 Okay, we are recording. Don't forget about having somebody take minutes. Okay. Thanks to everybody's everybody here that we're expecting. Yeah, looks like it. Yes. Another benefit of an electric vehicle is that you don't feel guilty about sitting in the car with it on. In the parking lot to plug in your phone. Okay. Hi, everybody. I think first item rate is review of minutes from last time and it sounds like Jesse you're taking minutes this time. Correct. I think that was a head nod. Okay, great. I didn't see that. Yeah, Jesse, you're sorry. Yes, I'm on it. Great. So did anybody have any comments or edits to the minutes from our meeting that was quite a while ago. Yeah, I have a couple. My name is spelled wrong so you can correct. Sorry about that. I will know. No worries. And then I was wondering if section nine can be moved up to section three F because it flows better. We had the voting for the solar bylaw working group. Yeah, we did do it at the end after we discussed other things, but. Yeah, it felt like it was not going to be there as I was reading through and then it was there at the end so it's minutes I think it could just be plugged under section three. Yeah, that makes sense to me. Anybody else. It's good. Okay, so we accept the minutes, approve the minutes. Someone second it. I'll second that. Okay, I'll give a roll call vote. So just give me one second here. Okay. Jesse, make sure you mute. I mean unmute. Rose. Yes. Selman. Abstain. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Goldner. Yes. Okay. Minutes approved. I don't think you called me, but I'm sorry. Yes. I can't see you. Sorry. Yes. Sorry about that. Okay. Now the minutes are officially approved. Okay. Great. So then next up, I think it's public comment. Do we have any public. We do. Let me just. So I'm going to. Allow Tony Cunningham. To speak Tony, you have three minutes. Thank you. Tony Cunningham. Oh, and drive. I sent an email yesterday to Stephanie Dwayne and Jesse. I'm going to speak to the committee. I'm going to speak to the committee regarding two time sensitive energy and climate action related aspects of the elementary school building project. That this committee may want to consider advocating for. The first is whether the school should be a climate resilience hub for the town, potentially serving as an emergency shelter. I believe one of the strategies in the car recommends identifying a potential hub, including a feasibility study of potential sites and facility upgrades that would be necessary to develop the school. And the second is if this committee would want to recommend a ground source heating and cooling system over air source for the new school. So it would be excellent if this committee could discuss what role if any it could play in the school building project. As it relates to climate action. Thank you so much. Thank you, Tony. Great. Thanks, Tony. Any, anybody else, Stephanie. No one else has their hand raised. Okay. Folks will give you a second. If you want to raise your hand. Also usually do another public comment. At the end of the meeting. No one else has raised their hand. Okay. Well, is that then I think we can move on to the next item, which I believe is staff updates. Correct. Yes. Where to begin. Okay. So the solar landfill fencing is almost completed. The, the. North landfill development with the actual array will be mechanically complete by I think next week. So. Ostensibly it could go online by the end of the month, but that all depends on ever sourced. And it's not very likely. But it will be ready for that at some point at the point of which ever source to decide to sort of turn it on. So very exciting that that project is almost completed. I think it's going to be very, very exciting. I think it's going to be very, very exciting. So just regarding that last piece of fencing that needs to be installed to protect the grasshopper sparrow. So that's moving along. I am working on the. Mass CEC grant with. With family outreach of Amherst. I think we finally come to. To an agreement of that family outreach can pay the, the community captains. So I think we'll have a lot of communication back and forth with Mass CEC and with family outreach. So I think we'll finally get all the contracts together and finalized for that effort. So that's moving forward. The Fort River farm community garden will be launching. At the beginning of June. So I will give you more information about the community garden that is being developed there. There's been an incredible garden circle of folks. We're working with the healthy Hampshire. they've been, they've been, they've been a fantastic. Partner. Really enabled us to, we've got a, a well in there now. A standpoint while that was installed. By one of our volunteers yesterday. She was quite pleased. And we were all thrilled to actually have water at the site. So. It's been a really incredible process, but that will have 40. It's been a really incredible process, but that will have 32 10 by 10 in ground plots and there are 12 raised beds that will be available for folks so we're just talking about how to assign the plots and we want to give priority to to people who are apartment dwellers and also BIPOC members as well. So, So it's been a really exciting process so so those things are moving along quite quickly and that's everything that's at the top of my head right now. I have a question. June is late for some plantings. Is it possible for some of the assigning of plots to start that we can we can we can assign the plots earlier but people can't actually use the site yet because it's a there's a lot of work to be done out there we're just getting it going this is the first season so anyone with an in ground plot is going to have a lot of work to do to really make it a really viable productive growing space. It's just because of the nature of the site and it's the first year so people will be investing a lot in there in their plots this year. But there are plots available at the amethyst brook community garden site so if people are interested, they can contact Angela Mills in the town manager's office. And those are ready those have been available for a while now so there are plots available that way. And Stephanie this I know this is outside of your room here but are the plots that were on Mill Street. Right. Are they completely melaine are the are they completely done. Yes, they're, well, I don't know are we had one final gardener who had been there for a very, very, very long time. But I do believe. I'm not sure what the, the last communication with her was regarding moving out of that space. But, but everyone else is gone from melaine so. And they'll be offered. They'll sort of have first dibs that plots at Fort River Farm. Some already I think one or two may have already gone to amethyst brook but anyone else is, they'll be the first ones offered a fort river farm site. Any, any other questions for Stephanie or Stephanie any other updates. No. Although, well, one thing I will say, which will make Andra and Dwayne especially very happy is that I think we finally have an MOU final version of our MOU to move the CCA forward so I just got it yesterday and I just need to incorporate the comments and I think we have a final draft so hopefully we'll get that signed and that can, that means we can engage the consultant and we can really move this thing forward finally. I was trying to save that for our meeting but I couldn't not let you both know now. Stephanie question, a different topic we talked about a while ago about separating compost from regular trash and I know we had a vote. Where's that at. So I really don't work with the recycling and the solid waste so much. But I know that there's been a group of citizens. Zero waste Amherst and Darcy has been very, very engaged with that group. So it might be worth outreach to them and I don't, I don't, there's nothing new that's happened I can say that much I haven't heard anything new about about about that initiative but they have so many emails that it's really hard for me to keep up. They have a lot of correspondence and that zero waste group. Okay, great. So I think with that we can move on to ecac member updates. And I think maybe I'll just kick it off because one of the things we talked about in our session last in our retreat session last week was thinking about ways to kind of standardize our meetings and make sure our meetings are as useful as moving forward and so one one of the things that I think we threw out was, and this is at the very end of the discussion so I don't think we quite completely finished it so potentially we can move this on to a follow up item but one of the things we talked about is is potential is during these member updates in addition to just noting anything informational that you want to share. If you have a specific project you're working on or working on a team with giving an up giving updates during this part of the agenda, and then if there's something we want to do a deep dive on and have more of a deep dive on related to your project or or anything that you raise that can be added as a official agenda item either in advance of the meeting by emailing Stephanie or myself, or you can say, hey, this is going on with my project I'd love to do a deep dive on this next week and we can add it to the agenda there. So just throwing that out. As a way to maybe kind of start to move in that direction and we do have two items, I believe that we are going to do a bit more of a deep dive on today. But if folks have any updates they want to give based on what we talked about last week. For example, I was I've been emailing with Paul and we're setting up a meeting to kind of discuss some of the questions. I raised last time about the kind of the