 Good evening and welcome to the March edition of the Board of Commissioners of the Electric Department, Burlington. We meet every second Wednesday of the month here now at five o'clock at 585 Pine Street. As always, Burlingtonians public is a welcome to come, repairs, come on down, express your concerns, your thoughts, join the conversation. So welcome. The first item on our agenda tonight is the agenda. We have any additions, deletions, changes, anything in support to the agenda? All right, nothing. Fantastic. We'll move on to the minutes of the February 14th, 2024 meeting, barring any grammatical errors or anything like that that could be submitted to the clerk. Are there any other changes or significant? Take the motion to approve March 13th, 2024 meeting. It's been made. Do I have a second? Motion made and seconded. Selection on the motion. Bring done. Closing may. Motion passes. Thank you. Moving on to item number three on our agenda tonight is public form. This is a chance for the public to address the board with any concerns or phrase or anything anywhere in between. As always, as I mentioned a minute ago here, we meet here every second Wednesday of the month, five o'clock, 585 Pine. Always welcome. Do we have anybody from the public that would like to speak either in person or online? Hi, I'm I'm on the phone and I would like to speak. This is Nick. This is Nick. Can you hear me? Yeah, we can hear you, Nick. Okay. I'm a resident of the old North and and I'm a Burlington electric rate payer. And I'm concerned because we don't seem to be planning for the closure of McNeil and its replacement with alternative sources of electricity. The climate crisis demands that we do this. The science is clear that burning wood to generate electricity puts far more carbon dioxide into the air than burning any fossil fuel. And it takes decades, if not a century or more, for regrowth of these to make up that carbon death relative to fossil fuels and absorb and sequester the carbon dioxide that's emitted. So I feel there's a climate imperative to be moving away from wood burning to generate electricity and that we should be looking towards renewable sources that are truly low carbon like wind and solar with battery storage to help with reliability. I'm concerned because I've reviewed Burlington's electric integrated resources plan, which as you know, is a plan for how customers power is going to be supplied for the next 20 years. And it provides for McNeil to be continuing to operate throughout the 20 year period. And it doesn't really meaningfully evaluate alternatives to operating McNeil. I think we need to be moving away from McNeil now. Not only is this necessary to address the climate crisis, but it's becoming increasingly clear that McNeil is not economic. Their information submitted to the Joint Owners Committee indicates that as of September 30th, 2023, there was a calendar year net loss of more than $4.7 million. We had an economic expert look at this issue and he determined that most years the plant loses six to $8 million. That loss would be even greater if it weren't for the revenues received from the sale of wrecks. And the sale of those wrecks is now in jeopardy with Connecticut cutting in half the amount that's paying for wrecks. And we don't even know how long that will hold up. In addition, looking at the forecast for the price of gas going forward a number of years, it just doesn't seem like the price is going to be below McNeil's breakeven point. I'm not sure exactly what that is, but I think it's $65 to $75 per megawatt hour. It looks like for the most part, you know, barring some future shock, the price of gas is going to be below McNeil's breakeven point except during the months of December, January, and February. This year, it wasn't even economic to run McNeil during parts of December. And I know that, you know, usually it's running full tilt during the winter months. We couldn't even do that this past winter. I think that's really what I had to say. Thank you for considering my comments. Thank you, Nick. Thank you, Nick, for your comments. We appreciate it. As this is generally not a give and take, the only thing that I would offer would be the department to have an opportunity to respond in terms of any factual and any accuracies, but this is generally not a give and take. Are there any other public comments? Thank you for your comments. Could I mention one other thing? Sure. Yeah, I know your general manager has said we can't just look at, you know, whether there's a profit and loss for a given year because operation of McNeil and operation at 100% renewable allows us to save some costs on some other programs instead, including the standard offer program and the renewable energy standard tier two. But, you know, it's my position that those programs, you know, would provide climate benefits. You know, a lot of those are small scale renewable programs. A lot of them are solar. So, you know, we should be taking that into account when we're, you know, foregoing those programs. I think that we put way too much emphasis on maintaining 100% renewability, not all renewable sources of electricity are created equal. Some of them generate greenhouse gases. Others are very low greenhouse gas generating. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. Are there any other, is there any other public comment either online or in? Yes, please. Yeah. Just give us your name. Okay. Hi. It's not a PA. Okay, you're right there. I'm Ashley Adams. I am a Burlington resident and repair and I've dashed here from work, haven't had time to prepare comments. But I was at the PUC's public comment session last night for Burlington's IRP. I know that none of you were there and I'm sure you have lives of your own. But I think it would have been really beneficial for you to hear public comment. And what I would like to do is send you all the manuscript, or the manuscript, the transcript after tonight's meeting. I think that would be really helpful. I was there and spoke, several others did. Something I want to mention is that the attorney for Burlington Electric, Bill Ellis, I believe, his name was very inappropriate, almost badgering the public, brought to the PUC's attention that I am the spouse of one of the intervenors, which has no bearing on anything. It's, you know, as if I can't think independently of my husband. That was upsetting. What's far more upsetting to me and it's deeply emotional to me. I was born in 1971 in Vermont and the changes I have seen in this state due to climate change are astonishing. And I grieve those changes for my son. I grieve those changes for anyone growing up in this altered world. And I'm a captive-rate pair. I don't want to move from Burlington, but I am a captive-rate pair. We know the science behind burning our forests. We know that upwards of three or 400,000 tons of CO2 are pumped into the atmosphere every year because of McNeil. We know that three or 400,000 tons of trees are removed from the forests thanks to McNeil. We know there is no plan to shut it down, and that is unacceptable, excuse me. So I intend to continue spreading science on the biomass. And I think it's really, really important this body becomes informed not only about the science behind the burning of our forests, but about the lack of planning on the part of Burlington Electric, the economics behind supporting this plant. I'm supporting this plant. I am funding our demise, and that is unacceptable. So I will share with you the transcript from last night, and I really appreciate you today. Thank you for your comments. I appreciate it. All of our emails should be on the website. Are there any other public comments to be made? I'm Chris Gish. I met you all last month, which was awesome, and I wanted to follow up on some of the things we talked about last month and also say briefly that I was also attended the virtual public hearing for their BED's IRP last night, and I was pretty frustrated with just to kind of like make you all aware of it, if you haven't. I'd encourage you to watch the recording, but watching Burlington Electric attorney, who I, as far as I understand, is retaining as ratepayers, behave pretty at the least unprofessionally. In the first place, it wasn't clear at first who he was representing, and he was actually like, was, you know, perhaps working for enforcing the rules of this proceeding, but then like making claims about rules that may or may not have been true, accusing someone else of dominating this like informational session before the actual hearing, when it was actually dominating it, and just making it overall harder for the public to participate. That was just frustrating, and it didn't feel right, and I wanted to fly, like this kind of like public participation is so much for all of us. And then I wanted to just follow up last, one of the things that I brought up and then Darren responded to a little last time was about residues and the notion that McNeil is different from other wood burning plants, because McNeil's using quote residues, and Darren referred to two things, the integrated natural resources report from summer of last year, and then the appendix to the purchase wood agreements for whole tree chips, and I just wanted to give you, A, in the INRS report, their reasoning for claiming that McNeil is burning these residues is not, there's no direct data to support that. All they're saying, it's on page five, you can go check it out if you want, but to paraphrase rather than just read you a long paragraph quote, they're saying that growing stock of hardwoods and pines like common trees in Vermont produce a certain amount of quote residues when they're harvested for other purposes, and McNeil in the regions where McNeil harvest uses less than that proportion of the total wood that's harvested, so that conceivably McNeil could be getting all its wood from these residues, but there's no direct, nothing is directly connecting those two things, there's no data collected like at any of the harvest sites or anything to show that's happening, and I'll say I've been to, you know, now at this point almost a dozen sites where wood has been harvested at McNeil and you see a lot of these residues, or at least the kinds of residues that maybe we want to imagine are being burned, like limbs and tops, like things that are like this diameter small, or you see a lot of them on the floor, or what was the forest for, because that's kind of like one of logging, one of one things is trying to leave behind to prevent soil erosion, things like that, which is awesome, but just to go to show that there are many other places these residues could be going, they could be going to firewood, they could be, some of them are being left for us, they're definitely not all going to McNeil, so that's not a case that our plant is burning in tops, and then I want to also just bring you back to the definition, or as residues are defined in the purchased wood agreement, they define residues as, quote, tops and limbs damaged in, or diseased trees, and otherwise non-commercial wood, so those, all those first things, tops and limbs damaged or diseased trees are examples of non-commercial wood, but like the core of the definition is just wood that doesn't have a more profitable market economically at that time, so it's not any kind of physical definition that might inform the carbon intensity of the fuel, or any characteristic like that we might be concerned with, it's a definition based on like value judgment of