disclosure by law. If you go back up there. I think that's up at the beginning. Yep. I'm just giving people an opportunity to read. I was scrolling slowly. Ish. So if you could just scroll to the top. My understanding is that, that there was that, that. Anna is it first name had. Was considering a different by law around rental utility disclosure. Yeah. Separate. Utility, not rental. What? Rental utility disclosure, the third bullet. Well, maybe we could ask. Maybe we could ask on a for clarification and seeing that she's here. So. And I also wanted to check on. Stephanie noted that. You're working on a residential energy labeling with other groups. And I think that's. Is that referring to the same thing? No, it's a separate. It's a separate effort. It's a separate effort. It's a separate effort. It's a separate effort. It's a separate effort. By need. That's underway. I can mention it again later. But okay, it'd be good to get neat in there. So that that's clear that it's not the building electrification. So I'm, I'm clear if you were wanting clarification for the other. Item. I guess let me get. Let me find Anna. And I see your hand up pulled on the moment. Okay. You're unmuted. Thanks, Stephanie. Hi, everybody. Thank you. So yeah, it is a rental utility disclosure bylaw. And I am waiting right now to see what I was, what I was saying last time was that I don't know if it's kind of moot at this point when the new rental registration process. Rental registration bylaw comes into. Play. I guess. So once we start looking at that, I'm waiting to see their final draft to see if they cover what I would be looking at. I think it's going to be a rental utility disclosure bylaw. So that's, um, it's, it's a bit of a holding pattern right now, because I think that they're trying to get at a lot of. What I would be getting at in, in a rental utility bylaw. Disclosure bylaw. So it is rental utility. To answer your question. And it's different than Stephanie's thing. I think we were trying to figure out. If, you know, four people were all trying to do the same thing at once. Well ours. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. But it may be similar to what the RMI effort. Is, is what it sounds like to me. So maybe that's the clarification. And you're looking for, I'm not. Yeah. So having not been here, I just want to note that. I have no idea what that. Section was reporting on. Um, and I don't know. I think it's important to. Make that clear. You can try to work on it, but it is going to be confusing because they're basically titled almost the same thing. So I'll try to make it. A little clearer. Okay. I'll do my best. Thanks. Anything else. Just one comment on. In section five under my name. So I know I brought up the UMass event that has now been canceled. I know we talked about it should be in the minutes, but the update is it has been canceled. So I don't know if it makes sense to remove it from the minutes or not. I think I wouldn't remove it from the minutes. We can just note it in. When you have updates today, note it there. Okay. You don't want to cancel it from the minutes because. You announced it. Yep. Make sense. Yep. Anyone else. Okay. I've changed just to the minutes. Okay, we're ready to vote. I'll move to accept the minutes. Second. I'm sorry. Who's seconded. Okay. All right. And I'll have to give a roll call vote. So. Regevon. Yes. Rose. Epstein. I think. Part of it. Okay. Okay. Yes. I was only there for part of it, but I read the minutes and they look good to me. So. Okay. We need, we need enough. Yes. Selman. Yes. Allison. Yes. Goldner. Yes. Andy. Yes. Okay. They would have easily passed. It's not clear whether we can vote on it or not. If we're here. So. All right. Do we have any. Attendees who would like to speak during public comment. And it's so I ask that you. Keep your. Your, your comments short. We typically give three minutes. So I didn't know. Anna, I'm only meeting you. Thanks. I have to duck out. So I was wondering if I could give my quick. No, if that's okay. I can be public comment or not. I just. I don't want to miss it by accident. Okay. So, okay. We're pausing public comment. No, no, it's fine. If there are other public comments, you can do those first. All right. Thanks. Any other. Public want to speak right now. We'll see if we have time at the end. Okay. Thank you. Yes. Anna, go ahead. Thanks. So just a quick update today. Council is meeting on Monday. But we will, this is our only meeting in July. So I wanted to let you know about something that's coming up later in July. And I'm now actually, as I'm saying this out loud, think that Steve probably I might be stealing your thunder a little bit. So I apologize, Steve, if I am, you can just yell at me. The residential rental by law review process. So this is continuing to move through CRC. And I know that there are a lot of different ways to get at this topic, but on July 25th at 7pm, there is going to be the first of many community forums around rental permitting. And so folks would like to come to that. It's an open meeting there. And they'll, there will be opportunities to both comment in person as well as they're going to be using a community engagement tool to register agreement or disagreement with other speakers. So lots of opportunities to engage there. And if you want more information on that or to give, to fill out so far, it looks like there's a survey, but there's going to be a lot of other engagement opportunities around this. If you go to engage amherst.org backslash rentals, they've created a page for input on the, on the by law review. So it'd be great to get some, some solid climate lens comments in there as well. If folks are so inclined. Other than that, we are kind of cruising along. And if you have any questions for me, I'm happy to take them. But that's the biggest thing that I think would, that I think is pertaining to, to y'all at this point. Cool. So if there are no questions, I'm going to remute, but if you, if you think of any, please let me know. Okay. I don't see anyone's hand up for anything either. So. I have another question on it. Just following up on last. Last meeting. From the notes, if you have any update on. The. Capital inventory memo to finance committee that you wanted. Input on. Not yet. Let me, I don't have any updates on that. But I guess once you've got. Once you've settled on, I apologize. It was a minute late. Did you vote in a new chair? No. Okay. Thank you. So once you do that, I'll reach out to the new chair to try to get on an agenda. And I'm hoping that what we could do is have a, a really good discussion at this level. And then I know that Stephanie also has a, an inventory too. So we want to just again, make sure we're not duplicating efforts. Or being redundant. So that's, that's my goal is to get on an agenda for y'all to really. Sit down and talk through. Talk through the. What would be beneficial to have information on. Or what information would be beneficial to have. There we go. Okay. And also the. Anything on the zero waste bylaw. It has not come before us yet. The plan. I believe that there are plans for that. But we have not seen it yet. But it exists. And so. It is not. It does not exist in a form that's been proposed to the council. I don't know what. Yeah. Does anyone remember if. We already. Submitted. Submitted. Submitted. Submitted. Submitted. Submitted. Submitted. Submitted. Submitted. Submitted. Submitted. It has already submitted a statement of support for it. When, when the zero waste. Group presented it to us. I can answer that because you're on the list of people who have, who've said, you've endorsed it. So hopefully yes, you did. But yeah, I believe you did. I think. make sure to send that to y'all as soon as I see it. I haven't seen it from the sponsors yet. Okay. And will there be time between when? Yes. So it will have to go to committee. And I believe it'll actually go to my committee, which is town services, not that we can't have input either way, but you'll get double the fun because it goes to TSO. So yes, there will absolutely be plenty of opportunity. Here's what I think maybe a good process might be, is if y'all want to find it, so I'll keep you appraised on it, but it will be in the council packet as far as I know on August 15th. So it's not there yet, there's nothing to find, but if you want to read it and have questions for me, I don't know if I'll have answers, but then I can bring those questions forward or opinions on it once we get it, that would be really helpful. And I can bring those to council or to the committee, depending on what feels more appropriate to y'all. Does that sound okay? Yes. Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you. All right, staff update. We have to vote the chair and vice chair first. Okay. So, I think actually I'll kind of jump in for this part. If that's okay with you, Anders. Okay. So the first question is, are there any nominations, would someone like to nominate another member or self-nominate themselves? Please raise your hand and I will acknowledge you. Vasu did raise his hand, definitely. Did you, I didn't see that, so. Oh. Okay, Vasu. Yeah, I thought about it. First off, thanks, Jesse, for bringing my name up last time. And I think I'm, yeah, after talking to Laura offline, I feel like I'm ready to do it and I'll do the best in the job that I can. Obviously leaning on the experts in the committee, so I'm gladly willing to lead the e-care. Okay. So, Raghavan, is there anyone else who would like to nominate another member or self-nominate? Please raise your hand. Okay. Without that, then I will ask for a voice vote and I'll go backwards. So, this is a vote for Raghavan, Vasu Raghavan for chair. D. Yes, for sure. Goldner. Yes. Allison. Yes. Selman. Yes. Roof. Yes. Gregor. Yes. Rose. Yes. Raghavan. I'm not meant to say yes. Yes, you can vote yes. You need to vote for yourself. Yes. Well, you don't have to. Well, you don't have to, but you have to vote. Or I guess you could abstain, but that would be weird too. So, great. Excellent. So, thank you, Vasu, for stepping up. We now have one. Yeah, absolutely, thank you. And with that, Vasu, you then get the reins of the meeting. Actually, now that you are officially chair. Oh, so now I take notes. You're taking notes. So, Andrew, you're back to taking notes. Trade. Don't worry, I'll help you. So, I'm also curious about nomination for vice chair. Right. So that is your first task as the chair is to now ask for nominations for the vice chair. Okay. All right. Any nominations for vice chair? Laurie. Yeah, as last time in my email with Vasu, I would be happy to be vice chair and help out where I can. Anybody else? I'll call the vote then. So we have Goldner nominated for vice chair. And I will call you by last name. D. Yes. Goldner. Yes. Aldner. Allison. Yes. Selman. I'll go to roof. A muffin and I have conflict of interest. No. Yes. Absolutely. Roof. Yes. Breger. Yes. Rose. Yes. Regevan. Yes. All right. Congratulations, Laurie. You are vice chair. Thank you. Thank you, Laurie. Thanks, Laurie. All right. Let's go to staff updates. Definitely. Sure. So there are a lot of things as usual. So right now we are trying to move forward the community choice aggregation. We are now Valley Green Energy. We had our first meeting with the consultant, which is very exciting. So we're figuring out what our next steps will be and how we move forward is three communities working on the same initiative. However, there will be outreach in each community that the consultant will work on with each community. And I'm sure Andra and Duane will also support. I really see that there's a role for this committee in doing community outreach about this, for this committee especially. So we'll have more information as we move forward with that. And I'm sure, well, I shouldn't say I'm sure, but I'm hoping Andra will and I can both help out with that piece. So that's one thing. Then another is that I will be sending you documents. There was an ARPA request for funding several months ago that I put together for just over $500,000 for sustainability initiatives. And I did mention this to the group. I had outlined sort of four target areas based on the carp and they were all approved by the town manager. So they are now publicly accessible. And I will send you those documents for more discussion at the next meeting because I would like to speak with you all about here are the initiatives that are gonna be moving forward and these are approved and they are funded so they will be moving forward. I think there's a role for you all to play in some of these. One of them is a residential heat pump. So I do wanna talk about that with all of you in sort of developing that what it could look like, how we might move that forward. It does involve hiring someone to sort of take the reins for that. So I will be involved, but maybe not as much as I typically am. So I think it's an opportunity again for this committee to work on helping to develop it, but also when I implement also doing some outreach around that issue as well. So that's one of the initiatives. Another thing that was funded through opera was securing two fellows says interns, but really they're going to be two fellows. One will be doing a building inventory analysis and the other one will be doing our greenhouse gas emissions inventory update. So those applications go in in December and that would be for next summer. So next summer at this time, we would have hopefully the two fellows working on those two initiatives. The building inventory I'm hoping will be a fairly broad and extensive look at like lifecycle and that kind of thing. Some of the information that we don't currently have that we're looking for. So again, this will be an opportunity for you to weigh in on the things that we might need for that. You had a question, Steve. Is that town buildings or all buildings in town? Oh, town buildings. This is municipal. This will be in a municipal building inventory. Lori. Can you just explain what you mean by heat pump initiative? What exactly is that? Or would it be? Can we get to it more at the next meeting? I just don't want to take up a lot of time only because we'll be talking about it at the next meeting. I'll have more information. And I just didn't want to get into it right now because there's a more, there'll be more in depth in conversation about it. Stephanie, just curious on the community outreach portion. How does that happen? I mean, are we doing different, I guess what is the best media or communication channel to improve outreach? Because I see different, I mean, the library committee had an Excel file with all their ideas. And then I know Anna talked about outreach as well. Is there a best practice and how we can improve outreach? A best practice on improving outreach, I think is different than a best practice. I think in terms of improving outreach, we can sort of talk about what the best practices have been and used and how we can improve on that. But I would say that we have some other, just from what I heard from Anna, it sounds like the town is already starting to move with some different modes of outreach and input. So I would say that, again, this is a bigger conversation that shouldn't be part of the update so much. I think we can save this for, when we talk about these initiatives or when we talk about outreach and education, we can sort of bring this to that conversation. But I hear you and there isn't necessarily, I mean, there's been a standard way we do things, but I think that's changing even within the town. We now have a DEI director in place in diversity and inclusion. So I think that that's going to be equity and inclusion. So I think that's going to be a new point of contact and a new source of guidance for how we do things. So that's a new opportunity. So I'm sorry, I got a little bit sidetracked there. I was talking about the two interns, what they're going to be doing. And then there were a couple of other efforts that were funded. One is more expansion of the mobile market to add funding for a few seasons, but that's sort of, that is happening later. All of this funding sort of is available beginning next fiscal year, but it has to be all expended by I think 2026, which shouldn't be a problem. So some of this programming has a timeline to it. I will be sending you all of that documentation for your next meeting packet. I just wanted to sort of give you an overview and also explain that some of these things have been in the works while we've been having meetings and sort of talking about things like, some kind of outreach program, but I haven't been able to talk about them until the town manager approved all of this. So I apologize that it seems like we weren't doing anything, but I was. It was a little frustrating for me to not be able to share because from where I sit and now that these things are approved, I think it's an opportunity for me to bring some of this to you to get your input on things like developing RFPs, looking for consultants for the heat pump program. I think there's an opportunity for working to sort of identify what are some of the parameters we want the fellows to look for when they're creating the greenhouse gas emissions inventory, so all of those kinds of things. There's a lot of opportunities for you to weigh in. Just don't overwhelm me all at once. So we can sort of pick them off, one at a time. And then the other thing I just wanted to tell you is that I did have a meeting today with a representative from a company called Utila Mark and we're talking with them about doing a greenhouse gas emissions inventory for our vehicle fleet. And as part of that, one of the things we're asking for is for them to look at the life cycle of a car and at what point will we need to trade that out for an electric vehicle when we have the opportunity, if there's existing technology that could actually be installed on existing vehicles in the interim until we can trade that out for when an all EV becomes available. For instance, there's nothing for dump trucks right now. Dump trucks are not EVs. We don't have any EVs, but there is, I believe some technology for anti-idling that could be installed that could sort of help the efficiency on some level and emissions on some level. So that is something also that will be provided for through the ARPA funding. And sorry, I'm trying to think. The last thing is also the community dashboard. We had talked for a while about having a community dashboard about sustainability and climate goals and all of that. We have funding to do that. So that will be happening as well. So we will have that presence. So I will send all that information to you. I also have the final solar assessment report for those specific buildings. This isn't the big, wide, broad community solar assessment. This is the narrow one that was identified that was much more targeted information in terms of also identifying costs and revenue generating opportunities for some solar installations with battery storage. So that's all laid out. It's very in-depth and involved and specific and I will get that to you for the next meeting for discussion or at least for review. So that's, I think that's all I have. Nice work, Stephanie. Thanks, Jeff. That's very exciting. That's a lot. And I just wanna also say I'm gonna err on the exciting to hear of the progress side as compared to the, why didn't you tell us sooner which you couldn't do anyway side of things. It's great to know that things are happening. That's wonderful. Thanks. Yeah, thanks, Stephanie. I think we talked about this last year where we were talking about how do we spend or what are some of the actions we can take from our car for the ARPA funding that we have and we never really got around what they were gonna be until this is the first time I'm hearing. So I guess my question is how do we make sure that we can also provide some input, Stephanie because it seems like you're working a lot and is there added value that we can add in the future to just to make sure that we're helping you out here? I think Laura and I, what was appropriate at that time was for me to check in with Laura. This is something that the town manager specifically recommends. So it wasn't really something that we felt that it should come