best ways for ecac to be engaged and sort of serve as a way for the town to apply a lens of climate action to to the work we're doing. And that works. That's my inform informational update for you all. So with that, I'll maybe pass it over to anybody else who wants to give any tech member update. Laura. Yes, be in on that meeting to if you could. Okay. Yeah, I have to see is it Stephanie what's the role there. Oh, you're muted. I don't know off the top of my head I'll just have to double check. I don't think it should be an issue but I can check. Okay, great. Maybe it'll be helpful if we just reviewed kind of where we ended up in terms of working groups or, you know, where people think they want to put their energy. And how we organized it, because I'm not sure I remember correctly. Sure, we can we can do that so does anybody have a member update. Not related to something so I see Dwayne and Steve with the ends up here. So we'll start there and then yeah we can we can do that under. Great. Okay, yep, thanks. Well, it's somewhat relates to the solar planning but it it it's more broad I'm happy to let you know that our solar planning toolkit is is has been completed and is available on our website is a clean energy extensions website. I don't think the chat feature works for us so chat to the link. I'm not going to tell it to you but if you go to the if you Google UMass clean energy extension and look for the research and initiatives and then solar planning you can find it there. But we're excited to have it available publicly. There's something there that I think will be helpful for for the work that we're going to be doing, but also for communities around Massachusetts and potentially beyond. So happy to for folks to take a look at that and offer any feedback offline beyond this meeting as well. Great that's exciting to me and I know you've been working on that for quite a while. Yeah and many other people in my group so. I think in the minutes to that. Oh great okay do you want me to email it to you Jesse, or you got it. Okay, great. Okay Steve. Yes, I finally had a chance to talk with Mandy Joe from town council about the council or CRC, which is community resource committee committee, thank you. And as you might know, revamping the town's rental permit system quite extensively so they've got quite a plan for doing that coming up very soon they hope to address the both the application process and requirements and the sustainability lens. They're actually hoping to discuss that at the next meeting which is May 22nd, and then the one after that which is June nine. And so Mandy would love to have some easy AC input. By the 26th of May, which is fairly soon if possible, and certainly by June 9. Two issues at least that I can think of. I think what I'm going to ask is if there might be one other member ECAC member that might want to work with me outside of meetings to develop a list or proposals or suggestions that either we take straight to CRC or we bring back to ECAC for a discussion but so that that that'll be coming up but the questions that we that I can think of that we might want to our suggestions to provide to CRC have to do with what might be included on a new rental permit application. These are the applications that have to be filled out each year. The questions might we want to see asked that would help us understand the rental stock in town, and this could be for example it could be asking about the age of buildings, what sort of heating source they have. If there's been renovations, and then we could ask questions about the nature of renovations, the style of renovations if it was replacement windows or new insulation. These are these are things that at least be really nice to know as we go through and evaluate the rental stock from an energy efficiency point of view. Now whether it turns out we actually the town wants to ask those on the rental permit every year is another issue, they may decide that's too burdensome. But so the series of questions we need to come up with a series of questions that we would like to know more about the rental stock and how we might get that. So that would be under the their their category of application process and requirements. The second category that they're beginning to discuss are seeking input from us ECAC is the sustainability lens. And I think that's a little bit broader. So here in our previous meetings have talked about a couple of things and the general goal of increasing energy efficiency and comfort and rental properties and reducing while reducing cost to renters. And then the other one that I think we've talked about at least tangentially is see if we can might encourage or require rental properties to accommodate electric electric vehicle charging. And I thought of the rental vehicle charging is somewhat new but those be the things that I would like to potentially bring to them as suggestions from the sustainability lens. So the CRC is hoping is that ECAC can provide some recommendations and suggestions either in writing or and or showing up at one of their meetings to discuss those ideas. And then the CRC process is going to take many more months so it'll get reviewed it'll go through different stages right now they're at the concept stage. Later on they'll get to the writing actual language stage. There's more time to add stuff but it'd be great to get these ideas out early. So I guess I would defer then to Laura and Stephanie if that's if it's feasible to allow a couple of us two of us to work outside of meeting to develop some recommendations. And I, anybody's interested in doing that with me. Can I answer that Laura. Yes. Again, if you assign people you become a subcommittee, and you have to post meetings. If you create something and share it with someone who may be interested. You can do that, and you can get their feedback, but you can't, you can't necessarily meet together and have a meeting and a discussion and create something together and then bring it back to the committee. So I think that makes sense. Steve, I would say, I don't like meetings, but I do read my emails. Okay. So it sounds like if I write something up, I can send it to at least one other person and get their feedback. Yes. Steve, shouldn't this go through the, you know, building electrification accelerator team. I mean, could if there's time for that. I mean, at least emailing. Yes, community members who are part of that. And working with them if they're interested, you know, I guess for sure whether that happens at this stage or can happen at this stage. I think there'll be plenty of time for additional input as CRC continues to solicit ideas from a variety of different groups, including community groups. I think our task at the moment is to basically get some concepts and placeholders introduced to CRC. And then they can begin to just sort of fit the blocks into their planning. And then details will be worked out in coming months. Well, I just, I'd love to get chorus input into this. And, you know, it was courtesy to invite the other people who've been working on the project. Yeah, so the other people you mean. Felicia and Chris and Chris. What is this group we're talking about for mind me, I don't, it doesn't sound familiar. It was the team that that formed a year ago to be a part of this Rocky Mountain Institute building the energy accelerator what is the electrification accelerator. Yes. Andra can I just clarify something there so is your thought that, because in my mind there's two different things there. There's whether Cora has any insight as a coach outside of Amherst has any insight on things that we as ecac should add to our list of sustainability lenses is that what you're thinking. I just think that we have community members who've been working on this and they should be included. Well yeah so that's that's fine but they also have opportunities. I don't want to over complicate the process. So they also have opportunities to engage with the council and CRC in other ways. So I think if it's a question of what does ecac want to put as a sustainability lens, you suggest to the CRC as a sustainability lens, that's slightly different in my mind then. No, the rental piece of it. That's that's the main piece that they should be a part of because it was the project that developed out of that group. So they should write something and send it to them we haven't met as a group in at least six months, but I'd be happy to send something to them for for their feedback in their comments. And I see that Anna has her hand raised. I was just about to say that. Okay, so she may have some insight from Council point of view. Anna you're unmuted. Hi everybody I apologize I'm in an airport right now so I hope you can hear me okay. Really quickly I just want to know, you know I think in my mind these were I'm interested to hear what you're saying on Andrew because, you know in my mind these were separate projects. The Rocky Mountain Institute and then the rental registration by law. So I just want to know the rental registration by law. And this will be kind of one of the first time that he's been able to engage with the council in in this way and we want to set a really good precedent and so I think that if you all want to talk as a CAC to the Rocky Mountain Institute that's fine. But I think like Laura said or Steve said simplifying this process would be really great. Really speaking so if you can be if ECAC can be the sole point of contact. The other part is that this is so much bigger than just the ECAC input that we want to make sure you all aren't to Steve's point right like this is moving quickly and so we want to make sure your insight is captured in the process so if you do want to get input from the folks at the Rocky Mountain