economics, and I just wanted to flag that for you, so it's hard for me to hear, to not be really skeptical about claims that the carbon profile of McNeil is somehow like fundamentally different because of this idea of residue, there's nothing showing directly that these are, that like that this is a different kind of wood, and even there would be serious concerns even if taking that amount of wood, even if it were all tiny sticks from the forest, but I don't think there's any conceivable way that's really happening, and I just wanted to share that with you, and that's all I got. I respect public comment, I don't want to offer anything at this time. Thank you, thank you for your comments. All right, we'll move on to, are there any other public comments online or in move on to item number four commissioners' corners? Time for commissioners to bring up subject matters that they would like to bring up, or something that has happened over the last month or something. Great, we'll move on to item number five on our agenda tonight, which is the general manager update. All right, thank you. As mentioned in the packet, we are planning, and it originally was going to be on the 21st, it's possibly going to be on the 19th, either the 19th or the 21st of next week, to have a number of different announcements, including an update of our 2023 data for the net zero energy roadmap. We're hopeful that Synapse is going to be able to have a report to us in the next several days. That was their plan, and then we'll release that information publicly next week, as well as as the commission knows we've had a delay from our normal January announcement for our rebates and incentives and new programs, because we did have some additional process at the PUC around Act 44. But those programs are ready to roll out, and we are going to announce the updated 2024 incentives for customers, rebates, new programs. So we'll keep the commission informed as to whether it's the 19th or the 21st, but expect one of those days we'll be getting some of this information out, which we're excited to do. Legislatures back in session, we have the renewable energy standard bill is still pending in the House, and this morning I testified via Zoom to the Energy Natural Resources Committee in the Senate, again about Act 44. We've had some back and forth with the Department of Public Service, where they've wanted to reduce the budget that's available for the efficiency utilities to put resources into emission reduction programs. This affects our heat pump incentives, our EV incentives, our geothermal well test program, that suite of programs, multifamily charging programs, number of other ones all get resource in part from Act 44 and through the efficiency utility, and in part from Tier 3 through the general utility. And so we are supportive of an effort in the committee to clarify that the levels that were set in the legislation that were authorized for funding can be fully utilized, because the Department was taking the view that perhaps there should be a reduction, I think initially as much as 42 percent over a three-year period. Now it's more, now that the first year was locked in, they're looking at a 10 to 20 percent reduction. We're not supportive of that. We want to bring as much of that resource as we can to that, you know, to those initiatives. So we'll be tracking that effort as well as the renewable energy standard and other legislation that might be happening, but legislature's back and we're continuing to engage on those items. The energy assistance program rate is still pending at the PUC. We've had some additional process there. I think the good news is that nobody who's on the rate, income qualified customers, are losing access to it because the pilot has officially reached its conclusion. We've gotten the authority to extend their participation while the Department of Public Service gets additional questions answered in that docket. On the flip side, we're hopeful to move it forward as quickly as possible because some of the changes that you all authorized, the city council authorized, would help us to auto enroll a number of customers, potentially expand the participation immediately from 200 semi-customers to perhaps six to 800 customers and then grow from there. So we're missing out on that opportunity while it's pending, but we're hopeful to get it moving in the very, very near future. We did hold a meeting with property owners who are in the 25,000 to 4999 square foot category with District 2030 just to learn a little more about what they're doing relative to decarbonization, what types of initiatives they're taking. There's been a variety of policy conversations around that cohort of buildings and so we're trying to learn from them kind of what their challenges and barriers are, what investments they're making, what types of technologies they're utilizing and we're going to have some follow-up from that, but we had an initial conversation with those property owners over Zoom and we had the energy services team and Chris Burns and Jen Green sustainability join us for that as well as the permitting department and the business development workforce development department in the city. So getting a collective effort to understand what's going on in that space. And then lastly, town meeting day, we did have approval for the charter change for the line of credit to move from 5 million to 10 million. I expect that'll get taken up hopefully in the legislature in the near future. It was broadly supported. It was unanimous that City Council supports our financial metrics, doesn't ask anything additional of ratepayers so it's a real win-win from that standpoint and we're hopeful that it can be approved this session. Granted it's the middle of the