 Welcome. Good evening. It is March 9th. This is our monthly meeting of the Burlington Board of Electric Commissioners. First up on the agenda is the agenda itself, wondering if anybody has any recommended changes or suggestions or any last-minute edits that may be needed. Seeing, hearing none. We'll move on to the minutes of the February 9th, 2022 meeting. If you have any substantive content-related edits that you'd like to highlight or that, you know, mischaracterized anything, now is a great time to mention them. I have one. I'll have to just find it. Wait a minute. Anyway, I can tell you what it is. It was referenced to something I had said at the previous meeting in which I said that several other towns in Vermont had cut back on the number of streetlights. And in the quote, in the present minutes, it says, other communities in Burlington. It should be in Vermont. Okay. Thank you. Because I'm page two of the, I can't find it. Okay. Great. Okay. Thank you for catching that. You said it. So, good catch. Any other observed edits that may be needed? Okay. Hearing none. If someone could make a motion to accept the meeting minutes from February 9th. Move to accept as amended. Commissioner Shagnan. Aye. Commissioner Herndon. Aye. Commissioner Modi. Aye. Commissioner Stevens. Aye. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you, Lori, for your time and effort on those. Next up is the public forum. I can't quite tell if we have anyone from the public. We have Mr. Devlin, but I believe he is from the city of Burlington. Is that correct, Erin? That is correct. Tim Devlin is city attorney's office, city of Burlington, and is here on the railroad lease item. Okay. And Mr. Devlin, I'm guessing you don't actually want to speak right now at this exact point in the public forum. Yes, that is correct. Thank you. Nobody else, Lori? No, there is no one in it. Okay. Well, for anyone who's watching at some other point, feel free to reach out to your commissioners or to the team at BED or join us remotely or in person if you ever have a question. Next up is the commission corner. This is an opportunity for commissioners to bring up any questions or highlights or thoughts in advance of getting into the full body of the meeting. Anybody want to mention anything? A couple of quick things. First of all, thank you to Emily and others for putting in that extra little bit of information on the degree day printout regarding temperature variations from the budget. That helps me points out how cold January was, by the way, seven degrees below budget. So thank you for that. Just a quick question. Again, I've asked this about charging cars, but I'm going to ask again. I looked at the installation of a couple of high fast chargers, but it still seems like it takes about a half an hour to charge a car to go 300 miles, let's say. That'd be 30 kilowatt hours, roughly. And I was just comparing that half hour, if I'm right, with the three or four minutes at a gas pump. Anyway, for future thought, this still seems to be an issue, at least in my mind, about just how much time it will take and how many people you can process in an hour. Third point, a small one, though. It was an outage Sunday around five-ish. I was walking along the lake at that time and it was an incredible blast of wind, and I'm wondering if that's what did it. It was indeed a bike path, a tree limb related outage that was caused by the wind, was the primary largest cause. We had some other smaller outages, I think scattered throughout the city at that point, but at one point in time we had several thousand folks out for about five minutes. The team got about two-thirds of them back online within the first five minutes, and then everybody was back on within under two hours time. It was really scary. It was a nice day, and boom. I was really making, moving fast, like they're away from trees. So it happens. Thanks. Okay, that's it. Thanks, Mr. Herendine. And yeah, to your point about time of charging, you know, I really view this market as just a constantly evolving market, and we'll see what they figure out in the next one, two, three, four years, because it certainly is shifting quite a bit. Any other commissioners want to raise anything or? I'm back. No, and I just wanted to say I'm here too, it's Bethany. Oh, hi. Great. Thank you, Commissioner Herendine. No. Commissioner Herendine, what did you want to say? We're talking about some discussion of lighting next time, right? Yes. Okay. And I, my guess is Darren was going to touch on that, but yeah. So essentially, Burlington Electric has reached out a couple of times to the national standards group, and they're still either waiting for a reply, or maybe they've received a reply in the last couple of weeks or so. No, no reply. Okay. So what I asked for in the meantime, given that they'd already developed this agenda, I asked for the April meeting to have sort of a primer for all of us to remember. I think the last time I really deeply sat and listened to this conversation was maybe 2015. Maybe it was a couple of years smiling, 2017, 2016. Well, the big discussion was in 2013 and 2014. We did revisit it briefly around 2017, I think. Okay. So it was a while ago. So if it's that foggy for me, I thought it would be helpful while we wait for the national standards entity to get back to Burlington Electric team that at least we could get up to speed in terms of what we're doing currently, what the standards suggest, how other communities have rolled this out, and what all that means. So that when we do get a reply, and Darren, if it'd be helpful for the commission to nudge, we'd be happy if that would be helpful. But when we do get a reply, we can actually dig in a little bit more quickly instead of having to do the background homework. Yeah. The only thing I wanted to mention is we haven't had a reply. I know we've had some back and forth, but we haven't gotten a substantive reply. I can't promise that we'll have one by the April meeting. I know Munir and Andy Ellison are keeping tabs on it. I did also want to mention that I anticipate a heavy volume for the April meeting in particular. I think there are at least four to five significant items in addition to the lighting that I'm anticipating will be bringing to you. So I just wanted to put that out there. The commission can certainly include the lighting in April, or you may look at it and decide that you want to maybe hold it till May. But I'll leave that in your discretion. But I did want to warn we're going to have a very dense agenda for April. Okay. Well, we could, I mean, particularly if we don't have an answer yet, we could move it to the May meeting. And perhaps then we'd have a full overview. I just know that the details matter here. So I do think the commission is going to need that background detail before we actually jump into any sort of discussion about it. Is that okay for commissioners if we have a pact at April agenda already? Yep. And if we're not hearing