 So we'll just let people take their time coming in. I know a few people said they only have an hour. I gave us two hours just for the luxury of having that time and, you know, seeing if people could block that time out but it may not take us that long. Okay, great. Yes. Well, we, I mean, if this works for you, we put together a slide deck to walk through the questions and walk through the issues. Great. And in the course of that, we would get to your questions as we go. Okay. And there's a lot, there's a lot of stuff we'll need to discuss. We don't need to discuss it all today. So our hope is to kind of tee up the issues. And then at the end just decide how are we going to work on, you know, resolve these things together. Yeah, sounds great. Yeah, we are going to just confirm our meeting schedule, I think, this morning. Hopefully, really the only, there's only three of us that are actual voting members because we represent each community. Everybody else is more just interested parties and activists that have been involved in this from the very beginning. So, you know, that's, that's fine. Let me just, people are And I invited a group of my colleagues to the call. I hope that's okay. I can't remember whether I asked if it was, but I It's totally fine. So I'm assuming Kim and Marlena. Is it Marlena Marlena Marlena Marlena Marlena. Okay, let me bring them in. Marlena I'm letting you in and Kim I'm letting you in now. And then there may be a third Julie. Okay, great. Good to know. Hey, Paul. Hey, Chris, how are you? All right. Excited about this meeting. Yes, me too. We're excited to get excited to get on. Hi Marlena. Hi, Kim. Hi there. And if you see, excuse me and Julie Harris joined, she's also with our team. Good morning. Good morning, Kim. I'm getting an echo or other folks getting an echo. Yes. And is it just when I talk? Well, we didn't have it when you and I started. So I think it was when Marlena and Kim joined, we started to get an echo. He muted now. So I think it's coming away. Yep. I'm the culprit, Stephanie. I got you on mute. Hi, Paul. Okay. Hi, Tom. Hi, Tom. Thanks. I asked only because it's usually me for some reason. You need my ear things just create an echo about 50% of the time. So that's why I asked. There's just one other one or two other people I want to give a moment to join. So. And will Julie definitely be joining us? Yes, she said she would. I do also know she's been having a little bit of internet connectivity, so it's possible if that happens to her today, she may be a little bit delayed, but she's definitely planning to join. Okay, great. Just good to know. I just want to keep my eye out for her. Yeah. They start Stephanie and every team is here and enjoying what she's available and will fill her in. Great. Sure. Yeah. So I think the folks that I was waiting on from our team are all here now. Thank you, everybody. I just want to make the announcement that this meeting is being recorded. So it starts automatically as soon as we enter the room. So I just want to give you that heads up. And we do have a little bit of. Just housekeeping on our end that we just have to get through because we've had. There's only three of us that need to vote, but we need to approve our minutes from the last three meetings. And I want to do it while we still have Tom, because I know he may not be able to stay throughout the whole meeting. So I'm just going to start with that really quickly. Tom and Chris, I hope you had an opportunity to review the minutes ahead of time. If any of you other folks that are part of the working group want to comment on the minutes, that's fine. I'm going to start with each set and give an opportunity for edits. If there are anybody, you know, if there's anybody who wants to comment on the minutes, I propose to change. So I'm going to start with the minutes of June 3rd. And do I have a motion to approve those minutes? So moved. Second. Okay. And all in favor. Just a voice. I. Tom. Okay. And I'm an eye. So. The minutes of June 17th. So moved. It would be louder. Okay. And. So to approve the minutes of the 17th, Chris. Yes. Tom. Yes. And I'm a yes. And the minutes of June 24th. Could I have a motion? So moved. Seconded. Okay. And the vote to approve. Yes. Tom. Hi. And I'm also a yes. So minutes are approved. Great. Thank you so much. And thank you Darcy so much for taking the minutes for us. Greatly appreciate that. Thank you Darcy. Okay. Thank you. I only really quick. Comment about the meeting frequency. I'm just going to start easy. If this becomes a more complicated conversation, we'll move this to later in the meeting so that we can get right to Paul and his team. But our Fridays. Either at 10 or one o'clock. Okay. For you, Chris and Tom primarily. All things being equal either of those times are fine. But I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I've been witnessed in June get stuck in some kind of transit situation, but yeah, those times worked for me. Okay. Chris, do you have a preference to those days? Does. They work for me. Okay. And either time works for you. Do we want to then have a preference for 10. AM or 1 PM. 10 AM. 10 AM will work for me. Okay. Okay. All our other members who are typically part of the working group to any of you have comments or would, would 10 AM on Fridays be okay for you for the majority of the time at least. Andrea, you too. It depends on the week. Yeah, I have a regular Friday, 10. 11 o'clock meeting. But it will change in. A month or so. Yeah. I mean, and we are typically our meetings are about an hour. So if we just say Fridays at 10. For the most part work and Sam, I know you can't always join us, but would that be okay for you? Yeah, that works for me. Thanks, Stephanie. Okay. Great. Then our next meeting will be, so we're saying every two weeks. So our next meeting would be July 22nd at 10 AM. Great. Excellent. Okay. So a quick update I have that I wanted to let people know is that we do have a webpage for the Valley green energy working group that's on the Amherst website. I sent you all links. Not at this meeting, but please take a look at it. And if there are things people want to edit, change Chris, take a look at your title. I think I might have it wrong. Cause I think it was different than I thought. So, you know, take a look if there are edits, just please send them to me, and I'll discuss them at the next meeting. So that will be one of our agenda items. So, but the, the agendas are up there. Minutes will be up there. I post them. The drafts are always in the packets, but I don't post them under the minutes until we actually approve them. So these three sets will, will be posted probably by the end of today. So yeah. So that was exciting to actually have a real presence stand out too. So. Well, with that, I want to move this along and pass this on to Paul and your team. And we can do, we should do a quick round of introductions. I'm sorry. I didn't think about that. We should probably introduce ourselves first. So I'll start very quickly. Hi everybody. I'm Stephanie Chigarello. I'm the sustainability coordinator for the town of Amherst. And I'm going to, why don't we popcorn? I'll just pass this along to Chris Mason. And then you can choose the next person. Chris Mason energy and sustainability officer for the state of Northampton. I'll pass it on to Tom Thompson. Thanks Chris. I'm staying off camera in motion here. I've got a driver, so I'm completely safe, but I'm Tom Thompson. I'm the citizen representative for the town of Pellum. Okay. I'll pass it on to Darcy on behalf of Tom. You're welcome. Darcy, you're muted. Oh, you're still muted. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'll pass it on to Tom Thompson. Thanks Chris. You're muted. Oh, you're still muted. Okay. I'm going to pass it on to Adele and we'll get back to you Darcy. I am Adele Franks. I am a resident of Northampton and a retired public health physician turned climate activist and have been part of this working group for a while now. And I will turn it over to Andrew. We can't hear you. Of course. I'm in Amherst. I am on the energy and climate action committee, the town of Amherst and have been an active participant in this working group for a number of years. Darcy. Hi, I'm Darcy Duman. I'm as Adele and Andrew are. I'm. Now on the board of the local energy advocates, which has grown out of our community activist group that is working with this. Official town. Multi municipality group. So yes, community activist. And I guess we'll. Darcy, you want to choose someone. Sorry. Or Sam actually Sam is with us too. Oh, Sam. I'm Sam title man. I'm a resident of Amherst and I'm assisting in this CCA process in my capacity as an unpaid consultant appointed under Northampton's planning and sustainability office. Okay. And with that, I guess Paul, I will hand it over to you and you can introduce your team and. Get started. Sure. Great. So I'm. Paul, my role in the project is I'll help with the development of the aggregation plan, help work through some of the environmental issues and handle the regulatory approval process. And I'll hand it to Marlena. Hi, I'm Marlena Patton and I oversee the customer education and outreach customer support and day to day program operations. I'll hand it over to Kim. Hi, I'm Kim pair. I handle the procurements for the aggregations and help the town secure pricing for the aggregation program. I'll hand it over to Julie. Hi, I'm Julie Harris. I'm the community outreach manager and I support Marlena and outreach and day to day operations. Terrific. So I think I did we get everybody. Everybody. We didn't have Catherine. Oh, Catherine's here. Great. Hi, everybody. I'm Catherine Rache. I'm the director of the environment and land use department at the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission, the regional planning agency that serves Amherst, Northampton, Pelham and 40 other cities and towns. And I've been monitoring this process for years. And thank you all for what you're doing. Then see you sneak in Catherine. Thanks for joining us. Thanks. Excellent. So we have a PowerPoint