from staff as looking to the car for implementation. I mean, because yes, you all were the ones who heavily contributed to the development of the carp. Implementation is really more on the town. It's not something you all can sort of check in and make sure the town is doing what it's supposed to do but the actual implementation really is the responsibility of the town manager. So as staff, I was tasked with coming up with things and that's why I went specifically to the carp to pull those items out, which is what I always intended in the first place. That was always what it was meant to be, a guideline, a guidance document for us. So I think there may be different kinds of initiatives and there may be a way in which I can weigh in but I can't say that with ARPA funding specifically that's something that it's necessarily gonna be under the purview of the committee to recommend specifically. You know what I mean? I think you always make recommendations and those things were certainly in my mind in putting this all together, like the dashboard, the pump program, the inventories, all of those things were things that had been discussed several times. So it's in there, your influences in there I guess is a very long-winded wave, what I'm trying to say. Sure, okay. All right, anything else for Stephanie? All right, let's go to ECAC member updates. Steve. Okay, I'm still here. So yeah, let me say just a few things about the work I've been doing on the rental property energy efficiency and that dovetails nicely with both what Stephanie and Anna are working on. Tomorrow this town council CRC is having another meeting to discuss, I guess sort of the nearly final draft revised rental registration by-law. And most of that is not around energy efficiency. Most of it's a bunch of other issues they wanna deal with. As I've reported before, we did get them to add some language that allows the town to ask on the annual permit application basic information about a property. It's not exactly specified what that would be. That's questions that we would have to develop but it would likely be fairly straightforward information that building owners could answer like the year built of the building, the square footage, the fuel sources used for heating the building, whether electricity or natural gas or whatnot and a few other questions. So that's good. We're at that step to start that data collection. We have been continuing to explore other ideas and there's sort of a swirl, at least in my head, a swirling bunch of options that overlap, all of which have some pros, some great advantages but all of which also have some disadvantages. And I will just take a brief moment here to kind of see if I can summarize them. And I would love to talk more with Stephanie and Anna about your thoughts. Cause I think we're working on potentially some similar things. So one category of idea that we have is to ask the building owners to provide more information about their rental properties beyond basic information like year built and the square footage and the fuels used. We could consider asking more detailed building information like the type of roof and wall construction, the amount of insulation, whether they have an air leakage exchange rate value. These would be harder for the building owners to do. They would probably have to hire someone to help them with this, besides one possibility. It would help us identify the rental properties that are most in need of energy efficiency improvements. But there's a bigger cost for the owners to get that data. In addition or instead of another option is to ask owners to provide actual energy use for buildings. This is probably feasible only as I understand it for larger units where the data can be aggregated. There are privacy concerns if it's a one or two family place. And part of the problem is owners, if the tenants pay the bills the owners might not have any way to get the actual energy use. However, owners of larger apartment complexes and I'm not quite sure what the cutoff is. It might be five or six or somewhere around there is possible to get that data at least from Eversource through a program that the EPA runs which called portfolio manager. And that's used for commercial buildings. And as a technique where basically you create a list and then Eversource will actually feed the data into your portfolio manager online program. And you don't have to type in all the numbers yourself. But again, that's only for larger units. Another possibility we've talked about is asking building owners to submit some sort of energy efficiency improvement plan. And we haven't gotten very far as to what that might entail but it would simply be asking them what do you know about the efficiency of your rental properties and what are you doing to improve them? Probably this wouldn't have enforcement behind it but it would at least hopefully get them to start thinking about it. So that's kind of one category asking building owners to provide more information about their properties to help us understand which buildings, rental buildings we might want to focus on. Another category would be asking for inspections of some sort of the properties. This could be a town staff inspection with a customized checklist. There's pros and cons to that. And they're in it or instead of that there are standardized sort of official recognized inspections with scores. There's the home energy score or the HERS home energy rating score or the DOE has a free system called the BEAS Building Energy Assessment Score. All of these are assessing the building not the actual energy use but the nice thing is that they provide a score so you can compare different buildings. I've talked to a few contractors in the area home performance contractors that do these and they say it's not very useful for existing buildings because it's disruptive, it's expensive and you have to make quite a few assumptions about the insulation levels and window efficiency and things like that. Another possibility that we've just started thinking about is for the inspection might be to encourage or possibly require rental properties to sign up for a mass save assessment. And mass save is the program that's of course is supported by the utilities and it's often the first step or it is the first step in many cases for further incentives. And there are different assessments for single family homes, for small rentals and for larger rentals. There's different programs for each of those. I know a number of us have not been too terribly impressed with the residential assessments that we've experienced and I'm trying to find out if the assessments for larger rental properties might be more thorough and more useful. Also, I have no idea whether mass save would look favorably upon a town requiring a thousand plus buildings to sign up for those assessments that might overwhelm them. But it could be done phased over several years. So that's a different inspection system. So there's a couple of different ways that we could potentially require inspections that the presumably the building owners would have to pay for and have done over some sort of a time save. There's other options that we talked about that might include required energy use disclosures. So for example, if a rental property gets one of those scores, then we could and other communities might have done this, require the rental property to disclose what the score is or perhaps what the energy use is to potential renters. So that's a way of sort of bringing to light what the actual utility costs would be. Then other, some communities have gone further. They've had, after getting a score, the energy use score of some sort, they will begin to require buildings that fall below a certain threshold to upgrade. And they're usually caps on how much they have to spend per unit. And sometimes there are caps on whether, on the payback, they don't have to spend money if it's more than a eight year payback. So Burlington, Vermont is doing that, that sort of program in a few other communities. There's other disclosures, sometimes there's time of sale disclosures that are also used for residential buildings, energy use, disclosure at time of sale, but that's not very frequent. There's not a lot of turnover. So that's not so relevant to the rental properties themselves. So we are still trying to assess and we're a little bit stuck. There's all these great ideas. Many of them have great, but they all have some drawbacks. And I guess what we need to do is to speak more with town staff and perhaps other community members about what would be feasible and what would be effective from this long list of possibilities. So that's what we're working on. And I love to have a chance to chat with Stephanie at some point and Anna too about your ideas on sort of this broad topic. Yes, Stephanie. Steve, can you just clarify when you say we are working, who we are? Well, we could be anybody. Right now it's me primarily. We had a mess meeting a couple of weeks ago, Jesse participated, Chris Reddle, local retired architect, and then Cora, who's been our RMI sponsored coach that started out with the building electrification program. And she is continuing to help, is very interested in helping develop some sort of ideas for this rental property efficiency program. But I would love, there's kind of a lot of research to do and looking into different programs. I would love some additional help. And I'm part of that initiative too. Yes, sorry. Yes, definitely. That's okay. Of course, everybody knows you're always involved. And I would love to help. I mean, if there's research that needs to be done, if there's, you know, programs, I'm trying to do that anyway and slowly learning my way through these things. So I would love to be more involved in something like that. It's a little bit hard for me to figure out how to get involved in all these existing things. So. Yes, Duane. Oh, Stephanie first and then Duane. I just had a quick, Steve, I wanted to suggest that we could maybe schedule a meeting with some of the inspectors or at least even the lead inspector just to talk about some of these different options because