 Good evening and welcome to the monthly meeting of the Burlington Electric Commission. It's held at 585 Pine Street every First our second Wednesday of the month right here 530 that might change that probably will change next month to 5 p.m So welcome as always Public is welcome here. Come on down join the conversation give us your thoughts And it's an open meeting to express Have a good conversation. So anyway, we're gonna start off tonight First item on the agenda is the agenda. We have any changes addition subtractions to the agenda this evening All right, hearing none Move on to the minutes of the January 10th 2024 meeting minus any clerical errors or Typhos or anything are there any substantive changes to the minutes of January 10th hearing none I would entertain a motion Make the motion to approve the minutes of December 13 2023 meeting. There's a motion. Is there a second? second motion and seconded Discussion of the motion Hearing none All those in favor of the January 10th indicate by saying I high I Sharers is I all those opposed to abstain right? Oh, right. I abstain. That's okay. I mean if you've let them So we have four eyes one abstention motion passes Which will bring us to item number three on our agenda tonight, which is the public forum This is a chance for anyone out there here at the building or out there in on zoom land to Address the board with any concerns or whatever whatever's on your mind. Is there anybody? either in the public here or Online that would like to speak Sir You're here Yeah, step step up. Yeah I don't know. Yeah. It's just great. It's kind of funny. Oh, it's just for that Yeah, I'm Chris gish. I am a Burlington resident rate payer This is the first Burlington Electric Commission meeting. I've been able to make I've tried to review the minutes on some of the other ones Largely because I've spent the last few years. I'm learning more about the McNeil plant and Have a lot of concerns with that just being a young person and like watching our climate kind of disintegrate Before our eyes, you know, we all Sort of know that like though great the ridiculous weather. We're having this winter really warm and then now like this little bubble of cold air coming down from the north as Further below us gets snow further south because it's like a supercharged Al Nino and The Pacific Ocean this you know four plus degrees warmer than previous El Nino's event Which is when the Pacific Ocean is warmer all kinds of things like we could talk about the climate for a long time But I know I can't necessarily directly ask questions of the Commission, but I guess I want to flag What in my sense has been no serious consideration from Burlington Electric on how to phase out the McNeil plant or how to do that in a timely way and I'm not sure if you all have clarity on The necessity of moving off of like carbon-based energy sources But I think the science is pretty clear on that, you know, even I think it was pretty telling when even one of the authors of this Previous memo by VIC that Burlington Electric had explaining like the so-called carbon neutrality of McNeil Even one of those authors in like a front porch forum exchange with some of us he remarked that we should be shifting away from all carbon-based fuels as quickly as we can and In short, I want to just kind of ask the Commission how Burlington Electric is starting to move to do that and to think like concretely how to do that because I've noticed like in the IRP the draft IRP there's not really any consideration of using McNeil less and I know and Burlington Electric is Pursuing this the district energy, which is a 20-year contract That implies McNeil would be operating, you know at a similar capacity at least during the winter and And then I think Darren is also going to talk to you tonight about The the res bill that Burlington Electric is active in in the state house and that basically grandfathers in McNeil and our other biomass facility indefinitely to qualify for Rex which doesn't seem right to me if you understand the res similar to me Which is to try to get a handle on climate change and reduce climate pollution So all those things kind of which I'm sure like you're aware of at a lot of levels I just want to flag and ask you all what you're doing to like seriously and concretely think about how we can phase out the McNeil plant and maybe that's a study maybe that's trying to think about how Burlington Electric can use all of its connections and You know power at the state level to try to make it easier to develop new wind and solar and like more funds toward energy Conservation things like that like things that could actually help us move away from McNeil So that's kind of what I'm thinking about tonight You're in a crack at that if you Well, I'll I'll just say I think we've emailed a little bit Their district energy resolution has a number of concrete steps in it that we're pursuing That talk about how to improve efficiency at McNeil How we're possible reduce any sort of environmental footprint at McNeil But you know I challenge anybody to think about if we want to have a hundred percent renewable electricity And we want to have a hundred percent or as close to it reliability as we can have and we know that winter energy is Incredibly volatile expensive and heavily fossil fuel dependent. I don't know how you get there with today's grid with wind and solar Now the good thing about the renewable energy standard bill That we're working on in a coalition with VPurg and VNRC and renewable energy Vermont other utilities is we're making a commitment within that bill To say that as our load grows from today as we electrify more things which is part of our plan We're going to meet an increasing portion of that with what is called under the bill new renewables So renewables that are primarily wind and solar that are built post 2010 so things that have come online more recently including wind in Vermont which we're very supportive of and the state is currently not Supportive of building any sort of wind in Vermont. We are supportive of wind in the region and in Vermont So the idea is let's build out more wind and solar meet our growing load But I still I challenge anybody to figure out how you can run the grid reliably Respect ratepayers affordability run with a hundred percent renewable electricity So no nuclear no fossil fuels in our mix and do so without Wood and in today's current technology state the district energy resolution has a lot of pieces about doing some analysis We have that as part of our plan. So we're interested in the analysis, but part of our role here is to be Pragmatic about providing power our customers number one concern every single time we survey is reliability More than affordability more than anything else and my view has always been that if we want to electrify Which is good for the climate more EVs more heat pumps people need to know that they are going to have reliable affordable power And as of right now McNeil is part of that equation for us could be that in 20 years There's different technology mix and we're in this position to move away from it and if Moving away from McNeil meant we were relying more on wind and solar I'd be really interested in that conversation too But currently as the VEC report pointed out 92 to 98 percent of the time we run McNeil the alternative on the grid is natural gas and much of the rest of the time It's coal and oil so it doesn't seem responsible to me to move away from McNeil and towards those resources That's just kind of our philosophy at the moment If that if that's helpful Yeah, and where do you find you know to to his point? 50 megawatts of reliable power that you can turn on with basically flip flick of a switch How are you gonna? How are you gonna replace that right now today? No, I don't think we're going to today, and I don't want to have like You know and extended back and forth Especially after like coming right here from work and all that But I just think the level of study or like serious consideration that I see From Burlington Electric about like how do we phase out this? Generating station that is like highly polluting to the climate and Is not nearly as detailed and Highly considered as like other things that are being planned, and I think 20 years is Way too late to be like entertaining the notion of maybe starting to face it out So that's kind of where I'm coming from and I and I'm not an expert on the grid So I can't comment on like oh it would actually be impossible or not But all those things and like thinking maybe more seriously about reducing our electricity use Because right now I know the projections are through 2050 to roughly double Vermont's electricity group use and that seems It seems pretty daunting to think of that all coming from wind and solar. I would agree with that so I Think wrapping our heads like more Seriously around all those things, you know He goes back to my same question, you know, what do you think? What do you phase it out to? That's that's the $100,000 pyramid question. I just operation do you go right one other thought just because you mentioned it We don't believe that McNeil is a bigger climate polluter than fossil fuels I know there's a distinction here and I know that not everyone thinks that but the analysis shows that when you're using wood residue That's the dominant fuel source that we use You know leftover tops limbs disease damaged trees that are otherwise going to decompose or part of a sustainable forestry operation That the carbon value from that the payback on that is far far quicker than if you were going out and cutting trees for the purpose of generating energy and I would agree that you could do biomass very poorly and create a really negative Carbon impact from that and I would argue conversely you could have a situation where Forestry operations that are happening anyway and generating leftover wood that's not commercial and can't be used Has a different carbon footprint and there's a lot of nuance to that discussion So I don't think it's as simple as saying that it has emissions at the stack Or that we can only look at emissions at the stack kind of one point in time the state and all the kind of Analysis that I see looks at a life cycle, you know, we do that with EVs We do it with solar solar has a carbon footprint to that it has to pay off over a period of time So does wind with McNeil we have to consider the fuel source and that's another piece that's in the district energy resolution