session so that said if it's something that they're interested to move forward, we'll be working with the legislature on that as well. And I think that's everything I've got. Questions? Item number six, the January FY24 financials. FY24, we had a favorable variance to budget mostly driven by the timing of REC revenues received. We budgeted to receive these in February. They came in in January instead. So January looks far better than budget and then February is going to look worse than budget because we'd already received the revenue. So you can see there we had an actual net income of $616,000 for the month compared to a budgeted net income of $99,000. So just over half a million better than budget. Starting at the top, kind of looking down the major lines of revenue, sales, I was again pretty much right on budget, only a $10,000 variance on a $4.7 million number. Sales for the year to date are within 1% of budget. Other revenues from the month were worse than budget by $73,000. Most of that is reimbursements from the EEU. And then you can see the variance in the power supply revenues of $1.2 million. Again, that's timing. Moving down to the expense group, net power supply expense was $541,000 worse than budget. As usual, that's a combination of many items. Fuel was favorable to budget by $92,000. McNeil production is slightly under budget by 13%. Transmission was essentially on budget for the month, only a $12,000 favorable variance. And then purchase power again worse than budget this month by $647,000. We had savings again on the mystic capacity charge. Wind production was lower than budget again. But then on the other side, we had higher than budgeted iso exchange charges. And again, energy prices were under budget, which helped to the extent that we were purchasing when we intended to be selling. So year to date, the purchased power supply portion of the entire power supply budget has a negative variance of $83,000. But the entire power supply, net power supply budget, has a favorable variance of $485,000. So that whole kind of energy price forecast versus actual situation that we've been discussing has had a negative impact, but combined with some savings on other portions of the power supply budget for the year to date were about half a million dollars ahead. Other operating and maintenance expense was just about on budget, a small variance of $33,000 worse than budget. For the year to date, that's half a million better than budget. And then other income, similar variance of $29,000. So year to date, we have a net income of $2.9 million compared to a budgeted net income at this point in the year of $500,000 and $1,000. Let's see. So that's $1.4 million ahead of budget. Last month, we were $1.9 million ahead of budget. So even though overall, we had a positive variance in the net income, the negative variance in the power supply is kind of falling down to the year to date sense. I just want to also give the commission an update on our forecast for where we're going to end the year. That has improved mostly due to our adjusting our assumptions a little tighter based on experience through the year. The major one being fuel expense. We adjusted that downward, so that improved. We also adjusted our mystic capacity expense. That's been consistently under budget. The first year of the mystic contract, we saw the high correlation with loads and energy prices and that magnitude of that expense. Similarly, as energy prices have been lower this year and loads have been lower this winter, that has been lower than we sort of budgeted for. We had been kind of continuing to assume the worst there. With now seven months of the fiscal year experience behind us, we're being a little less conservative and saying, okay, we don't think that capacity charge is going to be as high as we've been assuming. May 2024, but it'll take a couple months for the settlements to kind of work their way through ISO New England and for them to do any true up. We might make our last payment in June or July. Yeah. So with all of those tightening of projections, we're now budgeting a net income of 832,000. We were projecting a net loss. The net income we're projecting is actually better than our budgeted net income at this point. So not out of the woods totally yet. Cash is still tight, but there are some things that we're watching that could further improve and would positively affect the cash balance on June 30. One is a request that we've submitted to the PUC to transfer some TEPF funds back to operating. Our O&M expense forecast for the rest of the year is likely overstated because we've been assuming that any money that areas had in their budget from the year to date, they're still going to spend, they just haven't yet, but actually some of that they're probably not going to spend. And then we have some vacant positions and we kind of haven't forecasted the sort of savings between now and June for those vacancies. So there's some, definitely some things we can still do to sort of have the cash position approved for June 30. Any questions before I move to the next page? All right. Capital spending for January. We've spent about $600,000 in January compared to what we had spent on capital through December. So we are at an actual spending value of $3.7 million compared to a budget at this point in the year five. And $3.7 million is about 34% of the full fiscal year capital budget. And then looking at cash with the premature infusion of the rec revenues were just under $10 million. And that's $1.3 million favorable to our cash budget for January. And then the ratios also are quite good for this month. 