Institute, just making sure that it's all within those timelines that maybe Joe has put forward. So that makes sense I'm happy to answer any any questions that might happen that might come up. But yeah so this is this is a bigger process that they were going to do without realizing that ECAC should be involved and so we want to make sure that they continue to consult y'all. And this is a really great way for that to happen. Thanks. Sorry if it's so loud back here. Thank you that that makes perfect sense and of course, Steve should be the point of contact. It's not actually informing RMI. We just have a model here of that I think we should be replicating of ECAC members working with community members. You know, teams that that that generate ideas and generate work and you know we have we have other people who we can talk things through with. And so that should be supported and maintain. And I would say that this is a part of that. Definitely talking to your community is so important and that's totally fine as long as I think it's just we want to really make sure that you all are our product part of the process through CRC. And so just being very mindful of their timeline as well. Yeah, I get that this is more of an internal ECAC discussion about how we work in, you know, collaboration with community groups individually. So, so yeah, so I'd like to have, I'd like to finish like take that conversation maybe to another meeting Andre because I wasn't aware you were all still meeting as a group. So it'd be helpful to maybe get an update on on that process but to finish this discussion with Steve. So it sounds like to me Steve, you're going to write something up. Jesse it sounds like you volunteered to take a look at that over email. Yeah, I would like to also be in on that if possible. I just, as I learned the ropes that would be useful to see this I don't know how much use I'll be in more input but it would be nice to see it. So just one thing about that process just make sure if you send something to both Jesse and Lori. It should not be like a shared email just send it to them both and then they can both respond to you separately. So it sounds cumbersome and I apologize but again, there's a reason that's all, you know, in the end we would not like it if we didn't have transparency and the work that we do. Right. I will send it to them separately just so we don't cross our wires by mistake. Okay, great and then Steve, sorry if I missed the timeline so would we is the timeline with the timeline allow us to talk about this at our next ECAC meeting or do we need to get something back to CRC before then. I wanted to bring it to the next CRC meeting on May 26. That will be before our next ECAC meeting. I think the meeting was May 22, but the input was by May 26, and they were going to discuss it also at June 9 that's what I wrote down. Yeah, Mandy said they have a May 26 and a June 9 meeting. I don't know since because that Sunday so maybe it was 26. 26 I think I heard the same thing Lori but I think Steve meant the 26. Okay. I'm at 26. Yeah. So I guess my preference would be if I could get some feedback, then I could provide that to them to CRC before our next ECAC meeting. So if you guys would prefer to see the draft before it goes to CRC. Then I'll tell Mandy that we'll get it to them before the June 9 meeting. I don't feel personally that I would need to see it I feel like I could just send you a couple of ideas and I'm very confident that you can take any ideas that come your way I don't think I need to even respond to an original draft I think. I think we all have probably have some good ideas we can individually shoot out. Okay so it sounds sounds like Steve you will share, share with Mandy and then also share whatever you send in our packet next time that we can look at all look at. Okay, we'll do that sounds good. Okay, any other ECAC member updates. Okay. So, so we have two items on our agenda for today. That came out of one that came out of our meeting last week where we had talked about wanting to do a bit of a deeper dive on the solar planning and Amherst. And this was from Dwayne's discussion of thinking about how we can be proactive and pulling together materials for the working group and the consultant for their resource assessment. And then Steve mentioned emailed after the meeting suggesting that we also talk a bit more about outreach and education because it came up in several, in several ways in the retreat so I think with that agenda item we could also maybe under to your earlier point kind of rehash a little bit of what the last like the last bit of the retreat discussion is on sort of where our plans and grouping it's are and then feed into the education piece. So let's start first with Dwayne. And I think Steve also involved with the solar planning and Amherst agenda item. Yeah, sure. So this is a Steven I basically and then with Stephanie as well. I think there's two main things here one is sort of what we would. The vision that we have with regard to how to assist on the solar planning for Amherst which we'll get into in a moment, but then also to some extent also just an update maybe from Stephanie but also how we did the extent that we have the ability to provide some input in terms of the scope of work of the solar resource, a solar consultant doing the resource assessment. We can go over over that as well. So that's sort of what we had had laid out. And I think, if I recall correctly Stephanie you, you emailed around to the committee. A discussion draft of these recommendations. Maybe before the retreat. I don't recall. I think it was wasn't it after or after the retreat. They were circulated. Yeah, okay. I have them in up and I could share my screen if people want to see them. That'd be great. Maybe we can walk walk through them through them that way. Great. Yeah. Okay, great. All right, I guess the I want to start with the, the top of that before getting into the enumerated bullets the, the less than enumerated the character of first and second sections there is something that's not really in the purview of the solar consultant, but more so ourselves is in the past and maybe about a year ago. Bo Steve and I independently became came to similar conclusions with regard to, you know, how much solar we thought was going to be needed for to cover the load, the electric load of the town of the full town in of Amherst. I think we did sort of with without and also with the universities and colleges. But I one question I do have for this group and maybe is, is, you know, that's going to be a very important calculation and something we want to refine and get up to date as much as possible. So looking at our electric load today, but then also through some assumptions in terms of market penetration of electrification, what these electric loads may grow to be over the course of the next couple of decades. I think that stuff that I'm happy to take a take a first crack out and crack at, and then work with with bring back to the, to the committee to, to review and get some input on. One question I do have maybe for the group is, is advice on any updates or suggestions of where we might get updated information on our electric load for the town. And what we, what at least I looked at before was the last greenhouse gas inventory, which may, which may be the best data we have and it's actually not bad data at all. But it's remind me Stephanie is it 2016 or something. Do you remember 2016 data. Yeah, 2016 data so it's, it's, you know, a bit dated. I'm not sure if these things change too much, but they may. So it'd be a question of whether there's any additional data, updated data. The only thing I'm thinking of is whether. Or Stephanie, you know, whether the CCA either has or plans to have access to better community wide electric data. Electric usage for the for the town. I think that's a goal. Not any. Right. We don't have it by next year, but eventually. Okay, okay, so, okay, because that if I recall correctly that is a part of the process of once you get a CCA set up is being able to get access to that data on an aggregated basis at least divided by, you know, residential commercial So that would be actually really helpful. I think at this point we probably stick with the green, the greenhouse gas inventory. As their baseline or current current data, but then update update this when we get the data from the CCA but I don't think we need to, we don't want to wait for that. I'm sorry Dwayne just before you go on just in terms of accessing information I just want to say that we are going to be looking to update the greenhouse gas emissions inventory and hiring a fellow in probably hiring them in December to be doing the work in the summer of 24. No, 23, just so you know so. So, so basically next summer we'll be updating the GHD inventory so there'll be some data then that will have a fellow working on so I don't know what the timing may work. Great. Yep, I don't think it. I don't think we want to wait till next summer. I think this will be that that we want to get going ahead of that for sure. But okay. Okay, and then the we wanted to go over sort of some recommendations that Steve and I came up with, with regard to how we would want to add these these set of bullets here of recommendations or recommended questions for the town. For the solar assessment to address from from this consultant and the idea was to ideally that we would have this resource assessment done before the solely solar zoning bylaw is completed. I think they're going to be at least probably going on in parallel to some extent, though any completion of the bylaw is is is at the end of the process or maybe the solar assessments done before the solar bylaw, which I think is would be the