that we thought we would walk through as a way of bringing up the issues and responding to your questions. Sorry, I'll share my screen or I just went ahead and did that. And let me ask and folks see a PowerPoint slide on the screen now. Yes. Excellent. All right. So we'll. We'll work through it. And I'll say first, it's really a great pleasure for us to be working with you and to get going on this project. We've really been been looking forward to it. And I know you have a wonderful team. Some of you I've known for a while. Chris in particular and Tom also, and I've gotten to know some of the others of you, Sam and through this process. And it's great to have a chance to play to have a chance to work with you. So we put together an agenda. We also thought that introductions would be in order. So we've, we've knocked that one off already. And then we'll walk through the typical program timeline. We'll then focus from there on reaching the first milestone in that timeline. And then we'll raise some areas where we need input. And I'll say there. We'll see how it goes with the time. There are a number of issues. Some of them are pretty detailed. We don't anticipate we'll resolve all these questions today. It may be helpful for us just to provide an overview of, of the issues without trying to dig into resolving them. And then we want to talk about next steps, how we would work together to, to, to resolve the questions as we go forward. So we'll be laying out the issues today, but not looking necessarily to be getting all the answers to those. So here's a typical program timeline. As you can see, we divided the aggregation program into four phases. The first is the aggregation planning and regulatory review, followed by the electricity supply contract and supply and then the second phase is the program support. And then the public procurement, then public education. And I say then public education, but public education can actually go through the entire life of the project. We don't have to wait until the other phases are done. And it's best and fact, not to wait, but to get going earlier. And then the final phase would be the program support and management. Once your program is up and going. So in the next phase, you'll see that the process is going to be on a scale. You'll see that months five through 17, the period of the DPU review is sort of compressed into a small box there just to make the timeline easier to see and to fit on them and to fit on a slide. You had asked about this in one of your questions, noting that the DPU review process has become very long and asking if there's anything that could be done to speed it up. And I think it's well over a year now. We have, I think our longest pending plan is about 18 months now that they've been waiting and some others close on the heels of that. There are two possible glimmers of hope here that things might be better for your plan. One is that the actual, the Senate version of the state budget this year includes a provision that would give the DPU just six months to review aggregation plans and the plans would be approved if the DPU didn't issue its order within six months. We don't know yet whether that will become law. It's in the Senate version of the budget. It's not on the house version. The house and Senate are working now to put together a combined budget. So we'll have to see if it's, you know, appears in that combined version. And then it goes to the governor and the governor can veto that individual provisions, including that one, if he wishes. It's not guaranteed yet, but that's one effort to speed things up. The other is that DPU staff is, is well aware that the current process takes way too long and they are very unhappy about it as well. And they've told me they're working to put together some initiatives that would speed things up quite a bit, including trying to just resolve a bunch of the questions generically for all the programs at once. So they don't have eight million questions they're trying to decide with regard to each application plan. If that were to happen, it would produce a smoother and, and swift a review path. So those are all possibilities. None of them are set yet. The takeaway is just, it takes way too long now. And there's some chance it's going to be better by the time your plan is filed. So that's the overall, that's the overall timeline. What we thought we would focus on today is just as a way of digging into the questions is to focus on that first milestone and what's necessary to get there. And that first milestone is the public presentation of the aggregation plan. So we go to the next slide. So the, this in this first milestone, what needs to happen is that the valedrine energy needs to present to the, it's the citizens of each of the communities. And the key aggregation documents and to give those citizens an opportunity to comment on them. And those documents are the document should be filing with the Department of Public Utilities. And I'll go through them in more detail on the next slide, but it's the aggregation plan, the education plan, the opt out letter and the model contract. All of those need to go to citizens for comment. Typically what that means is they're posted on a public website. A note is a notice of a public meeting. And citizens have the opera 30 days from the posting to submit written comments or they can come to the public meeting and, and give oral comments at that meeting. The meeting often usually includes a presentation about the plan explanation of how the plan would work. That meeting can be a standalone public meeting, or it could be piggyback on some other public meeting that was, you know, being noticed and taking place anyway. We will say that in most communities, there's not a great deal of comment on the documents and there's not a great deal of attendance at the public meeting. This is all happening very early, you know, a year or more typically before the program launches. It all seems very remote to the public. But it's a required step number one. And number two, it is a, it is an occasion to get going on public education and that public education starting at early is very helpful and you do it over time so that by the time you launch your plan, people will be, will be more familiar with the program. You know, the way it works at preparation of the documents is we'll draft the initial versions. We'll need input from you on a number of questions. And then once you've approved the documents, we'll get that public presentation to work with you to get that presentation scheduled and to take the comments. This all has to happen first. And then once that's done, we can move to the next milestones, which are meeting with the department of, with the department of energy resources, and then a filing with the department of utilities. Let me just briefly describe since I was talking about these documents, what they are. So the first one is the aggregation plan, which describes at a high level, the key features and operations of the program. And it's important to recognize that this is a heavily regulated document, much of the text is prescribed by the department of public utilities, but there are a few key points that decision points for the, the communities to make that will be your documents in the document. Then there's a related document called the education plan, which describes in a good bit of detail. And now initiative will look like and the fire back and forth with us fill in what those. Then we, what we call here the enrollment notification mailing materials, more commonly called the opt out letter, which is a letter that goes to every resident prior to being able to program, express the program and that the customer can opt out if they want. If they don't doubt, they'll be enrolled automatically in that letter. This needs to be submitted to the public in advance and it's part of what the DP ultimately will approve. There's the model supply track, which is very the contract which would be signed. Communicator by the JPE, if you have a JPE at that stage between that entity and to be electricity supplier. The no contract from perspective, the supplier gets pay their electric bill, but it sets out suppliers responsibilities and it's a big, you know, early page single spaced sort of technical energy kind of contract. Fortunately, it's been out of contract. It's been used by a whole bunch of tank communities approved by the DP multiple times. There's a model for you don't have to come up with a new model, but it's part of the set of documents. I can move on from there or let me pause a lot and see if there are any questions about what I talked about so far. If anyone has any questions, can you raise your hand? Okay, I don't see anyone with their hand raised, but I actually have a quick question, Paul. In terms of the first public meeting right now, we're still obviously meeting via zoom. I'm just wondering how do you typically does your staff oversee that meeting? Or is this one of those details that you work out with each individual community? And how has attendance been, if it is virtual, I'm just curious about that. So it's sort of two questions. Yeah, so it has very often, you know, over the last few years, the meetings have been virtual. We coordinate with you, I guess we could do the zoom meeting, although it needs to be a public meeting. So it would be, I think it's more commonly the way it's been done, it's whatever process the, you know, the town uses for its meetings. Attendance has been light, both virtually and in person. I can't remember exactly, but Marlena, do you have a sense of the number of attendees, typically? I don't, I don't know how to say what's typical given the past two years anymore, to be very honest. In those communities that have highly engaged citizen environmental groups, we have seen more participation in these meetings, maybe 20 people will come in those communities that have less engagement and participation by citizen environmental groups, we will see maybe only the stakeholders who are already involved in developing the program