I think I gave some feedback at the last meeting that we all had, but it would be helpful, I think for him to be involved as well. So I'm happy to schedule that at your convenience. Okay, yeah, that could be in August. I'll be away until about the beginning of August. Okay. Just two quick, quick thoughts, Steve, which this is great work and really exciting. One is a disclosure question could be just has the building had a mass-save audit? And if it has, what were, disclose what the measures taken were as sort of to put some more robust information into how the building might behave. But then I was also, there seems to be a bifurcation in terms of consumer needs here, in terms of renter needs and fairness to some extent, in my mind at least, of whether the renters are paying for the utilities or the building owner is, I mean, if the building owner is, it's kind of his or her business decision. And it's kind of, I'm not sure if we can pry into their decision-making with regard to what to do, but if the renters are paying, it just seems only fair to me at least similar to how we require cars to demonstrate, show how many miles per gallon they get, renters, it's not to avoid sort of the buyer beware, to disclose, just in some way, require some disclosure of what the costs are for heating electric for the space in absence of sort of that government action and maybe beyond the scope of this issue with the town council and sort of regulations is, maybe there's a public side to this where there could be some methods by which renters and amateurs have a website where they can disclose how much it costs them to pay for utilities in different spaces. And that way the owners are pressured in some ways to make it as cheap as possible for their renters. That raises all sorts of, it could be voluntary, so I don't think there's a privacy issue, but it does raise questions about how that's policed and how renters report their information when they don't know their way around utility bills very well or whether they're talking about gallons or therms or dollars. So there could be some data quality issues, but it's just an idea. Yeah, great. That prompts me to report that, Stephanie, we got the MPower grant and that's working with family outreach of Amherst to connect with renters in town and that is hopefully getting underway. And hopefully, yes, that we wanna really learn from their program what renters in town need and want in terms of that. And whether there might be some that would be willing to participate in their program that looks at their actual energy use in some format. The other thing that remind me of it, many times in other communities, these programs have exceptions. So if the landlord pays the utility, then they could be exempt from some of these requirements. Or if the building in question is built to a recent building code, particularly perhaps a stretch code, then they are exempt from some of these inspection requirements or other requirements. What we've been told by some legal analysis is you wanna offer sort of a number of different pathways to compliance because in Massachusetts, local communities cannot do anything that dictates or conflicts with building codes. And insulation is something that is directly in the building code so the town of Amherst could not require certain levels of insulation. And in fact, I believe there's a federal law that supersedes any local law about efficiency of appliances. So Amherst could not require energy star appliances or appliances of a certain efficiency. But other communities have with a series of different pathways that might include increasing the efficiency of appliances or adding insulation or doing air sealing. If you have multiple pathways to compliance, sometimes that's more viable way of avoiding the preemption of state and federal laws. Yes, Steve, my comment, I think this is very important for us, right? I think the buildings is number one in terms of emissions. So I think this data is gonna be important but it's also important to get it right. I think maybe we should also consider leading in lagging indicators in terms of, okay, we have this data for now and then three to five years from now we want to go back and do an assessment can we use existing data? So it's something to consider, is the future smart meters where we easily get the data in a single platform, right? I don't know. It's just something to think about is just... Yeah, I've been working for almost two years now trying to get the data that the town that has collected from the rental permit applications and from the building cards that they don't mesh together well and the building cards aren't always updated or they're confusing. It's not clear if there was an addition built or an existing space was upgraded, for example. And the combined data set we have is very incomplete for the larger apartment complexes. So it's hard to make significant comparisons. But yeah, getting better data is good until my personal approach is I don't want to spend years just collecting the data and then think about what we're doing. I'm hoping we can do some things now to at least encourage building owners to begin moving forward. And also we want to also find some carrots and help connect building owners to the incentives that exist. So that'd be one advantage in my mind to going with the Massave program because that definitely connects owners to the current incentives. But we also want to look at the programs like the PACE, the commercial PACE program and others. And there's a program for a mass lean L-E-A-N which helps buildings that have a high proportion of low income people in them helps with incentivized energy efficiency improvement work. So that's another task I'm kind of work on to sort of kind of find out these different agencies that might be able to help. Some of us know about Block Power that worked I think in Ithaca and there's some other programs that are similar to that that we might be able to tap into. All in Energy is a company that I think it's in Massachusetts that also helps helps kind of connect the contractors the owners and the incentives which as some of us know is sort of tends to be a difficult thing to bring together. So Steve, that's also something that I'm very interested in and have actually been starting to work on a little bit. So sometimes talk. Yeah, let's think about how we might be able to split up these different research tasks and connect and work together. I've actually been speaking with Block Power a bit lately about a lot of different things. I'm slowly learning how they work. Okay, I'm all done with that. And Steve, any other updates? Yeah, Laura sent me a great document that I don't know if anybody else has read. From RMI, it's investing in climate smart transportation on the America is all in website. Some people are nodding their heads if other people read this. It's basically an overview of IIJA, the bill that passed last fall. Of new funding as it affects transport and electrifying transport. And a lot of the, there's like 32 pages that are probably just background that a lot of people here are aware of, but there's a really, really, really handy chart on the last two pages that I wanna make sure everybody knows about because that's a really nice chart of the program, the amount of money, whether it's a new or existing fund, like what kind of grant funding it is and who it's available to. And there's links to all of the different programs. So that includes things like, like electric vehicle workplace charging program for municipal employees, school bus electrification, cooperative purchasing between climate mayors, school bus stuff, just a lot of transport electrification and decarbonization stuff. So just a heads up, if anybody's interested in that, I thought about pulling out that chart and sending it to Stephanie, but I didn't get around to it. But if that's of interest to more people, I can do that for the next meeting. Yeah, let's do that, Stella. I think it's an area that we haven't really talked about much. So I think we can talk about it. It also includes things like things that I haven't even thought about at all, though maybe more like transporty people have like street lights and that kind of thing. Okay, thanks, Stella. Any other E-CAC updates? E-CAC member updates. I guess the only thing I have is the UMass event that I mentioned last time that is now canceled. So trying to figure out what we can do with the Hitchcock Center, so it's ongoing. Might move it out to later in the fall. They do have some programs at the Hitchcock Center, fireside chat and we're trying to get more information around that, see how UMass can be there and help support and also be more aware. Okay, let's move on to the next topic, engagement with landowners, developers, and businesses. I don't know who had this. That was something I had offered to do last time. I got a name from Stephanie about a week ago now and reached out on Monday. Haven't heard back yet. This is Ron who has, I don't remember the last name, Stephanie. Oliver Deer. Yeah, who has made some put in charging stations and this sort of thing. So I don't have anything to report. So I haven't heard back from him yet. I'm gonna keep trying to do things like that as the opportunities arise. So Stephanie, if there's anybody else I should be in contact with, I'll keep sending out emails. I didn't do it right away last week because it was just a busy week but now I'm officially on vacation. So I'm actually sitting here in my apartment in, I don't know if you can see the water out there I'm in Providence enjoying the view of the swamp behind the house. I rented of the tidal slew, I think it is. So I have lots of time to do stuff like this. Thanks, Lauren. Yeah. All right. We have the solar bylaw working group update. Yep. And I can. Before we go on, I think that there's more to the engagement with land over owners, developers, businesses to discuss besides what Laurie was doing. Yeah, there were a lot of questions too that I hope you could discuss. Yeah. Don, that was something that we talked about. You are interested in and I wonder if there's some informal meetings