is to have a Review of the wood supply Independent review that we're going to have third-party review to confirm the data that we have that says that the bulk of our wood is coming as Essentially leftover residue from Forestry operations that are taking place in the state of Vermont, New York Which has a again a really different carbon footprint Life cycle than it would if you were going out and cutting trees or for the purpose of generating energy That happens in some places like in southern US if you're Growing trees for the specific purpose of cutting them down and shipping them overseas to use for energy Very very different carbon footprint from the analysis I've seen and then what we do at McNeil and I respect that there are different viewpoints. You have a different viewpoint I respect that I just want to offer it as context. Yeah, I appreciate that. I am I am really curious to see that study and Hopefully see the process and who's doing that third-party study and all that What up Like I've looked at that to and visited some sites where wood from McNeil was harvested, but it's hard to I Don't think from what I know of there's not a paper trail of like what types of wood exactly go to McNeil You know, there's the harvest notifications that are approved by the state Fish and Wildlife Department But they just that all they're saying is like some wood was harvested for McNeil from this site But some wood could have gone somewhere else as well But we it doesn't like the tonnage or type of wood is not specified So I think it's hard to have any confidence in knowing that these are all There may be the residues, but it's hard to know that they're all really limbs and tops Like I don't know that there's really much documentation on that or if you can share if there is Yeah, I mean we've updated our contractual materials Last year to make it crystal clear in our appendix. We will not accept Energy generation, you know wood feedstock like nobody can go and cut at a site Specifically to serve us and that we will only accept the non-commercial wood So the leftover residues tops and limbs disease damaged trees, you know wood that's leftover from a otherwise You know purposeful harvest and we also don't pay enough to make it worth anyone's while To go in the woods and cut specifically for us So, you know the third-party review I think will be helpful for you because you'll get to have additional data on how that looks we have a study out from a different third-party INRS for 2023 that did some analysis on this, but we'll have a different study and You know, we have four foresters on staff who are Professionally trained and work with the state of Vermont agencies to make sure that we're meeting all the appropriate criteria So, you know, I'm not aware of any like kind of further concern around it But I think putting out more information will be useful to you and anyone else who has a concern. Yeah Yeah, that's good to know. I know I have like Concretely talked to foresters and landowners who said that foresters recommend they cut down like Live trees or whole stands of live trees and send them to McNeil and they probably qualifies like Damaged or something because they're not High quality for other uses like if anyone's familiar with like pasture pines like white pines that grow up after an old pasture Like they're weevil they have multiple stems, but they're they're healthy. They'll keep growing, but they're Like low quality. So things like that. Like I know I've heard foresters recommend like, oh, yeah, you should get these chips and send to McNeil and Raggate So things like that. But yeah, I'll leave it at that Thanks for your comments. Yeah, thank you Is there anyone else for public comment is anyone online, I know Allen's here for a specific subject, so Anyone online Glory, no Thank you, sir. Appreciate it All right, we'll move on to the next item on our agenda, which is the commissioner's corner an opportunity commissioners to Share what's on their mind are things that have happened over the last month or so and open the floor to Easy enough We'll move on to item number five in our agenda. That's the general manager update with general manager Springer. All right. Thank you So we're moving towards springtime set of announcements on our updated incentives You know, we're holding things steady essentially till then but we're working towards a variety of updates some exciting announcements I think coming in April and all coinciding with the 2023 net zero roadmap data that Synapse is working to put together for us so we'll we'll hopefully have that ready to roll out all in April and We'll keep the commission updated as we kind of get a firm sense of the timing of that But don't anticipate anything happening in March. So certainly not before our next meeting We touched on the renewable energy standard. So This bill is now out of the house energy environment committee was in the house ways and means committee today We testified in house energy and environment. We haven't been asked to testify in ways and means I don't think ways and means is taking a look at it for policy purposes But just fiscal purposes it may have to go to the appropriations and then it would go to the full floor And it's it's been supported strongly by the NRC be per renewable energy Vermont conservation law foundation others as well As a number of utilities I think it's an interesting example of a really kind of broad collaborative approach on a topic that's eluded Consensus for a period of time and the original bill was from 2015 I worked on it when I was in state government the first version that's held steady for about nine years But it's due for an update. I think we have a good update that's planned And be deal continue be active trying to support it moving through The energy assistance program which you all voted to send to the council and the council approved Is under review at the PUC? We're working through Potential Questions that may come up in that process. I don't expect any kind of immediate result there But the good news is that the pilot program again is for the 12 and a half percent discount for income qualified customers The pilot is essentially extended until we reach a conclusion at the PUC so Customers will not be impacted by the regulatory process Monday so two days ago. We had another vote on a Carbon ballot item. There was a vote at the last council meeting vote at this meeting both votes were six six So there's not gonna be a ballot item in March or one planned for August We're continue to be interested in working with The existing ordinance and making sure it's implemented well, but also exploring options For buildings that are not currently regulated by that ordinance So all new constructions under that ordinance all buildings 50,000 square feet and larger under that ordinance It's not still not 100% clear to me that the carbon fee is the right tool to help decarbonize the smaller commercial buildings It's something we'd like to explore There are definitely organizations. We work with That are gonna share best practices with us from around the country. They're building performance standards. There's energy disclosure Rules and requirements. There's energy efficiency standards. There's different ways to structure incentive programs so there's there's more than one way to attack this issue and You know, we've looked really hard at the cohort of buildings. That's 25,000 to 49 999 square feet and it's a different cohort than the 50,000 and above 50 and above Largely campuses like UVM UVM medical Champlain the school district the city You know larger kind of capital planning organizations by and large if you go below To that next cohort those entities still have buildings the district the city UVM medical UVM Champlain But you get a whole bunch of other buildings types, you know And we're talking about social service providers nonprofits nursing homes, you know coffee shops These are not necessarily entities that even necessarily own or control their building in some cases And if they do they may not be thinking about capital planning the same way that a larger institution is so the carbon fee is a good tool To affect the capital planning on equipment replacement We have to figure out if it makes sense for that or a different tool to apply for the next cohort of buildings And we're gonna explore that topic. We're interested in exploring that topic So more to come hopefully there Our charter change pending in just a couple weeks on the town meeting day ballot Emily was at the ward 2 3 MPA to answer questions and also did a segment on WCAX. We have a website Line of credit FAQ on the website. The link is here Feel free to share with any members of public who might be interested or if you want to post it I'm from porch forum or anything like that. It's available. This is fairly straightforward, you know Going from five to ten million after not having increased it for a lengthy period of time with inflation being what it is And all things equal it's good for us from a financial metrics standpoint with our credit rating It's also good for our ratepayers because then we don't have to raise the same level of cash to keep on hand if the You know credit line can count towards a portion of our requirement So we're hopeful that that'll be We'll continue to get information out about it and that that'll be You know an item that can move forward if it does move forward on town meeting day We'll work to advance it in the legislative process see if there's an opportunity to move on it this year And then last but not least if you're a fan of BED social media, which I hope you all follow Two f-150 lightnings just joined our fleet ones at McNeil and one is here at pine street It's been really great to see the continued electrification of our fleet Obviously, we've got the electric bucket truck, which is a whole different type of vehicle to electrify But we're increasingly able to replace fossil fuel trucks with Electric trucks and that are going to have the range all-wheel drive the capacity to do all the things that we need them to do That's an exciting opportunity. We're going to keep planning for that in our budget You know, I really don't see Any need to buy another, you know gasoline vehicle for conventional purposes if we can at all avoid it We're going to avoid it. I think with our line trucks. We're going to explore how the electric truck works We might be interested in trying to get another electric truck if we're