attend. So it kind of depends on, I guess, the flavor of the community. And these meetings will be for each, each community will hold their own, is that how you're envisioning this? Yes, that's a terrific question, which I hadn't thought about prior to this, but yes, given that there are multiple communities here, each one would have to hold its own meeting. Okay. And I did notice someone did have a hand up. Go ahead, Chris. So will the outreach for this be included in the education outreach plan? And is it worth it to actually try to reach out to say disenfranchised communities or, you know, other equitable, equity based communities that may now be involved at all? Is it worth kind of trying to get them to this public meeting? I guess it's partly a question for us too, but. Yes, partly a question for you. I mean, I think, and I'll let Marlena's way into, but I'll just give an initial reaction since I started, which is that outreach to those communities is really important with a goal of helping them understand the program and to make a good choice about whether to participate or not. And by good choice, I mean an informed choice about whether to participate or not. For the, for this meeting, which is really about comments on the plan. It's probably not critical for that. Those communities more important for those communities and really everybody is understanding the program when it launches and being able to make the decide whether to participate or not. That's my take Marlena. Do you have a thought on that? Yes, I will try to. As with everything with aggregation, there's no short way of saying anything. So I'll try to make this make sense. So there's. There's what the DPU cares about with regard to outreach to vulnerable and disenfranchised populations. And kind of what they see that, that where the minimum bar is for where they, but they see that, that to be, and then there's what is actually required to connect with people, which can be a very different level of effort. As you likely know. And so what may make sense. For this first version is for the first outreach. Is to make sure we're doing at least the minimum. So that the opportunity is there for people. To learn about this program and comment on it. I do think each community needs to make kind of a sincere effort to make the aggregation plan available. And I think the DPU is looking to see that. So what that might look like is if you know, for example, there are specific language populations that you routinely make an effort to do translations for, we would want to do those translations for this. If you know that there are particular agencies that you routinely loop in when you're trying to do some kind of interactive, you would want to mention this to them and include them on some distribution information. Distribution of information about this, but I don't think this would be the time for you to, to a super deep dive and to try to do a lot of really tailored outreach. Because this isn't a time when we have real details around price renewable energy contract, program start, program duration, and all the things, all those, but I don't think it's the time to do that when we start to introduce this. So I think it is a time when you can do some outreach, kind of what, what seems to be like a reasonable amount of open doors to make sure that the community has avenues in, but I don't think it's the time to kill yourself to really make sure that the outreach connections are made. I think that, that's something. Not that we should, anyone should kill ourselves, but I mean bad metaphor, but I think that extra effort is what we would want to put into this. I think that's a good point. I feel like I just gave you a lot of words, but does that make sense? You know, clear. Yes. Thank you. Andrew has a question. Yeah. So given that we're hoping to move quickly on forming our JPE. And that that requires a. Community advisory committee. This might be actually an opportunity for us. And I think that's a, another motivation to do. More in-depth outreach to a more diverse. Proud. And, and want, we want to start the education. Process early on. So my question is, is it. Is it feasible to do. I don't see it making a lot of sense to. Translate the entire. Aggregation plan with all the legal ease, you know. But to. Have a translation. Well, English version and translated versions of. Some summaries that, that. Make clear that the key issues that community members would be interested in. Yes. So it's absolutely possible and. And not a strange thing to do either. And certainly something we've done. So. If you wanted to, for example, I would recommend that you engage in a. High level look at how you know, what aggregation is. And how the program will work. And that. You know, this program is being planned and you are, you know, welcome to and invited to submit comments on it. That kind of thing. I think makes a lot of sense. And it would be, I think pretty straightforward to put something like that together and get it translated. One is I'm not taking notes on all of this because we're we have the recording is that okay if I summarize. And secondly, is the public hearing just on the aggregation plan or is it on all of these documents. So, will the public be asked to comment on all of them. Technically speaking it's all good questions all of the documents that the plan is the one that's easiest to comment on. Yes, and they want their free to come out on any and all of them and all of them will be presented for their review. Right, I guess I've been thinking that that the, like our BIPOC community might be interested in commenting on the education and outreach plan itself, because they want to seat at the table. Just, just was wondering about that. Thanks. So if I could, if I could just offer a couple thoughts there. One is the development of the education and outreach plan is something that requires a collaborative effort. It's not something we can kind of go away and do and then present to you wholesale because you folks know your community as well. And that we will actually be able to provide you guys with a template to show you here's where we need input from you folks, and the creation of the document is something you are welcome to invite other people into. So, you don't need to wait until the public comment period for that it's something that could happen even as the documents being created. So just wanted to put that out there. And I wonder if it would be helpful to just explain what that public presentation typically looks like, because I can see it might seem strange to think we're going to like hold up these four files, you know, on a screen and say this exists, look at it and this is quite how how we typically approach it because that that is a very strange thing to do. The typical way we present this to the public is we we put together a slide presentation that we make as visually as engaging as possible given that it's slides. I really try to make it pretty. And we take people through a consumer friendly explanation of what aggregation is and how it works, and the rough timeline and when they can expect to hear information and what kind of options they'll have, what kind of control they'll have those kinds of things, what their rights will be within the program. And then we say, there are documents that are created in order to support this, and those are available for your review and comment if you'd like to talk about how you would do that so we do create a very consumer friendly presentation, and then, and then invite people to look at the documents and then they're typically made available for download, and also if people want to come to any town hall they should be available and hard copy, but just wanted to put some shape to that so you guys could start to think through that as well and have a better sense for what that might look like. We have a new DEI director here in Amherst, so I think, you know, for us at least I know we now have some other staff that can really help us in a more focused way than maybe we have been able to even in the past. Stephanie, DEI, what is that a diversity. Of course, okay. Excellent, so I don't see any other other hands I'll just keep rolling along with the next slide so here's a list of some of the questions where we would need input in developing these documents. The program name and whether you want a logo and I know you have a name now we just wanted to talk about that a little bit. The next is the program options and the names of those options that was that needs to be specified in the aggregation plan. So the issue of funding through an operational ladder which I know you're interested in. And a lot of questions around the outreach efforts. Then some questions about new initiatives I know you have a strong interest in doing innovative things through your program and I wanted to talk through that. And then finally that process for reviewing this supply contract. So, the way our presentation is structured as we would just now just start walking through these issues. As I said earlier, I think the thing to do is we'll raise it, maybe we could have a minute of discussion, or answer questions, but probably don't want to try to decide all these issues today I don't think there's, there's time, there's time to do all of that and in one meeting. So the first is the program name and I know you have a name already which is good to put you ahead of most folks at this stage. A question we had is whether Valley Green Energy is the name of the aggregation program. Is it the name of the J, you know the the entity, or is it both of those things. And that's a, it's a, it's a minor point but it's something we should know in writing the aggregation plan because we'll need to refer to it. And we have below just for informational purposes the names of a bunch of different aggregation programs. We included there the Cape Light Compact towards the bottom left, which is the other, you know, group aggregation true group aggregation like you. And they have the, they are the Cape Light Compact is the entity, that's the name of