that we could start having that would help us move ahead. Yeah, it is something that I'm interested in and I meant to reach out to Laurie and I apologize. I spent two and a half weeks of the last four weeks in Maine. But now I'm not on vacation but I do have quite a bit of time. And I think it's wise to start out with Stephanie's recommendation and then move from there to some of the other kind of major residential individuals in town. I'm looking out my window at Archipelago's new building on Spring Street and I certainly know both Kyle and Dave really well. And I'm happy to reach out to them. I'm happy to try to, I mean, I'd love some suggestions on outreach. This is all part of that outreach conversation that Vasu was talking about and that Stephanie's been talking about generally. But I do have the time and the energy now. So I'm delighted and I can connect with you, Laurie, by email or otherwise. And to be fair, Don, I meant to contact you too and I just got caught up in other things, so. I promised my wife I wouldn't even look at my computer while I was in Maine. And yeah, and that's right. And Andre knows my wife, so she understands. Yeah, and I think that's why I asked a question earlier on the best approach to outreach and I've seen different ways to do it. And there's one or a couple of approaches that Stephanie, that you've seen, has worked best. I think it's important to relay that to this committee here so we can take that information. Because we've talked about it at length about outreach over the last few meetings. Yeah, I also think this is sort of a smooth transition between what Steve was talking about earlier and Jesse, the efforts to get information on buildings and to put the disclosure bylaws or whatever's gonna get put in place in place and the outreach that comes sort of on the far end of that, right, on the down street end of that. It sort of, one goes right into the other. In some sense, the outreach starts while you're doing the development of these bylaws, right? So how do we leverage that effort, right? How do we tack on to that? And having a, I was just looking up the report that Stella mentioned, it might be nice to have a chart somewhere that, I mean, I know going through this with my own house now, I know it's very difficult to figure out where you find the different programs you need to apply for loans, for grants, for, it'd be nice to have a chart somewhere where you could just go and click on the links depending on what your situation is and who you are looking for. So if that doesn't already exist somewhere we might consider putting it together or just linking to it if it exists somewhere, finding a way to advertise that. Yes, Phil. I don't understand why there's never any outreach of any kind at Playgrounds because there's like these, at Groff, there's a board, Kendrick, there's nothing, but you have like tons and tons of parents who like by definition are deeply invested in the future, like sitting there supervising when they could be like, I don't know, reading 10 documents on this. You know what I mean? Like it seems like a great place to flyer and there's never anything. So just a thought, especially since it's a summer and it's COVID and a lot of people with kids like don't wanna go inside places. Yeah. Like it's just kind of surprising to me that there's never a flyer of any kind at Parks and Playgrounds. My daughter asked what that kiosk is for at Groff Park. And I said, oh, it's for important notices. And it's like, oh, nothing important going on, I guess. Yeah, there's never any notices. Just like, yeah, just said very well-built kiosk with nothing on it. If you made waterproof flyers, then people could read them while they were supervising their kids in that wonderful splash park. Yeah, exactly. You have like just so many people sitting around like trying to figure out what to do. Which actually reminds me, I had a question on last week for Stephanie. If all the events can get added to the Amherst page, that way Hitchcock Center is adding the events that they have. Some of the other advocacy groups are adding, it's all in one place. So people know what are some of the key events that are happening. I don't know if you had a chance to talk to anybody. No, I didn't talk to Brianna about that. I mean, there is a community calendar section of the town's website. So all the events are listed, people submit them. You can submit your own. It doesn't have to go through the town to post something. What you're wanting is specifically a sort of sustainability. It sounds like... Checkbox. Yeah, there's no checkbox for sustainability. I think it just has community or general events or whatever. Right, because those are the broad categories. So I would say that to me, the dashboard will be a place where we can do something like that. That would make more sense. I just don't think that, the way that is structured, that category of boards and committees, community, those are very general sort of categorizations. It's not, I don't think it makes sense to sort of have sustainability live right there for sustainability events. Now, I will talk to Bri again, but I just think to me that doesn't seem like the best place to put it. I know why, but I think it's, that's kind of like the official postings for meetings. Like that's kind of like the official site. When I post our meetings, that's the official place they go. And community events, that's where people go to find the information. But I think maybe they can do it under sustainability as like a whole other tab. I don't know. I'll ask again. Okay. I'll follow up. I'm sorry about that. I just didn't get a chance. Yeah, no worries. But going back to outreach, Stephanie, do you recommend that I connect with the bid? I'm sure they've done a lot of outreach programs and IDE inclusion diversity equity, that group. Can I connect with them? Do you think they would be the right people? Certainly, I mean, you know, always the bid in the chamber are excellent ways to get in touch with the business community, which is always hard. So, you know, Laurie and Don, that goes for you too. And I know Don, you've already mentioned it, but they're always like the two best resources. I would also say that now that we have, you know, our DEI director is new, but we also have community participation officers located in the town manager's office. There are three staff members who comprise that team. They're good people to connect with. Brianna, who's the communications director. Angela Mills, who's the executive assistant to the town manager, and Jen Moisten, who is now the assistant DEI director, are all the community participation officers. So they have a direct line to sort of doing some of this outreach. And our two out of the three are Amherst residents, longtime Amherst residents. So they really know people in town quite extensively. So probably some kind of, you know, if you want me to set up a meeting for you, I'd be happy to. And I'd like to be part of that just because I think that's really good information for me as well as the staff person to this committee to hear as well. So happy to set something up if you would like. Yeah, please do. I think that'd be great. And Laurie, I don't know if you want to be part of it as well. Yes, that was a meeting between who and who, sorry. That would be with the, I would try to get the community participation officers, I think probably are the best folks to start out with. The DEI director is brand new. I think, you know, I don't officially know her pronouns. I think that she is probably very overwhelmed right now because they just got on board and I've seen them in a lot of meetings already. So I'd hold off on that. But the assistant DEI director is part of the community participation officers group. So that would be the people that I would suggest we meet with. And what is the topic of the meeting? I'm a little confused as to what, are we going to be bringing information for them? Are we going to be seeking information from them? It's outreach, but what does that mean in this context? It's their approach and how do they go about, because the bid has done a lot of outreach before. So it's just learning from them and seeing how we can implement that. Just learning about how they, how their approach to outreach works. Right. Okay. Yeah, I would be interested in that for sure. Okay, I have to warn us again too about the whole, you know, subcommittee thing. So, you know, if it's two or more members and you're working on the same initiative, I just have to post it is all. This is a meeting with the chair and vice chair. Correct. So does that, I'm realizing people are in new roles. So I'm just going to have to get you to that. No, that's fine. I'll just, I'm just going to make sure. But yes, Laurie, I'll make sure you're. Yeah. So the other thing I wonder though is, should we not have, I mean, one of the things that's going through my head is, you know, say I reach out to people in the business community even about, I have to bring something. I'm going to do outreach. I need to have something that I'm bringing to them, right? And I think we lacked that yet. So it might be better to decide what, what is the goal of this outreach, right? What are we trying to do? Cause I don't think that's simple. Well, when you're talking, I think Vasu was trying to get it just what are some general strategies. For instance, I would say when we worked on the MVP community outreach, you know, we had food, we had childcare, we had interpretation, all those things were part of the outreach. So those are cut some outreach strategies that sort of help to ensure a more diverse and equitable engagement. And that meeting, those two meetings especially, I think in my entire career were the two most diverse meetings that I've ever been involved in. In fact, we had people that, I think I didn't really know anybody. I think I maybe knew one or two people who showed up. So it's those types of approaches. And I think that's what Vasu was sort of getting at. Also, I think, you know, there were some things that Anna said earlier about reactions to speakers. I hadn't heard that before. So