back? Okay, great. Yeah, fine with me. Yep. Okay. Thank you, everybody. Probably doesn't make our presence in the south end too happy, but we're working on it. So any other comments for this section of the agenda from commissioners? Okay. So we will move on to the financials. Emily Byrne, welcome. Good evening. General manager up there. We need the GM update first. I understand entirely. Who needs Darren? I thought I was off the hook here. I was, that was good. Thank you. Sorry, it's been a long day. We're in the last, yeah, anyway. Thank you. No worries. Sorry. Emily, you're off the hook for now. Thanks for the moment. So actually quite a bit going on that is in the report. I'll try to touch on a few of those items and add just a couple as well. I think when we get to the financials, you'll see the impact in January of McNeil's. What I think of is a historic month in January. It was the most expensive month, I believe, in ISA New England history. And McNeil ran 24 seven. I think we actually maybe even exceeded our capacity factor because we're rated at 50 megawatts. And we were running even above that, which we have the ability to do for periods of time to try to leverage the strong prices in favor for our customers. So McNeil had a significant positive impact in January. I expect it'll have a significant, maybe not quite as big, but significant positive impact in February. And it really goes to the kudos to the entire team from the forestry team that's keeping our fuel supply intact to the operations folks and obviously the policy and planning team that's engaged on the market side of this. It was a really strong month. You'll see it reflected in positive financials. I do want to say that the financials and the Moody's metrics that you'll see this month are significant in part because of that. I do expect them to moderate and come back to the mean as we end the year, the fiscal year. So I don't expect that the numbers you're seeing this month are going to be necessarily the numbers that we'll see at your end, but it's made a positive contribution to where we are. With that said, I did want to touch just briefly on the FY23 budget. This is not in the update, but it's related to all of that. We are in the process now of reviewing the initial materials for the FY23 budget. I think we had talked about extensively with the commission and the City Council last year that following the 7.5% rate increase, we have the likelihood of needing more frequent rate adjustments, but that we expected they would be more moderate than the 7.5%. That continues to be our thinking. The inflation environment that we're in is not helping us in that regard. It's creating more challenges, but our goal is going to be to deliver a budget in FY23 that while it will include in almost all likelihood a rate adjustment proposal, that that adjustment will be more moderate than what we dealt with with the 7.5% last year. And we will likely have as well an alternative case that would show what the rate pressure would have been absent the revenue bond, which is a significant mitigating strategy as we discussed with the community and the lead up to that vote. So we'll have a good discussion as one of the very substantive items on the April agenda. We'll have a draft budget for the commission to review with us and we'll give some greater context as to what we're seeing initially for a rate change range or specifics if we're able. But I wanted to preview that we are seeing the need for a rate adjustment again in FY23. We've also communicated regularly with our larger customers who have expressed a desire to stay in touch on this given the significant impact that it has on their budget development process. So we've had regular financial meetings with UVM and UVM Medical Center, for example, to let them know what we're seeing and what our trajectory looks like so they can make their own budget determinations as best as possible related to that. On the positive side for the revenue bond, we were pleased again to receive the A3 rating from Moody's with a stable outlook on the net zero energy revenue bonds. We had previously received it on our outstanding revenue bonds last year. So this is a good continuation of that. Moody's cited not only our being 100% renewable, our strong local economy, but also our rate plans and financial management strategies that are helping to address the prior challenges that we were seeing in some of the metrics that they look at, including the adjusted debt service coverage ratio. So that was positive news. On the arirage assistance and disconnect policy, I have an update from what was in the GM report. We are likely going to be sending letters to customers who are eligible for this assistance in the next month or so. We're probably going to have a cutoff that is a little different than what I'd put in the report, but we're looking to create a scenario where we can set an appropriate cutoff date, apply arirage assistance from the city ARPA funds to help customers who were affected by the pandemic and be able to have customers see those applications on their bills in the probably the April timeframe in most cases, possibly the March timeframe for some customers. We'll make sure there's a process as well where customers who believe they should have received assistance and didn't receive it will have a means of communicating with us as well. But I wanted to give the commission a heads up that we are working on getting communications out to eligible customers. We're working on setting up a process to apply the 1.3 million in ARPA funds to the eligible arirages and we'll have kind of more to report I think on that in April, but this is more of a heads up that that's coming and then we'll be able to report on the outcomes as of April and May. I won't linger too long on legislative activity other than to say that our charter change, the thermal energy charter change has passed in the house is over to the Vermont Senate. I imagine we'll have hearings at some point in the near future hopefully in the Senate, government operations, it moved through energy and technology, house government operations, house appropriations, all heard about it I think and we were engaged in terms of testimony and supporting that effort with the city. So it's through the house over to the Senate and we'll have more to report on that in the near future. District energy, in addition to what's in the note here that we have meetings over the course of next few weeks with UVM and UVM Medical Center and are working towards the conclusion of phase three. The two other notes there are I believe there's been movement in Congress such that there's a likelihood that the omnibus appropriations bill will be advancing in the very near future and we have confirmation that the district energy funding that Senator Leahy had appropriated for us is in the final version of that bill. So we expect that that funding will be available once that bill is passed to support