able to you know grant funding dependent potentially And look at also some different hybrid options as well that might evolve in that space But I think we're getting to a tipping point where there may be enough options out there that we don't look at Purchasing gasoline vehicles anymore and certainly our preference not to do that. So Do we still have gasoline line trucks out there? We do so the orange line trucks are hybrid line trucks Some of them may run on biodiesel or capable of running on biodiesel. They're hybrid, but they're using more conventional fuel They're not fully electrified. So the electric bucket is the first You know, it has some limitation in terms of you have trouble if you were trying to take it to a You know mutual aid in southern Vermont or Massachusetts without adequate charging infrastructure because it's not going to have the range to Really get there all in one shot So either we will need we could get another one potentially because you use them around the city not an issue for the most part I think but We're going to need some sort of hybrid capabilities for vehicles that are going to go potentially outside the city during storms and things like that So it's an active interest of ours, but we're glad to welcome the lightnings for the time being and we'll keep working towards more electrification That's what I've got Any questions The carbon Not really Yeah, not really so it's very much building based The only place where maybe Transportation would come into play is if you're an existing building and you pay the fee and you're in Burlington You could propose a plan to help reduce emissions on your site and get a portion of the fee returned to you So it's conceivable that that could be something that was transportation based that you're building Whether that's you know replacing like lawn equipment with electric lawn equipment or you know doing it would be doing things outside of the scope of the You know thermal sector potentially in that space, but by and large it's it's a thermal focused Fee didn't I think you said last time like if somebody bought bus passes for everybody worked there for example that they could take That cost and offset it with their feet Yeah, it's conceivable if they if they had to pay the fee and they submitted a plan that was approved And if it was a transit based plan or a transportation demand management plan, I think that that would fit I mean we haven't had a real-world example because I don't know that we've even had like a permit go through yet Because it's only been in fact for a month and a half But yeah, if you were a campus based system and you had to pay the fee And you wanted to get a portion of it back that those are the types of things that you might do to try to reduce emissions and Could propose I think you know as far as I understand the language. I think that would be acceptable Ultimately the Department of permitting administers it, but yeah, that could be an element Other questions Thank you All right, we'll move on to item number six on our agenda the December FY 24 financials Not on the balance sheet Good evening everybody here are the financial results for December FY 24 We had a net loss in December of two hundred and three Thousand dollars compared to a budgeted net loss of seventy six thousand dollars, so it's two hundred and sorry We had a budgeted net loss of two hundred seventy nine thousand dollars compared to Third time okay actual net loss of two hundred seventy nine thousand compared to a budgeted net loss of seventy six thousand variants of two hundred and three thousand dollars worse than budget Contributing factors sales to customers were down compared to budget in December. It was warmer than We had forecast or the average temperatures would have indicated So both residential and commercial sales were down Other revenues were also down by a hundred and nine thousand dollars a hundred and three of that is EU reimbursements Moving to operating expenses net power supply expense had a negative variance of three hundred and twenty five thousand dollars as always lots of components to net power supply expense fuel expense was favorable to budget by three hundred and ninety three thousand dollars McNeil production was 47% lower than we had budgeted Same similar story as in November Lower energy prices unfavorable economics Still a little muddy in the woods at the beginning of the month. We were trying to conserve wood supply For hopefully colder weather ahead So maybe it ran less than we had planned for it to run so we saved on fuel Transmission expense Was unfavorable by only seventeen thousand dollars November peak loads were higher than budget Purchase power was the second biggest variable overall purchase power was seven hundred thousand dollars worse than budget Combination of things there we saved a little bit on the mystic capacity But because we had less wind production and we had McNeil Offline more than budgeted that means we paid more for energy through the iso exchange So and also energy prices were lower. So we brought in 981 thousand dollars less revenue from the sale of excess energy And so when I talked last week, sorry last month about the projections for the forecast and the sort of Overall two million dollar projection for in purchase power. We saw a significant part of that here in in December Other operations and maintenance expense was better than budget actually by two hundred forty two thousand dollars for the month Looking at the year that category is about half a million dollars better than budget and Other income below the line other income and deductions Had a positive variance of ninety seven thousand dollars most of that unrealized gain on investment So for the year to date, we're on a net income of two point three million dollars We had budgeted to be at four hundred and two thousand dollars at this point. So we're one point nine better than budget Last month. We were two point one million dollars better than budget. So The sort of year-to-date results have eroded a little bit Speaking to the forecast as I did last month Not a lot has changed the forecast has improved a little bit. We've sort of internalized some of the You know energy market hit that we were expecting Rec revenue we've Since since calendar twenty three is over now. We know our wrecks available. So we know What the wreck revenues? We're anticipating on the order of like one point four million dollars an additional net power supply expense Due to lower energy prices between now and June So combined we're at the moment projecting a net loss of a one million dollars a month ago We were looking at one and a half. So that's it's improved and we've Identified a few areas that we're actively working on and when we do the forecast next month We'll be trying to improve even further on that So any questions on the income statement before I move to the next page Yeah, I think so because I'm not really sure I'm understanding what's happening. It sounds So you did your budget and it looks like for the whole budget for the year is okay It's just these months We're also thinking when you get to the end of the fiscal year, we're gonna be behind Right, right. Yeah, it's a situation where we had a Month or two of negative variants kind of this fall But the variance was small and then we had several months where we did better than budget, right? But now we're coming into the winter December January February. Those are the big You know winter excess energy producing months and so That's where we have the most risk in terms of Will What will the energy prices be? What will we receive for the sale of that excess winter energy and so It's the situation where we can be kind of two million dollars better to the good But then lose four million dollars in the course of three months if you know what I mean So you're counting on the sale of energy as part of the income It's an offset to power supply expense. That's kind of why a power supply expense is labeled net So the revenue we receive from that energy kind of gets rolled up into that expense line But that total expense line is really a sum of about 15 or more different elements, right? some of which are cost and This one if we had energy to sell Right, it would be a revenue essentially so it's why it's called net net expense But like one of the takeaways that I had looking at this You know you're halfway through and if you were ending the year right there really good variance to net income You know January February are going to be the months where most of that risk is going to materialize So we're waiting to get the January financials to see you know We know we know power prices in January were not where they were when we did our budget and our rate case back in May In June of 2023 like we know there's a delta there that's in our forecast You know how it played out in real time and what it looks like you're going to start to see in January and February And then there are some other factors like the reduced rec sale revenues that aren't kind of factored in here yet But we factored them into the forecast so there's still like a lot of dynamism over You know five plus month period where things could shake out in different ways and we may end up Right on track for what we plan budget wise Even if we get there a completely different way than we expected or we could face some headwinds And that's what we were kind of working on you know month-to-month right now And it seems like it's just so many things that are out of control of BED's control like last year the problem was The price we owe you all whatever the same problem Oh, it's the same problem different magnitude this year different more conservative Same problem. Okay Yeah, we're more concerned energy to sell at a certain level and it comes in more than right And so that space is smaller than yeah, exactly So we were we were more conservative in the price we forecast But we still have roughly the same volume of excess energy the ISO markets work We get charged for all of our load and against that we net all the payments for our generation So that's why we call it net net purchase power and When we have excess purchase power energy charges could theoretically go negative But you know, that's a function of the projected price and the projected price has not come in the last two winters Now that excess position will also change with the expiration of contracts And if we choose to renew them at at lower volumes and things like that The