that seems to me to my ears, that's like a new tool that the town may be using as an approach. So things like that. We also did outreach piggybacking on programs that the community participation officers had planned at some of the multifamily developments, like, you know, scarecrow making at, you know, in the fall. And we just went with diesel and collected feedback on what people were needing around transportation and buildings. Yeah, that was part of that outreach was specifically following up on outreach the committee had done initially. And there was already sort of a format for what the committee was looking for. So Darcy went with an easel and basically used the same format. So it was already kind of an established outreach. So she did show up with something in that particular case. It wasn't just kind of general. Yeah, and then Lori, I think we may want to consider that as well. I think, you know, maybe bring a few examples and ask them how they approach it. So I'll think of something as well. I think it's a good idea to bring some questions to them. But yes, Jessica. I think in general, just to get a little, maybe to what Lori's talking about too, something that's always going through my mind for this group is a little bit of, and I still don't, I still can't come up with a better word, but like branding and words like branding and elevator pitch, I think I would love, I think it'd be great. I could maybe try to do this or maybe just as we all move forward, just like any of these things that we go forward with, if we are all saying somewhat of the same thing about what we are doing, how we're doing it, what we're trying to do. In general, my sense is we are still figuring out what we are and maybe other people know better than I do. But I oftentimes don't feel like I have like the pithy statement and maybe it's just I gotta go back and read the charge again. But I just throwing it out there, there's something, I don't know. I don't wanna derail this conversation, but I do feel like if we're gonna embark on another round of formal outreach to have some clarity of who we're reaching out to and why. And so when any of us talk to anyone, the messaging should be clear and consistent and repetitive. And I'm not sure if we're ready to do that and I just wanna throw that out as an ultimate goal, like sort of like as we, if we're gonna embark on something, I think it has to have that exercise coming first. Andra and then Sal. I feel like we have several good beginnings on this. We have talked about this and what we really need is a subgroup to put legs on it and bring it back to the whole committee for us to dig into. And yeah, public meeting, but an action-oriented subgroup to make this happen. We've been talking about it for years. Yes, Sal. How's this, Jesse? So I think it's a question. I think the question is, how can the town support you in your climate repair goals? Cause that's like helpful. That's information that assumes expertise and it's something concrete that we can take in our advisory capacity to the town manager. Because people have stuff, people have stuff. So if we ask people, how can the town support you in your climate repair goals? And they're like, well, I would really like to find a way to decarbonize my house or I would really like to take the bus, but it doesn't come by my house or like that's the information that I think we aggregate and then communicate. And so, I don't know. I think that's the outreach question. I don't know how other people feel about that. But I think framing it, I think framing it in a hopeful way. And I think framing it in a way that assumes, assumes like some prior knowledge because I think that exists and like assumes good intent and then in a way that like can gather like concrete information that we can bring to the town manager. Yes, Lori. Sorry, did you call on me? You raise your hand. Yeah. Okay, so I had, I just wanted to talk a little bit more about what Andra just suggested about having a group come together to come out with this, I guess these goals, right? Of what we're trying to outreach around, right? And I think it's more than one there are different audiences. And I think that there are different tasks, right? Yes, there's what Stella just mentioned the going to different groups with questions about what can we do to help you make happen. But there's also just getting the information out there. And it's the information we get is getting for different groups. And what I was gonna suggest is that maybe instead of putting a subgroups together right away to work on all of this that like for example, I would be willing to go and try to put together a list of resources for business owners and landowners who might wanna convert, where do they start? And that's a list I would want them to know about then, right? I'd want to get some information to them as well as some information from them about what else could we do? Is this enough or is there more? Is there something different that you need? So that would be the sort of this that would be what I would be bringing what we would be bringing to the conversation would be the list of resources. And then asking for their input as well. So I think we have a lot of the pieces of this, right? You've got to, I think you've been working on the outreach to individuals and homeowners and renters I think, right? And I guess. No, sorry? No, not renters. You've gone fuzzy again. It must be six o'clock. Not renters. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So I'm getting feedback. Oh, there we go. That's better. Okay, so, yeah. So I mean, I can start doing some research and maybe also talk to Steve and Don about this separately. Maybe I'll make a list and then send it around and see what can be added to it of resources that are available already. I know one of the biggest problems I've been having I did actually talk to Block Power last week about what their pitch is. And I have to say, I wasn't all that impressed. They realize that making these conversions is going to cost money. And their pitch is twofold. One that, well, heat pumps are so much more comfortable than other forms of heating. They nice, comfortable, constant temperature, which I think some people would debate. So that's interesting. Some people like the ability to change things quickly. Or to have very hot air coming out of their vents. And the other was the long-term savings. And eventually the world is going this way. You're gonna have to do this anyway. So they have a standard pitch that they give. But I'm hoping we can maybe do a little... I think the key thing is to try to find the people who want to do this anyway who know this is the right thing to do and worry about that more than coming up with a really strong pitch. Because I think the pitch is always gonna be hard. It's gonna be hard, right? Because you have to get people to buy into your way of thinking about the world. And that's hard. Yeah. Jesse and then Andra. I just, I wanna quickly say that I really agree with and appreciate the responses to the sort of disruptive maybe comment that I made. I think Andra is quite right. We're almost there. It's close. We've talked about it a lot. We've touched on it a lot more. I think suggesting this is not like, we're not like wildly departing from what we're doing. And then Stella, I do the spirit of what you said. I tried to get it down as quickly as I could. But it's just simple, positive. And I guess I would offer maybe to between now and the next meeting to craft something. So it's really, it maybe is just one or two sentences. That we sort of lead within all of these discussions that allows it's sort of a little bit of a unifying theme. That just, I just, I think it's about mindset shift and presenting it in again, like Estella was saying, sort of positive spin, et cetera. So I would volunteer to come up with like a possible, like it's really just a unifying theme. And that would allow us to then what Lori said, like, yeah, then we go and meet Vasu's meeting, but it's like everyone we meet with should hear something like that. So if that, if it makes sense to sort of bring that back to the table and give five, 10 minutes to discuss it next time, I would prepare that. And I would, my starting off point would be what Stella just said as well. I guess I'd like to ask if, you know, Lori offered to put together resources. I think you said for commercial building owners, is that right? Landlords and commercial buildings larger, larger conversions. Yeah. Something I'm trying to learn. I know nothing about it, but I'm trying to learn about it. So I might as well document what I learned, right? As I go along. Yeah. And, you know, our other thought, we have outreach happening, we're already planned to happen to renters in multifamily units. So we're left with the single family residents and homeowners. And I wonder if anybody's particularly interested in that and would, or- I'm becoming very, yeah, I'm becoming very expert in that. So I could do that too. Really? I'm sure others have as well. But I could go, I could talk for an hour and a half about what I've learned so far about trying to convert my own house and how hard it is to get good information or a good evaluation of your home as heat load or manual J. Anyway, yeah, I'm learning all of these things. So I can try to do that. That'd be great. Thank you. It's very hard to know you're doing the right thing. So I think this is a good way to start and then we can discuss how to actually get out there, start doing meetings and things. Yes, Jason. Just real quick, Lori, if you're putting together resources on commercial buildings and properties, if we were to run the numbers of sort of energy consumption on a cold day in Amherst, my guess is that the makeup air on commercial kitchen hoods would be a massive, massive culprit. And there's some pretty good resources out there as far as reducing that number with some simple technologies. And so I would just say, I would just ask, see if you might add to that the commercial kitchen energy consumption, particularly makeup air for these just huge, thousands and thousands of CFM of air, warm