the effort. We're also applying for competitive funds that would further lower the cost of the project, expand more infrastructure to the Intervail Center to help more of the Intervail Center buildings potentially join the project and also expand some controls technology that we wanted to have for automation at UVM Medical Center. So Evergreen is working with us on this grant application. It's potentially a three to four million dollar competitive grant application that we'll be submitting and it would be in addition to the funding from Senator Leahy if it is successful. A couple other items in the report. You're going to hear in a little bit presentation on the low income rate options and ideas from James in Policy and Planning. I wanted to highlight that our goal will be to come back in April and that will be another item that will be potentially on the April agenda is approval recommendation for the Electric Department to bring to the city council to advance a pilot low income rate which is different than what we have now. We have a temporary energy assistance program in fiscal 22 that's funded with ARPA dollars. This would be something that would be a pilot rate that could potentially lead to a more sustainable program over the long run. So that'll be another item that we're hoping to bring in April. There's some other key financial items in April. The key bank line of credit that is able to count towards our Moody's Days cash on hand with one tweak in the wording that we've worked on. We'll be bringing that to you in April for approval. I believe that expires in May. So that item will be coming as well. Also level three fast chargers at the conversation during the commissioner's corner. We are looking at a proposal to replace our only two existing fast chargers and I'll put fast in quotes because they're 25kw chargers and those are no longer considered all that fast by today's charging standards. We're looking at a proposal to replace those with 62.5kw fast chargers which would be some of the fastest in the state and would be compatible with more vehicles because they would be both CCS and Chathamow compatible. The current ones we have are only Chathamow compatible which means they only work with Nissan and Mitsubishi. So this would expand fast charging opportunities both in terms of speed and in terms of the number of vehicles. These would be revenue bond projects and we may have a multi-year agreement potentially with ChargePoint to support them and even though it's already in our budget the multi-year agreement would be something that we would likely want to bring to the city council for approval and we would bring it to the commission in advance of that in April for discussion as well. And lastly also in April we have the expected Synapse Net Zero Energy Roadmap update. I'm hoping to have that completed by the end of this month and we'll be able to put some slides together to highlight some of the emissions and fossil fuel use data for 2021 and some of our incentive data as well. So that's another item that I'm expecting for the April agenda which I wanted to highlight. That's a number of very in-depth items that we'll have for the commission in April. And then just lastly I think before we go to the financials or any questions that you might have I did want to note that I'd submitted a commentary I think it's in Vermont Business Magazine and it'll be in Vermont Digger shortly that's in support of the clean heat standard proposal that the legislature is considering and also made some points relative to kind of previous work with McNeil and with the RES different policy changes and energy project changes that we've had in the state that precede the potential for the clean heat standard and how that work could potentially be meaningful not only from a climate standpoint but also given the situation that we see in Ukraine with the need to just get off of oil altogether as a global crisis has emerged. So just want to make the commission aware of that if you see it it'll be in Vermont Business Magazine and Vermont Digger and the clean heat standard is a proposal in the legislature that is similar to a renewable portfolio standard but for the heating sector this time as opposed to the electric utilities very much in line with what we're trying to do with net zero energy and in line with the forward-looking work that heating companies in some cases are already doing. So with that I will pause see if there are any questions. Commissioners looks like maybe. Yeah I did my comment about the half hour charging for 30 kilowatt hours was based on the 62 kilowatt charger just FYI. Yeah I think typically you can go from 10 percent battery to about 80 percent battery in 30 to 40 minutes depending on the vehicle depending on the charger. There are vehicles out like the new Kia EV6 and the Hyundai Ionic 5 that use 800 volt architecture and if you found a 350kW fast charger which I think are mainly electrify America you might find one in New York State there are none in Vermont. You might be able to get that 10 to 80 percent in closer to 15 to 18 minutes but so that's the future but the present is more like you said commissioner you know 30 minutes for a fast charge maybe 35 but a number of folks I think are charging at home overnight for most of their trips and if they're a renter we're expanding our charging efforts for rental properties as well through the EV match partnership so hopefully folks can charge at home most of the time and then they use those fast chargers when they're on a trip or in need of something if they don't have a home charger. I had a couple of questions on this as well I'm just wondering if this went out to bid at all or if there are other like are there other entities that you're looking at proposals from also. So for this particular one we received an unsolicited bid from Chargepoint as our current vendor to basically do what they call a rip and replace which is they go in and take the existing chargers that we have with them and they are able to take them out use the existing electrical and put them in and their pricing came in significantly under what we had budgeted for level 3s generally. So we felt like that was a good opportunity. In the future when we go to do new locations we would be looking at an RFP process and looking at whether there are other vendors who could serve new locations but in some cases where we have a good rationale we're able to accept kind of an unsolicited bid for a good project provided there's a rationale which in this case them being an existing vendor and providing strong pricing we thought was was worth moving forward more quickly. Thank you and I actually I don't yet own an EV but I wish I did but I'm wondering you know just in terms of consumer protection like what are the communications that hey you're definitely being charged this much at this time like how is that like I mean if these are on Burlington Electric property or you know at least one