 to order and it is being recorded. Good enough. Great. Welcome everyone. So looking at our agenda for today, we will be starting with a review of the minutes from our 7120 meeting. And you need to assign somebody to do the minutes. Yes. So that was Sarah, correct? All right. So who's next on them? All right. Now I've got all the Rs here. Um, there's a lot of us. Yeah. I think Ashwin, your next alphabetically, would you be able to take minutes today? Hmm. I would be happy to, but I may have to be ducking out and in a couple of times during the next couple of hours. But I think I can give it a shot. Or we can have Steve or Andra. One thing I could do is if I could start a Google doc and share it, I can take notes as I can. And if I do have to duck out and someone else can tag team up with me, is that workable? Yeah, it looks like Andra is saying yes. So maybe you and Andra could do that together. So that's all good. Okay. I'll email you the Google doc right now. I think we're going to have to do it next time. I'm really tired. I might not be so good. Well then two is better than one. I think. And we'll move to, to Steve next time. Um, All right. Great. Thank you both. So we will look at the minutes. Um, Stephanie, do you want to pull those up or do folks have them open? They just leave them. You can do both. Okay. So are you seeing the minutes? Or. I can never tell what you can see in. I can see. Yes. We're seeing the minute. Okay. Near the topic under public comment. About Andrew Glace. I don't know if a word was left out. He expressed semi colon. He is pleased to be sitting on the meeting and is here to listen. Just get rid of the, he expressed semi colon and start that sentence with he is pleased. That's pretty trivial. But it looks like something is missing. Otherwise. Oh. I'll just make a note of it. Anybody have any other comments or are we ready to. Have someone. Motion. I moved to accept the minutes. Okay. You need a roll call vote. I'm just going to do it in order of my screen. Drucker. Yes. Do not. I'm staying because I didn't really get to read them. Very fast. Okay. Breaker. Yes. Yes. Rose. Yes. Der. Yes. Yes. Okay. Great. And it's approved. Great. So I don't see any public here. Stephanie is that. No public. Accurate. Okay. So then let's move on to staff updates. So I was just saying that the. The MVP action grant reimbursement. Request was. This being submitted. Been working on it all day. And that will get submitted. And then. That'll allow us to sort of move on. Freely into our next phase, which. It's kind of exciting to kind of at least wrap up first phase up. And sort of looking at what we've done and summarizing everything. It's been, it's been. A great process so far. I mean, I just. I'll share it, you know, when, when I am. I'm completed with it, but it's been a really great process. And I think. You know, we've done quite a lot of things. Even though it seems like we're just getting to the. The really exciting part of working with the task groups. There's been a lot of work done. So I think you should all feel really. I mean, in my perspective, I hope you all feel good about what you've done so far. And excited about this next phase. It's good question about that, Stephanie. Yep. Well, I don't totally understand what the upcoming grant is for. It's not. It's just that there are two phases. It's the grant was broken up into two phases. So it was portioned out. We got a hundred thousand dollars, but. Some of it was for a phase one, which is. It was tied to the fiscal year. So we had to complete the next phase. So. So we got a hundred thousand dollars. And we got a hundred thousand dollars. And some of it was for a phase one, which is. It was tied to the fiscal year. So we had to complete certain tasks. By June 30th, which we did. Thank you. And for really being on top of that. And. And then the next phase phase two is just the larger share. Of the funding will enable us to sort of move forward. With the, with the task group work and actually starting to move forward. So that's the same grant broken out in phases. That's all. We just really squeaked, you know, by. You know, June 30th was our cutoff and we managed to actually submit invoices and complete tasks on the 30th, which was. Pretty impressive. Okay. Anything else, Stephanie? I'm, yeah, I mean, there's probably much more I could say, but right now I'm sorry. I am just a little overdone with grant reporting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No problem. Um, any updates beyond what's on the agenda for today? Yeah, Darcy. Well, we had talked about. Reporting to the town council. So I guess that is. In process of. Figuring out whether we can report. To the town council. Hasn't really been brought up with the council president yet. And whether we should get a, like a 10 minute presentation sometime in the near future. Yeah, thanks for that. So I, um, After you email about that, I reached out to Stephanie. And so Stephanie is going to get on the agenda for a 10 minute presentation. And I think that's, um, I think that the MVP work kind of has it relates to our. And you can't as well, but from, from, I think the perspective of the MVP. And then I don't know Darcy. Is that something that you would do to get on the regular agenda for an EECAC update? Or do I need to email Lynn about that? I can do it. I can attempt. That's never been one of the regular reports that committees would have. I can do it. I can do it. To get it on there. Yes. Okay. Why don't you do that? And if, if that doesn't work for some reason, if they, if she says no, then we can sort of reassess. Okay. Sure. Excuse me. And just to be clear, um, I'll probably check in with the town manager. Just to make sure I just need to run it by him and make sure that, you know, I don't need to do this. No, we're good. Okay. Great. So I will turn over to Lee. Linane and to introduce. Niche engineering. Fantastic. Everybody. Nice to see everybody again. So, um, as part of sort of the initial conception of the. Climate action adaptation planning. Pardon the fact that I live in a very busy corner and it gets a lot of work in a busy corner. Um, Uh, the, uh, We invited a niche engineering and specifically Isabel Cowish into, uh, our team, uh, to bring expertise around, uh, infrastructure planning, uh, stormwater systems, uh, other other types of infrastructure of which they do a lot of work around municipalities. Uh, and I believe some in, in, uh, Amherst as well. Uh, and, uh, to be part of, uh, the sort of resource team for, uh, developing the plan. So we want to just take this opportunity for Isabel to introduce herself to introduce niche and to talk a little bit about sort of what they're learning and, uh, and, uh, some ideas about where we might go. And Isabel, I'm sure you have a particular perspective on what you're going to say, uh, which is great. Um, so I will turn it over. Well, wait, before I do that, I'd just like to note, uh, Um, I have worked with Isabel, uh, and niche in a number of different ways over the years, uh, in a lot of different things that, uh, that we have done and in different projects, uh, probably the last time Isabel and I worked together was a project that she was running for the town of Nahant to run their MVP process, uh, which was quite interesting. Um, so anyway, we have a relatively long, uh, um, history together, working in different ways. Uh, and that was why I thought there would be a good addition to this process. Isabel. Thank you, Jim. Um, and thank you all for inviting me to join you today on your call. My name is Isabel Cowish was niche engineering until a year ago. I ran my own consulting firm, Clarenon Hill. And, um, so I wear, I'm a planner. I'm an urban and environmental planner. And at niche engineering, I feel that is a good role like to, to bring the, the more holistic and larger picture to a sometimes smaller engineering perspective. And so far the, um, the interaction with the engineering team has, has gone very well. And, um, yeah. So a little bit of background or about niche engineering. Um, so we are, uh, an engineer firm that focuses on serving, uh, transportation, planning, civil engineering and structural work in addition to the planning that we're providing. And, um, so as such, we, we kind of like no municipal projects from various angles and perspectives. And, um, uh, so we, we look at infrastructure both very holistically. So from the planner side, we bring that more holistic envisioning aspect to things. Um, so when we look at projects, so I would say what we're doing right now as to identifying opportunities and strategies, um, for your town is more like the holistic planning perspective. And then working with all my colleagues, um, who are like very, they can, they can drill down. So to say, like into, into the soil and to the pipes, and they really understand how to fit things in and how they work. And, um, on, on that, on the order or type infrastructure, um, aspect. And, um, so we find that this, um, this approach coming, coming from like a broader perspective and then thinking through projects, how they would apply to specific locations. And it's not just stormwater infrastructure. Um, what Jim mentioned, but it's also it pertains to transportation planning. It pertains to overall, um, aspects. Um, so we