air that's just being sucked out of buildings and then needs to be heated again, there's ways to reduce that, even just not turning it on the second you walk until you start cooking, there's a lot out there. So there's some really neat stuff out there that you'll find. And there's an enormous amount I don't know about. So Jesse, I'll put something together to get it started, but I'm assuming that you and Don will probably have a lot of things to add to it and change it and fix it. It's interesting because the hood even came up in my own kitchen. I was warned not to get a hood with greater than 400 and CFM or something like that because then it turns it an issue. So... Yeah, I don't think you need a hood more than 100 CFM to me, quite honest. So yeah, all these things come up even in miniature trying to figure out your own house. Yeah, cool. Okay, great. All right, I think those are the items on the agenda. So let's talk about our next meeting and the agenda for next meeting. So Stephanie... I'm sorry, you did discuss the Solar By-law Working Group update. Yeah. Oh, sorry. You kind of combined two things into one, not you specifically, just the conversation led that way. Dwayne? Yeah, so I can give that update and Stephanie certainly can chime in as well. So the Solar By-law Working Group is convened and have met for the first time a couple of weeks ago, blocking June 20, I forget exactly the date, but about three or four weeks ago, we do have a full cohort of the working group in addition to representation from ECAC, there's representation from the Planning Board, from the Conservation Commission, from the Water Supply Protection Committee. And then there are three residents. And so I think we have a good group and we had our first meeting, and I'll say in terms of staff support, happy to say we have not only Stephanie, which is wonderful, but also Chris Brestrop. Brestrop, is that correct, Stephanie? Brestrop. Brestrop. Or Chris, Christine or Chris, she is the Planning Director. So great to have her as well. In our first meeting, which was got into some content, but it was mainly getting ourselves organized, introducing ourselves, learning about open meeting laws again, and so forth, but Town Manager Paul Bachmann kicked us off as well and was there for the whole meeting as well. So that was great. Unlike a committee, I guess, this is a working group. We have a mandate in the schedule. This is not to last indefinitely, but we have a year basically to meet the charge, which is essentially to develop a draft, a solar bylaw for the town to then consider through the town council and the manager. I will say one action item we took was to elected chair and yours truly was duly elected. So I'm chairing that committee, which so fast we can commiserate, but I'll draw a lot from seeing Laura chair this committee. But so I will say that it's going to be a lot of work on my end just so I'm going to probably be a little bit less available for ECAC except for reporting back and helping out where I can. But anyhow, we have our second meeting, which is scheduled for Friday this Friday. We meet for two hours. We have a pretty robust agenda. I think basically we're still a little bit in the learning phase. We have Christine, the planning director who's going to give us sort of a zoning 101 primer. So there was sort of get all up on board on what zoning is all about really. And then we do have three model bylaws that we've identified that we will be reviewing as a group from the Cape Cod commission from PVPC and from DOER. So we'll be going through that. And then spending some time in terms of sort of setting out the agenda for what are some of the bigger issues that we need to address in the coming months and then sort of what's the agenda for the next couple for the next meeting. We will be trying to meet fairly frequently. We're going to try to meet two more times this summer before the fall. And then I probably bi-weekly as well in the fall but we'll decide on that come fall. We are at this point meeting during the daylight hours. So we're meeting Fridays at noon for two hours. We might try to do a similar early evening or late afternoon meeting like this one. But people are welcome. It's obviously open meeting. And I will report back after at each ECAC meeting I suspect as needed, as long as there's been a interim working group meeting and try to get as much input as I can from this group and report out and represent our charge and our mission well in the bylaw group. Stephanie, anything that you'd like to add? Nope. I just would say hi to Estelle as a comrade there. I don't have anything to add. Yes, Steve. Yeah, that's great and congratulations Dwayne on getting to be chair. I think I watched that meeting and it looked like you had a lot of good support there for that. They recognized your expertise. One suggestion that I would like to make you in your agenda for I think this meeting coming up on Friday was what other sort of one-on-one topics might the committee want to have introductions to? And I would suggest that you consider having a one-on-one on the Massachusetts Clean Energy Climate Action Plan. Just so that all of the members and the public who are watching can get a sense of what do we need to do by 2030, 2040, 2050 to meet the climate goals that we have set. Great, yeah, that actually was passed around and identified as a resource for us. But yes, in fact, we have an agenda item for what are our future topics, one-on-one topics sort of. So I will put that down as a for a discussion as well. So yeah, I appreciate that. Great and good locker. Looks like you have a great group in that committee. Yeah, yeah, no, I'm really pleased. I mean, the different perspectives, I think one thing we're gonna focus on a little bit on Friday is learning a little bit more about each other. We did relatively quick introductions, but I want to get a better sense of where people are to the extent that they can share, should know where they're coming from, what are their perspectives, what are their primary goals and expertise that they can offer to the group. So yeah. Sorry, Steve and I are having a little bit of a lower hand competition. And so that's why Steve keeps switching on your screen. I keep lowering it and then he lowers it and ends up freezing it. So sorry, that was just a little behind the scenes humor. Yeah, thanks Dwayne. And I think you also brought up the point where you said you're not gonna have the bandwidth to support other activities, right? And I think that's also something that I wanna touch on and we'll talk about it. I think in two meetings. So as we get into the execution of some of these actions, how do we execute them, but also the bandwidth of everybody in the company, I think we're all volunteering. So that's important to know. So I ask that everybody, if you can just document how much time you're spending or how much time you're willing to, or how much more are you willing to take on, I think that's important because that is key as we drive the execution of some of these actions. So we'll talk about that in two meetings from now. But the ask is still remains if you can just document everything that you're working on. All right, anything else? If we're moving on, I've marked some of the things in the notes for next meeting that have come up. Yeah, do you wanna read them out for our next agenda actions, Chandra? I might have missed some. And I don't know if any came up before I was taking notes, but a couple. So Stella said she could get the chart out about the transportation resources. And we were interested in talking about that. And Laurie offered to put together some resources that she can find for building owners. Will you be ready before our next meeting, Laurie, on that? Or that's not enough time. I can try to get it. I mean, I can try to get it all together and we'll see where it goes. I'll get as much together as I can in two weeks. You shouldn't even try to make it exhaustive because we'll all look at it and say, oh, well, I know there's this list over here and it has half of what you have and more. Right, right. And then there's also, yeah, right, exactly. So I will put together what I can. I'll try to find what already exists. That doesn't take more than, you know, I'll Google around for an hour and see what I can do or maybe two hours and see what I can come up with. And then we can talk about it more next time. And Jesse is gonna prepare something that we might be able to use as a unifying theme or elevator pitch. And depending on, you know, what timing of meetings that Stephanie can set up that she offered, one might be a report back on the outreach meeting with the community participation officers and just one other meeting, what was it, Stephanie? Sorry, I don't know about a meeting. I know I also said that I wanted to talk about the documents that I worked on for ARPA. So follow up on some of the upcoming projects that I'll be working on that would actually involve you all as well. You mentioned scheduling a meeting with the inspector for Steve and Laurie was interested in that. Jesse has something, so go ahead, Jesse. I wonder if we might just add for two minutes on the agenda for next time to formally thank Laura and Andra for being chair and launching this committee. Andra, just cover your ears for a second while we discuss this just a quick kind of, I think it'd be great even if it's just in the minutes to just really, it's just a tremendous amount of work has gone. I think it was longer than anticipated four hours. And so I think I'd love to suggest we do that. Yeah, absolutely. And I would be happy to craft as I'm, I'm gonna look through a lot of our stuff as I craft the elevator pitch. So I'd be happy to craft that as well. And it'll be awkward and rambling like everything I do, but so it goes. And Stephanie, you said you didn't have information on the heat pump program. Is that something that you will also capture? That's part of the information that I just said the initiatives that I'm working on for the ARPA funding. I'm gonna send you all the documents. You'll have the documents so you'll see it. And then we can talk