5.04 on the debt service coverage ratio, 1.61 on the adjusted ratio and 122 days cash on hand. Moving on to the next. Is salinia service? I'm not sure if everyone saw your email. Run through the slides as I have been doing. Hold those up. Okay. All right. This is the same slide as before. Just some context, but you all know this. Okay. So what have we done since February? Since your last meeting at the commission's request, we researched the overlap between customers who enrolled in the energy assistance program and customers who have been charged the return check or reconnection fee. The answer was none. Yeah. We also inquired with TD Bank about the Vermont statute that the customer who spoke referenced. They were unaware of it. Their legal department is investigating. They're not charging us the fee for now, but it also sounded like it was going to take a while for it to make it through their legal team. It seemed the question they were looking into sounds like they are a federally chartered bank. And so there was some question about the degree to which state level laws apply to them as a federally chartered entity. I don't know. That's what they said. So we're not being charged the fee for now, but we don't have a final answer on that yet. We have proposed a new definition for the fee that was called customer or is currently called customer assistance call. Of all the public comments, we got the most on that one. I'm proposing that we call it power problem investigation, customer responsibility, because that's truly what it is. Someone believes they have a problem with their power, and they ask us to check it out, and it turns out to be on the equipment they're responsible for. We updated our labor estimates slightly for the power problem investigation. And then this was in my email from yesterday as well. The whole discussion around the customer assistance call prompted a discussion in our operations group, distribution group around disconnections and reconnections. And so the proposal before you tonight includes four additional fees for when we go on site to assist with the disconnect, reconnect at the customer or their electrician's request. And the reason there's four is that it depends on whether the property has one meter or multiple meters, and it depends on whether line crew has to go along as well as during and or field services. So I'll go get into that a little bit deeper. So the first from initial service down through temporary service, no changes to what you reviewed and we discussed last month. Those numbers are the same, all the words are the same. Returned check. The proposal is since we don't know how this is going to turn out. We're asking the commission to essentially approve two sets of fees. We have to from here, we have to go to the board of finance, we have to go to the city council, and then eventually file a tariff with the public utility commission. It may be hopefully we'll have heard from TD bank by the time we get to that ultimate filing with the PUC. Also the PUC is going to take some time to review it. And so we could submit to but then update the case once we hear from TD. So that's our sort of compromise for dealing with that situation. Certainly if we're not charged the $10, we don't want to charge customers for that fee. On the other hand, if we are, we want to be able to collect it. So we've split that into and then no change. Oh, actually is a change, but I didn't mark it. No, I neglected to mark it. Okay, so meter removal replacement for siding. My proposal here is to remove the words for siding and make that a more generic meter removal replacement. Because it's part of the discussion with the operations group. We do a thing called a meter poll, which involves visiting the home and removing the meter. And but we're not charging for that. But I'm like, but if you come do this for my siding, I would get charged. So we're trying to make a little more consistent and a little more generic so that we could cover both. So actually, you can see on the sheet, I and we're proposing to delete the rest of the long description, but I neglected to change the title in the very first column. No change to the collection fee. We're still proposing to eliminate that fee. And next coming to the fee that's currently called customer assistance. As I said, we're we're our recommendation is to change that to call it a power problem investigation customer responsibility fee, both either during business hours or after business hours. And then you can see there's some changes proposed to the language describing that fee to make clear that this is charged. When a customer asks us to visit service location to investigate a problem with the customer's power and the problem is determined to be the customer responsibility. We've also added clarification that we will not perform work on equipment that is the customer's responsibility during an investigation and change questions on anything I've heard so far. So the about the our I think you're trying to strike a balance on their end of the thing, but sometimes customers probably don't where the problem is. And so am I correct that you're trying to strike a little bit of a balance where twice but first? Would you talk me through the phone? Yeah, yeah, my understanding from talking to the folks who take these calls is that they will run the customer through kind of, you know, did you check your breaker, right? Or ask, you know, what's happening? Okay, my lights are flickering. Or, you know, it's okay. So did you check your breaker? Yes. We will ping the meter. Okay, right to see if the meter is on, you know, if it and if so we'll say, well, it looks to me like your meter is fine. We see power at the meter. It's probably something within your home. You know, and then we also the other thing we do is we say, you know, we can come but the fee for that if it turns out to be on your