appropriate steps or sequence. This is our sort of list of recommendations to sort of scope out the consultant study. And really looking at sort of how Amherst might plan out and and and think about the scale of its solar development and where that may go. So the first sort of recommendation is for the consultant to do a technical and then economic potential in terms of how many megawatts of solar that could be installed in various different built environments and already disturbed environments that is what what is the potential capacity for solar on our residential rooftops are larger rooftops parking lots. The landfills and brownfields this would obviously also be in and include an inventory of what's already been installed. I will say that I from from my own work. I'll be able to through the state databases come up with a quite accurate accounting of all the solar of different sizes and sites being being residential or commercial or land based. We'll be able to come up with that fairly quickly from the state databases of how many megawatts have already been installed in Amherst in these various different categories. But, but, but this consultant would then be able to broaden that out to look at more more broadly across the whole town is the recommendation on on these built environments. And I think maybe to talk just differentiate a little bit between technical and economic potential and consultants do sort of work, work in this area. Technical potential is really about, you know, if you at if cost was no up no no barrier, how much solar could you really put on the roofs or the parking lots and so forth in these different categories. You probably screen out for roofs that are, you know, over a certain amount of shading or oriented in the completely wrong direction so forth. But looking really at what the technical potential is of what you could at with without a cost consideration, and then the economic potential would would really scrub that down a bit, looking at and scrubbing out locations where economically, the costs would, would suggest they were too high, too high, or that the orientations were too off to really merit the installation of solar. I would say on the resident and Steve you may have more experience with this my my sense is that on the residential level there's, you know, too many roofs, residential roofs and Amherst to go one by one with the budget that one would have. So that's really done more by fairly established percentages of roofs that tend to in the Northeast with our sort of type of building stock. There's some data to provide some reasonable guidance of what percentage of rooftop residential rooftops would tend to be economically feasible for solar. So that would be more of a formulaic type of approach, but for any of this more substantial rooftops, my sense is that a consultant could go, especially because there's not that many and Amherst could go one by one to scope each of these out. And likewise with the with the parking lots and so forth. And then second is is similarly is to look at that. The potential for solar PV installations on open and undisturbed land. How much of that is available in Amherst that quality that currently qualifies for the Massachusetts smart program. There are categories of land that are not eligible for smart development. And so those would be scrubbed out. And again, we we're going to the idea is not to really look at this parcel by parcel, but to for the consultant to come up with some scale of looking at this across the town using GIS layers to then come up with a land area and hence megawatts of solar that could be could be installed in these areas that would qualify would qualify for the smart program. And to break that out into different categories of land, be them farms or forests or pastures or golf courses and so forth and to break that out also with regard to how much of that land tends to be in private versus municipal versus state ownership if there's any. So that would give a sense of the of the site potential for solar development, both on the built environment and the undisturbed environments. And then the third recommendation is then to is to look at these different categories of solar installations be them on rooftops parking lots or open land in various different categories and to come up with their characterization characteristic costs. In terms of how much is a cost dollar per watt or dollar per megawatt of installation in these different categories. I think part of this resource assessment and solar planning is to figure out these tradeoffs associated with potentially arguably better siting options with regard to a disturbed lands, disturbed sites, but also always keeping in mind the tradeoff with with regard to additional cost extra cost to put solar in on on rooftops or parking lot canopies for example. And then the fourth recommendation is then really to look at the, and I'm trying to remind myself here is is marrying together the the prior work that we did that we did is as ecac here to sort of suggest okay here are the here's the the electric load that we need to meet that to meet for the for the town of Amherst, or what are the various scenarios that that that we want to look at and present to that ecac wants to present sort of present and have the consultants work with us on in terms of of what the goals are for the town with regard to hosting solar within the the boundaries of the town. And this is where our electric load projections come into play. So, you know, a couple different scenarios that mean we might look look at is how much solar do do we need in terms of megawatts if we're going to meet the our own needs within Amherst. How many megawatts would be required to meet the electric loads of the of the town. One scenario might be similar but the electric load for the town after we go through some significant electrification of our heating and transportation. And then a third which may be a different goal and different perspective, and there may be others. These are just examples, but another conceivable one would be looking at. So much our own load, but looking at mass at Amherst as one of the 300 some towns and in the Commonwealth, and what would be a reasonable. How much would we have to host or want to host if we wanted to host our quote unquote fair share of solar in our town. And what we mean by fair share is open for discussion obviously, but one metric of that could be, for example, by by land area. So if the town at the Commonwealth has a goal of so many megawatts or gigawatts of solar by 2050, and that's equally divided by land area across the different towns that could be one metric. So we calculate then our fair share of solar to host in Amherst and we, that would be another megawatt figure we could look at. And the idea would then be to marry together joined together the the our consumption our electric demand usage, and then given the resource assessment of the different sites, citing opportunities for what would be within the town built environment, unbuilt the environment. What are the different potential outcomes in terms of citing for each of these different scenarios of how much solar we want to site. What would be there, there's many different ways you could you could place that solar around these different sites that we have available. Some of the some of the each of those scenarios have different implications with regard to how much undisturbed land we might have to take up, whether we have enough parking lots and rooftops to accommodate what we need. And what are the different costs associated with the different patterns of solar development to accommodate the goals that we the scenario goals that we set in terms of the megawatts that we want to be able to site and to come forward with a set of recommendations or at least out potential outcomes of you know here's for different goals that we want to set here are potential ways that that amount of solar could be cited in Amherst over different types of the citing opportunities rooftops and land. There's a range of different ways that could be done, each of which may have different characteristics with regard to how much undisturbed land we might have to disturb, and how much, how what the cost differentials might be between those different layouts. So that was the, that's sort of what we laid out here in these in sort of this planning idea. And let me ask Steve if he has anything to add or Stephanie, and then we can open it up for sure. Maybe I'll just overview quick summary here so there's two asks. The first one is just sort of a go ahead from ECAC for Dwayne and me to develop scenarios that we would be these scenarios that he discussed that we bring bring back to ECAC for discussion. That's sort of the first ask the second ask is that ECAC sort of approve those four questions that we would like the solar study the town funded solar study to address so these are just be our suggested questions. One two three four as as you see on the screen there with with any modifications that folks might have today. Yeah, thank you. So does this hand raised for a question. First question. Of the four questions that I think the question is, is this an appropriate place to also look at ownership models, because to me that that feels very important. I'd be more excited about a big solar installation in next to my house if if I was, you know, a member of that in some way had had some skin in that game whether well as if it was a corporation that was coming into my town, and putting them in and extracting those kilowatt hours and selling them somewhere so someone can do something that feels less good as an example and then the second is, if it's helpful I have two quick images that show just a snapshot of what