find that we can by bringing those expertise, we can identify solutions that work very well for particular aspects. And so typically we are brought on. So we have a lot of municipal working relationships. I don't have the numbers on at the top of my head, but I think we have like 82. Or we work with a lot of towns, so probably half of Massachusetts. And we work very well with the, um, in the engineering departments and also the planning departments. And, um, we are brought on to like installed solutions. Um, and so one project that Jim mentioned was in the town of. Well, Sam, um, just nearby, um, where we had like a similar role, um, to what I would envision might come out here. So not, not taking, yeah, just leave it at that. So, and in North Hampton, we, um, work together with another, uh, engineering planning slash firm and, uh, we were brought on to assist with the visioning, um, aspect and then identify solutions like around town, like where those could be implemented. And so we, we had an approach of, so how would we address, um, stormwater issues, flooding issues around town and what could be done about those and, um, and so then we were tasked with developing the strategies and the solutions for that. And so as you know, or, um, as Jim and Lauren may have mentioned, so. The, the task we are targeted with, um, or your town for Amherst is, um, like looking at the, both the stormwater infrastructure at the water system overall at the wastewater system, the drain system, the transportation sector. And also at procurement. So it's, it's kind of like a good mix. And we feel like there might be some value at it. And I don't know like where these discussions are going, but I, I heard that they're, they're like particular target areas that where it would be beneficial to have us like bring our lens on the, the understanding and how things work on. So we're, we're flexible. We're looking forward to, uh, working with you and hearing your ideas, um, like for, for the most part as well, because we, we have a good understanding. We read the MVP reports. We read like all the good strategies that your committee already identified. So, uh, cuteness to that. So to all the 35 or 40 different strategies that were listed on transportation, um, planning and, um, stormwater infrastructure and all of that. So I think, uh, from the perspective, um, where I'm coming from as an MVP provider, working with a lot of towns, um, I think it will be beneficial to get into brainstorming and identifying like what are the kind of like top five award strategies that you all agree on and where you think this is really worthwhile putting forward and how can that be done. And then again, like niche with our, um, more ground proof strategy and approach, we can help you like identify where we could identify, where we could work those strategies, so to say. And, um, yeah. So how we will participate in a project moving forward is, um, from what we had discussed with Jim and Lauren so far as we will be participating in, in one of your, um, in one of the next, um, committee, um, meetings and we would envision this to be like, um, more like a listening or an active listening session for us. So where we would prepare some questions and ask you about like your concerns and your ideas and your strategies where you think this might work. And, um, then in a, in a second meeting, we, we would be hoping to like come up with some strategies based on what we hear, um, that we would want to suggest to you moving forward. So I know this, this was a lot and we were just getting to, to know each other, but so this, this has been like my, um, take away from the interactions I had so far on the project. And, uh, Stephanie and I, we also had a, a meeting with Gil Ford last week. So we're, we're in the process of meeting with the important stakeholders. And, um, so we're definitely looking forward to, to working with you all. And, um, looking forward to receiving all the, um, the comments or questions or whatever you have for us so we can, uh, provide you with our services as best as possible. Um, Isabel, can you talk briefly about the, uh, the green infrastructure project in North Hampton? Not, you know, I have to talk in depth about it, but just sort of what was the goal of the project? Kind of what role did, did niche end up playing? Uh, I mean, just as a little side note, a Linane was also involved in that project, uh, around community engagement for it, which was a very small part of the project. Um, yeah. So, um, I wasn't running that project so that it was before my time. Um, but my colleague, Jen was also on this call. So Stephanie, you met Jen. And I'll call the skill for it last week. Um, so niche, niche role on that project was to, uh, work with the, with the committee essentially to look at, um, um, highly flooded areas around town and there were like 10 sites that have been identified by the town. Um, as being like critical, um, from various, um, perspectives, but, but mostly because they were like kind of frequented or, um, there was like a lot of rainwater that came down. So they, they had like, um, um, yeah, they were an area of concern. And so for these 10 sites, um, it was then decided that niche would kind of like run in analysis and look at, um, the percentage of, uh, service service and like what those sites could take on or are taking on like currently and what the opportunity is for improvement where, so what could be done in order to make those sites flood less. And, um, yeah, so this is one thing we do, like on a daily basis, like we do a lot of modeling and we run calculations for areas and we know like what a particular area can take on as to, as to stormwater and what it can store and what then, what not can be stored results and runoff. And so that's, um, obviously a combination of particular factors, including the soil type and including the amount of impervious surface and, um, yeah, the amount of rain, like if it's a, just a light rain or if it's like a real storm event that, uh, floods out, um, like within a couple of minutes, um, areas and as, as we know with climate change where we're, we're seeing increasing rainstorm events, there's a lot of rainstorm events, but from there, it's higher frequency and also higher intensity rain events. And so we have like models that, um, are geared towards like analyzing all these sectors. So it's essentially, we can play around with the amount of rainfall that is received for a particular area. of likelihood in the future. And that's one example of how we assess the risk of a particular area and how that could be improved. And then for the improvement, again, we play with a couple of factors, such as, OK, what could happen if we would install a particular re-infrastructure measure, for example. And it could be re-infrastructure measures like a white term. So it could be a bias whale. And from Stephanie, I know that you're already doing or you already have re-infrastructure installed around town. But maybe there are particular other areas where improvements would happen down the road. And so there would be an added benefit of adding re-infrastructure. And so just to give you some more examples, so bias whales are a typical re-infrastructure measure where at a street corner, you would open up the area. And you could install storm drains. And those can be installed practically anywhere. And if the soil is not the right condition, we can make it right. So meaning its re-infrastructure is not always just green, but it can also be hybrid. And so for example, if it's like a very dense area, you would add additional means just to get your water detention water storage. And I don't want to go into too much detail here, not to get too technical, but just delivering the message that there is no site where you can't achieve more. So you can make it happen and if it's a combination of green and hybrid and gray infrastructure in place, that's great. If the desire is to just upgrade the gray infrastructure, that also can be done. Yeah, and so where was going with this? So in Northampton, essentially that was the approach. So we looked at the sites at the 10 sites and we based on the conditions at the sites and interactions with stakeholders such as yourselves and just listening to what would have the best co-benefits and would work well for the budget and for all kind of particular reasons. We narrowed it down to three priority sites that were particularly well-regarded because of their location. And then we did conceptual designs and designs that then led into the construction of those majors in Northampton. And since then, the airstorm water flooding conditions have been improving overall and added to... So one site, for example, was like an environmental justice area so where an additional co-benefit was gained by just adding more green space. And I mean, the opportunities are wide because you can also add like park benches and oftentimes like another great example we've worked on is the water program in DC. It's called Street Kennedy Project or Water DC Project. And that's like we work with a landscape architect firm and that project addressed 33 best management practices and those are best management practices are essentially like different types of green infrastructure. And it was just a regular street, highly