side is x. So then with that information, right, they can determine and sometimes they do like, I, you know, what, fine, please come, you know, I understand. And other times they say, okay, I'll call my electrician or I'll, you know, I'll take other steps before I ask you to come. Okay, yeah, yeah, that makes all the sense. Just welcome. I had help. Okay, now with that, I'm going to go to the four new ones, which are different flavors of disconnect, reconnect assistance. So these requests, first of all, we're doing about last year, we did 200 of these a year. We're not charging for these. This what's happening is there's some sort of work on the customer's electrical service being done at the home, bringing it up to code, upgrading it or expanding it. It could be they put in a solar array. So check my notes on the other things that I was told about what could be happening. They have a tree on their service wire, that's their service wire. They're doing work on a roof or the soffit and they need us to take the attachment point off and then put it back on. So it's these kinds of situations. From 2018 to 2022, we did about 100 a year. Last year did we did 200. So this is work that involves our operations coordinator. So the request comes in on our service application, which is a web form. It goes to the folks in building B and then the operations coordinator contacts the chief of field services, they go out. If there's multiple meters, the metering crew goes out and yeah. So it could be as oh yes and then two line workers on a bucket truck go out as well, even for the single meter situation. So it's you know quite a few people and equipment and it's not work on BED's distribution system. It's work being done to support whatever activity movement the customer wants to make at their home or residence or could be commercial building in theory as well. So what the reason for the differentiation is as I said, if it's a multi meter location in addition to the chief of field services and the line crew, a member of the metering department goes as well. And then sometimes the line crew is asked to pull underground service. So the flavor of fee that's potentially called you know with line worker assistance, that's what that means. And so it's the same to you know it's the same set of it's the same crew. It's just that they spend more time if they're asked to pull underground service sort of an extra step. See what else should you know about these? Do other utilities looked into it deeply? I don't think Green Mountain power. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I did that sheet that I showed you maybe one or two meetings ago maybe in January. Ramon Electric co-op has sort of like a number of levels of fees for disconnection and reconnection and one of them sort of makes sense to me now. The highest number, the highest fee says if line crew site visit required. Oh, like now I understand maybe what's going on. But I haven't dug into it deeply to know if how many utilities are due. I know GMP has a fee. It's going to be changing after electrical panel. It's only around that is if they send out a line crew because most of the time it's a line crew that's going out with two on a bucket because they're metering personnel using the Rutland or their AORs but most of their line crew handle all the metering installs. Most of them know that was a fee a year ago. That's a big difference worth looking at. You cannot at a later date. Are we in line with and having just seeing this and that know that it's going to go up the line several other players but as I'm not going to worry about making the decision tonight because we're just seeing. These are based on the cost of fee. I think there's going to be I mean a little bit kickback contractors spying justify. I mean a kickback on I mean just the cost of it you know I mean and I think as any utility and feedback I get out of the contractors and new contractors why do I need you know I mean and I mean it's a legit thing to say you know this day and age but we can justify it's all great and all that but you know recently I've had that come across my table and you know I had a disconnect reconnect and I had two bucket trucks four guys and a metering personnel. Why did we need so I think it needs to be looked at and I think whoever's dispatching it that'd be their reliability to do they can handle it but I think we really need if we're going to change our fees to this large amount we're really going to have to look at and make sure that dispatching is efficient and not going to get the company. Maybe we can get ahead of crashing out fries and then contractors. Yeah I mean I think it's a big change and I think out to the public as we can and be this cost is going to be a property and they're not going to be a change. I mean we need change I mean there's no doubt I mean we got costs that we have to incur I mean so it's it's there but it's going to be a you know it's going to be a hard thing for people to swallow in Burlington that have never did just a couple thoughts off or you know the first being we would have time even if it is approved this evening it's still going to go to the board of finance city council be filed if you go through process it's not like it's going to be implemented tomorrow it's plenty of time to engage with the contractor community let them know the other piece being you know very much cost-causer pays utility principle if we didn't do this appropriately and we are incurring the cost and it's being spread to all rate payers when it's really benefiting one specific rate payer so it's it's very much the right thing to do in that regard but I appreciate you know the point and I do think we could through our you know our line crews and our field crews