the JPE. They have run an aggregation program and they do other things most significantly operate energy efficiency programs. They fudge a little bit whether Cape Light Compact is the name of the aggregation program or not, sometimes they call the Cape Light Compact, and that's how it appears in the materials mostly, but then sometimes they say it's the Cape Light Compact power supply program so they, they, they, they, they fudge this, they fudge this question a little bit but that's, that's something for you to think about. Let me ask maybe you have thought about this is Valley Green Energy the program where you thinking or is it that would that will that be the name of the JPE when it's formed. We did a lot, a lot of thinking about this. And we had a lot of discussion so Valley Green Energy is the name of the aggregation, but the Valley Green Alliance is the JPE or will be the JPE. Okay. Excellent. So, then we can check this one off this is decided so already decided so that's great. Thank you. The next is whether or not you want to program logo. Marlena, could you speak to that. Oh, sure. Well, before I dive in I'll ask, do you have you already decided if you want one, if not I can talk a little bit about the slide. If you've already made a decision there I can, I can save you the slide. I haven't made a decision about a logo. I would think we want one. Okay. I can't see everybody but let me do a little quick scan. Thumbs up. If people want a logo. And, and it actually not but now that we're talking about a logo. It, you know, maybe the Valley Green Alliance needs a logo at somehow blends with Valley Green Energy and so by I think a logo definitely somehow without getting confusing. Okay. So we can definitely develop a logo for the Valley Green Energy program. And if the Valley Green, if you start to work on the Valley Green Alliance logo and need them to play well together also doable or if you develop the program logo first there's new develop the Alliance logo second. You know whoever develops that they can play well together. I think graphic designers can handle those kinds of challenges in a pretty straightforward way. That's, that's great. We can help you do it. And I think that's pretty much all you need to hear on that point. Excellent. So the next question we had is the program options and this year. I'm sure familiar with this general concept to choose many aggregation programs, all aggregations have what's called the standard product which is what customers become part of unless they choose something else. And then many aggregations also have optional project products, giving people different things they can choose if they want a very common structure as the standard product has some amount of additional renewable energy in it. Over and above the state requirement. And then there's an upgrade product with 100% renewable energy, and many communities also have a step down product with has just the minimum amount of renewable energy. The advantage to that is it's the lowest cost and it has a way of creating an option in the program for people who want to spend as little as they can. Everybody offers that optional basic product though. As an example, a city of Worcester doesn't so they have some additional green in their standard, they have an up to 100 but they don't offer a budget, but most, I'd say most programs have a have a budget option. That part of the plan just to complete the thought, you don't have to decide in developing your plan, how much renewable energy you would put in your standard that you can decide later after your plans approved after you go out to bed and so you see what the price of the additional renewable energy would be so you can make that decision later, but you do in the plan need to discuss the structure and say something to the effect of. If you have a product, it's going to have some extra renewables in it, we're going to decide on this some later, what some equals later, and then we're going to have a budget and then we're going to have 100% renewable so you need to need to decide the buckets, but you don't need to decide the exact composition of the standard. Adele had her hand up. Yeah, I wonder if you could clarify for us what you mean by the amount of green. Is it all about Rex, or is there some aspect of it that's about actual purchase of renewable electricity. Well so that's a good question so the way most communities maybe pretty much all at this point do it is by extra Rex and so, and that's the, that's the standard in Massachusetts and throughout New England where renewable energy content is determined by Rex. If you would like to do something different though you're able, you know you would be able to do that here, you know, as an example, what one of the communities we work with is, is looking at entering into a virtual power purchase agreement with a new renewable project and they'll be getting the output will be purchasing the output of that project you can do that. You could if you wanted you could enter a bundled contract for electricity and Rex for renewable project there are a bunch of ways you could do it. It's, if it's Rex it's the easiest thing. If it's something beyond that which is maybe where you want to go will need to just figure out how to describe that to the DPU that's kind of clear enough because to satisfy them at this point and let's say just stepping back a bit. There's an increasing tension between communities and developing and aggregation plans want to maintain the maximum amount of flexibility for their programs. And that's one push out of the push the push back is from the Department of Public Utilities, which is pushing for more specificity in those plans so we're here we have a, we'll have a dance with them about how specific to get but we'll want to start with what you want to do. So the kind of often you have the three options, how many options might a community offer and I'm thinking for us standard green 100% renewable budget option. And then you know, there's the creative special case option that we might want to add in yet to be determined. Are you need to argue with the DPU over it. Is that just getting to be too many your opinion is that just too many options confusing folks or is that a possibility. Um, I'd say two things there so if you were thinking that the options would be the same but different amounts so standard has 10% renewables, then you can choose 50% then you could choose 100% then you could choose budget. We'd probably discourage you, although we'd be happy to do what you want but we would let you know, having a 50% and 100% option probably doesn't really get you that much that distinctions are small to people and not that many people participate. But if you want something that's really different. That would be lots of fun, and I personally could see value in that although we have a challenge of course explaining it to people but you know if they're basic rec options I'd stick with the three, but if you want something really different. That would be a good case for a fourth. Okay, thanks. Chris did you have anything in mind for that just I'm just more curious. Um, so I'm going to put it out there for a lot of future discussion but the fourth would be say, you know, supporting locals, supporting local option, or greenhouse gas reduction option or, and you know the idea being that that would be tied into either local renewable energy, you know, really dreaming supporting some kind of electric vehicle charging stations or something, or was the other one I was, I don't know any kind of demand side management I'm not sure you know that that's just really being wide open and a lot of what we'd be focusing on is doing stuff local. You know, really this is not just buying wrecks outside the community this is the community trying to do something that could possibly be tied into this, and it's supported by this. Thanks, Darcy has our hand up. Yeah, I like that idea Chris. Yeah I was also thinking of the possibility of just, you know, an option focusing on the source of the electricity being local. So, you know within the within the, the joint powers entity geographic area. Thanks Darcy. Anybody else. Does Tom have his hand up Tom do you have your hand up. I have my hand up. Yes. Paula is. I'm not tracking it. What's, how old these options fair, compared to just buying dirty power and stay, you know, if they opt out. Essentially, how do these, how will these rates fair do you have any sense of it at this point. Yeah, so, I mean, typically, the, if you have a budget option which has no extra renewables. You can assume that that's going to be basically the same cost as basic service, or most communities now have a price for their budget option, which is actually less than basic service so can't promise that no guarantee that that has been the experience for most communities lately. So, I think that if I can offer a friendly amendment to your question is, how much extra would the renewables cost over and above the lowest you could pay which is probably budget within the program. So there, I'm trying to think, Kim, do you have these numbers any of these numbers at the top of your mind on what we've seen in bids lately. We may have lost Kim so. I'm here. Let me just try to pull something up quickly I don't have it on the opposite top of my head but you have something I can pull up quickly that I was just taking a look at. Yeah, so I have in one that we've looked at recently, comparing a budget option to adding say 20% additional mass class one Rex adds about 7 and a half mills to the price so less than less than a penny. And that's to the price to add 20% additional class one Rex. And that's typically what people choose to add would be what they call the Massachusetts class one. That's greener and more local than the national Windrex which would could come from Texas this would be a local renewable in New England. Thank you that's very helpful. So I have a question on talking about Rex. You know one idea Massachusetts has a lot of different kind of Rex, so they also have alternative. I forgot what