excess was generally created by signing the contracts before kovid and having sales still not have recovered to pre-covid levels Another way that the excess could get shrunk right if sales if the load increases compared to the contracts we have Right, then we have less than we're less have a less extra or less long To sell on the open market right all to your customers Right, we didn't Right, we did not intend to be you know this long in winter periods But the contracts were let before the sales fell off Now again when they expire you do not have to replace them at full volume So we can tailor our Position again now we would normally be excess. That's not an atypical position for us because to be a hundred percent renewable Reliably where there's extra buffer to cover intermittent resources under producing in a year, but not this much So we would normally scale back one or more of our replacements to recognize this If the load has not recovered by the time we're replacing them You would agree to produce less power and you'd be more Better matched with what you need We would purchase less purchase less. Yeah And and then be Not sitting on as much excess which then removes some of the volatility In the projection on our budget It doesn't we're not again, we're not paying more for the contracts than the contracts are worth But in a budgeting process, we are not getting the budgeted revenues We're not losing money on these power contracts, but we are not making the budget in those Counting on the money to pay your bills In a budget sense, yes it's a little bit well, I think it's So COVID is part of the problem plus climate and energy prices A lot of things But I think I think we'll know more after the january and february financial shakeout Um relative to what we do now We'll have a little more precision on where we are Because operating expenses, that's in control Yes No, it's it's the power supply line. That's the variable and the rec this time here that it's the variable It's supply chain on More additional additional electrification still a challenge of increasing that base load or is that noise supply chain Yeah, just getting more like what your projections were for increasing electrification and bigger Usage kind of like two two issues there You know one is we're definitely still having a longer lead time to get items in So I think could be an issue with as we come to the end of the revenue bond period which we're going to You know making sure we can get stuff in and pay for it with the revenue bond before that expires but then We're seeing a lot of electrification Happening but it is not at a volume that has started to creep fully out of the noise of variability And I think there's we've talked about a lot of it's happening in the residential sector Which is only 25 of our yeah our revenue and energy use essentially in the commercial sector Which is the bulk of our energy use we haven't seen that level of of Approach yet and that's one of the challenges Yeah, I'd say that the sort of general economic condition right of burlington in particular of the businesses in burlington And the commercial property owners in burlington is a big driver of the level of investment They're willing to make You know in building new construction that will now need to be electrified or pay a carbon fee under the new ordinance or You know retrofit Upgraded weatherized, etc. So our energy services group is seeing an uptick in that Activity but but really only I would say in the past six to nine months, you know, and that's so this sort of covid hangover Um in terms of commercial building investment has been longer than what we've seen in terms of consumer residential adoption of electrification It's complicated Yeah, my shall I move to the next page? Okay Moving to capital spending for december year to date We've spent 28 of the Budget for the year We have budgeted to have spent 4.7 million at this point. We have only spent 3.1 million so far um, a lot of the generation the production spending is Will take place in april with a mcneal outage for annual annual maintenance and investment there Distribution Has a lot of work scheduled for spring they've been working hard on You know tracking materials wire switches Transformers, etc. And moving projects around as material availability allows Um, let's see for cash position. We had 8.075 million dollars of operating cash available at the end of december That compares to a budgeted value of seven and a half million So still about five hundred thousand dollars better than budget for cash And you can see the credit rating metrics there for the last 12 months Ended uh 4.58 percent on the debt service coverage ratio set by the revenue bond resolution Adjusted debt service coverage ratio of 1.45 And 110 days cash on hand questions Okay, we'll move on to item number Seven which is it's the Emily's show for the rest of the meaning here afraid so The beady budget overview That's good that worked Excellent, okay um Right, so I think this will get to um Some actually it's a good segue from the discussion. We just had um and some of commissioner workers questions So I wanted to um The basis of this is a presentation. I gave to uh be any employees last summer just because of like a budget 101 um So and I thought it would be useful for Um, particularly some of our your the newer commissioners All right, let me figure out how to advance my slides. There we go um So pretty simple, um, we'll just go through a lot of pictures, but personally I find it A lot more useful to look at numbers in terms of proportions and change over time So this is a picture of Our fy 24 operating revenue budget So this is a budget. We're working off of through this year And the question I asked to the employees, you know total operating revenue budget of 65 Point one million dollars, you know, what is the big obvious thing about this slide? And the big obvious thing is that 81 percent comes from sales to customers, right? So that's how important sales are Um, you know to our operating revenues. We talk a lot about rec revenues because They you know, like sales, they are volatile and they are an important component But they're only 13 of this year's budget Um miscellaneous revenues is where the miscellaneous fees that we'll be talking about later. That's where that piece falls Um Conduit rental falls in that Um, EU EU reimbursement falls into that slice and actually of that miscellaneous revenues 3.8 million 3.4 percent of that is EU reimbursement, which Also appears in operating expenses sort of the two kind of net against each other So there's really only a very small slice of that that's sort of true bed operations Okay, so these are megawatt hour sales over the last 20 odd years and so when james was talking about negotiating contracts in the sort of 2012 to 2016 period Right, you can see where where sales were around 30,000 330,000 megawatt hours And then you can see covid here in 2020 And they've recovered a little bit But you're definitely not where they were when we negotiate the sort of the last of the renewable contracts Some other things that you can see in this slide Sorry, I might have to go back to another screen to see my notes Around 2001 Uh, there was a recession. You can kind of see the recession at the very beginning Uh, 2005 the hospital had a big expansion. That's the highest point of the graph Um, another recession 2008-2009 Um, 2010, um, the federal government, um, put in new efficiency standards for lighting Such that you could no longer go to a hardware store and buy an incandescent light bulb, for example Starting those phase those standards started to phase in So all of those things had Kind of a noticeable effect on sales And then we also had, um, you know, 2017 You can see, um, Blodgett Left Burlington for Essex, right? So things like Blodgett Um, Burlington Town Center, especially filaments, right? Coffee cup All of those, um, business relocations or closures, um Show up, show up here in the Kallawatt hour sales So that's, that's one of our big challenges, right? Obviously when we're trying to Look at a budget That's faced with inflation, kind of 81% of your revenues, right? Have spent So one softly declining, yes Lord just asked if the electrification strategic electrification efforts Are driving, like it seems like if Blodgett's gonna have, you can see Blodgett leaving or coffee cup leaving That some of the strategic electrification should show up as well, but And that's, and that's exactly the point about the commercial buildings, right? So Yes, you know, EV rebates, heat pump rebates have been strong and excellent, right? But the per kilowatt addition Of those is dwarfed by the 75% of those kilowatt hour sales that come from the commercial sector So what we really need are more hoolas with geothermal You know heating and cooling systems We need more electric buses for example, like Because you know 75 of all of those bars is coming from the commercial sector, not the residents So I think yes, the heat pumps and the EVs and the e-bikes and the mowers and all of that Are helping like I think this would be worse without them But they're not contributing significantly enough that they really sort of show up in the data Especially if you're talking about industrial Profile industrial usage Right, right Like for example, one of the projects we're excited about rhino is going to expand here in burlington And I think they're doing expansion in burlington that will allow them to stop trucking product from here to wiliston or from wilson to here So we'll be providing a Tier three electrification incentive for that because they're going to be reducing fossil fuel use because they won't be running trucks from here to Wiliston, but that you know that will help james you want to add in something? Yeah, you have to clarify that well. It's they're going to add extra refrigeration in burlington and avoid the trucking To the refrigeration that's in wiliston. So it's a tier three measure And it is also a low growth measure for burlington So it's it's one of those, you know, really great deals and I certainly Want to compliment the energy services folks and my team for working with them to To turn that into an approved tier three or to a provable tier three measure So it's a great one. But I think emily also said it. I mean, we know Ev charging is occurring. There's no question that the load that there is load related to ev charging But what we can also see is that our aggregate load has