pervious, but we were able to fit in like a lot of techniques, a lot of additional like complete streets combined with green streets. And then we fit in educational measures, we fit in art techniques. So it's phenomenal. So I can, if that's of interest, I can send you some information material. But so there's a wide variety of how far you wanna take it and what's the purpose. And No Town is similar to the other one. We're very well aware of that. So this is why our approach is typically, we just want to listen more to what you want to achieve and what are your interests and then we can try to make it happen and design or come up with a strategy that meets your interests. Great, thanks. Thanks, Isabel. Any questions? Yeah, Pete. Yeah, thank you, Isabel. I'm Steve Roof. I'm a professor of Earth and Environmental Science at Hampshire College. And I've been involved for quite a few years, kind of managing some of the 800 acres that we have there and working with colleagues consider soil sequestration, soil carbon sequestration. And I'm wondering if that's part of the package of experiences if you might be able to help us come up with strategies for managing our lands, both forests, farm fields and other open spaces to maximize carbon sequestration as part of our carbon mitigation plans. Yeah, totally. And this is a super exciting topic. And we just had another team call about that. And yeah, we're like looking at the land use in Amherst and like at all the area that is there, I think there's a huge potential for like tapping into those solutions because it's already there. So you have like plenty of forest area, you have very well fitted soils. So we would definitely love to investigate that topic area more. And one thing I did not bring up yet is like the big linkage between green infrastructure where people typically look at at being just an adaptation measure to climate change, because you have like green infrastructure gives you the opportunity to store and detain and filter more water to add to increased water quality, which obviously is like in everybody's interest in Amherst given that you have a lot of wells and people use it as springing water. But that's not the end of the game because due to the fact that green infrastructure can be used for like filtering the water and for absorbing more water, it also means that less water would go down the storm water pipes. And there are studies out there and we're just getting ahead really wrapped around like what that all contains, but there are definitely some good indicators like how green infrastructure can add to cost savings overall, because you would need less pumping. Yeah, you would have less water flowing through pipes overall. And not to go into too much detail here. And obviously there is also maintenance standards with engineering perspective because there also needs to be an equivalent of water flowing through those strains. Otherwise you get detrimental benefits downrode from that. So we are cognizant of that. But point being, green infrastructure addresses not just adaptation questions, but also mitigation questions for climate change because yeah, the carbon footprint is reduced overall through that. So I'd love to investigate that some more with you. Great. Great, thank you for joining and I'm looking forward to working together. Yeah, likewise. Thanks for having me join and so have a great rest of your afternoon and evening. Fantastic, Isabel, thanks a ton. All right, thank you so much. Good show. Take care. Bye Isabel, thank you again. Bye bye. Okay, great. So now we're gonna turn it over to Steve to talk a little bit about the building electrification work. That he's been involved with. And I think the intent of this discussion is just to learn a little bit more about it and then maybe discuss what we think the best role for ECAC should be. And Steve, if you have any proposals on that. Okay, thank you. I'll kind of give an update of where we are, what we've done, which is just getting started and answer any questions and then we can have that bigger conversation about how and what ECAC itself could be doing to help with this. So we have had one big group meeting a couple of weeks ago and then on last past Friday, a team meeting with the Amherst team with one of the coaches from the RMI woman who had worked with Brooklyn, I think. And the Amherst, I'm just switching here to my notes on that the Amherst meeting was nice. I was a little bit late joining, I was actually out on Cape Cod and didn't remember the meeting until somebody emailed me. Stephanie sat in, Andra was there. Chris Riddle, who has sometimes been in our meetings and then Felicia, and I forget Felicia's last name now, she's with mothers out front and Andra knows her. So this group of us plus, I'm talking the name, who's our coach there with RMI? Coral, Coral, anyways. So our meeting on Friday was a chance to kind of get the team organized, to get introduced, to discuss a few things and to plan next coming steps. So with Stephanie there, we were able to talk a little bit about the history of the existing progress in Amherst, the town council's goal of 50% carbon reduction, the zero energy bylaw, mandating zero energy town buildings, and the CCA progress, it's moving along a little bit about the Solarize Mass program, and a few other things that Amherst is a green community and a member of the New England municipal sustainability network. And then the other thing that we talked a little bit about is that Amherst is affected by the Berkshire gas moratorium. So already there's a sort of de facto ban on new gas connections with Berkshire gas. It doesn't seem that that moratorium is gonna lift anytime soon or ever, and how that might have a factor, play a role or help with the electrification process. So we're looking forward to working more together and some strategies to connect what we're already doing and have done with this electrification bylaw, which the RMI, the Rocky Mountain Institute is sort of heading or helping us achieve. Their hope is that our team would have a electrification bylaw ready to present to the authoritative voting mechanism, which in our case would be town council, by the end of 2021. Doesn't have to be passed then, but they're hoping that each of their teams in different communities will have something prepared to be presented to the community by that time span. So that's fairly soon. There's the experience from Brookline and Arlington, quite a bit of groundwork to do, quite a bit of research and then quite a bit of networking outreach and lobbying to get this sort of thing passed. In the packet was some background that had been presented by, prepared and presented by Arlington and Brookline, which I hope you've had a chance to read. There's two, they each provided some one or two page info sheets that they gave to the public. They gave to in some cases, town meeting members or town counselors and other decision makers. And then there's some other documents there. The one that's a little bit longer is the Brookline fossil fuel overview slides with some 30 slides. It goes into a little bit more detail and answers at least some of the questions that came up in terms of what the Brookline's bylaw encompassed and what it did not. Maybe I'll catch my breath there and see if anybody has any questions at this step. And I thought I might just briefly summarize the Brookline fossil fuel prohibition bylaw as a next step. But does anybody have anything to either add who's participating or questions? Bad Darcy, unmute yourself. I got some noisy people in the next yard. Trying to protect you. So I think I asked this at the last meeting but is the ordinance mostly focused on banning new gas connections or, and was there discussion of the likelihood of Joe Comerford's legislation passing that provides for a statewide zero net energy stretch code? I don't know anything about the Joe Comerford's proposal and I'm not sure if I've missed that. Stephanie or Andra could chime in if they have heard, if that was part of the discussion. The Brooklyn and I believe Arlington focused on new fossil fuel piping, either gas or oil, prohibiting in new buildings or in significant rehabs, gut rehabitations, preventing the installation of fossil fuel piping for either natural gas or oil heat. So yeah, so that sounds good. That seems like that would be an easy lift because of the fact that we already have it. Defecto seems good. Okay. I mean, just to be mentioned, sorry, but I mean oil is not delivered by pipeline. So how does the moratorium on pipelines affect oil heat? It's not on pipelines. The wording here is fossil fuel piping in the buildings. And so it's all behind the meter, behind the street, only in the building and it's, I believe, it prohibits the installation of the piping for natural gas or for fuel oil. So in one of the sections that mentions it, the bylaws designed not to conflict with any zoning regulatory code or state law. So it cannot have an impact on natural gas infrastructure in the street or regulating other things that the state already regulates. So it's attempting to do that by strictly regulating that stuff into house. I don't think it does cover oil, actually. I think we're gonna have to bring that to this project. I mean, there is a local permit for hooking