they're called basically heating Rex, and they have demand reduction, no demand supply. Does anybody put those in. Do you think DPU would allow that. And how would that kind of fit into one of these, this program structure as an idea as an initial idea just kind of keep it on. Yeah, it would certainly be allowed. And we, yes, we could make it some of the other ones, just as this might probably wouldn't be your choice, but just as an example that's happened. Some communities purchase class two Rex rather than class ones class two Rex or from older renewable projects in New England so they have that they're not from the region. They're not from outside the region like the national Rex, but they're from all the projects so there's no, no benefit of helping to create new projects but yes you could, you could do that and as another example at one point Cambridge included just solar just the solar Rex for their only only additional Rex they would, they would accept so yes that would be a that would be an issue that we could that we could consider and that that would be possible. I have one more question I just wondered if the 100 renew 100% renewable option. Since it pretty much has to be Rex. Have you seen it was just using class one Rex. Yes, it's almost always that way so or most towns most towns make it all class ones. And then some get a little bit more specific than that so because class one even class one is a pretty broad category so some community say class one Rex but not including biomass Rex. And biomass counts as class one but they are there. They're also polluting so some community say let's exclude those others can specify some specify only wind and solar so only wind and solar class one that's. Thank you. Those are easy, easy, easy, easy ish things to do, you know, particular types of Rex, specifying location of Rex, not impossible but that's a little harder to do. So if we wanted to really promote local, whether it's solar thermal. Putting on solar how water systems or something like that, could a program, possibly say, you know, if you're doing this in our community, we will buy the Rex from you. And then that cost is passed on to customers to like that through a local Rex option. You could the and they're there are two pathways for buying the Rex and I'll just mention them so typically the way the Rex or purchases the supplier purchases them. And that's the best way to go when you're dealing with like normal class one Rex because these are very big purchasers of class one Rex so they're they buy a very high volumes and they get really good prices on them. But it does become very cumbersome to ask them to purchase something that's out of their normal pattern. So, if you wanted to do something much more targeted. But probably the better way will turn out to be that you would use your adder for it, and you would use your adder and then, you know, you would or we would on your behalf, making wreck purchases from specific producers at small scale. The big suppliers don't like to do that but you know you could do that we could do that and that would be the way to get these local Rex, very local Rex. And I believe the Cape Light compact does something similar so they use their adder to create a fund that they used to buy these really, really local Rex from local projects. Well, could you actually go beyond local Rex like if the standard state sponsored Rex was X amounts. For a local, local edition, just really trying to see what you know you can use this program to encourage local implementation and energy efficiency and thermal and stuff like that. Yes, no, absolutely so you could do any kind of combination there. And the only point I was trying to make there is that in so far as you're, you're making, you know, very thoughtful purchases from particular local projects which would tend to be small. No, I got that keep that separate from the purchase. No that makes sense. Yeah, yeah. You can certainly do both. I just want to clarify something that I said earlier when I was talking about price. I was referring to the supply price of the program and that it would it would add, you know, less than a penny to add 20% so say the program price was 15 cents for that basic option. It would become, in this case, the cost of Rex is you know, 7.5 mil so that would change the price to 15.75 but the cost to consumers for a month would be around depending on what the average kwh is in the towns it would be around $4 a month to the average consumer. So just wanted to make that clarification when I was talking about a penny and everything that was more the supply price and what it's going to cost consumers. Anybody else have questions or comments. Okay. All right, great. So the the next thing you'll need to decide is, in addition to what you want your options to be, you need to have names for them so that you can refer to them in the plan and then they opt out letter and elsewhere. So here are it just for your consideration, you know, examples of common naming practices, usually that it starts with the name of the program so, you know, if it's a town it would be the, you know, the Newton standard for example. Yeah. In your case we were thinking it would be VGE or could be Valley Green Energy that might be better. So that the name of the, the, the program and then something that indicates it's the standard one something that indicates it's extroverable one and something that indicates it's lower cost one. You don't need to decide these today's but you will as part of your plan you'll need to make these decisions. The next thing which is a bigger question is, I know you were interested in was, was funding and charging what's known as an operational adder. So, you know that has been approved for many plans. If you were to collect the typical amount which is one tenth of a cent per kilowatt hour. We estimate that would be about $125,000 per year for you. We estimate the actual amount will depend on, you know, kilowatts hour sales through the program, and our estimate is based on some information about what how much electricity is used by the people in the communities and then some assumptions about how many of them are on basic service and then how many of them would opt out, but ballpark it's about 125,000 a year. It's used for program related expenses so you couldn't take the $125,000 and use it to buy fire trucks for example, that's to be related to the program. Very commonly it's used to provide salary support for a staff person who works on the program. And then I looked up the Cape Light Compact who has it, the only other JPE, and they use it to cover all of their operating expenses so not just staffing but rent and legal and advertising all of the operational expenses of the JPE are paid with the adder. Those uses are pretty easy to get DPU approval for. If you want to do something more creative, for example, using it to pay for electric vehicle chargers or to buy these, you know, targeted local recs, something like that. They're going to have to make more of a case to the Department of Public Utilities it's not that they say no but when someone suggests they want to use the funds for anything beyond a staff person. They've been asking to see a lot of detail about what you plan to do. Excuse me what the budget is, etc. So we would, we would need to work that out. One of the questions was is there any, like anything new from the DPU on this point. And unfortunately the answer is no most. Most communities have just because the DPU makes it hard to spend the adder on anything other than a staff person, most communities are just using it for staff person at this, at this point. But doesn't mean you can't push to use it for something for something else. I mean, I know because of that fact. But is this something that you have to have defined before we go to the DPU. Is there any way to kind of go back two years later when you want to have something new. You know what level of flexibility is there in this you really have to plan it out in detail in advance. Yes. I have a question so there are two possible pathways here so one pathway would be in the plan you file, say, we want to use the, the, the, the adder for XY and Z but make the language pretty general. If you do that. Six months or so later, you're going to get some questions from the DPU and they're going to say, tell us more exactly about how you're planning to use that adder money. And if you satisfy them at that stage, they'll let you use it for the other things. And if you don't satisfy them, they'll just approve the staff person. So one path is file something general but broad and then use the, the within the approval process. Add more definition and that gives you like six more months to figure it out. And then finally, you can file it with a limited authorization. Then you can add to it, but so far the DPU saying you need to amend your plan and amending the plan means filing a whole new plant so that's not that it's a ton of work but it's it goes to the be back to the beginning of the DPU review process so that's probably another year plus to get that approval in place. Yes, I directly answered your question that's what I would have said yes not a lot. Darcy has her hand up. Just wondering if it would be possible to ask for a larger adder. Yes, it would be possible. And you just have to justify it so you're going to get pushback on it. If you asked for more than the 10th of a cent. The pushback is going to be, tell us how you're going to use that money. And if you can make a good case for how you're going to use it, you should be okay. What, what, what the DPU has really resisted as people who are asking for money without a clear plan for how they're going to use it. You know, when it's when it's a small community and we're talking about 50 grand and the town says we're going to use it to fund a portion of a salary. That seems reasonable DPU just accepts that. But when in the case of the city of Boston, for example, that was asking that 10th of a cent but a 10th of a cent for Boston, you know it's more like a million bucks and 50,000 