not yet increased because of it You know in any in any meaningful amount. So that's Yeah, it's a it's a real issue and again, it it creates a length of energy that we would not normally hold All right Yeah, we're working with them as well Yep Yeah, that'll be great Okay, so this is the same slide only this is dollars, right before was megawatt hours. Now here's the revenue So you can see the first and this is only 10 years or 14 years of data. The other one was 22 years So you can see the from f y 10 to 2021 The pattern is fairly similar and those are essentially those are the 12 years of no rate increases, right so dollar per kilowatt hour remains the same kilowatt hours fluctuate and Generally trend downward and the big difference are the three rate increases that we have Requested and or gotten approved in f y 22 23 and 24, but that's what's causing the revenue dollars to rise here These are rec sale. Oops. No wrong wrong screen. Sorry. These are rec sales from same period f y 10 to f y 24 so you can see Uh, some volatility there Um, this is what allowed be ed to not seek rate increases during that 12 year period Largely, right? Uh, was a big factor in it. I would say because the the rec prices at that time were really high and That additional revenue kind of made up for what we were was eroding on the sales side Um, you can see things have stabilized really since f y 19 um, f y 24 was a little bit higher than the sort of low in 20 Anyway, the budget at about was actually was higher Probably the actual is going to be uh closer to 22 or 23 really And okay, so now we're going to move to operating expense so this kind of I think gets to your question commissioner would occur, right? Which is where's the risk and how can we be, you know, two million dollars ahead? But you're telling me we're going to be one million dollars behind um, so proportionally Of our entire operating expense budget, you can see that the right-hand side fuel purchase power and transmission, right? That's half the pie so um, o and m is big and it's great that we're ahead of budget on that but You have to have a lot of o and m savings, you know to make up for big variations in fuel purchase power and transmission So that's that's kind of the ratios we're dealing with for those expense categories Um depreciation and amortization is 10 percent. That's the sort of tealish robin's egg blue That's non cash, right? That's just income statement expense The taxes and pilot are about five percent And then I did a comparison here on this slide, which is sort of what at our operating expense budget look like in f y 10 Versus what does it look like today? Um, so fuel is about the same interestingly 14 percent Purchase power has shrunk quite a bit. It used to be 38 percent back in f y 10. Now it's 22 Transmission has gone up a lot and we'll see that actually have a bar chart on transmission um And then o and m has grown Depreciation taxes pretty much the same Okay So here's fuel expense over the past 14 years Let's see if I have any note on this one So this is a function as you know of both The wood price per ton, but it's also a function of the volume consumed Are used at McNeil Right, so there's some price delta and then there's some volume delta as well um and You know so mo a lot of the Like f y 19 being low that was both a low volume and a low price yield More per unit when you buy less Is it a bulk discount or why why does volume impact? um Well, because so if the plant runs more than you know more than usual or less than usual, right? We oh, I see so So we paver the wood when it's purchased or delivered But then we put it in an inventory And so we don't actually expense the wood until the plant uses it so The purchasing is sort of independent of the usage, right? So um because we use an inventory system So f y 19, which is a low is both a low Relatively low production year as well as a low We were paying low prices per ton that year So here is purchase power expense um over the years um So it's you know what I love about this one is that You know we became a hundred percent renewable and and look where our our power costs are, right? They're they're better Um than an f y 10. This isn't normalized for inflation or anything or adjusted. This is just Straight so it's probably even better. It's probably exactly it is even better Move to so here's transmission. This one is ugly Right. This is why that slice Of the pie um Changed so much. So we were paying just over four million dollars a year and transgender this transmission expense back in f y 10 We're now playing not quite nine. Sorry not quite 10 million, but nine and change. So Uh, it's definitely more than doubled Over that period. So that's definitely a source of challenge So is that what we pay isa new england? combination of isa new england um velco and Nipah for the movement of the energy across the grave For the transmission expense is the most complicated area I would say of the power supply of the power supply budget James isn't here for questions. Yeah, and gm and green mount power too. So we pay green mount power transmission Or accessing the georgia mountain community wind Which is internal to their system and we pay transmission for wheeling power To the airport across their distribution system so George mountain wind is a 10 megawatt firm Point to point transmission contract because we don't know when it'll produce So we need 10 megawatts of transmission all the time The airport is a load following transmission contract because it's purely related to the load of the airport Okay, so yeah, the the number of different ways we incur these charges is as emily said complicated I would use my favorite word for kfc even gruesome um in terms of detail Happy to do it more detail, but it's not a nighttime quick discussion. I'm afraid Yeah, and most of this is we know like james says we do pay gmp We do pay some for nipah, but most of this is going to velco and iso do england for new england wide statewide transmission facilities so Call us a naive question, but like how does Does that square against all this money we've been investing in velcro all those years? In every year we Pull out of investment into their system And we and we we see the dividend Payment for that equity. So it's essentially like only it's like owning stock, right? so It's it's a it's a Attractive rate of return almost 10 percent. So that's why we make the equity investment but I wouldn't say that those two things are like necessarily related. Yeah I mean the I mean I guess no, they don't really cancel each other out. It's I Steve's what I was saying like there's a very complicated formula for how transmission expense is allocated Among the distribution you utilities as well as the other new england transmission operators like velco so um There's a yeah And as Emily said too, I mean just to give you a sense of scale, you know, the iso transition is probably eight million give or take right seven to eight Velco one to two and then you fall off hard when you get to like gmp and nifla in terms of magnitude so But you know iso is the gorilla for transmission still, right? But the amount we pay to iso some of that ultimately flows back to velco To pay for them as an operator and owner of new england transmission facilities, right? So it's a we pay into a new england pool and then that new england pool gets divvied up and velco gets a share Yes, we pay it. We pay a tariff rate for iso transmission And we pay what's essentially an allocated rate for velco to make whole all of velco's costs After they get money from iso new england So one of them is a rate x times your your peak load And the other is percentage of whatever velco's operating costs are for the month after other revenues Okay, so what I did on this slide was I took the Previous pie chart which is sort of the one little the little one shown up in the right hand corner Of all of our operating expenses, and I took the purple slice Which is the o and m And I exploded that And said, okay, what are all the things within that purple o and m? And the big blue one is labor and salaries not surprisingly the Second biggest red one is labor overhead benefits and pension And then the green one Is outside service services, you know consulting engineers Um folks who come in to adjust the environmental emissions controls at the McNeil plant consultants, um and all that stuff DSM rebates, that's the return on the that's the other side of the e eu reimbursement that I mentioned seven percent And then you get into a whole lots of little little things Um stock room materials and supplies maintenance contracts for things like software Tier three compliance. That's the Expense portion of meeting our tier three obligation every year Insurance and then everything else from you know phones to postage Is too small to see And so what I what I spoke with the the staff, right? It is which is to sort of say You know half of that operating expense pie chart is the power supply And then of that 34 percent That is Operating and maintenance sort of within our control, you know 57 percent of that is us is is employees and is our people And then this is the change over time of o and m expense Um, let me see do I have a note? What happened in 1415? I think 1415 was probably There was a staff retirement buyout around that period. I'm guessing that's what caused the rather precipitous drop from fy 15 to 16 So I'm not surprisingly, you know with the labor and inflation benefits increases Those costs have gone up Um, this is a slide that we show you every year and we also show the council this and so this shows Sort of our efforts Around fiscal discipline and trying to moderate the rate of growth in Sort of the amount of not, you know the non power supply o and m expenses that we can actually control So in fy 24 Those expenses were 1.5 percent less than they were in fy the fy 23 budget The rate of growth on average is just under 4 percent a year Um Since fy 16 between fy 7 and fy 16 the rate of growth was more like 5.84 percent So, uh, we've been really trying as hard as we can to keep that growth limited So, um, as I as I told the staff, you know, okay now, you know how to get to your operating income We've covered operating revenues now. We've covered operating expense So that's the top piece of the income statement that I show you every month And then there's sort of all the other non operating below the line items Velco dividends are the first one. We just talked about that. That's 