this scale is based on the Steve's rough numbers, which I could put up on the screen. I think just to help all of us to to see loosely what we're talking about just because I think a big part of what we can be doing as a committee is giving people visceral senses of what some of the more technical conversations look like so this is our the entire town of Amherst. This yellow dot in the middle is the, I think 335 acres of solar that may be the right number may not. I'm not challenging that that's about how big it is and then quickly all show you if you were to then zoom in and see that circle. This is downtown right here where my cursor is if you can see that. And these three blue things are. One is the big why parking lot one is the town common and one is the high school roof and just to get a kind of a quick visceral sense of how many big why it would take almost 100 big why parking lots to get that 335 acres and there's a lot of calibration that's not happening in this drawing like the fact that a rooftop has less might have less power density or all kinds of things but really loosely to see for me the one that really helps is okay about 150 town commons worth of solar like that's something I'm starting to start I like to try to start to get these metrics on what some of it because megawatts that doesn't acres that might not mean something to people but 150 town commons that might help with the conversation. I really appreciate that Jesse and like that visualization and that is that type of analysis and then looking at how that might be distributed in various different ways that circle. Maybe one option is just to build one big circle. Maybe over maybe over the town I don't know. But the other you know but if you start breaking up that circle as you say then and you're talking about 200 big why parking lots or whatever. But how does that do the extent that we don't have 154 commons and we don't have 200 big why parking lots, but we do have some. If we break that up, you know how much. I think, you know, a big question is how much is how much can we affordably get on the built environment, and what's left over and where and and of that part that's left over. Not necessarily, we don't want to like, say it should go here here and here but sort of what are the types of parcels that are sort of the, the, the, the most appropriate, or available and appropriate to to install the rest of that's the direction that we want to go in. And quickly, the ownership is, is this. Yep. I'm not. I will say that in our town in our solar planning toolkit, which which I talked about earlier. There's a whole component on ownership there, which I think is really enlightening and important and actually has gotten a lot of interest by people that we've talked to and there's a huge difference in economic value to the community. If you can, if the community can own it, as opposed to third party so that is is a component here I think as Jesse suggested also impacts people's willingness to accept solar in the community. Yeah, I think that is part of this planning I'm not. I'd open up to the group in terms of whether that's a follow up step in terms of now that we know how much and where it might go how do we think about ownership and and and and planning this out in that regard, or whether it should. It also interacts with the CCA for example, potentially. And so, I think that should be part of it I'm just not sure that the sequence. Of that part of it. Andra has our hand raised. So two things that maybe it's conversations among, you know, as a ECAC committee, but maybe it fits under, you know, maybe this number five and six. One is the considering the CO2 impact of different scenarios. We know that we have some citizens who are interested in us looking at that and considering that as a part of the whole. And the other is something that we have to talk about within the CCA group as well but I think it would be really good if the ECAC would talk about the renewable energy credits. And what does it mean and and if we're really counting our how much we're offsetting our energies. We have to grapple with the reality of the market system that is solar energy credits. So, that's a future conversation I look forward to us having and don't know how it fits. I would say that these four questions are really for the at this stage are for the consultants doing the initial solar study. And I think they're big asks of the solar study of the consultants and I'm not sure they're going to have the resources to even answer all of these. But these would be, this is what Dwayne and I considered to be really important data to help with those next questions, which are ownership, which are, how do you do the wrecks, what are the carbon benefits. So I would see those questions as being informed by these, but what we're asking here is, you know, do we want to request that the solar study consultant team, try to address these questions. And then we work with the data and the answers that they provide to answer the next set of questions that come up. And that, that makes sense for me. I like the questions. And I asked, but in that context. Yeah, let's not, let's not just give them 20 questions and get no answers, give them four good questions, get maybe one answer. So I like it. Good, good, good approach. Yeah, I think, yeah, and I appreciate Steve you phrasing it that way. And the sequence because Enki mind that the consultants have certain special, you know, areas of expertise and it may not be ownership, different, different options for ownership and it could be carbon accounting of, of, of forest and, and, and steel. And that stuff that I think would come, come after we, after we have the data that's presented by the, by the consultants. Okay, so I think what I'm hearing is, you know, I think we have a good, a good start at questions I think there are some other points raised around. I mean, this is, this is, this is a bit of a wish list of what we want to have happen and so I think the first step is figuring out what the consultants can actually do. And then the second step is figuring out based on what they within their scope of work given the funding that they've received, what we might want to try to build in. I think prioritizing, you know what we think to Jesse's point, you know, our community needs to help us come together as a community and understand the scale of this, understand the implications, and like, you know, come together and I think that's what, that's, that's what we're going to try to do in my understanding is that that's what you can try to do right figure out what we can add to this work. So that would supplement this, the work that the consultant has funding for, and then what can we do to help. Like I know we talked about with the scenario analysis for example like, what do we need to do. Who do we need to get together. Obviously it'll be an open meeting it's not going to be an internal discussion but who do we need to get together to really hash out like what are the right scenarios in terms of Amherst's share of solar. And I don't know if I know the answer to that but I think, and maybe it's within the working group as well, and we just provide ideas to the working group I'm not sure the right approach but that feels like something that we need to sort of coming up with some agreement among the active active folks in this discussion on that question would go a long way. And, you know, I'd be happy to work. I think I can work like with Steve together in some way to come up with some ideas and maybe some initial data and thoughts to flesh us out a bit more for ecac to review in terms of what these scenarios might look like. You know what as I'm thinking about I'm also, you know, thinking about the 2050 decarbonization plan. And you know we do have to keep my new this idea that we need to generate all the energy we need our within our town is we need to we need to evaluate that. That's one one that maybe one goal we might want to look, look at, but to the extent that the decarbonization plan anticipates large amounts of offshore wind, which is obviously in nobody's town. But we all share that. So you know maybe maybe it's not necessary that every town has to generate its own share its own enough enough renewable energy for its own needs, because then the offshore wind doesn't go anywhere isn't needed. And it is. And so, you know that might be thinking about generating enough in our town for our own town use maybe enough, maybe, maybe, maybe something we think about as an upper bound. But then look at other scenarios about sharing, you know, a fair, fair, fair share of the offshore wind that's expected, for example, that would reduce the amount that we would need to generate ourselves. So yeah, I think it would be helpful to have a first stab at some ideas there. But I think we also need to answer the question of who we need. Who we need to get together to have that discussion and is it, is it ECAC having an open media, you know, having a, I don't know, we just need to discuss about what the right forum for that would be and how we move that forward and in a, in the right way. I don't know if anybody has any thoughts on that. My thought is that ECAC should and can come up with a couple of scenarios and I think Dwayne can develop those I'll provide comments, and then ECAC can discuss at an open meeting and we will, we will own and recommend those particular scenarios. So the groups in the, in the town and the community also create some scenarios of their own, and then those will go to the working group and the working group will look at all of them, and sort of pick and choose which, which scenarios they didn't want to emphasize and the thing about scenarios is you're looking for the boundaries