bucks. And the DPU said how you're going to spend this money and they said well we're going to have a staff person, and the DPU said well stat you're not paying anybody a million dollars so we're not going to let you collect the 10th of a cent we're going to collect up 200s of a cent or something so you can ask for more, you just have to show what you would spend, spend it on they, they don't want communities to get big funds here without without clarity about how those funds would be used. But is the criteria that they are using to decide in their regulations or is it just past practice or what, what is it based on. It isn't really, it may not really based on anything so so far, because they haven't approved anything other than the staff person lately. I don't know really what it's based on, you know the core of it is that it has to be program related, and that is a matter of state law because it's a, this is what's called the program fee and so program fees have to be spent on the program and that's a settled principle. But the DPU when they look at this they say well yeah we're going to look at a bunch of other stuff too but there's no, there's no clarity on what that means or what criteria they would apply. This is the first plan where they approve something creative, then we'll know, but they'll be they'll be figuring it out with us. Get two more questions. Instead of a staff person, do they ever let you use money to hire a third party contractor. It hasn't been presented that way but I couldn't. I don't think they would object. We would just need to explain how that, how what that contractor would do is different from what we do because we get paid through a contract that are in the plan so they'll say they'll just say well what's the difference you know you guys have mass bar choice. What are they doing, what would this other person be but if we can describe it as something different, which it would be of course that that should be okay I don't think this there's magic to it being an employee versus not an employee. Okay, the reason I'm asking is, you know, thought, my mind is something to use this for would be wonderful would be to actually contract with a third party to do strong promotional outreach on energy related stuff. All together, it could be helping landlords switch over to electrify their heating systems. So that's kind of like another local idea, somehow funding some kind of outreach strong outreach and education program and hand holding that enhances a massive program doesn't supplement it. That kind of thing. Hey Paul. This is Sam here I recall you mentioning that you guys are working with an aggregation program or communities seeking DPU approval for its aggregation program to collect an operational adder to use for energy efficiency related activities, which I believe you said was a novel and I'm just wondering if that's accurate and what the status is of that request. Yes, so it. That that has changed over time. So the city of Worcester wanted to use their adder to support energy efficiency initiatives which they wanted to be, you know, supplemental to massive not contradictory in any way or conflicting. And then their original plan as we filed that so that's probably the status where we discussed this the most. Worcester got a lot of pushback, both from DPU staff and National Grid about it. National Grid was afraid it was going to conflict with their programs. And it didn't seem to be ultimately an unsolvable issue, but it was made very clear to Worcester that if they wanted their plan proved approved anytime soon, they should withdraw this energy efficiency idea because it would be a long fight. So they did that in the interest of getting the plan approved. It's still their intention to go back with a plan amendment to add that because it does seem like a very good thing to do and conceptually it's quite consistent with what Chris just outlined which is let's do something that enhances mass save through the program. So it was always their intent, but they, they had to abandon it temporarily in the interest of getting a plan approved fast. Got it. Thank you. Other questions. Okay. Mr can move on. So the next, the next area to discuss is outreach and education. Marlena, would you like to take over from here. And then I'll try to, I'll try to, I guess, keep this kind of brief because I know we've been running long. So this is all about that out, excuse me education and outreach plan, which is a supplementary document that gets presented to the public and filed with the DPU along with the aggregation plan. And the document has to address all the phases of outreach which are here on the slide so that means, and it's what we showed you in the timeline set means everything. The planning and regulatory approval phase, including the public presentation of the plan, then the program launch outreach which is more intense period right before launch at the DPU has stronger opinions about. And then whatever you plan to do after launch and there are some DPU requirements around things that you have to say and do after launch. So this is, this is what we would document in the outreach and education plan that I referenced before and you would create a template document for you that would say this text is required by the DPU. Here's what you need to fill in this part's required here's what you need to fill in to make it easy. So that's, that's one of the early next steps that I would pursue with you. Any questions here. Adele. I did question, because it involves how to explain the program and, and I see electric city bill mentioned a number of times. Let's just say, and, you know, we want to consider some novel way of funding, some of what we want to do. Which might not be on the electricity bill. Is there, is there any way to include such a mechanism under an aggregation plan that does not involve the electricity bill. Do you mean as a funding source. Yes, as a, as a to pay for other programs, program related expenses. That would go beyond what normally is included for you know we've mentioned a bunch of them already today. But let's just say that we wanted to use some other mechanism besides the electricity bill. Yes, so you could do that and the great opportunity that would open for you is that if you're not looking to fund it through this ad or collected through the electricity bill. It's no longer part of the aggregation program, technically as far as the DPU is concerned. So you're free to do whatever you want. You don't have to deal with deep you only have to deal with DPU oversight in within the four corners of the aggregation plan so other funding sources bring with them much more freedom. Gotcha, thank you. We pop on to the next one. So, I recall one of the questions was you all were interested in knowing what kind of support we provide for outreach and education. So I already mentioned logo development we're happy to do that for you we also will help you draft announcements and media releases. Build and manage the program website there's a lot of requirements around the content of that website from a regulatory perspective that have to be kept up to date. And then just generally a lot of information so we do that all for you. We design and cover the cost of printing and fabricating materials, including electronic materials like social media graphics. We also create deliver presentations we cover translations and interpreting yard signs aren't on there but we'll do that too. So, pretty much, we cover the outreach around the program would be the summary statement I would I would offer there for you. And I just gave you some pretty pictures on the right so you can see some of the kinds of things we've done, but we would obviously create something special for you guys. And would with the website be a joint website that each municipality would then somehow linked to on their own municipal websites or how would that work. Well, I mean I guess that's a decision for you guys but I think that would make the most sense to the public rather than maybe having three different websites with similar names. And I think from a regulatory perspective if you have a single program that you're launching having a single website is fine. But you're quite right that each community would need to link over to it in fact that's a regulatory requirement that municipal websites have to maintain a prominent link to the aggregation website at all times. Prior to the launch during launch and in perpetuity after launch, but I think we could create the single one if that works for you guys, and I think it would be easier to manage speaking it from the perspective of the team that would be likely managing the content. Personally, I think we would want consistency. And that would be the easiest way to ensure that we have that. Yes, I think that's right and I'll just add I think from a regulatory perspective from a DPU perspective, it's one program it's not three programs so they would want one, they would want one website for the three with links to the individual community websites. All right, then just moving along then the other thing we talked a little bit about this before and this would be an area for a lot more discussion. The, you know, the chance to do new initiatives through the program. Key things are whether these new initiatives are technically part of the aggregation program, in which case they have to be in the plan and the DPU is going to regulate them, or whether maybe they're related but not part of the technically part of the aggregation program in which case you have a lot more flexibility. So that's one issue to discuss. And then there's also timing, you know, similar to points Chris made earlier. What do you want to put in the plan initially to get that approved and then, you know, the things that you might want to add later and deciding whether to include something new early which might slow things down a little bit versus adding that new thing later after the plan is up and going but then there's a, you know, there delays in getting that new initiative approved later through an amended