up oil in a house. And maybe it's getting it that to prohibit that activity. Brookline and Arlington have not done that. They just did gas. Okay. Extract it. Well, I'm looking at their overview slide and it does say gas or oil. Prohibits the installation of new fossil fuel piping, gas or oil in buildings. And that got knocked out at some point in the way along the way. Do you wanna add anything else? Either Stephanie or Andra who's been participating in some of these meetings. The, then I'll kind of go on a little bit. The key aspect of the Brooklyn and Arlington bylaw is that there are waivers that allow for fossil fuel infrastructure to be granted on a couple of broad cases and also a case by case basis where a new sustainability review board is appointed by the Brookline. And this gets a Brookline select board to oversee a waiver process. So businesses or homeowners could apply for a waiver. But the law does not affect, where does it go? Does not affect gas pipelines, gas meters. Rehabitation has to be more than 75% of the floor area for residential and more than 50% of commercial buildings. So on the rehab side, it's a fairly large, has to be a fairly substantial rehab in order to kick in this law. It doesn't apply, where am I, I'm trying to find a couple of places where it says that. All right, here it is. So it provides exemptions for emergency power systems for buildings or housing complexes. It provides exemptions that allows fossil fuel fuel for central domestic hot water systems and buildings over than 10,000 square feet. And also for commercial kitchens, it allows for fossil fuel gas or whatnot. As some specialized equipment is too costly to operate such as pizza ovens. And residential cooking was something that Brookline added as an exemption during the negotiation process, as well as an exemption for laboratories and medical facilities. They mentioned those are some things that came out in discussions that they added to the bylaw and over the progress. So there are those exemptions. And as I mentioned, there are certain waivers. So if people want to argue in front of a, in this case, so-called sustainability review board, they could try to get a gas or get a waiver for the restrictions. There is one thing that- Brookline provides a little bit more information on the cost and benefits. They provide some explanation that all electric technology is available and exists today and is cost competitive where that's air sourced heat pumps for heating or induction stove tops and electric heat pump hot water heaters. So they describe those. They provide a fairly simple example for a new house, what the cost differential would be from installing gas heat and water and central air conditioning in the traditional way versus using air source heat pumps. And as a slight increase, actually decrease in the cost in the first few years, over 10 years, they show up basically having a wash in terms of overall costs with the air source heat pump equipment being slightly less expensive to install, but with a slightly higher annual operating costs based on, I guess, current electric rates. So that would be the kind of analysis that we might want to update and make more specific to Amherst if we were going to try to take this to the town and try to get support for it. I think that gives us an idea of what we could do. The main thing is that this is only this project, whole project is only addressing new buildings and lots of people are interested, including Chris Riddle, and Gut Rehab. There's people interested and we've been told that there will probably be a lot of side conversations of interest to the existing building stock, but that's not what this project is. Right, yeah, this was new buildings and major rehabs. Just the last thing I'll add about the Brookline and Arlington examples are they've both been passed by their town governments. Both are being reviewed by the mass attorney general to see if they are consistent with state law. That has not been determined yet, that should happen by the end of this month. And so that'll be a major milestone for all these other communities to see if the law is acceptable to this state attorney general. And if not, what aspects of it are not acceptable and would need to be modified in order for it or similar laws in other communities to be considered acceptable by the state. So I sort of feel like, you know, let's wait another week or two and see what the attorney general says, whether this law has a chance of being successful or considered legal by the attorney general. So that'll be upcoming. Hopefully we'll hear about that fairly soon. As Andra mentioned, one of the threads of conversation we had last Friday was that this bylaw is sort of the stick approach to forcing people to move away from fossil fuels. We also have quite a few carrot approaches, whether they're incentive programs to Massave or Mass CEC and the Solarize Amherst program that Stephanie has sort of shepherded through provides opportunities for things like heat pumps. So I think in parallel, I think it would be very nice to look at positive incentives for homeowners and businesses to make these changes without being required to. So that'll be working with some of those other entities that can provide those incentives and seeing a way, I think a way to get the word out that those things are available, they're cost-effective, it's a good move and maybe provide, we could provide some coaching or advice or at least help them find the resources to pursue those further. I have a kind of structural question. David, this is something that you're gonna be putting time into. It seems like you ought to be on the building task group. I don't know if there's any flexibility there, but I don't know how you see that in terms of your time. Yeah, I wouldn't be opposed to that. I guess I'll leave that to Chief Laura to authorize any change in membership of those committees. Yeah, that certainly could be talked about. And I think Chris Riddle is on the task group, the building task group as well, right? He is and I'm attending all of the task group meetings as well. So I can- Do you plan on attending all of the building electrification? I'm gonna, as many as I can, but I can also coordinate with Steve. So it's not that I have to. I mean, I can certainly, I think if this is something that's gonna be moving forward in the town, I definitely wanna sort of be involved and stay on top of that information. So I do not intend to keep being really involved. I kinda wanna get it off to a good start, but we do need some more community members to be a part of it. I think a bigger team would be very beneficial. So think about it. So I think, yeah, sorry. Just think of who might be recruited for it. Yeah, and I think, and Sarah, you're on with Jesse on the buildings, correct? I think that this could be a topic of discussion for their task group meeting to see if within that group we could recruit more people. I guess my overarching question is, do we feel that the participation in this process is gonna provide significant help to us to get to this end goal or not? I think my opinion at this point is yes, I think and hope so. The RMI team is pretty strong and then the coaches that they've assembled from Arlington and Brookline and some other places, I think will provide a wealth of experience. And I guess I'm hoping that we still, we can wait a little while to decide whether we're going to pursue a fossil fuel prohibition bylaw or we might shift more towards promoting the incentives, the carrot approach to encouraging shifts away from fossil fuels or I don't know if there's an in between to that. So I'm trying to keep an open mind right now and not fully committing in my head that we're gonna create a bylaw by the end of the year and try to get that passed in town. That's a possibility yet. I'm not convinced that that's the biggest bang for our buck in terms of time commitment. There's a few things I wanna try to analyze and that would be along the lines of what would be the impact to our total greenhouse gas budget of enacting such a bylaw. And for Brookline, they estimated that the bylaw by itself could lead to a 10% reduction if there was something like a half percent of their buildings were renovated every year for 15 years that would provide about a 10% reduction. I'd like to try to do an analysis like that for Amherst considering our housing mix. And I hope to get some help from the coaches and our MI team on how we might go about doing that analysis. The other factor we wanna consider is there an impact on housing costs with such a bylaw and be able to address that as we if and when we bring it out to the community. And that would be cost to renters. It would be costs for housing costs. It would be building costs for businesses. Is this gonna cost people more? I think that's gonna be a question that people are gonna have. And then yeah, the other question is people say, well, I like to cook on gas. I don't wanna shift to electricity. So there's a preference that's the other aspect. But I think it's worth pursuing. I'm interested in continuing to pursue this and then sort of see in the coming weeks what the best avenue might be and what we might choose, figure out what the rest of the teammates from the Amherst side, how we might best