you're not trying to predict the future you're just trying to see what what's the range of needs or the range of options. I would say ECAC should ECAC should recommend, develop and recommend scenarios in a public meeting. They don't have to represent the community. They can represent ECAC and our, based on our knowledge. I would say that a lot of what we want to do in terms of engaging community happens through our outreach and education and not actually, you know, like we can take a piece of this solar question. We don't have to give everything to the work group. There's, there's roles for us to play in terms of facilitating some coming together, learning, and, you know, input. Okay, yeah, I think that makes sense, Andre and Steve but I think I agree with Steve that ECAC should probably come up with some, some of our, I think we need to come up with some ideas too so that sounds like the first, the first step and then. So maybe I could ask Dwayne and Dwayne to draft something, send it to Steve to review and if anyone else wants a separate email to review please reach out to Dwayne. And then, Andre, maybe if you, I don't, I don't want to put you on the spot but if you want to come next to our next meeting. So thinking about like what kind of, and this is a segue I think into our next discussion point on educational education outreach if you want to come with any thoughts on how we might do that, like what kind of forum or or ways we might want to try to supplement whatever. I don't think it's with it. I don't know, I don't, I can't speak to what the work group is going to do so. And actually that's a question Stephanie is that work group officially finalized. It's, it's in process. Okay. So I think for the next meet Dwayne do you think this is something that you could pull together ahead of the next meeting. Then, like two weeks from now. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I'll try to do that. Okay. Yeah, just let us know if not but it, but for now we'll tentatively put it on the agenda. Okay. Thank you so much for coming on this. Did we cover everything or I heard somebody, sorry. Well, I guess I wanted to ask if, if ECAC approves the, those four questions that we are recommending to the consultant team that they address. If they're general head nodding then. And no objections. Then Stephanie, are you able to transmit those four questions to the consultant team or should Dwayne or I draft a letter. No, it's, it wouldn't be in the letter I think we'd probably want to find a way to draft these into the scope of work, which will be being developed very soon. And, you know, again, it's their recommendations you all are providing to the consultant but ultimately obviously the town manager will have to take a look and the town has to be okay because we also have a limited funding. It sounds like a lot but $75,000 isn't actually for the scope of a study that we're looking for it's very limited so we all you know you all may also want to look at those and prioritize what are the ones that really should float to the top and it might be something that you and Dwayne sort of agree on what those might be and get those to me sooner than later. So my preference that ECAC makes these four recommendations and sort of officially acknowledges that these are the questions that we would like to see addressed and acknowledging that they may not be addressed. And then we learn later on once the town has worked out the scope of work, you would come back to us Stephanie and say well they can do three out of the four and we say great. Like ECAC might figure out a way to get that fourth one addressed in some other manner. But for now I'd love to have it on record that ECAC is requesting that these four questions be considered by the consulting team. Absolutely and they can be like I said they can be something that we can sort of include initially what and as you know Steve from working with consultants yourself. If we engage the consultant, there's typically more discussion and more refining about what they're looking at. So even if we sort of put something out there. And the consultant responds to it, and we choose a consultant, there may be either expanding or narrowing as we engage them so I just want to be clear that even if a scope even if an RFP goes out because it may it may not be able to wait for your deadline, quite honestly, at this point, in terms of getting the getting the RFP out, because the working group will be engaged and I think we don't if we wait too long, then the assessment is going to fall behind the work of the solar team. Do you know what I'm saying. So I think we want to get. I think we can. That's why I'm saying if you can sort of work together get your questions and prioritize and maybe you do this. By your next meeting is what I would suggest, because quite frankly, yep, I'm asking the ECAC to approve these four questions now. Yeah, I think you have a motion and I'd like to second it. Okay, I didn't hear that so. Who weighs the motion. I am, I will make it now. Okay, is that okay. Sorry, I have a clarifying question when you mentioned that you're going to use the data from six years ago. As a starting point. Well, and this would be these would, this would not be this would be something that we would do apart from the consultant so it's not really part of this consultant scope of work. But yes, the idea was to on the data, the best data available at this point in time with regard to how much electric energy the whole town of Amherst uses is based on 2016 data from the greenhouse gas inventory. I'm just wondering if it's worth extrapolating to current day based on usage or from a community standpoint is it worth and I don't know if we can do that send out a survey to the community. Get a sample set and use that to understand what the 20 points would demand is just thinking from a community standpoint is it worth asking that question so they think they're aware. Yeah, I'm not I don't think I don't think we'll get better data doing a small survey. What I would probably do is look at. I don't know if there's updated data from the state but to the extent that the state trend for electricity has either gone up or down or stayed the same. I might just extrapolate Amherst similarly. But my sense is that electricity is stayed pretty, pretty much the same. There's been efficient, there's been economic growth but there's been efficiency. And there hasn't been a whole lot of electrification yet but but I can look at that and try to do the best to come up with a with reasonable data but I think within the precision that we're talking about it's probably not not not so bad. And I was also going to suggest that you can also the utility may be able to provide data in aggregate. So on request from like ecac or something or the town manager no from the town no from the town I wouldn't be through you I mean if the consultant is working on this. We're working with the consultant that's how we can outreach to the utility to get some some data so you know I think that's an option to. So I will read a motion that I move that ecac recommend this language and I can share my screen with it. Share screen, think and think that ecac recommends that the town funded solar assessment address the following questions and those four questions that we have been looking at. And I second it. Do we do a roll call. Sure. Stephanie. Yeah sorry I need to see you all Steve can do you need to have these up or I do not I can see that there's anybody else. Have any questions on these before we stop sharing. Okay. Okay. Please make sure you're unmuted when I call your name. Selman. Yes. Allison. Yes. Breger. Yes. Roof. Yes. Goldner. Yes. Brega van. Yes. Rose. Yes. And rocker. Yes. Okay great so I'm. I think that. In that agenda item, I'm just pulling up my, my notes here so I think as a starting point to get to move into the discussion on education and outreach. I forward I sent everybody last night. Some of the notes from the retreat and I can't pull them up, but it's maybe someone else can we can school. We could scroll to the last bit right. Which is the summary. And this is something we talked about out loud. But we that I, but I may not have everything right so I'd like to go through this with you a little quickly. So I'm going to sort of, I put all of our ideas into sort of three different buckets. One bucket being education and outreach with some shorter term ideas. One being a potential forum on the climate road, the Massachusetts climate robot potentially with on, you know the other climate activist groups in town as a way to sort of have a scaling impact. So it would be open to, it would be open to anybody but we would, you know, try to make sure that they were able to attend, and maybe that's a place where we could build in some of this discussion on the solar scenarios. But I don't know if anybody wants to lead on that. I know Stella was going to connect with T with tack on some transportation idea she had, and then the meeting with Paul which I already talked about and then longer term we talked about some forums with other groups that can also have a similar scaling impact so meeting with commercial heating companies to talk about, you know, how to make sure they're ready for their transition to heat pumps companies with truck fleets to talk about electrification, building owners who could benefit from C paste sorry I don't have it spelled the right way to think Don you were going to connect with did as a starting point for that through those conversations. And then I think there isn't there's a couple ideas around partnering with other groups. And so I thought maybe best to that would be something you could you could lead on. You know you had mentioned the U mass alumni