plan. So these are the sorts of issues we need to discuss but this is, you know, a great big, a great big topic here the new initiatives. I just want to kind of put a question out there kind of the other way instead of kind of proposing something I want to do is, I want to put out something I want to, I hope to accomplish here. So, you know, my position is got is defined at working in all city sectors that means business residential. I almost work 100%, probably 95%, 98% on city facilities because I just don't have enough time to do a public facing outreach. And I think that Stephanie could probably say the same thing. I would love it if whether it's the JPA, I'm sorry, whether it's Valley Green Energy and or Valley Green Alliance, that it provides some kind of a way of doing a public, you know, public outreaching program so we're really engaged in the community. So I just keep that in mind, you know, how might that fit in here how might that be accomplished. Well, like, if I'm understanding, Chris, I'd say that, you know, this is a, the program like this is, is like ideally suited for touching the community that's what it does well, particularly residents that's, that's what's great about these programs and for, you know, many communities. In our experience struggle with just the issues that you mentioned that the community wants to pursue sustainability with regard to the municipal facilities they've got, they've got levers they've got ways to do that, but it's much harder to influence the residents, from a time perspective and because it, it, you don't control what the residents do a program like this is designed exactly for the rest. So it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a way to address that, that part of the city. That's great I will concur with Chris that that's been our challenge here too and one of the things we struggle with even with our energy committee. So we reach the residents the thing that I said right from the, you know, the get go is, you know, we have plenty control on municipal facilities, but the largest contributor to our greenhouse gas emissions is not the municipal sector which is only like 3%. You know, it's really the residential is one of our biggest blocks. So, you know, I agree and I do see the opportunity here I think it's great. So, thank you. Thank you for your question. I'm, I'm having trouble understanding this last point, because previously, it sounded like Worcester for example really wanted to do more outreach to say residents. But math, but DPU is pushing back on that idea. So, can you clarify what we're talking about now that's different from what Worcester was trying to do. Good question so the issue that Worcester ran into was they said they wanted to use, they wanted to run an energy efficiency program for the residents using money collected through the aggregation. And the pushback they got what from both the DPU and national grid was, well, we have the mass safe programs that are funded by ratepayers in other ways. We don't want you to do something that conflicts with what, what the mass saved programs are doing. And Worcester's responses well of course we're not going to conflict with massive that would be stupid we want to create more not less, but the DPU and national grid said well you got to prove that to us and we're going to we're going to make that a rigorous thing for you to prove that so the the, the, the issue with, with Worcester was particularly focus on energy efficiency, where the mass saved programs exist and concerns about conflict if those. So if, if this pays for a staff person, and that staff person. Also, does something like runs a solarized program. That's, I mean, could that something like that be possible. So in an ideal world what you would pay is the percentage of the person's personnel costs that were related to the work on this program, not the solarized program. If you don't act as no one digs into that, you know, down to the penny but that's, that's the principle and so most communities that do it. If the program aggregation program doesn't require a full staff person will pay a portion of that person's cost. Sorry, everybody if I'm taking up one more time here but if we, if we went to the DPU already with an identified fund to help some kind of a source to supplement a staff person, knowing that that supplemental money would be used to do broader public outreach. Do you think DPU would be more likely to approve stuff. How that affected me in saying, are you asking, let's say a staff person costs $100,000 just for a round number let's say you go and say if you want 50 grand through the aggregation plan and we've already got the other 50 somewhere else. Right, I'm thinking, you know that case the money would be coming in from the Valley Green Alliance. So it would be, you know, basically one staff person is kind of working on both, or maybe one and a half staff or two staff people. And the aggregation, the other one is working on more broad or part of it is working more broadly but they're really one person. Yeah. I think that would be fine although that the DPU hasn't asked for that so far so they haven't, they've only looked at how much aggregation money is going to the staff person, they haven't asked, how are you funding the rest of that person. That actually sounds like a better way to go. So, we don't have to necessarily, so I'm just trying to be clear about this. So, if we had someone who is, you know, supported by the aggregation adder who was doing some additional work. We wouldn't necessarily have to have that specifically spelled out or we do have to, I guess, I'm still a little unclear. Yes. What, what you need to do is to say what you would do with the aggregation money. You don't need to say what else you're doing. You can just say, we want just round numbers $50,000 and that portion of the cost person is going to work on the program. Period. The DPU doesn't need to know how you're funding the rest of that first time, or whether you're funding the rest of that person's time it might be a part of time position and so you could be anything the DPU doesn't care for the person's working for free a million dollars, but they don't they're not worried about that they're only worried about their little world. They're really worried about that world, but they don't worry about what happens outside their world so you just need to say what you would do and what you would spend the money on. Okay. It sounds like once you've got a reasonable amount of spend on staff, then it's pretty flexible at that point. DPU kind of says staff person for this okay good. Yeah they're not going to challenge you on the fringe rate or the health insurance or anything like that. I was a little surprised I mean I don't think I, and maybe we were told this before when we spoke with folks from Cape like compact but I didn't realize we could use the adder for rent and, you know, other supplemental costs, like insurance and that kind of thing I didn't, I don't realize that I thought we were feeling like we'd have to come up with some of that too but I so I'm thinking that if, if this person, if, you know is sort of housed for lack of a better word in the JPE. They're working in the JPE but they're doing this work in the JPE so the rent for the JPE could essentially be covered by that adder. Is that correct. I mean the work for the aggregation. It's to the point that you just made that they're not they're just asking, how's that money being spent but not specifically what portion of it is for the JPE. Is that correct. Yes, that's, that's how I understand it I mean the Cape, and we'll really should I think it would be prudent to dig into more with the Cape and I'm sure they, they'd share information with us but this is how I understand that it works and it's consistent with the file with the DPU so they say we're using it for administrative costs and they actually submit a cost schedule which has, you know, travel, a thousand dollars you know everything from staff to legal down to travel and little things all broken out in there so what, what, I guess what I don't know I guess what we'd have to do that is let's say the JPE did four things one of which was the aggregation. You know they probably in an ideal world would want the aggregation paying a portion of the rent a portion of legal fees a portion of other things we might want to have a little do a little analysis of that with them. So they'd still expect the JPE to be contributing to a portion of that like they all of the rent couldn't be covered by the aggregation. The JPE did other things. I don't think so, but there's, we'd have to feel it out it isn't there aren't announced rules on this. All we know is, you know, what the Cape Light Compact does and what's been approved and, but we could have a conversation with the DPU or we could certainly have a conversation with the Cape Light Compact and then, and make our best plan. Thanks. Just a quick question. Yes, absolutely. Okay thanks I just wanted to go back to the website topic for a moment, because Northampton Amherst and Palms are arm process of forming a JPE that contemplates doing more than just administering the aggregation program. We're using the Cape Light Compact as an example where the compact does multiple things including its aggregation program and so on its website. The aggregation program is nested within the broader JPE website I'm wondering what your thoughts are on how, you know, we would address our, you know, related sort of website issues. I mean, you know, the RJPE is not yet formed. And I don't, the communities have determined the specifics of what it would do beyond aggregation or the timeline so I think that's probably why nobody has any specifics right now in terms of how they'd want to see those things integrate but that seems like that's an inevitable question that needs to be addressed at some point. Yes, I mean I'd say that's something we should, we should think about that I don't think we had thought about that either so. Another meeting another discussion. Yeah, I would think