of them and then at City property like how how do we make sure that we don't have having folks say oh wow or whatnot I mean ChargePoint is nationwide so I don't I'm not asking this really about ChargePoint I'm just mean we're at large how do we make sure that consumers are getting what they know they're getting and what they're signing up for. Well the great thing with BED chargers which is whether whether it's going to be fast charger or level two at this point is we have a public tariff for the for the public charging stations I believe it's 17.3 cents or so per kilowatt hour prior to the rate change it'll probably be affected you know by the 7.5 percent and so you're getting a transparent charge per kilowatt hour which I think is better than getting a charge you know per hour at the parking situation or you know for an amount of time I think you want to charge based on the energy because that's very similar to charging I think per gallon which is what people are used to at the gas pump the pricing that we're offering is extremely competitive from what I've seen as an EV driver even looking at other communities in Vermont I'm not aware of really any public chargers other than some that may be free of charge in some cases where the rate is as competitive as what we're offering at the public tariff stations the app that you use for charge point for example if you're at a BED charger will tell you exactly kind of how much you're charging in terms of kilowatt hours what your pricing is and we'll warn you when we do have is a four hour parking limit typically so that people can move in and out of the chargers and after four hours there is a parking assessment that's levied if you want to stay at the station for a longer period of time but I feel like it looks like James maybe has some thoughts too for at least for the Burlington public chargers it's very transparent in terms of the tariff price the per kilowatt hour charging and then the parking fee coming on after four hours to encourage folks to you know use it but move on when they're done as opposed to parking there and holding this charger from somebody else to use great so just add that it's essentially it's the same as our SG rate small small general service rate and so it's it's governed by PUC rule just like any of our other tariffs the only thing I mentioned Darren's absolutely correct about everything he said is just that when we start thinking about the much faster chargers we need to consider is whether we want to change that four hour penalty to encourage more turnover at a high volume charger but that's a future discussion but that's that's out there too was you know that four hours was based on the capability of our existing level two mostly level two charging cleat great thank you and also just glad to see that you're looking into you know the low income rate as well and keeping district energy going so you know if we can be helpful let us know thank you any questions or comments um for Darren okay hearing none now we will go to financials uh Emily great thank you um I will share my screen let me know your painter and a musician it looks like oh I am not my husband is full disclosure I'm really creative with spreadsheets um but that's about my creativity ends he's the I don't know what side of the brain of the relationship but anyway I will um do a walkthrough of the financials um hopefully everybody can see it as Darren alluded to January was a very good month um for BED I will make a bad joke and hope that this is my first presentation and you'll remember that I delivered really good news the first time I presented and um in case I ever deliver bad news there was that time that there was good news right um so at a high level the net income for the month was 557,000 as compared to a budget of a negative 337,000 so a variance of 800 almost $900,000 $894,000 um and year to date that puts us at 698 almost $700,000 um over budget or not over budget as compared to budget to the good so on the revenue side for the current month sales to customers was up $195,000 this was primarily driven by residential um which was up about 205,000 the commercial was down slightly about $12,000 um so residential was ahead this month um other revenues were down 36,000 33 of that is due to the EU and then this was not a rec month so there are no receipts to report in January um on the expense side we're very favorable um primarily on the power supply costs so as Darren spoke to McNeil had excess generation in January and received higher than budgeted prices for that excess generation um that's in a nutshell James I don't know if you have anything you want to add to that um since this was a good month on that front I'll just yeah I'll echo what Darren said this is the highest prices we've seen it's also the most dramatic swings that we've seen in wholesale markets the price forecast when we did the budget last March was prices would be $65 a megawatt hour for January they came in much close to 150 to $160 a megawatt hour I mean it's we're not talking small changes what happens though is under the system where we buy all of our load and sell of all of our resources if we have excess resources we stand to gain from high market prices at that time and so we very much did um so our resources performed well not just McNeil but others as well and we had excess interviews sell and we sold it at much higher than we had expected as a price that will be true in February as well maybe not to the same level but it's it's you know again that could the price forecast for February was equally conservative and I will say that the price forecast for this coming winter and I use the term forecast loosely they're actually forward prices is actually worse than this winter thanks to the unsettled situation in Europe thanks James um so we'll go to the the next line the operating expense line we were down about $79,000 compared to budget primarily due to labor expenses being lower than anticipated as well as materials and supplies and insurance being under budget um the we'll go to the taxes line which I believe everybody's been briefed on the changes in pilot and the savings associated there so that looks as it has in prior months and that gets us to the nearly $900,000 variance from budget to the good so for the year we're ahead on sales to customers by $90,000 the benefits of January sort of made up for made up for the lower previous months so we're ahead there we're down on other revenues primarily due to um billings associated with other customers um for the capital costs I'm gonna have to I might need help Darren on this one the um I can't I'm totally blanking on what's called contributions uh to capital contributions to capital thank you um are down this year the that was gonna add Emily this is an interesting month where you know it normally you're like oh well our load was up you know we actually every megawatt hour that we sold that was inaccessible we expected we sold at retail