association perhaps there's other ongoing events or things that are happening in the community that we could make sure we attend or, you know, have presence there so folks know that we exist and what we're doing. And then the second, the second chunk was just sort of these larger research projects and initiatives, and some of them do like as we were just discussing the solar project you know some of them are going to be education, you know have education. I think all of them will have education pieces, and all of them will likely have policy pieces like the rental housing questionnaire that we discussed earlier, or potentially other levers that we can use and I think we had sort of three general buckets of improving the sustainability and resiliency of rental housing, Steve and others, and we can folks want to throw their names in on that on the solar project with Dwayne and Steve but also Stella offering to provide some GIS skills. And then the residential heating idea, and looking into things like block power and supporting the matchmaking for homeowners that Lori and Andre mentioned. And then the third bucket is something that I added after the fact because I was reflecting on the meeting and realizing that you know I think Andre you raised a point about us engaging on the gas moratorium discussions. We had the public comment and email from, from Tony Cunningham about the school building. We have there's, I am on the BEA email list and I saw something go by about something else they were looking for for community support on related to gas so these things kind of come up in, in like floods and droughts, like sometimes we have a lot of these types of things other times we don't. And it brought me that maybe there's, we should identify one person or two people that sort of take the lead on taking these, these, these ideas and request and either funneling them through the committee as needed or, you know, deciding, or like basically leading discussions on whether these are something that the committee should react to or not. So, so those were the three, the three buckets that I pulled together. I don't know if anybody has any questions or thoughts on that. You're having your weird voice again. It's like every time at five at 6pm, I feel like. Gotta say that was a really good weird voice that was the best I've heard so far. But now, the base kazoo. Yes, much better thank you. I think there's so many different opportunities and, and I think you brought up a few ideas we talked about some ideas last time I wonder if it makes sense for everybody to send me a list of what they think is can be an outreach and education opportunity, and I'll compile it for our discussion in two weeks, if you want. Yeah, that's a that's a great idea. And yeah, but so I think it'd be great. Yeah, that's a good idea. And I think maybe we could also pursue would you be willing if I because I think each each of us individually has different networks where we find out about different events that may or may not be relevant. So perhaps we can also send you those, those as well as ideas of maybe groups we might want to connect with or, or things like that. So names, email addresses and different committees. Yeah, Don. Yeah hi I just need to apologize to everybody I have another meeting that's starting momentarily so I have to leave. I let Stephanie know but I didn't let the rest of you know so assign me to whatever you want to assign me to look at that see. And just let me know by email. Sorry, sorry about that. Thanks. Thanks Don Steve. I was just good to respond to your remark earlier Laura that yes I would be interested in doing education outreach on the Massachusetts climate action plan on the 2050 goals and kind of keep it at a fairly high level, and say if we want to try to meet those goals and stop burning fossil fuels. Here's the big picture of what we need to do. And I think, I think that information is really crucial the people to be able to understand and internalize that before we get to bigger discussions about the city's deciding and towns responsibilities. So I would love to do that I've got that presentation that I did back in November. And if people like that. I'd love to get feedback on it. I'd be happy to do that with other groups, both targeted to other community groups specific community groups or even public public events say you know sponsored at the Hitchcock center through Hampshire college. I'd love to get some help with that and feedback and improve it and if people want to team up and do it together. Or if somebody wants to present it instead of me I'd be happy to help support that as well but I think that's the big need helping people understand the scale of what we need to do to reach our goal of the 2050 goals. I'd like to add in a note and send that to Vasu. I've been meaning to mention that my son Solomon did a TED talk in Scotland. I think the title is how much clean electricity do we really need. And he's talking at a global level, but it really puts it into perspective. So if you Google Ted talks Solomon Goldstein rose, you'll find it. 10 minutes. It's, it's pretty awesome. Okay, any other comments or thoughts on this plan. Any other ideas about education or outreach. Okay, so. Well, so we don't we don't need to prolong this if we're if we're feeling good about stuff so it sounds like we have quite a few action items on our list already sending ideas for outreach events, or any contact information or events that we know of that are going on to the zoo. I mean, potentially coming back to us next time with some thoughts on scenarios. Andra coming back with some thoughts on how we might help facilitate outreach on those scenarios. But point taken Steve that that might need to happen separately or after the discussion of the roadmap because I agree that's an important piece of foundational information. And I think for the residential, or the rental stuff. Steve you'll just include what you send to Mandy Joe it as part of our packet and we can discuss that during the updates if you need to. Is there anything else I'm missing in terms of key agenda items do folks want to talk next week about the school building heating systems I know Jesse I think you might have attended one of the and then I don't know if you've been at an ecac since then so I don't know if you have any updates from that. Yeah I could, I, I could give a quick report back on that. It sounded like what Tony Tony I think was asking for might be more time sensitive than that and I, and I think it may make sense, I think we've all seen the email and we wouldn't make sense for all of us. It's fairly, it's a little bit technical the ground source heat pump stuff and I haven't heard the rationale what why she's asking for one for ground source versus air source. Needless to say, we'd have to talk about it for a little while to really understand what's being asked, or we can do the research ourselves. And as citizens who happen to be on the ECAC can we then remind me, there's an ask on the table here which I think is worth talking about if we have time now. More importantly than reporting back from that meeting because. And so it is the, do I understand the ask correctly that she's asking that we formally asked the school building committee to include resilient features and ground source heat pumps. Is that correct. Yes, that's what she requested. It's pretty simple to ask that they add that to the budget. Because it doesn't mean that it's being added to the project, whereas the question of ask of going air source versus ground source heat pumps I think is a much more nuanced question that involves the design of those systems. There's there's a lot. of information there that quite frankly if you really want to be able to have that conversation you'd have to watch that meeting, and then do a little research on your own. I don't know if we can weigh in on that one quickly without more information. Yeah. I just want to hand up to Laura if you can't see that you might have something even less big to say than what I'm saying. No, no, I just think I just wanted to summarize I think what Tony was requesting was, as you said, just advocating that those features be included in the budget scenarios because they're not being investigated. There's no, no investigation of the school serving as an emergency shelter and a climate emergency, for instance, as a resiliency feature that's not being investigated about what the costs would be to do so. Tony was requesting that those things be included and also then about the ground source air, ground source heat pumps versus air source heat pumps, as well, and that those also be financially investigated. Okay, great. I see Dwayne and Andra have hands up. Yeah, I think that we should separate the two issues because they're different. I think we should discuss. My, my sense is that what you should be advocating for is a building that doesn't operate on fossil fuels and air source or ground source. I tend to agree with Jesse like I think there's lots of nuances I understand that the different site plans. And so I think, unless somebody wants to take the initiative to really research that and then come back to ecac with kind of a clear recommendation that either we, we pick we prefer one over the other or just simply that either of those are the best options right. I think that's something we need to just got decide. Dwayne has his hand up and also Andra. Yep, I was just going to add. Jesse, you, you. I appreciate your insights into this as well but my understanding between air source and ground source heat pumps and let me first say I think these are two different questions with regard to resiliency and and and air source and ground source heat pumps. I'm speaking more on the