that we would want Valley Green Alliance to be launched at the same time as Valley Green Energy with the Valley Green Energy as a program of Valley Green Alliance, maybe the only program be really nice to have one other program to go along with it. I'll make a note for us to come back to that. And then, I think the last thing we had which we don't need to spend any time on today is, there will need to be legal counsel review of this supply contract. Hopefully that will be pro forma because it's a model agreement and there's a very big advantages to using the model agreement, which means that the approach legal county encourage legal counsel to take as review it. There's nothing in there that gives you, you think it's a huge issue, but don't come back to us with 100 little, you know, line edits and that's because then you're not in the model agreement anymore and once you're not in the model agreement, it becomes a much bigger deal trying to get the suppliers to work with you because from their perspective it's way more efficient if all the towns are using the same contract so that can be a conversation for another day we don't need to deal with it now but that's, that's the issue there is a big advantage to using the model and the challenge to give any contract to any lawyer, they can think of 100 ways to make it better, but doesn't make it better if it takes you out of the model. And then I think our last thing was just was just next steps and how we how we work from here. We do meet every two weeks. So, I'm, and I'm sort of putting this up to the group and I know Tom already had to leave, but I'm just envisioning that we're going to be putting you on our agenda for each meeting going forward for covering at least one or more topics. I guess we would say what is the next thing you see as us needing to do with you. So what are the you know what's the next big decision that we need to make and we could just put that on our agenda in two weeks. Marlene would you think it's the outreach plan would that be the thing to focus on first. So, yes, going back to kind of what our big next milestone is it's the presentation of this array of documents aggregation plan education outreach plan the mailing materials in the draft contract to the public that's kind of the milestone we're working with. The aggregation plan and the contract are kind of what they are the aggregation plan has room for some input but a lot of it is pretty structured and once you work through some of these discussions. These topics that we've just gone through the format of the document is kind of set the education outreach plan though is something that does require, I think, a bit more back and forth time investment so I would imagine we might start as I mentioned before, I would give you a draft document like a template document that's heavily annotated to say this language is required, this is where we need some input and it would give you is also just kind of a sense of the structure and what are the different chunks of time like what are the different parts of this process when when might we do outreach and what might it include. So what we could think about doing is having that available for you. That's not something I think that we would necessarily talk through constructively as a group, although perhaps it is. It's something you might want to digest for a bit and have some side conversations and figure out how how we want to tackle it, but given that it's a document and you know, you have to fill it in and write it. What I could do is we could try to have that available for you in the next two weeks. Maybe shortly before the meeting and we could talk through it, and then you kind of take it away and you know those of you that want to actually manipulate the document could do it. If that would make sense and once, once we get some of those other discussions, like conversations like around program name and things that'll then I can also go ahead and draft the letter that's the other thing that really inspires conversation the automatic enrollment notification letter which the DPU calls the opt out letter. It's, it's not something where the town has or towns have a lot of flexibility and what they can say but there are some pieces that you can have some flexibility with but you just you need to see it you need to kind of get comfortable with the animal that it is. Even the regulators help write anything it's, you know, it's not poetry so it's good to adjust adjust yourself to that early so we'll send you a draft of that but I would start with the, I would start with the aggregation plan, and as that goes, we get feedback from that then I think the next step would be to turn to the letter, and along the way I think we might be having some of these other conversations on the topics that we discussed today and then we can use those to inform the aggregation plan itself. So I would imagine kind of that order that's roughly the order we're following with other communities so it might work for you guys and then I think the contract piece that follows its own path with town town's Council approval and review and approval. Does that sound right Paul. Yes. So I think I think for the next meeting would be, let's let's talk about the outreach and education plan and figure out how to tackle that. And I think maybe a good goal would be to send it to you shortly before the meeting so you can see it. And then we can kind of figure out from there, what's how to use the meeting. Sounds good. Okay. Chris has a question. I think another thing that's going to be should be earlier than later is us deciding what kind of offerings we want to offer. You know the, we needed to find that because that's going to have to for trying to be creative we're going to have to have some good arguments for whatever we want to do. We certainly tackle different things in a meeting so we don't have to only focus on the outreach and education plan and then once that's done, move to discussing with the program offerings are we can, we can multitask. No, starting with that education out of plan sounds makes sense to me, but I think internally we're going to have to start talking about the offerings, for sure. We're going to talk about the web presence. Just of our initial, you know, we have a, we sort of have our working group page, which is just about finding the materials for these meetings minutes, you know, it's a place for the public to go just to find us. And I don't know how that will interact with the Valley Green Energy page because that's obviously going to be something separate. I mean maybe it just links to it. I don't know if we have that discussion as well. Is there any other. I mean, our typically our meetings are an hour we can make them longer if we need to, although I feel like typically even if we make them longer we lose people. So, does an hour seem sufficient or do you think we need to do an hour and a half, what would make sense in your experience, especially because you are working with three communities. I mean, I'll say I don't know if others on our team have a different experience. I think what we want is that the time that works for you and if it's an hour is what you know your full group can give. Let's use an hour we can meet today we covered a whole lot, you know, big broad overview stuff will be more targeted and what we try to accomplish how to set up the meetings for things we can do in an hour. And keep that makes that's most comfortable for keeping the team together. I would be inclined to do that. Okay. Chris, can you send us your slides. I need, I need them to post them because I just legally have to. Okay, so they'll be part of the minutes. They'll be part of it. Yeah, they'll be yes they'll be accessible on the site on the web page or working with page. It'll be part I'll be actually putting them in the meeting packet Chris. That's when you'll find them the meeting packet materials for this meeting. Anything else. Thank you all so much. It's really exciting to be moving forward with this and I know we've waited a long time so thank you for your patience thank you for putting that presentation together I think that really helped other any outstanding questions. I think the members had that they didn't feel got addressed that you know here's now's your opportunity. Great. Okay, then I'm next. Oh, go ahead. You have one question and I because I was really interested to hear about the, the Senate budget item that you mentioned that would, you know, prevent DPU from taking longer than six months. Something that we should be advocating or do you know if there's any organized effort to advocate around that. I know that some towns advocated for it. I think we're probably in the process so I think they're probably far along in the process now that there's probably no further opportunity for advocacy. I think that's interesting just where we are there kind of tying up the details on that. If it ends up in the joint House Senate budget. Then there might be an opportunity for advocacy with the governor because the budget will go to the governor and the governor would have an opportunity to detail that provision if you want it so. Probably too late for the legislature but if the legislature's budget has it in the final budget then, then there'd be a chance to talk to the government. Governor. Now, I'm, but I'm not saying it's bad to advocate for it either. My guess is it's too late but I don't really know about the budget committee budget negotiations as known as the conference committee it's very much black box so you don't really know what they're doing and it's like selecting a pope you know you don't know what's going on until the smoke comes up at the end so I can if I can send if it's helpful I can send Stephanie a reference to the budget provision, and then you guys can decide, you know, whether you want to take a further step. Yeah, that would be great. Thanks. Great. Thank you. All right then our next meeting will be July 22 at 10am. Thank you all so so much. Thank you. Take care. Thank you everybody. Bye all. Thank you. Bye bye.