pursue this sort of thing in Amherst. I just add on that to what Steve mentioned. I think this is great to be part of this effort. Obviously we're not making any commitments but we're learning a lot along the way and with some real experts nationally as well as in our colleague towns in Massachusetts. I guess I would wanna focus a bit on the cost. Just looking at the slides that Brookline put forward following through some of their examples. Just from my mind, their assumptions on costs of heat pumps seems to be generous. Now in our favor costs hopefully go down over time but at the same time, especially when you're talking about a bylaw, I think you also have to look at what does the world look like if there's not incentives because these incentives are a result of state policies as well and as these markets tend to grow, especially a rebate program, they can't afford to keep giving as much incentives. So the incentive levels can go down or be eliminated. In fact, I don't believe Mass EC gives rebates to heat pumps unless they're whole house heat pumps, which would be the case in this bylaw I would think but then I look at it and it looks like it's pretty generous on the initial cost. So especially because of our deep concern in regard for impacts, particularly on moderate and low income and what that might mean with regard to affordable housing and what mechanisms there might be also to help if we do put a bylaw like this forward, what mechanisms might there be to either further subsidize or somehow make sure it's not a barrier to affordable housing. Yeah, just to amplify a bit there what Dwayne was saying, their assumption for a single family home, the heat pump would be about 12,500 rebates would bring that down more than 50% to just under 6,000. So the economics of their calculation depend a lot on several different credits. That's a very good point, Dwayne, would wanna investigate that. I thought that pricing seemed a little generous too. Yeah, even the 12,000 for a whole 2,500 square. 2,500, yeah. I mean, it was a couple of years ago but I put in three heat pumps and it was, and they were just room units and it's far in excess of that. But remember, we're talking about new construction. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Very different, yeah. Okay, so it sounds like in the interest of time we can move on from now, but let's keep this at front of mind to talk about if there's updates to be had. From my perspective, it seems like let's continue to follow it. Let's, particularly with the building working group, maybe offer up a chance for Chris Riddle to speak to it a little bit in the meeting when you have it. Obviously leaving it up to you all as the building group to decide and maybe drum some additional community support. But I think we were raising a lot of interesting questions around I think this will be one piece of the puzzle of buildings in general and how much of the piece of the puzzle would be and how it's framed, whether we can expand it beyond new buildings or whether we wanna, I think all of that is to be determined. So I think just stay tuned. I think also the question about affordable housing and then how do we, I mean, when we look to our sort of overarching goal of just transition away from fossil fuel use, like is there what can we do to help support that among low income and renters in our community? This probably isn't the way to do that, but like in the big picture of housing and buildings, how are we doing that? And this may be one piece of the puzzle, right? Yeah, Darcy. Oh, you're muted, I think. I, one of the things that we haven't done as a town yet is, is, you know, get involved in the heat pump, the program that's like Solaris Amherst only, it's like heat pump Amherst and that would like, seem like it'd be a great compliment to being involved in this, the ordinance, the program to put forward an ordinance, because then we would be, we would have an alternative, you know, that we could offer at a discount at the same time to as a sales, you know, it would help sell the initiative. What, so I don't know what the story is with that, Stephanie, is that rolling? Is that something that is a grant program that, you know, is available on an ongoing basis or how does that work? You're muted. Sorry about that, yeah. I was muted to tell you you were muted. Yeah, so it's, I haven't looked at it recently. It has been kind of an ongoing opportunity. I don't think that it's anything that's gonna go away because I think there's really gonna be even more of a push for promoting heat pumps and heat pump technology. So I, you know, I think the timing is actually good for us, especially if we're looking at sort of partnering this with something else, you know, over next year, I do think it's good to sort of have a package as you suggested. I think that's a great idea. So, you know, it's something in my mind that we would eventually, there was no question in my mind that we'll do this program at some point. It's just been the timing, you know, with CCA happening, you know, it just seems like we want the timing to sort of be right, you know, with sort of putting these things all together and presenting them to the community. Okay, great. Well, I think that's a good segue to our next agenda item, which is task group work. So Lauren or Jim? Happy to, I've been on the two that have happened so far. So first, that last discussion was very interesting, it was great. And I think there's just gonna be a ton of interaction here in these processes, which is fantastic. So much work going on, it's just exciting. So, so far we've had two meetings of facilitators to set up the task group meetings, which has, Lauren is having trouble with their connection. The, so I'll talk about the task group meetings first, and then I'll talk about some of the other work that we're doing just very quickly. The two task group meetings, we had the renewables task group facilitator group meeting, and we had the buildings and energy task group facilitator meeting. So each of those were myself, Stephanie, Kazikaya, and then the two co-facilitators, members of the ECAC. Both of those meetings, I thought, I thought both of those meetings were fantastic. Really got a ton of work done, set up what was gonna happen at the task group meetings, we have some work to do to get to them, and also picked dates for them, which is also very exciting. We have two more of them, one tomorrow morning and one Friday, and then we'll have all of them set, which is all very exciting. I don't know how you guys felt. I sort of felt like, all right, we're finally into the guts of this process. And it was exciting that way. Anybody wanna comment on any of that? Yeah, it'd be great to hear from the ECAC folks. Yeah. If you completely disagree with Jim or not. Terrible. I don't know what Jim's talking about. No, I felt similar. It felt like we were tangibly doing work, even though Jim would ask a question and I would have to sit with it for a while before I came to anything productive. But I feel like we created the bones of what I think is going to be a really creative and hopefully engaging meeting. Yeah, I thought, I'll go first, Andrew. You can read the list you have. I thought ours went really well. Was it actually a good meeting in that we actually really thought hard about where we were going and how to strategically present this information and learn and sort of the mix between educating and learning from the group. I think we start off with a list of all our strategies and like we're scratching our heads of like, how do we present this? And so it was actually, Jim sort of stimulated the discussion about, let's maybe back off a little bit and first really use the first meeting to talk about values and goals with regard to on the electricity side of really what does the community really are looking for in terms of electric use in the town in terms of where that comes from, how locally or not the cost of it, et cetera at sort of a high level of sort of what the values are. And then we can sort of take that into the second of the three meetings and talk about and then start talking about unleashing some of the strategies and have conversations of these different strategies with regard to those values and goals and then use the third meeting to really try to set up a consensus on where our recommendations may fall or at least from this group recommendations I guess to HECAC to then recommend to the town. I love the description of unleashing the strategies. Okay, I was trying to come up with a better word but that's all that came in. Good work. Sorry. I think that the idea of starting with principles was really important because like all of these task groups, there's a lot of technical aspects to it and not everyone is gonna be interested at that level and yet we want everyone to be able to contribute meaningfully. And so I think what I went away with was the idea that we're going to have some guidance from the group about how to make decisions but we're not gonna make all the decisions during their time with us but we'll take those principles forward in deciding what we're gonna recommend in terms of actual projects to further like how important is it to them to have local ownership? How important is it to keep costs down? There's gonna