4.4 million dollars in the fy 24 budget Interest income, uh, which you know has been higher the past couple years with higher interest rates Grants and capital contributions to to customer construction projects that one is very very volatile Depends on what projects are being done depends on what grants we receive Other income net is kind of everything else miscellaneous And then you have your interest expense. That's That's our debt service, you know the payment on the mortgage so to speak and then you get to your bottom line net income Um, I won't really go through this. I don't think We do do a cash flow statement. You see that every Every year in the budget packet. We essentially Um, look at for our operating revenues, you know, where where we what are our sources of cash? You can see so operating revenues is the big one the velco dividends the interests the grant income and just covered those Um, here's our three million dollars general obligation bond Financing here's the amount we budgeted to draw down this year from the revenue bond You add that all up you get 87 million Dollars and then on the other side we say, okay, where's the cash going to go? operating expenses Taxes the capital projects the debt service, etc And we and we cash flow out This is the annual picture, but we also do a cash flow for every month See where we're we're budgeting to be So this is just proportionally showing those uses of cash So again, the operating revenues are the the really big one You can see the importance of the 2022 revenue bond in the orange 9 million dollars in our budget this year Velco equity is the red 5% And then proportionally the uses of cash Again, the operating expenses not surprisingly the big one Debt service is the maroon 12% capital projects at for for what we call bed or the distribution system Non McNeil, right is 13% And McNeil is 2% And then we show you this slide every year. It's part of our budget budget presentation to sort of showing The allocation is sort of the capital spending over time as well as The allocation of the capital budget to the different plants. So production is our generating resources Is the distribution system General includes it buildings fleet vehicles that sort of thing And I think that's really what I kind of had I wanted to give you some just context for For proportion and scale and Relative size and importance of things as well as sort of trends over time, you know, so To just understand kind of what the pain points are, you know, aka transmission Being a being a big one And then I also wanted to share So we're actively sort of in budget season so to speak right now The departments the various areas of bd are developing their operating budgets or capital budgets everyone's working on their worksheets and sending in their forms And then we'll spend you know the next two months really like Putting everything together seeing where how things total up Figuring out where we have to make adjustments Before we bring you a budget as a first pass at your april meeting typically At the same time we'll be Developing our cost of service model for a potential 20 24 f y 25 rate increase And so we'll we'll need that to say okay What rate increase does our cost of service show that we can justify? And then what is our budgeted amount that we'll be requesting to make sure that those two are not in conflict with each other I did want to share with you we also do a Oh, I didn't stop sharing Typically as part of our annual review by moody's they ask us to provide pro forma financials so They look at our most Kind of recent audited financials Then they want to see where are you projecting to be in the fiscal year That's either in progress or that you're in the middle of preparing financial statements for And then what are you forecasting out two or three years? so Just I have no idea how close our actual f y 25 budget will be to this projection since we're Still putting it together literally But just to let you know we do do this exercise. We do provide this to moody's Typically they've asked every year some years. I think one year they didn't ask we got maybe got lucky But we do we do always have a five-year projection that we're actively working on and and updating not to do planning And so this is the the pro forma that we shared with moody's in september Um, I'm sorry. I'm on the wrong tab. I wanted to be on the income statement So here you can see we had f y 22 results at this time. We had preliminary results for f y 23 We had a budget for f y 24 and then we had a couple years where we were forecasting So we had to put in some assumptions here for how much sales would grow um About nine million dollars Between preliminary f y 23 and the forecast for 26 Some of that it was projections for rate increases, which you'll see below Rec revenue increasing modestly to 8.9 million Missile similar range as as past results Let's see fuel expense we forecast to grow a bit Purchase power also Some of that it was due to Some of our contracts are going to start to expire That's another thing that james and I will be updating you over the next six months or so I would say and so This forecast had to make some assumptions about The relative price of the contracts that would replace what we have in right now Uh transmissions are projected to grow o and m we assumed a rate of inflation So I think the important thing is to kind of see what what you know, what we're trying to do this exercise has come out with You know decent credit rating matrix and decent operating and net income results and um So we've you know, we've made our days cash on hand target here We've got the adjusted debt service coverage ratio around 1.1 to 1.2 And then here we showed moody's Um assumed rate increases, right? That would be required to sort of make this pro forma happen We've got the the two rate increases that are approved. We've got the 5.5. That's currently under review And then for f y 25 we assumed a 5.4 percent And for f y 26 we assumed a 3.6 so again Those are just assumptions just assumptions. They may come in higher or lower. They're just assumptions But I thought it'd be helpful to kind of give you a range of what Was sort of working on paper back in september And I think that's all I had on this agenda item and I'd be happy to take questions Yeah, it's amazing to me that electricity is still so cheap, honestly Right, I mean You gotta pay for a lot of stuff. It's a lot of infrastructure and a lot of costs and Transactions that go from Generating to turning your lights switch on but and it's still pretty affordable. I think that makes the 5 percent Probably reasonable, right because it's low relatively low anyways Yeah, but uh, just Not seeing you know, especially looking at what you just talked about the next couple of years You know guesses Just feels like that that goal is still a bit a bit out with the goal of the dare to Expressed at least a couple years ago Without trying to get it down to that One and a half two percent to give it through that that threshold But I'm not sure where that stands with the puc as far as being not how would you go to them for Or the more renewable bill would raise that from two to three percent Recognizing that very few utilities are getting two percent rate changes these days So if it was at three percent and we were looking at a three and a half You'd be in the spot where maybe you could get it done in fiscal 26. I don't foresee it in fiscal 25 But remember, you know point Emily was making the sales Come up your rate pressure goes down all things equal and we haven't seen the sales go up If the sales start coming the pressure to raise rates really dissipate significantly. So We get the town center online You know the first phase of that project we get the high school online You know, we get productive reuse of some of these commercial facilities That will change the sales piece Ironically more than doing a thousand heat pumps on residential will do even though that's a good accomplishment too And doing those things in tandem will have an impact. So You know, that's what we're that's what we're waiting for to get to that trajectory and You know, we've seen some delay in some of the different, you know commercial activity in the city so Okay Any other questions from commissioners All right, thank you All right, we'll move on to Item number 800 agenda tonight, which is the miscellaneous fee update Fortunately, you don't get a new speaker for this one. I apologize But I'll try to keep this brief So this is a similar slide deck to what I took you through last month. I'm just sort of highlighting The additional work and analysis that's taken place since your last meeting So as I said then We're evaluating our miscellaneous service fees. These fees are assessed under a tariff The tariff will require Both city council and PUC approval The current fees that we have in place now went to effect on July 1st, 2010. They were based on costs from fy 09 And fy 2009 that cost basis was before we deployed our advanced metering AMI infrastructure So since the last meeting the changes are in yellow Um, the labor rates actually were fy 24 and the calculation. I had just mislabeled the slide so And the labor overhead rate Was or is fy 23 actual Just clarifying that As requested, we did look at the ratio of initial service fees performed For customers wholly new to barlington where we got to start from the beginning with your name and address and all of the information We collect to set up an account versus customers who are Either landlords with standing orders or Customers just moving house to house apartment apartment within the the service territory or they moved out of town And now they're moving back and they're still in our system So the breakdown was Almost 50 50 46 percent in 2023 were new customers Brand new customers and 54 percent were Of initial service setups were returning customers We also dug in harder on depreciation for AMI related assets meters servers softwares pole-mounted routers switches So that we refined the carrying cost that's associated with the the AMI Or with fees that use the AMI which is essentially the reconnection fee And we also Sent our changes or we sent our worksheet to the vermont department public service both the sort of finance division that will be ultimately reviewing the rates from a rate design Uh, just and reasonable standard perspective as well as the consumer affairs and protection Division And we received favorable comments back