rates which were surprisingly close to the wholesale revenues we would have received if we not made those increased sales so that's how high the wholesale markets were cool thanks James um and then again we're still ahead on power supply revenues as we had in prior months and as you can see below the McNeil revenue did very well making up for lower performance and wind hydro and the other rec generators um the power supply budget partially driven by the prior month is 1.26 million below budget which is about 7 percent below budget um purchase power is down transmissions down fuel is down um so we're tracking very well their year to date our operating expenses are down for the year um $950,000 um for a variety of reasons labor outside services materials etc um and our other income is down the sort of assumptions we put around ARPA funds this year but that should change next month when we apply those funds and actually I made an error I think the other revenues is EU related and the other income is also customer capital contributions as well so my apologies yes sorry thank you um so is there any questions on the financial highlights and the income statement just to clarify EU related meaning is that um a timing uh issue in terms of when we're waiting for projects to come through or whatnot yeah it's it's billing um against the uh the EU revenues um so it comes in and out both sides so other revenues will reflect the EU billings that we've done and it can be timing um and it's also coming uh out of something on the operating side as well because it's you know it's the net effect is not significant typically but there is timing issues with the EU and we certainly are not seeing the the new construction rebates the way we used to pre-covids right okay thank you all right so I will go down to capital and cash on the capital budget we've only spent about 32 percent um a budget to date a lot of this is due to timing of projects um next month I'm hoping to dig a little bit into this next month and that I've had two months on the job to get a better sense of sort of where this is tracking and where we'll end the year for this spending um there were some projects that just won't happen this year and others that just haven't happened yet um on the cash front we are um as of January 31 we have 10.5 million in cash and investments compared to 9.4 at the end of December so we're in a very good cash position and as Darren alluded to our um credit rating Moody's ratios look really good this month as a result of how well January performed our debt service covered ratio is at 5.15 which is up from 4.8 last month the adjusted debt service coverage ratio is at 1.39 up from 1.27 last month and our day's cash on hand is at 142 days up from 129 last month yeah we had predicted or projected that the adjusted debt service coverage ratio would improve from the three-year average this year but would probably be in the 1.06 to 1.12 range um obviously it's exceeding that significantly at the moment I do expect it to return to a lower number prior to the end of the year but possibly a higher number than what we projected so there may be some positive news there relatively on that metric. Thanks right if there are no questions that's all I have today. Okay thank you Emily. This is Bob I do have one question. Sure. If we go back to your initial table a couple pages back uh keep going okay that's good just this is just for me and the elevator so right now operating income year to date is way up relative to budget uh with successes such as McNeil in January but in the next what six five months we're still budgeting being down by three mil and that I'm asking if that is the justification for the concern about a rate hike and also if we still think that the uh yearly budgeted number is reasonable of three million deficit. I think it Emily I'll take it just a shot at that and please jump in with anything I think the you know seven months of fiscal 22 is showing a significant benefit on operating income. I think it's possible we'll end the year possible not guaranteed that we'll end the year better than budget on operating income based on some of these changes that we're seeing with the power supply with McNeil. That won't drive anything relative to next year's rate case need necessarily. What it may do anything that happens positive in 22 that gives us a better cash position than we expected going into 23 can help us from a cash stays cash on hand standpoint and and from a revenue standpoint in revenue need standpoint in 23 to some extent but 23 is going to be driven by a separate set of factors in terms of operating you know we're going to have to assume you know changes related to COLA's changes related to some of the IBEW retirement arbitration impacts that we've we talked about are going to come into effect in FY 23 there are some other upward pressures related to inflation that we're going to be accounting for so when we look at the revenue need in 23 we're going to be looking at it really with a fresh kind of piece of paper in terms of the operating needs and the expenses so 22 can help us from a cash standpoint heading into 23 but I won't necessarily change the rate need other than would be my assessment any other further questions no okay Emily Emily good job we'll be sure to pepper you in the future but we'll we'll let it go for today so thank you thank you next up we do have a McNeil side track lease this is Betsy listen to Kowsky coming up welcome Betsy hello um and as you know we're required to bring in 75 percent of our wood and we have a siding that's built in can you I'm going to ask you to turn off your video because it's very slow oh okay no problem is this better my internet's terrible here I have to apologize that's much better thank you okay so uh as I was saying we have a sidetrack built off the main line to deliver the woodchips we own the middle of that where the unloading trestle is the railroad owns both ends and we lease the land and the track from the railroad we had two very old leases that came from the very beginning of McNeil covering the land and the track and the switches we've been working with the railroad to consolidate those into a new modern lease which was in your packet um I've been working with the railroad with Tim Devlin the city attorney with Darren and Paul Alexander to um oh hey Betsy I'm sorry to interrupt um I think channel 17 just noted uh Emily you might still be sharing your screen uh for the financial highlights you might have to unshare just so we can go back to the regular view sorry to interrupt no problem I can't see me anyway so it doesn't matter um so we do have this new lease that we've been working on as a group we've been back and forth with the railroad and they have given in on some things and not others and we feel like this is the end of as Paul Alexander says this is the end of the line for this so we are asking you to recommend that this the city council will um authorize