be some significant principles that of course will be in conflict but that will be the contribution in a lot of ways. And then also we did talk about wanting to have ways for them to continue engaging going forward in this process. Great, that sounds exciting. And yeah, I love that idea of having principles that then we can go back to and use as a sort of justification is not the right word, but to show like this is why we did it this way because it aligns with these principles this way it allows us to be more transparent with kind of a blueprint of language. Yeah, I thought it was a great idea that's done. Yeah, it was a great conversation that led us in. Somebody else, sorry? Oh, I was just gonna, Jesse's not here but one of the things Jesse really pointed out in Billings and I think Sarah totally agreed as well as Jim and I that the conflict is actually really good because if you have the conflict and then you have discussion about the conflict and you come to some kind of resolution to work it out that's an incredible opportunity to have that kind of dialogue and interaction within the group because it's also gonna be reflective of the community at large really. So conflict is not in this case necessarily a bad thing. So he's not here, so I'm adding that for him. I really like the idea that we'll develop these ideas, concepts and then we'll bring to the second meeting some very specific things and actually practice kind of working them through. What would it mean if we did it this way? So it's gonna be engaging. You're getting me excited for Darcy and ours a Friday afternoon meeting which I'm not super excited about the time but now I'm excited about the content. Everyone, this is, oh sorry, I was just gonna say this is Lauren, I'm having internet issues so I can't put my video on right now but just wanted to say that I just got back from vacation and heard about the meetings on Monday and Tuesday and I'm so glad that they were so stimulating and just really looking forward to you to come. Yeah. I have a couple of questions because I haven't done it yet and I'm just wondering if you started from a point of the goals that have already been passed by the town council, that's number one. And secondly, whether the whole idea of best practices of other towns factored in somewhere. Anybody? Sarah, you wanna talk a little bit about best practices from other towns and sort of starting with the goals? So we similar to I think what Duane was saying about how Jim encouraged us to kind of look higher across like guiding principles that then the goals would kind of fill up underneath. Our meeting one goal is mostly about kind of creating a shared language and vision for what we're doing for these three meetings. So we're only setting up meeting one in the meeting that we had yesterday. So then I think the things that you're talking about Darcy will come up after we kind of create this shared framework, at least that's what we're doing in hours and working on relationship building, getting to know one another, letting people start to generate ideas. And so that was kind of the bulk of what we were trying to hash out is how do we get people to talk about lived experience, expertise and all of these things in a way that falls underneath our, yeah, as I recall I'm overwriting our principles, same as your group. And then next week we'll hit, the next meeting we'll hit one tactical strategies informed by the MVP process and other plans, which we've been trying to juggle into kind of a chaotic list right now. So then we've got some thoughts from Chris Riddle too. So we need to get that into a little bit more of a manageable list. It's something, right. You love it, as you say. I say into something. Into something here. But really great work. I mean that was, Sarah had done a bunch of work looking at across a bunch of other town's plans and bring that in. The renewables group started much more from the goals, the town goals, but kind of took those and stepped them back to try to set up a conversation about why those goals? Why is it that, why has the town made that decision? What is it the town is trying to do? And then that leads into a conversation around sort of principles and what's up. I mean, obviously for the electricity task group it's going to be a lot about CCA. So they're going to have to understand that and understand RECs, because that's going to be one of those choices we're going to have to make. Like, I'm not looking forward to explaining that, but it's- I'd break out in a sweat whenever I have to explain RECs and bring some students to college administrators. Yeah, but the idea that we're going to delve into just a couple scenarios, I think makes it manageable. We don't have to understand everything about the electric grid. So everybody, you know, the two groups left have the opportunity to do this for yourselves, right? It's not, the idea is that there's not a preset process. It's more about getting to what makes sense for that task group and for you. The one thing I will say is that there's been this consistent vision of doing a little bit of data collection with the whole task group, which I think is fantastic. I think Andra came up with that. It was just a great idea. And I think that's something that we might think about across all the task groups is setting up some questions that we get task group members, all task group members, to kind of collect information on and then bring it back to the task group, not as a statistical dataset, but more as sort of an understanding. Darcy, you were talking about, I think it was Darcy, about, actually it wasn't, but I don't remember who was, about the cost of electricity and how much changing to electricity is, one of the things we probably don't have a good antelone is like, how much people's places are already electric? And that's something that, that's something we started to ask about and gather information. And the concept of getting all of the task group members engaged in bringing information into the process, which then they share is pretty powerful. So that was also, you'll hear that in the meetings tomorrow and Friday. It's pretty great. And then I'd just like to a couple of quick things. We put together the briefing, which is great. Nice job. Including a somewhat goofy process of screwing up the recording and then having to retake the ASL interpretation process, which worked great. So that's all set. We have, we have translated all of the slides into Spanish. We're gonna put together those as a second, as an addendum to the slide deck. Essentially, this is gonna be ready to go pretty quick. And it's pretty great. I just say everybody did a really great job. So that's all really good. And the, you know, this process is now picking up steam. Great. Well, that's exciting. Any other questions about or comments about the task group work? Yeah, Steve. Say I'm looking forward to ours tomorrow morning in the land use group. Lauren's sent around the kind of a list of ideas of strategies that came out of ECAC and meeting so far in the MVP. And I'm a bit daunted by the list and how we're going to handle that. So I look forward to talking about that in our meeting tomorrow. And I worry a little bit because there's ideas that are big, grand ideas, wonderful ideas, but not something that is necessarily something that ECAC can do or falls under our purview. And there are also some ideas I think are very well meant, but may not rise to the top. And I worry, I've had experience in other contexts where people propose ideas, they get considered, but not adopted. And then those people feel like, ah, their time and effort was wasted. Or I've had people say, you didn't hear me just because their idea wasn't accepted. So we might need to have some expectation management here in that because people put the idea down on a sticky and put it on the wall, that that's not necessarily gonna become part of the plan and at the very end. And I liked, I think Andra mentioned earlier, having the community sort of have input on how important is this idea for Amherst? Having kind of a ranking approach, seems like it might be a little bit step away from asking people to an advocate for a particular approach. Those are the things going around in my head. So I'm looking forward to the Linane team helping us work some of those out. Fantastic, I think those are great questions. And that's what the conversation needs to be about. Great, look forward to waking up early for the 9.30 meeting tomorrow. It's gonna say that's a great way to start the meeting, Steve. Seriously. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, Darcy. I was gonna say just a quick note, Lauren will be running those meetings. I will be there in the background taking notes so that Lauren doesn't take notes. And I think there's a way that has been used to rank different actions by criteria you know, emissions reductions potential, et cetera, et cetera. I think certain ones- The land use ideas is gonna be difficult to even come up with an estimate for carbon reduction potential for them. A lot of them are quality of life aspects or good environmental policy. Right, right. Well, then we will get an update from you all after your meeting. And it'd be helpful, I think, next time to get from since the ECAC members are just participating in our different task groups to maybe to get sort of the overarching overview and bouncing ideas between Leigh Ann and the ECAC at our next meeting, which I know you're bringing to each individual meeting from being there, but sort of having that be kind of a standing agenda item as we kind of go through this process. Yeah, I think that's a great idea. Also, we do have notes out of these meetings and the notes will go to the committee or the facilitation group first and then we'll go to everybody once the facilitation group sort of gets their hands on them. So we'll have meeting or a meeting notes out of all of this as well. Okay, great. Wonderful. So with that, I think I'll move on to the next agenda item, which is the open meeting law, discussion on open meeting law. Stephanie, did you have something to tee that up? I didn't. I can, if you bear with me, I can find something, but I didn't because I sort of thought that was kind of your hot topic. So yeah, and I didn't prepare something either, so maybe we have to wait till next time to talk more about it. I think the idea is just sort of stemming off of the experiences we've had being remote and recognizing that not only is Amherst leading the way in virtual participation, but ECAC is leading the way in sort of committee work beyond the town council to keep moving forward. I think there's an opportunity here to articulate challenges that we're having with open meeting law and how they're sort of prohibiting participation. So we talked briefly about this last time and I haven't unfortunately had the chance to really think more deeply about it since then. I did send notes to Mindy and Joe after our community leader meeting, just letting them know what happened and expressing my challenges I think we have with open meeting law and that I don't think it actually is bringing in community members to meetings. I had some in email exchange as well with Paul and Lynn about it and Lynn confirmed that they've been talking about it and Darcy maybe you have things to add I don't know if it's happening at the council level but not only with being just virtual, but in general the inability to have meetings and collect input from people in a private way really exposes people and we're not collecting information from people that don't feel comfortable being exposed in that way. And I think that's a detriment to our democracy. So it sounds like conversations are happening but I think if ECAC has any, and individuals of course are welcome to provide thoughts and input on this but if we wanted to pull together anything from our experiences as ECAC to submit to decision makers on this I think we might wanna think about that and pull that together kind of as we move forward. I think that's a great idea, am I muted? No. No, I think that's a really good idea and it's true that the council has been so stymied and it really came out in this week when we had a couple of meetings where people, you know, a huge number of people from the public showed up to the meetings that were from the new racial equity coalition including Ashwin and they weren't allowed into the meeting visually. So they were making these impassioned speeches but we couldn't see their faces. So that was just wrong and I have expressed that at each meeting and I get the response that it's being worked on. I think that there are remedies and I think other towns are employing them so I think that we could look at some of those and see if one of them is registering for meetings. I would, can I just add that Northampton has been having a similar process of lengthy public comments about the police and they've found a way to make people's faces visible. Yeah, no, yes, from the beginning they have. Without risking the Zoom bombing? There hasn't been any and there's been, there's actually a lot more testimonies in Northampton. Yeah, there were five. Those meetings went on for seven hours or something. Yeah, I mean, it hasn't happened. And I would add, you know, I mean, because with public process, it's true. You always get some people who do want to be seen but you will also have people that don't necessarily want to be seen. It's just, I think it's a matter of if people want to make the choice to do that, it's important too. I'm not advocating one way or the other, I'm just sort of, you know, playing devil's advocate and sort of seeing both sides of that issue. Yeah. Laura, sorry. What are you thinking of what we should be doing? So I think we can, so, I mean, one sort of easy option is just to kind of put together a memo from ECAGS perspective of what we've experienced trying to run virtual meetings and maybe we hold off until the task group meetings happen and see if we get any more insight from that but, or one of the task groups or something but sort of put an official statement out as ECAGS as saying, you know, this is where we've struggled and this is where we think open meeting law needs to be updated to address virtual meetings. I think the potential of virtual meetings to bring even more people to the table is big and that could be a positive but if it's not possible for people to participate or they have to be publicly identified or whatever I think it goes both ways. So that's my first initial thought but to be fair, I haven't given it much more thought since our last meeting and so maybe think about it a little more if folks have other ideas. That would just be one potential option. I think also like another example I would give is that the school committee gave some, did some great YouTube hosted town halls but I couldn't figure out how to make a comment or question because I had to like sign in and make a channel and I don't even know. Like, so there's just these limits to, there's these additional barriers or having to know that you have to submit per public comment by 3 p.m. Like that's the way the school committee is doing it. Like that just doesn't, you're constantly putting in barriers to allow people to participate. So anyway, that's my initial thought. I'm hearing just two things. So it sounds like on the one hand, we may not have explored all possible options to optimize how we are securing public participation safely with existing open meeting law. And on the other hand, it may be the case that open meeting law is in fact interfering with us arriving at the best solution. I think until we sort of rule out the former being true, it might be premature to move on to the latter, especially cause it seems like other towns, other committees are doing better than we're doing even with open meeting law as it exists. I know I don't have the capacity to look into this in much more detail. I'm not sure if anyone does slash feels inclined to or maybe, I don't know, cause I'm not sure that we can actually resolve this just by looking within the town of Amherst and we may benefit from looking outside in the town of Amherst. Cause if it was just inside the town, I would say maybe Stephanie can address this herself, but I actually don't know if that's the case. So I'm not really sure how to proceed. Yeah, I agree, Ash, when I think that that's a good point. And so I think there are, I think within the town, I think, and maybe looking with our peers and working with Sean, potentially I didn't looking at other methods to get more participation in, but I think generally there may be feedback that we want to give more broadly about open meeting law to the state that I think we should also give based on our experiences. But let's wait. I think just the fact that we're having this conversation and spending time trying to solve this problem, I think is already evidence that open meeting law has caused some issues for us. And it would be great if the state could invest resources in solving this problem rather than having us spin our wheels. Yeah, great. Stephanie. I was just gonna say, I mean, you had the IT director there and you were all able to ask him questions about what's possible in terms of safety with the technology that we have. And I think he answered you all as honestly as he could. So I do think there's certainly some limitations. It's also not sort of all just on IT. I mean, I think there are also just some sort of procedural guidelines that may make that the issue to what Ashwin is alluding to as well. But I agree that, you know, it really is like the bigger state hoping meeting law issue is really like the big broad umbrella because it sort of dictates all of it really. Maybe not the technological piece, but certainly the requirements of it dictate everything. So it's definitely a bigger issue beyond just the town. Yeah, I think that makes sense. And I also think that it would be helpful, I think just for the state level almost to provide, like these are all the technologies you can use. These are the different ways you can use them. These are the pros and cons. Like that would be helpful information from the state level for everyone to have. So individual towns aren't trying to make these decisions or having to, you know, Sean having to cost someone from Northampton to figure out what they're doing and all of that, you know. So I do think the state has led us down a little bit on moving government forward. I think that the fact that zoom bombings are happening as frequently as they are. I mean, maybe