and our metering and our communications on that side of the house get the information out to people who are doing work in Burlington so they expect it I think it would be you know a number of months before this is actually implemented so we have plenty of time to do yeah I think it's needed there's no doubt okay and changed I would feel comfortable moving along being that we're there and just said that we seems like we have a couple avenues that we have to talk at the public talk I would feel moving forward are we moving forward a recommendation accept this or one option would be to recommend it to the board of finance city council and then there there'd be time for us to do any additional work that's needed before it would actually go to the PUC even pending their approval so I don't think we anticipate filing this with the PUC until June so if there was any additional work that was needed we'd have that opportunity to do it yeah the only work that I would understand is that we are how does that the two things that do make me feel comfortable with it in general are the fact that it is being won them by us and that it's not it's not it's on their side of the line right and if we're not trapped me it seems to me that the repairs have been getting up for people have been getting a maybe for yeah we are owed for the service especially if it's on the other side of the dividing line again my only concern was just came to make sure that I do like that because I do I feel like Burlington already has such a getting work done and like the cost of permitting all city and I were part of the city even though I agree with that it's justified it's that it's not fair for me to pay some improvement but yeah I think so maybe some conversation like letting the contractor can know and add it around a little bit and talk about how it's here because most people aren't going to know about it until they have worked out on their house and then contract yeah I think plus like how they can develop is that they can they can feel comfortable doing that first of all getting wide where they're facing I don't have a underwit here to the contractor community such that something something on that sent out to yeah I was going to mention it to Paul Nadu and to Manir and probably we can also share it through channels that potentially Bill Ward has at permitting off that was my initial thought those are the other thoughts like a pre you know up front when you're later on retro yep yeah yeah I think it's just an incurving education because the way we were before the big jump you know what I mean it's all I think it's all about educating of like what's going on and like I said it's justified it's not that I don't agree with that I'm just saying that it's going to be a sticker shock for a lot of people I'm wrong and just us showing up y'all not charging you know what I mean and we've done that for years but it's right I mean the only other thing that you could do is that you could do like a step function or you could do initial year transition with a smaller fee knowing and communicating out that this is one tenth the cost is one fifth the cost is one third the cost um but that might set precedent in a way in two years well yeah like if it's I'm thinking more it's cold compliance that like what I was thinking and it's not the people who are too into renovation or choosing to do but if they're if it's a cold compliance issue I don't miss it like that was where I might have been just like oh I mean I understand like I do agree with the public anymore from uh just a couple more things I was going to share we did hear from four more customers since February one also expressed similar opinion about the customer assistance fee and then the three others this basically said they seem fair or reasonable or seemed okay um yeah yeah that's right and that's that's what we've heard so far um grant you know with the list of not including the four additional disco reconnect fees right that's the feedback we got on the rest of them so far and then um just a bit on the revenue impact um I actually got new information today that changed my estimate from what I put in my email to you yesterday um so this would um you know increase revenue to bd it would offset the decrease that we're going to see from the decrease in initial service fee um I had put in my email I'd estimated $300,000 that was based on a different understanding of how many of these were doing a day or a week um looking the actual data from last year it's it could be that this year we do even more than last year but using last year's data I'm now estimating around 130,000 which would just about you know just a bit more um than offset the $120,000 decrease from the initial service fee so the you know the entire package would essentially be revenue neutral I mean that's another way to look at it right the tariff as a whole now brings in sort of x dollars right to the to the revenue side of our cost of service and so we'd be initial decreasing the initial service fee um but then we'd be adding these disconnect reconnect fees so that the overall tariff change wouldn't you know depending on the frequency of all these over you know the next years which I can't totally project but it's much more equitable I think that that's a key piece that probably needs to be highlighted even if it's a little bit painful for some homeowners that have to pay $500 or $700 but people at the lowest end of the income spectrum aren't being over charged extra fees to plug in yeah that's I couldn't agree more and and in speaking with the operations folks I mean that's one thing I picked up on them like wait a minute so we're charting folks for the meter removal for siding but not for this whole thing right I was like we should