about more about what the heat pump program might be. It's not, it's loosely defined. So you'll see when you get the documentation and then we can discuss it at the next meeting. And then Anna wanted to talk about the Capital Inventory Memo. You're not gonna have any room for your meeting. Yeah, I think Anna's gone. She's only here at the beginning. Well, it's added if she has an update, she can talk to it. And we already have a packed agenda because I was gonna talk about how do we take all our items from the carp and start working on the execution piece. So let me work with Lori behind the scenes and then figure out what it needs to look like. So you'll have to post that meeting because you're two people, I know you're chair, but I need to check on this because when you're working on an actual document, I know I need to check on that. When you're actually working on something like that, it's a little separate. No, this is just, you're just talking about the agenda, right? You weren't talking about the agenda. They were, he was talking about the carp implementation. Yeah, I'm just talking about the, how do we go into execution or the right approach to executing the actions in the carp? It's just a discussion to figure out what our strategy is gonna be going forward. Would that be an open meeting? I think maybe, I would like to recommend that you and I talk maybe about that piece because I feel like often when you all talk, it doesn't involve the town piece and I'm doing a lot. Like what I'm sending you, you're gonna see. A lot of what you've been talking about is in a lot of what's been moved forward through ARPA. So it'll make sense. And also I've worked on the same thing that you worked on. I worked on with the finance director because we have more of the information in terms of actually budgeting and what funding might be available. So let's just talk about that. Can we just talk about that separately? Yeah, that's fine. Stephanie, do you wanna set that up? Sure. I think I missed something, but hopefully Stephanie's getting this all down. There's always the recording I'll listen to, so. Okay. Anything else that we wanna talk about? It's already a type agenda. You wanna cover C-PACE at some point, but it won't be the next time. Okay. Okay, we'll open up to the public for comments. Stephanie, anybody you see? So if anyone has any comments, please raise your hand and we'll unmute you. No one has their hand raised. Okay, I guess we'll wrap up early then. Thank you all for joining and have a good evening. Before you go, please don't leave yet. Just so you know, I sent you out an email earlier about this, but the state legislature has not extended the allowances for meeting remote leave and open meeting law. So that expires on Friday and it actually expires at 1201 on Friday, which means for instance, the solar bylaw working group has to actually meet in person in the town room because when we scheduled the meeting, I thought Friday was kind of, it was through Friday, I was wrong. So we actually have to meet in person. So that means that unless the legislation comes through in the next few weeks, we'd be having to meet in person for the next meeting. So the one thing I do wanna ask is if folks know ahead of time that you can't make it, you have to have a quorum. And in this case, that means five members have to be in person. Four of you potentially could be remote. You need to have a reason, you have to fill out a form to request remote participation. That's the sort of formal way you do it when the old open meeting law standards were required. So. And contact your Senator, our Senator and Brett to tell them we really want this extended. What I understood happened was that the Senate was fine with just extending it as it is and the House had changes that they wanted to make to it, which in some ways would actually make it more complicated is what it sounded like to me. Well, that's too bad. I will be writing to you about the accommodation then because otherwise I think I have to miss the next two meetings and the meeting in September. Okay, this is always the problem. And you can always send me an email to that effect and copy the town manager's office just so they're aware. I mean, they know that people are struggling with this and everyone can't make it, but just maybe if they're having some conversations with our local reps, they may want to include that. Yeah. I will also be out of town on our next meeting, the 27th, I think the July 27th meeting. Probably not able to zoom in or come in online to tell me too many time zones away. So Laura, you could potentially be remote. I can be remote anytime. I'm happy to be remote, but I will be out of town for at least three meetings in the near future. Okay, like Steve, are there others who will be completely unable to attend the next meeting on the 27th? Not completely, but I think being in the town hall is gonna be a little bit of a stretch at 430, just wrapping up work at the time. And Stella, I know it's not possible for you. Is that true? Yeah, I'll definitely request remote access. So that's already, well, that's three people. Is there anyone else who knows that they would absolutely need remote access on the 27th? The other thing that's important to note is that you can't, the quorum has to physically be in the room. So you can't have four members in the room and one member as a remote, even though that makes five members that constitutes a quorum, that person has to be there. Oh, and the other requirement is that the chair needs to be physically present. Sorry. It would be either. So if Vasu couldn't do it, then Laurie would have to do it. And Laurie is not here. Laurie is not here to do it either. So that could potentially be a problem. I think it's okay for the chair to designate somebody to chair in there. I will need to make sure, absolutely make sure that that's the case. So I will find out. Let's hope they extend the remote meetings. Well, I'm hopeful too. Also because it means that it's so much easier for people to participate. We don't often have that many people in person come to the meetings, but we've had substantial attendance. Is Mindy done with the door? Is our state rep? Who's our state rep? Is that Mindy? Yes, Mindy. All right, good. I know who I'll be writing to this evening. Okay. So I will find out if all things being equal, if we don't end up being able to meet remotely and the meeting on the 27th has to be in person, I'm going to check in with the town clerk's office and get their official opinion on whether the chair can designate someone else to chair the meeting that evening. If not, I will let you know and we may have to reschedule. I would move that if you find out, it's okay to designate that we all agree that Don chair the meeting or I'll chair the meeting. Or just if there's some like weird red tape that like, because we didn't talk about it in the last two minutes of this meeting, like I'm happy to chair the meeting. So Jesse, you'd be willing? Okay. Absolutely. If that's the only way to have a meeting. I can physically be there, Jesse. So if I can too, John, I can probably, I can walk across the street. If we both looked at our windows right now. I can walk across the street. Yeah. So who are the five that would physically be here then? Andra, Allison, Selman, no, Brigher and maybe Drucker. I don't know if Laura is going to be here on the. Yeah, maybe me, but late. So we might have to miss the first 20 minutes or so. Well, alternatively, you could start the meeting later. And we just meeting later. As long as we post it, if you start the meeting at five instead of 430, that's fine. You can meet five to seven. Yeah. Do you want to just say that now, knowing that? Well, only if we go, only if we have to be there in person. If this, if we're allowed to meet remotely, I'd rather start again at 430. Okay. Then that's what I'll make note. So if, because I have to post it 48 hours before, you know, if they change it, I mean, if at 48 hours before, you know, in 24 hours, they change it, we're kind of locked into whatever we've posted. We can't necessarily switch it up. How we've been, how the solar bylaw working group is doing it. We're sort of doing both, but it still requires a quorum physically be in the room. Do we know if we had that yet? Stephanie, just to offer it. I don't. Yeah, okay. I don't, I think a few people have requested remote participation, but it's certainly not the majority. And what's our quorum for in person. For. Formal. Or in person or five. No, sorry, No, no, no, no, no. Different group. Working group. Oh, okay. Different group. They have to meet in person. You may or may not have to, but I will let you know. You will all know ahead of time. Stephanie, a question is, does the quorum rule only apply if there's a vote? Or does there even have a meeting there has? No, even to have a meeting, you have to have a quorum. I've had this session with the clerk for the council, because I have been in situations in the past when I worked with the conservation commission where we didn't have a quorum and we had a meeting. We just had general discussion. There were no votes at all. And technically I was told that's okay, but our legal counsel very strongly advises against it. So the rule of thumb for the town anyway is that if there's no quorum, there's no meeting. Talking like a lawyer, Stephanie, what's the penalty if you don't vote? What do you do? You violated the open meeting law. Great, we didn't do any business. I mean, not that I want to gum up stuff, but I don't know what the penalty would be. I don't know what the penalty would be, but I know what the town's policy of dealing with this is. And so that is what I adhere to. So just for consistency's sake, I mean, if not for nothing else, for consistency's sake, it's good to just have one policy that we all follow. Okay, so Stephanie will be either from 430 to 630 or five to seven next time. Right, so if in person it'll be five to seven, if not, it'll be 430 to 630 as usual. Okay, thank you. All right, sure. All right, thank you everybody. Yep. Talk to you next meeting. Bye. Bye, all, thank you. Good job, this.