from from both of those departments at the public service department. Okay So I have does anyone need to want a hard copy of this so you can see it better are you all on teams? Great great So this is kind of where This is where we stand right now These are the Fees as they were posted on our website for customer feedback and review We are now proposing different than last month that we split the initial service fee into Two depending on whether you're a returning customer or a new So the returning customer initial service fee would drop from 30 dollars now to proposal to be six dollars That would apply to Returning customers including standing orders And then the new customer fee For someone new to our service territory would drop from 30 dollars to 15 the after hours Rate is unchanged since last time because Because the additional time it takes to set up a new customer is sort of dwarfed by the minimum call time that gets occurred That gets incurred if someone needs to respond after hours Okay for reconnection. This is where the additional analysis we did on the AMI Comes into play I'm forgetting what we had as a proposal last time, but it's currently 20 dollars um the current cost basis indicates A fee of 26 dollars We would be proposing to charge this fee not only to customers who have been disconnected for non payment But to any customer who's asking to have service restored after a disconnect for any purpose If a customer is um Moving in to a unit or a house apartment And they also need the power turned on we would charge this fee Not the initial service fee like we wouldn't charge both in other words Okay That makes sense. We just charge the reconnect fee Can I ask a quick question before we move on from reconnection? Um, and sorry, I wasn't here last month. So I don't remember from the notes, but if um Have you overlaid the reconnection? Um The population who might look for reconnection with like low moderate income rate Is there some is that separate different or is there kind of an overlay there? or ones we've looked at that Uh, we have it so something we can we can look at So in other words, um If you're on that special rate, right, is there an opportunity to pay attention to what that We could analyze the customers who are on the EAP rate versus customers who are being assessed the reconnection fee and to see How how much correlation there is yep Yeah, because it sort of feels like a poverty tax, right? And so Um Whereas if I just let it lapse I don't have to pay six dollars, but if I don't have enough money I have to pay so just No, we would we would Well, so if I move for example, I only pay six correct, but if I Actually don't have enough money and I which I understand you guys give a people a lot of breaks, right? Or it takes a while to be disconnected It does I did get one of those boots the other day Already you get the reading one, but um Yeah, it's separating out um to understand to fit someone who potentially could afford and is not is being Delinquent yeah, um versus folks who are on this rate special rates that may This might put them over the edge in a different way Maybe they get that maybe they pay the six Or something like that. Yeah, but because I think the problem with the special rate is it's only not that many people are using it Fair right Right Like the traditional, you know kind of utility regulatory paradigm is cost cause or pays So you try to have the fee really just reflect the cost of service So if somebody or some entity is incurring a cost they're paying for the cost and it doesn't get distributed to the other rate payers Within that you can do, you know analysis make judgments do other things But I think this kind of reflects that paradigm to start with but it's a good It's a good overlay to have and we can definitely look at it. Yeah, it's fair. I yeah, it just be To understand the burden just upfront if there's and then maybe there's creativity around what could happen Well, I don't know mike if you know the stop of your head But if somebody was disconnected for non-payment and they had entered into a budget payment plan Whether they're reconnect fee goes into the budget payment plan And if not we can look into that Okay, because typically when we do have a disconnect for non-payment and if there is a balance We work to try to set up a kind of a repayment over time And it's possible that this kind of thing could be included in that as opposed to having to be paid upfront So there's different ways to look at it. But let's see if that's our Kind of it within our current practice Yeah Thank you All right continuing down reconnection after hours Um would drop actually because again, we're So so so the reconnect fee the cost basis for that back in fy09 was $31 and 41 cents It was a policy decision to only charge $20 instead of the full cost recovery for that So it would go up But it actually the cost of it actually has fallen by $5 and 72 cents due to the AMI okay, whereas Reconnection after hours was There was no sort of policy driven adjustment to that it was sort of priced at cost so to speak at 195 That would drop To $93 again because of AMI and the ability to disconnect or reconnect remotely Temporary service, um, this is as presented to you last month Cost basis difference between increasing between 537 up to now it is $840 so the the proposal would be an $841 fee I'll flip to the next one returned checks This one the cost basis has increased to $17 and 58 cents Um The proposed fee. Oh, I'm sorry the $27 20 cents proposed fee is $28 The proposal is to charge that not only for checks, but also for a ch or electronic payments return for insufficient funds Emily kind add something just real quick lightning fast work by mike We can confirm that the reconnect is built into the budget payment plan But we could still do the overlay that you were requesting It's quick work Thank you, Andy Good teamwork Mead of removal replacement for siding no change since your last meeting the proposal there is 136 dollars For the collections, we are recommending to eliminate this fee. This is I don't know if we actually I mean, I don't know how many situations this actually happens anymore It was set up for If you are a person who received a disconnect notice Under current regulation, we have to visit your home If we happened to visit your home and you were home and you had funds available to pay us at that time Um in order to restore service. We would charge you this Um this $20 collection fee. We're we're recommending to just eliminate that And then the last two customer assistance call you'll see we got some we got probably the most feedback on this one The price of this is is the cost of this has increased quite a bit It would be it's uh 28 dollars now It would be the 86 dollars under the current cost basis 472 dollars if after hours The label on this implies that we will charge you 86 dollars every time you call and ask us for help or report a problem What this really is is it's a fee for One of our Distribution crew members to come to your location to investigate a reported problem with your power or electric service After having tried to troubleshoot the problem with you by phone And explaining the fee saying, you know, we can we'll be happy to send someone out But if the problem turns out to be on your Equipment or your side and not a bd issue, you know, we will be charging you x dollars and What i've heard from dispatch is that Um, you know, if someone's calling after hours and even now they learn they're going to be charged $195 They say, okay. Thank you. It's fine to send someone in the morning, right? Um So it's it's not for any customer Service call. It's really for a location site visit And if we get out to the site or the location and we determine that the problem is with bd's equipment, there is no charge So we're going to relabel that. Yeah, we're going to be more accurate Call it site visit or location visit upon customer request or something that's more descriptive of What the service actually is so what would be the customer's equipment and what You know a breaker has flipped and oh something inside the house like yeah Where you would hire an electrician to come and do it If they'd be calling and say hey, I think something's wrong with your service and we say, oh, you know, okay We roll a truck and we roll a truck. We have to pay a three hour minimum call I b w rates, right after hours after hours assuming it's after hours So then if we come and to find out, oh, there's there's a problem Yeah on your electric panel or in your so it's not on the bd system That's when this would apply. Okay, if it was related to the service connecting to the house our problem. We cover that So what happens if we have an outage? And the surge comes back on and trips a bunch of breakers In their homes their main breaker Who's going to be How are we going to determine if that was our fault or their fault? One of the reasons I'm saying because I've lived that experience where I've had 13 calls in one night for that reason So I'm just I mean, is it going to be the person called in? Determine that and saying Based on what I've heard is that the Either the operations team during business hours or the dispatcher after hours We'll try to run through those situations with the customer, right? And so The first thing we'll say is have you checked your breakers and obviously the dispatcher might know Hey, we had an outage and your your services just come back on Could you go check check your box and see? Right and so they do take the time to try to work through that with the customer and often That does the trick And then again, you know, so the customer I think is You know insistent or really feels like it's a problem with our service The person speaking with them always informs them of what the cost the fee would be If you know depending on if it's business hours or after hours if they if they really want someone to come out Okay I didn't know if you intended So it's a great question in general Yeah In general Utility like ourselves and all utilities really work by the same general guidelines that unless we're negligent We wouldn't pay in that scenario. So And the puc that's in our operating guidelines from 1997. It's pretty crystal clear. So Um, it's, you know, we say but for but even if we had an outage That wasn't our fault and we reset and something goes on in your house. We would not reimburse for that claims I mean, it's not so much that the equipment is failed Due to our