Darren to sign this lease and we can move forward on it um if there are any questions on it I'm happy to answer historic things and the railroad piece and Tim has the legal end of it if there are any legal questions that people have uh okay well this is bobbin and pardon me for being daunted by that 20 page uh legalese item but uh no I've not read every word uh quick question uh how long is the lease it's it's indefinite it it will renew yearly uh until either party chooses to stop it okay it does not have a set time frame okay uh second question I'm looking at the map and I'm thinking I did see I did skim some of that verbiage and there's a lot in there about who has right away and all that yeah makes sense because when I look at the map I see this single rail line coming from downtown and hitting out uh maybe as a part of Amtrak to Montreal eventually uh so that's my first question is that going to be the line for your main line um maybe I shouldn't ask you but it yes no I think you're right that I do believe that no it's not Amtrak comes up through Essex it would not come up the because the one that goes to Montreal is the line that goes through Essex I believe the Amtrak they're talking about from the uh western side of the state will end in Burlington because the tracks from Burlington to McNeil are not good enough to run passenger trains on uh there was some talk when they wanted to park that overnight train from Rutland parking it by Queen City Steel and even to do that they had to upgrade the train tracks just to run empty passenger cars so there will be no conflict with Amtrak on that line the possible conflict is with commuter rail from Essex to Burlington and we've worked with a railroad uh over the years on that and they have told us that that will not interfere with our chip train that our chip train basically has priority over that that the scheduling will not interfere with our chip train okay that's reasonable those curves are pretty tight should realize that uh one of the diagrams that we have shows a little zone to the south of the trestle outline in blue and it wasn't clear to me whether that implied there's going to be another siding there as well no no I think what it is is it's it's the two ends from the main line into our where we own um but there's no room for another siding there as far as I I can tell okay and I did confirm these sketches with the original sketches that in the original documents and they are the same if there's increased uh one more techie question if there's more traffic on that line uh what am I trying to say the siding that has the trestle on it isn't very long in terms of number of cars so I'm guessing maybe sometimes the cars actually go out into that line and if there's increased traffic on that line does the actual length of this siding become a limiting factor well yes and no we can fit all 21 rail cars on the siding uh at times we've run 24 cars and you do have to switch back and forth onto the main line and back um if we were to run longer trains we have a few issues we can only block interrail road for up to 15 minutes and that's a even that people don't like it's a dead end road and people get upset if they have to wait more than five minutes so we're really limited to how long a train we can put on and the siding that we have would fit the cars that we have if we look ahead to uh DES would that problem necessarily uh potentially be uh more troublesome uh well I don't think so because everything from that would be underground going up under the track so I don't see a conflict there uh well might we be burning more wood I guess is what I'm asking um I guess the answer is no so I don't think it's and the people that know more about it can correct me but I don't believe it's a significant amount more that we will be earning maybe a bit more but that's right right right now we're we're not bringing in five we're trying to bring five trains a week but we don't always make that okay thank you other commissioner questions so if I can ask um Mr. Devlin is it is it the items I mean this is presented not as a track change from the previous contract I do some I do see some writing in bold but is it can you just you know the the language at the top of the memo basically says that um you know it's it's updating some outmoded uh contractors can you flesh out a little bit more like what specifically those changes are since I don't you know I'm not seeing sort of a track changes approach yes and uh the reason there's no track changes is because the old ones were just so the that's not from them so there really wasn't much usable uh language from there or it would have been very difficult uh to kind of cram those into a reformatted process but anyways some of the broad strokes include um just cleaning up um various attachments um that's where you said like the the least premises um some of the uh staggered term uh language there I think because there's two different leases there was various terms and also various rates there this basically imposes some uniformity um where we're kind of dealing with two uh kind of buckets of items um modernizing um various items just kind of looking through this um I believe much of the indemnity and liability language is very much the same um let's see the rents um but sorry I'm repeating myself here but that was certainly updated and now is pinned to um more modern metrics which I believe is what it's CPIU um let's see other items uh include I'm not sure if the old one now that there's hazardous sorry hazardous materials language things like that um and various uh kind of more clear cut uh determination of responsibilities and liabilities for environmental um not factors here as well um sorry I hope that uh that's a very kind of generalized language is kind of picking out pieces as um I think maybe of more interest than not um in this uh it's already indicated long legal document full of legalese indeed but I'd be happy to also answer any kind of questions you may have on specific conditions or language in here as well hi this is bob I just picked up on you said CPIU uh which sounds like consumer price index no or that's part of the escalation of the the terms yes I believe that's correct um okay let's see I'm not sure if it's uh more specific that to that maybe to the northeastern region Betsy do you recall uh I believe it's just the CPIU we that is one of the items that we went back and forth with on the railroad and the railroad is a huge conglomerate right now and uh this is just a small small side piece of the conglomerate that we deal with they say for all of their real estate contracts that is the the way that they adjust it we were hoping to do something different but they really fought back on that and said all li and lease contracts use that as the adjusting clause and is that uh 10 000 per year is that um what were we paying before we were paying just under that when you added the two leases together they were over nine