do one or the other right either everyone gets a free ride or everyone kind of pays the cost to cover that service so I definitely agreed that should be a good talking point for the fight for the city council I think yeah yeah so that that was it I had a slide just on the the requested action some language before we get to that and as long as we're talking about engagement as long as they've got the three of you here and whoever's still online if you have any comments on this would love to hear them anyone online if I'd like to comment okay there is there is a suggested language I recommend that the board council authorized post change service care of Vermont public we have a motion to have a second second any discussion on the motion hearing none all those in favor of motion indicate by saying hi hi hi we'll see nay nice habit motion passes that brings us to number eight on our agenda tonight and that's commissioners checking which is basically one last opportunity for commissioners to bring up anything that's kind of been stirring in their head over the last hour or two I have one thing I don't want to you know anything but I was just curious about Darren if you want to kind of clarify some of the public comment that we received because about the the residue because my understanding is that BED does manage the force with the forester and that like that there's a lot of thought involved with how much we take from the but that equation that the gentleman pointed out I didn't really understand it and I just thought maybe if you had a moment I would love a clarification like the amount of residue that's there and then BED takes a portion of that yeah yeah so the I mean the report that was referenced talks about uh forest residues and then talks about the estimated piece of our supply that comes from forest residues comes from sawmill residues comes from the wastewood yard and comes from low value roundwood so low value roundwood would be you know I think was a half a percent in that study would be when you see like a whole tree that's stored on site like a log and that's essentially for fuel security it's a half a percent of our fuel supply in a given year what we did do and in response to you know we've had extensive public engagement on this issue over I gotta say probably more than a year because of district energy one of the things we did in hearing these concerns was updated the appendix to our wood contract which Chris mentioned and so we already were saying previously there's no economic value for somebody to go and plan a harvest for the purpose of supplying McNeill we do not pay anywhere near the amount per ton that you would need to make that economically valuable nor is that consistent with our you know different standards or or any of the desire that we have we know we are a market that's secondary market for higher value operations that are taking place and in some cases in many cases because of our sustainability standards that apply if you're selling wood to McNeill a higher value harvest that might not be subject to any sort of site management requirements are subject to it now even though we're the secondary market if you want to sell to us and in that case we can be a little bit like the tail wagging the dog in a good way and put some additional scrutiny on the practices make sure they're done well so we have a variety of different standards that we have to comport with all of that said we updated the appendix to make crystal clear if you are cutting wood and remember we don't cut any wood we monitor and manage we purchase these are independent operations but if you're cutting wood to supply McNeill exclusively we're not interested in that at all we will not accept it we will not accept cuts that are for energy production the carbon value from that is not favorable relative to using residues we know that the carbon payback for using residues is far far quicker and that's why you can't just there is no one-size-fits-all there is no you know kind of just one value for wood it's a very dynamic you know and complex calculation to look at the true carbon footprint of a resource like McNeill but all that said we made really clear that we will take the tops and limbs the diseased and damaged trees and the low value wood that would be left over from a commercial harvest so we're not taking the higher value wood that's going to timber construction furniture saw logs different purposes and so that's really now cemented in our contract if it wasn't clear enough beyond that the district energy resolution that passed the city council has a third-party study to kind of further verify all of this that's going to be included in our FY 25 budget so we have the INRS study which was a third-party study we have our contract we have our foresters who you know do this work day to day and are always available you know missionary desires to have them come in I know they'd be happy to yeah four foresters who do the work to verify the site harvest management plans and we have the report from INRS that showed that in the areas where we're harvesting that there's actually been a net carbon gain in the lands as opposed to a loss these are all complex inputs and and different pieces but we're going to have an additional third-party study so to the extent that there is continued skepticism the district energy resolution specified that we'll be including that in our budget which you'll hear the full draft budget next month in April and then we'll have an additional third-party study to help independently verify the various practices that we have other questions checking items going once motion to adjourn I've been adjourned motion have a second second one favorite key by saying hi hi hi we are adjourned thank you folks