we haven't experienced a lot of them, but almost anyone I've talked to has said that they have themselves in, you know, people in other circles have experienced them and not even municipal. I know some of them were just like some smaller businesses. Actually, we're even zoom bombed and I don't even know how that happens, but it's a prevalent problem that I think, as you say, Laura, it would be good if the state could offer some sort of mechanisms and guidelines and options for everybody. Yeah. I really appreciate you bringing it up, Laura. Yeah, no, I do too. And I think that there are, you know, it is true that Amherst has made some choices about the way we run our zoom meetings that are, you know, like it's very different from the way Northampton does. We use the webinar format, which creates two categories, you know, the attendees have really complained to me a lot that they can't, well, that they aren't participating and they're not seen, but also that they can't even see who else are the other attendees. So they're completely in the dark during the meeting and sometimes the meetings are two hours. And so if you go to Northampton, you know, like if you join the meeting, you're not put in the attendee room. You immediately pop up right next to the mayor. So it's actually a little scary. But it's a nice feeling to feel like, okay, everybody is completely included in this meeting. They can be seen or not seen, it's up to them. So I don't really understand why we've made the choices that we have. Okay. You know, I would prefer that we not do the webinar format myself, because it's very, you know, two worlds, the in group and the out group. I was telling Stephanie before we started that I was on a webinar that this UN org was hosting and I immediately joined in as a panelist. I was like, oh no, this is not safe. I know from our experience, this is not safe. And it wasn't, it got zoom bombed. But it was funny that, you know, I was like, it's a webinar, yeah, I should be in attendee and listen only mode. Anyway, side story. So yeah, so I think that we, I don't want us to move on and not address this, continue to address us moving forward. So I think as for right now, let's just leave it as kind of an open discussion item and let's see, I think to Ashwin's point, figuring out what other, like in Darcy, maybe this I would throw over to you is from the town council perspective, maybe figuring out how we move away safely from the method we're using to a method more like North Hamptons and understanding the pros and cons of that because I'm sure there are pros and cons. And then just think continuing to think about how we address some of the issues with open meeting law more broadly moving forward. I really like the idea of moving outside. You know, these groups may not be so big that it's impossible to have outdoor, in-person, distanced meetings. Yeah. I know there is a, I think the challenge last time when we accidentally had the outdoor meeting was that there was no bathroom. But I do think there's a port-a-potty on the town's common, right? I mean, I know nobody wants to use a port-a-potty, but so maybe we could have a town common meeting to think about it. I just think I have a couple of numbers, so it's all. Yeah. Yeah. And it is still 10. Is it still 10? That's a good question. Yeah, I think it is 10. Okay. Okay, folks. Well, I think given that we're all in other meetings this week for ECAC things, I don't think we should be wavering this one. I think for the next meeting agenda, I think it'll just sort of be a bit of a continuation of getting updates on the task groups. And I think by that point, we'll probably have some of the full task group meetings at least scheduled so we can talk a bit about that. Anybody else have other agenda items they'd want to add for the next meeting while we're here? Yes, Stephanie. Oh, Laura, I just have a kind of practical matter in that it's sort of the end of the fiscal year. And so elections of officers comes up annually. So probably at the next meeting, you want to revisit your, looking at the chair and co-chair positions or associate vice chair positions and having a vote, holding a vote to continue as is or if other people want to put themselves in the running, but you should probably do that at the next meeting. Yeah, thanks, Stephanie. That's good. A good point. Full disclosure is that I probably will not be able to attend the next meeting. I'm gonna wait and see. My children are currently with my parents, which is amazing. And they will be coming back that day. So I can't imagine being allowed to spend two hours on the computer when they first get back. But we'll see, they may come back earlier depending on how well they're doing at the grandparent's house. So I may not be here so we can either decide, I can send a note to the group about my chair, responsibilities and whether or not I feel like I should be nominated to continue or not. And of course, I'll be up to you all to vote for that. But so we can talk about, we can figure that out. I would just report that I'm also a little iffy for the next meeting. I'm on vacation, but it's, I think it's turning out to be a staycation because I don't want to go to North Carolina. But so would we actually be voting this next meeting or just talking about voting or developing a slate? You would be voting. I mean, I don't really honestly see any reason if you wanted to put it off another meeting. But I think at this point at summertime, so there's likely to always be somebody who's going to be on vacation. And I had given everybody the calendar so you could take a look at that. I mean, I guess, you know, what's your preference? Would you all want to wait one more meeting or? And truthfully, I may be able to make it anyhow because I'm just staying vacation. I'm trying to not do much, but this I just remember whoever's not present could easily be voted in. So let's, let's look at the Stephanie, maybe you and I can look at the schedule and Dwayne, wouldn't you? If you think you're going to be here. And everybody else is going to be here. Then I could at least join for the first 30 minutes or something. And then I can definitely do that as well. I mean, if there's a, if that sort of annual thing is taking place, I have no problem making sure I'm on at least 30 minutes. I mean, I don't think I'm going to be able to do that. I don't think I'm going to be able to do that. So I don't think I'm going to be able to do that. I don't think I'm going to be able to do that. I don't think I'm going to be able to do that. If it's just taking place. I have no problem making sure I'm on at least for an hour or something. Okay. Maybe let's play that. Yeah, I was going to suggest that maybe you just front load it. Yeah. So we'll add that to the agenda. Any other items? I guess just more for Stephanie is if you've heard whether or not my reappointment has been made official. Yeah. Yeah, I think. Yeah. Yeah. They're definitely going to reappoint both of you. It's again, I just want to remind you that every single committee in the town. Is in the same boat in terms of the end of the year. And so all of these appointments. Are expired or reappointments come up and they all happen at the same time. So it's a little crazy. And it's, I know. But at least, you know, I don't think that's going to happen. At least we've gotten the feedback that you two are definitely going to be reappointed. So. You know, I think move over with that in understanding that your reappointment is for three years. It's not just for. A year sentence. Good to know. The rest of your natural life. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The agenda at some point. It's not a full meeting. You know, a really full agenda. The question of are we waiting to take. Current actions. Or do we want to. You know, make a project. As we're going because. You know, the task groups for now are going to be where a lot of people are going to be. You know, I think that would be making some. Steps forward on a. Yeah, I think that's a good, a good suggestion. Andra. And I think both the question of specific projects, which I would probably kind of tailor the building electrification piece as, as an example of that, you know, a project that sort of we're moving forward as in parallel to the task group. Yeah. I think that's a good idea. I think that the work is happening in the task groups and the ECAC meetings, or just an opportunity to keep everybody up to date. There may be opportunities to do a little bit to, to round out the agenda with some more thinking. Along this line. So. Yeah, let's maybe put that on the agenda for next week. And to talk about it a little more. I'm a little discouraged that some of the, you know, the things that were taken out of the budget were all the. You know, I think it's going to be hybrid and electric. Or hybrid anyway, the police vehicles and so on. But. Yeah. Darcy. I had, I was all teed up to apply for the. Some of the grant funding. And. Yeah. No. All right. I'll talk to you about that offline, Stephanie. I don't see any, there's no public. So I think we can go ahead and join in. You guys can have 14 minutes of your evening back. And we will talk next time. Great. Thank you. Thank you. See you, Steven. Tomorrow morning. Yes. See you tomorrow. Bye. Bye.