our end of it. It's just the customer service part of it Being there for the customer and helping them out, you know, because we do have a lot of customers. I know at the time we're elderly Could not go reset their breakers, you know, due to it and it did go out because of the outage not Like I said didn't damage their equipment. It just tripped out and it does happen That's kind of what my question was Okay So that's the current proposal as I said those the fees that Current and proposed fees are listed on our website and have been for a couple weeks now We've heard Our communications team has sort of put the word out about the proposed fees through north avana news front porch forum Social media, I believe We've heard from 17 folks All but one of these are front porch forum readers Nine of the customers expressed that the customer assistance fee seemed really high And or they asked questions about, you know, am I going to get charged this to report a tree branch? Or it seems like you should be able to answer basic customer service calls without You know Charging me hundreds of hundreds of dollars and so that's where we're like, yeah, that that label is is it's not very clear um eight customers expressed a similar concern as the commission just raised the reconnect fee and or the bad check fee Seems harmful to customers who can least afford those assessments Two customers expressed the temporary service fee seemed high. They also, uh, it seems Maybe we're clear about when this fee would or wouldn't be charged One person expressed that this fee would be charged if they wanted to do a panel upgrade That's not what it's about. That's about its temporary service is really kind of a you know, vacant lot construction site And we kind of put in basic service while the construction crew Does their work Three customers expressed that the Something to the effect of, you know, seems very unreasonable Glad you're updating fees to stay current with current costs And one customer just said we shouldn't charge any fees at all And I've also updated the revenue impact because we have we've adjusted some fees We've split the initial service fee apart So with the current proposal, this would result I estimate in a hundred and twenty thousand dollar decrease In miscellaneous revenues. Most of that the loss of revenue from the initial service fee It'll be a little bit offset by the increases in the other fees, but the volume of those is very low comparatively So net Overall, this would be a decrease in operating revenue of around 110 to 115 thousand dollars We have done some additional work on the conduit rental fee that will go up, but Um, not by very much Um, so that will maybe result in about 1200 additional revenue per year So it won't it won't make up for this shortfall. So like all things equal f y 25 That's more rate pressure less fee, you know collection just to be transparent. It's not insurmountable. We'll deal with it It's just important to 65 million dollar budget though Yeah every Every one percent rate increase is about 500 thousand dollars of revenue or expense. So you can kind of Translate that to you have a point, right? All right, all right. That's good to know Um, so that's all I had I did have scot a little bit on just a reminder of the Vermont This is a busy comparison. So um, I can go through it or not as because I'm uh, commissioner moody You sent me that that email. So As you wish I'm ready, but maybe I'll pause there and take take questions That comparison will be included in the package after that after The fact for us is to take a quick glance at yeah. Yeah, I can Give you a hard time It's not a true and just know it's not apples to apples. Yeah, we're gonna say of course Appreciate that like some things we charge for get charged differently at different utilities Or some things may be built into operating where we're charging a fee or they might charge a time of materials where we have a set fee So there's distinctions Yeah, right and you know, we all have different union contracts with different provisions We all have different labor rates. We all have different labor overhead of benefit rates We all have different truck and vehicle rates Our service territory is very small and compact You know the cooperatives and gmp cover, you know, vast expanses of territory compared to a little to little burlington Um, so, you know, all of these are In theory, right? They're they're cost based and so because the utilities have different cost structures It can be hard to compare Completely apples to apples other questions Spirkey's I would love to give you a chance to comment if you'd like. Thank you very much Um, pardon me Allen Birkey Uh, for the record, I'm not the one customer that said no fees whatsoever I just want to confirm that wasn't me, right? So, um, again, I really appreciate that um, you folks are are seriously looking at these fees and particularly In light of the smart meters, uh, reducing the fees to transfer power On and off as a landlord that has Standing orders for all of my units. Uh, I Think that it's very important to Recognize and I think we talked about this at the last time although Emily didn't think that she was breaking out standing orders in addition to customers moving into the territory as opposed to somebody moving from one apartment to the other But um, I think that the cost to do a standing order is significantly less than answering a telephone call And talking to somebody about moving service from one to another I also think that Electrification is very important and it should be a goal And a something that you support because you have in the past had certain things where the cost basis Does not equate to the fee and the reason was that you just made a policy decision to do that So electrification Um between tenants, you know when a tenant moves out and another tenant isn't moved in yet It keeps the smoke detectors on It keeps security lighting that's outside. Maybe it's a duplex and the security light is tied to one person's account Um, but the other tenant gets the benefit of it Having the lights on if the police or the fire department needs to come is also very very important. So the impact I think is small And uh, and we don't know because we don't actually have the Proposure proportion broke out broken out of how many people are transferring pursuant to a standing order as opposed to moving from one place to another Those are grouped together, but I think you should encourage standing orders and I think you should encourage them For those reasons when our apartment is vacant Also to the point of somebody that is having trouble paying their bills if it's a tenant If my tenant can't pay I don't want the power turned off So it helps them afford to keep the heat on keep the lights on keep the stove working And things like that. So there is a public benefit to Electrification and standing order makes it as cheap and easy as possible for you So I would encourage you to continue to look at that. But once again, I'm 11 six bucks better than 30 And I think and I've shared with emily how she might be able to recoup some of that money And it has to do with the return check fee This is not my fight But uh, serving on the commerce committee and the house of representatives for terms working on banking I have provided emily as well as to the clerk of the board A copy of a statute that very few people know about And the statute specifically says that if you deposit a check into a into your checking account And that check is returned by the Customers bank as insufficient funds Your bank cannot charge you any fee And very few people know about it. Some of the banks don't really know about it when you bring it up to them I was in a business that dealt with some return checks And when you bring it up to them the banks go, oh, we won't charge you that fee anymore My understanding it's built into the Some component of that is built into the return check charge So maybe you want to adjust there But I'm not here to say that the return check fee Should be changed from what is being proposed. I just hope I never have to pay it But checks do get returned for other reasons. If they're drawn on a closed account, you have to pay the fee If it's not signed by somebody authorized to sign you have to pay the fee So it's not not all of your return check charges are based on insufficient funds Um, but again, I really appreciate you folks taking the time to work on this And uh, I will appreciate Whichever outcome you come up with But if you can manage to make the uh cost for transferring pursuant to a standing order Zero or less, I'd appreciate it So you're saying that can you explain the return check fee? So if I if I have a bank account And and you you write a bad check to cash my bank account. I don't have to pay it If I write you a check that has insufficient funds to pay the check And you try to deposit it into your bank And they take it back out of your account and say sorry that was returned for insufficient funds My bank can charge me for trying to write that check your bank cannot charge you For trying to deposit that check Yeah, but is that what is that? Some of the checks that you get are getting returned to you presumably are for insufficient funds Um, I am mentioning to you that not all of them are so if somebody writes a check on a closed account Right, that's not insufficient Okay, got it Thank you very much, and we appreciate uh, wonderful spending valentine's day. Yeah Well, I just want to say we appreciate you and the part you've played in in bringing this to the forefront and And bringing about some of the changes that need to be made So we appreciate you too Alrighty, um last agenda item commissioners check in any which is sort of any last Comments or whatever on what we spoke about this evening or whatever's on your mind Do we do do you know where the light pole thing like are there any streets has up and decided yet? Or is that part of the budgeting? We're going to change the light And so fiscal 20 Okay, so you'll know maybe april Okay, you're asking what neighborhoods might be targeted for Um for upgrades for upgrades and maybe they should be talked to way at a time And any other commissioner comments no, all right, and that being said I would take a motion Motion to adjourn Do I have a second Motion and seconded to this discussion on the motion Hearing none all in favor of adjournment indicate by saying I I All fly of eyes we are adjourned. Thank you all Thank you