air source and ground source heat pumps. I think generally for the scale of this building. From an energy perspective and a climate perspective, and from a roadmap perspective, a ground source heat pump is highly advantageous over air source heat pumps for this scale of a building. And I say that for a couple, a couple reasons one is that the, the efficiency of a ground source heat pump system in terms of its coefficient of performance throughout the year even in cold weather is going to be much better than air source heat pumps. Now it's going to, it's going to be more costly. So similar to the conversation of fossil fuels are not fossil fuels. There's a conversation to be had in terms of is the upfront cost of more of more renewable thermal efficiency worth it to avoid air source to increase the efficiency, keeping in mind, while we're electrifying. We're going to electrify in ways that reduce the amount of electricity we need because we're going to need a lot of electricity, and we need to reduce the amount of electricity we're going to be drawing, especially on those cold cold days. Okay, sorry to interrupt me. So the design team has done a lot of this work. Yeah, the one thing I was okay. Oh yeah, go ahead. Yeah, we don't need to redo that. But in terms of the budget is that the big part of the of verifying whether the efficacy and cost of a ground source heat pump is is understanding the geology. And investment during the design process before you make that decision of whether air source is better or ground source heat pump is better. You need to understand the geology. And so I think a question is whether the town has the, and whether we would recommend that the town in its budget for the design for the design process, have enough budget to drill a test well, which is not insignificant. Yeah, and I'll just say again when I think you're, you're touching on two or three of 10 critical issues that would need to be understood to, to wreck to make us recommendation one way or the other. I really, and I, and I think if we do any one of us that want to jump into this conversation really has to go back and listen to that entire meeting. And hear what was said, there's just a lot to it, which I won't go into now just the main point is there's a lot to it. I had my hand up, I just took it down because I thought I was about to talk. I, we're not where we don't need to recommend. We don't need to say ECAC all agrees. We just need to say, oh, we think that you should be putting these considerations both the cost of, you know, batteries and the cost of Well, they already have the comparative costs, but but anyhow to put them into the budget scenarios or whatever that is doesn't take a recommendation, it just takes a we're interested and you finding the most efficient and, you know, efficient in terms of our money as well. Solution for this so please look into both. Can we just do that. So they've so so yeah they've already done that so I think that I think on the first part you're exactly right so are related to the community resiliency piece it's just about including that in the analysis and so I think that's an easier answer. I think what Tony's asking for is because she's advocate based on her op ed she's advocating for the Fort River site and part of the reason is because that site is better for ground source heat pumps according to her article I haven't read the reports enough or listen to that meeting to know how what that's based on. So she my understanding is that she wants us to come out and support a ground source heating because and that would support that site location. I agree with Jesse that we don't have enough information and I think we need to decide whether we want to spend our time. Doing that or whether we want to do just what you said Andra, like we think either of those options are good in the, in the town, this committee needs to pick the one that's the most effective over. A range of issues. I guess I'd like to propose that we recommend that the idea of being a resilient center be considered, not that we think, you know, that's the right solution but that it. Yeah, I see that's a motion, then I would second that motion. All we're asking is consider it, because it's not currently being considered. Yeah, let's let Lori jump in because I know I jumped in in front of you Lori apologize for that. Did you have anything to add. So first of all I wanted to say has been said I just wasn't clear to me exactly what stage all of this is at but if it's a matter of considering these things they should certainly be considering ground source heat pumps and they should certainly be considering a resiliency hub. And the two, I think do sort of go together in the sense that the ground source has the potential to be so much more efficient. You know, like your whole site more efficient you make it more resilient right so in some ways so it's it's it's this seems important to me and depending on what she's asking us to support. If we can really get some clarity on that then we might want to go ahead and do it. And just to clarify, ground source and air sources are a huge part of the conversation very much being considered. I don't know if they're making one decision one way or the other but they've done extensive study into short term costs long term costs, efficiency etc that they're there, they are very much doing that. And my understanding of Tony's asked is on the other issue is they have not done anything. They have not done the resilience hub and that and that it would be very simple for us to simply said, but could you please consider this in the budgeting exercise. That's that's my understanding of what's happened. I haven't gone to every meeting I've just the one that was focused on those two technologies that an entire meeting dedicated to air source, ground source discussion. I would be inclined to support that but then my question my follow up question would be what exactly do they see as a result what does it mean for something to be a resiliency hub. That's for them to figure out. Yeah, exactly. And I think part of it, you know in this case, Tony was specifically identifying as an emergency shelter, and that has implications obviously on the size of the heating and cooling systems because then you're talking about working at a greater capacity for, you know, longer stretches of time, that kind of thing so I think that's partly why I got it. It hasn't necessarily been considered, because there's obviously a financial implication that would increase the price and that's yeah exactly. I mean, though, it's not committing but again it's not committing to Tony's point it's not committing the town to it but it's like, it's, it's been negated before it even has an opportunity to be considered. So I think that's all Tony was getting to an advocating for. Thank you. So there is a motion and a second. What is the motion for. Who made, I'm sorry who made the motion and where was the second. I did just the second. Okay, what was the motion. The motion is to I don't have quite the right words to ask the building committee to have the consultants include in their analysis. Okay, I would support that so yeah. Okay, all right so that motion is on the table. I'll do a voice vote. Selman. Yep. Breger. Yes. Roof. Yes. Goldner. Yes. Ragavan. Yes. Rose. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. Okay, so then who wants to take responsibility for forwarding that on to the appropriate people Stephanie, is that something you can do or should one up do one of us need to write something up. You should write something up and then forward it to me. Sometimes that sort of thing is just put in the minutes and then the minutes can be forwarded. Yeah, that's not, I don't suggest doing it that way. No offense, but it's too easy to get lost. You could, and you should. I would suggest submitting this to the town manager and or Kathy shown and cap copy the town manager. So address to Kathy and copy to the town manager. Jesse, can we nominate you to do it since you're taking minutes? I'd be happy to do it. The, I'm, I think I will keep the language in general. And not get, you know, not specific. Jesse, just make sure you copy me or reach out to me if you need any. Anything. Yeah. Thank you. Okay, great. So I think with that, we can move on to any final public comment if folks have, have some. Okay, so if that's a no, Stephanie, is there anybody with hand raises? Nope. Okay. All right, great. Well, I think with that, we can adjourn for tonight. Okay. Sorry, Lori, you do have public comment. Just one last opportunity. So if there's a anyone in the. As an attendee who wants to speak, please raise your hand. Okay. No request to speak. Okay, great. What's that we can. Oh, go ahead. But there's just, there's a thing here that says agenda for next time. Is that do we decide to take that off? That discussion out. Which is fine. But I saw that in the other minutes. It has this little section called. Agenda for next time or something like that. I don't want to. Yeah. So, um, I thought I had. I was sort of rambling. I thought I included that in one of my rambles earlier, but yeah, it was covered possible. I maybe I missed it. Okay. So it'll be posted. You'll send it. That'll be fine. I think I just didn't get it. Sorry. Okay. We can, I didn't think there was any, we don't need to rehash it. I don't think there was any objections to it. So. I can connect to you and make sure we have it in the minutes. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry, I missed it. Thank you. Oh, that's okay. Okay. Well, thank you, everybody. And. We'll reconvene in two weeks as normal. So next week we don't have the cat. All right. What are we going to do? Yeah. All right. Good night, everyone. Bye.