thousand dollars so that price is not totally outrageous compared to what we've been paying um the old leases didn't have real good ways to figure out how they were going to increase the prices they just kept sending us invoices and we kept paying them so this was one of my questions I would wanted something in writing that really documented how it was going to change what it was built on and how it would change over time okay um I like that the term suspension and termination seems pretty even on both sides um the the one piece that I'm um curious about is the or not the one piece the last piece I'm curious about is section nine and I did see Paul show up um with regards to the hazardous materials um just you know we did go around just to answer that they originally told us that they thought wood chips were flammable that they would be included under that section we did did fight back on that saying that they're green they're almost 50 percent moisture they're in the train for a total of three hours a day there's no way they're going to become flammable they agreed we have in writing that they say wood chips are not flammable so they're even though that's in that contract that's not not they're not counted as a hazardous material okay um what else would could there be well I think this is a stock lease so if you're hauling petroleum or or propane or something like that I think this is their land real estate lease that they just use for everything so that clause is in there for other materials that somebody else might be hauling so this is their their pro forma language yeah but they did confirm that now they do not count wood chips as as flammable or hazardous did they do that like in writing like via email yes yeah great okay thank you commissioner randy i'm good okay other questions from other commissioners okay well uh we were um handily provided the verbiage um to read it is uh thank you lori on page 30 of the pdf or 31 actually i didn't ask everyone if everyone's fine with um making a motion but i'm not hearing any questions sure i can make the motion um i make a motion to approve and recommend that the city council authorize the general manager burlington of the burlington electric department to execute a sidetrack lease with the new england central railroad to facilitate the delivery of wood chips to the mcneil generating station subject to review and approval of the city attorney's office i'll second that motion uh commissioner shagman hi commissioner moody hi commissioner herondine hi commissioner stephans hi commissioner whitaker hi thank you motion passes thank you thank you betsey sounds like thank you everyone how many months did that take uh we got the well it took over a year for them to even give me this document then we've been working on it since october lots of back and forth but they gave in on some things and we gave in on others so i think since nobody's happy we all won well thank you both have a good night uh no need to stay with us unless you really want to um so uh thank you next up on the agenda we have the uh low income rate um overview discussion uh with james gibbon and this is also a vote if i recall correctly no it is not a vote no vote get gibbons what did i call you gibbon we're hoping for a vote in april on this one i'm just checking checking the agenda yes okay james gibbons discussion normally our very our very much our intent here is to give you some idea of what we're thinking solicit comments rather than hit you at a single meeting and ask you to act on it at the same meeting so you don't sound very good i'm sorry no i'm i'm somewhat sick so uh hence my peak performance mr gibbon well anyway anywho um uh can you guys see my screen at this point hopefully all right so darin asked me to give you guys a quick overview again my my goal here is really to lay out what we're thinking in terms of a structure but for the next meeting we'll actually be bringing you the proposed tariff language um to actually act on so really you know if you if you have any deep you know vested loathing of our proposed course of action this is where we'd like to hear it so we don't waste a month and bring you something you won't approve so anyway with that said um with that said i'm going to try to figure out why my screen is not advancing when i couldn't make it not do that before all right this is a quick summary of the energy assistance programs we have been looking at the obvious ones to look at are the two that are approved in vermont and the two approved low income or energy assistant rates and from assistance rates in vermont is that of vermont gas systems and green mount power and both of those are structured fairly similarly they're both a stated percentage discount off of the rates and charges that would otherwise have applied they are using outside a determination of eligibility to offload themselves so that they are not the ones responsible with determining whether or not customers qualify for the rate and they're both using the department of children and families qualification so if you're qualified there you're qualified for the rate um and they have slightly different income thresholds one is 185 percent of federal poverty level one is 100 percent of federal poverty level okay those are the two structures that have been approved in vermont none of the other electric utilities have low income rates but this this kind of low income rate at this time wek may be doing something but i'm not sure it fits the mold exactly like like what we're talking about here we did take a quick look at austin energy austin energy does do a flat discount per month for the customer charge um essentially they move your customer charge uh they determine the eligibility at the city level and the city is the one who determines it and they're using a higher level of 200 percent of federal poverty level cut off for doing so but it is again unlike the other and like other two structures it's not a percentage of the bill it's a flat dollar credit sacramental municipal utility district smud who is certainly one of the very biggest municipal utilities in the country uh you know multi-million customer municipal utility uh does tiered monthly discounts that reduce the customer energy charges the discount is dollar-based and it's tiered based on federal poverty level and it level of federal poverty level and by year so it changes over time and changes by income level of the participant those are just some of the structures and you've got the footnotes for the sources of it down at the bottom the thought we have right now is probably that we would lean towards a percentage discount for eligible customers it has the merit of having been a structure that is approved and in use in vermont in two other regulated utilities so it's got consistency and and i don't know that we would necessarily end up the same percentage but i think the structure is a structure that we think probably makes sense that means the higher the bill the more assistance you provide which as opposed to a flat credit which doesn't do that but the only note is we may not be able to implement it by a where we're looking into this with uh mike leach and on the implementation side is if we can't do it as a actual percentage reduction in the bill there is a workaround for that which would be to file tariffs for income qualified customers that were a stated percent lower than the other applicable tariffs so let's say you wanted to do a five percent eligible discount you could file a residential rate for eligible customers that was five percent lower than the standard rs rate so you could still even without implementing it as a percentage credit we could still implement that structure if we wanted to okay we could implement a flat dollar bill credit but that is not our first thought first thought of what we would do we are going to have to come up with some estimate for you of at the next meeting of not only the structure but the impact on our financials of the structure and we're certainly concerned or cognizant that at this point in time a you know a significant reduction in revenues due to offering this rate is not built in our budgeting assumptions so you know this is something we will have to look at what the effect of it will be we do certainly seem to have a higher than federal average um distribution in the lower end of the income spectrum uh the graph at the bottom is really the united states average versus the burlington information um the 2018 federal poverty level for us on the four is 25100 i mean the poverty level is a scary number in terms of of low low money for a family of four um the 2020 electric usage is based on average bills that's actually not news right now we do have to consider that we have large student body populations which might be factoring into this um you know in terms of you know does a student consider account is having no income so we're not certain about that right now it's also it should be impact not immaculate so i can make a mistake as well apparently um what we need to do between now and the next meeting if you think that this is a reasonable structure a percentage discount applied to eligible customers is we need to essentially do the math of calculating the eligible customer pool based on a threshold calculate what assistance we're proposing to offer and calculate what we think the uptake will be of the eligible population to come up with a dollar impact on the financial statements so that's the work that my team has already started doing is putting that piece of it together um i would say we would want to keep in the back of our mind when thinking about setting those thresholds that a subsequent change in one of those either the threshold or the amount of assistance it's going to be a lot easier to move those numbers up in the case of assistance or down in the case of threshold then it is going to be to move them the other direction so if you're either increasing the assistance or increasing the eligibility that change will be easier to implement and do i think perceptually than to do something that reduces the eligibility or the assistance so it may be wise to start slightly conservative too and make sure that we are not caught off guard by our uptake or anything like that um the we're going to take that data like i said and we're proposing using the innovative slash pilot rate structure for minnesota utilities and co-ops which was just put in place by the legislature fairly recently uh was it this year last year i can't remember where it was which session last session thank you garen um so under that we would be able to propose a pilot rate structure that would have an 18 month duration but it can be extended at the end of that duration and it does not require the full regulatory approval process that you would normally have to go through so 45 days after filing this proposed tariff structure if there was no objection from the puc or the dps we would be able to put it in place we have some notification requirements but that's it okay likewise at the end of the 18 months if we decided that we wanted to continue it we could also provide 45 days notice of that and if they don't object during that 45 days it would continue outside of the 18 month window so it's a it's a lot more a lot simpler process for implementing it and getting through the regulatory approval there are constraints on it which i don't think would apply to this and the only last note is in order to take advantage of this option we need to make sure that there is a nexus between the proposed rate design and either tier three strategic electrification under the res or the stage comprehensive energy plan and that's what we're checking right now is to make sure that we can make a successful you know connection between one of those two things i talked to darin about this we we think it should be doable but we are double checking in this statewide energy plan at this point done so that's our state of our thinking right now we would be coming back to you in the at the next meeting with an actual proposed tariff structure it would be a pilot tariff structure it would go to effect for 18 months you would have a we would have to make a second decision if we chose to extend it past that period and we would also be bringing you the economic impact on the budgeting work that we're doing of offering such a rate or what we think it would be and that's the end of my sides this is bob again i guess i don't want to get into the weeds whoops but but i will in the sense that sorry will will uh the re i'm getting some kind of feedback somehow anyway will the feed with the uh let me mute to see if that's it okay better hello can you hear me yes much better we can hear you okay uh i hope it isn't set up in such a way that there's a sharp discontinuity on the basis of income you know one of these deals where you make five dollars more and then you're you're out of the program so uh is there going to be sort of a gradual approach to the threshold rather than an abrupt one we were not proposing that to be candid um you know there we have to balance the the difficulty of implementing it through our systems with the structure and certainly none of not only one of the four entities has come up with any form of tiered structure and they are a multimillion customer utility not a smaller utility i'm not ruling it out but i i do think i would get some push back from an implementation point of view okay then what you will you'll be classifying people as either in or out of the category but not actually uh do anything else with their actual income sounds i want to be clear that that we're looking for your input but that was certainly i think my initial thought is again you know under the same rate that we did essentially a 7.5 discount right now for people who met this income eligibility we would look to continue that structure okay but if you do have the income data and you trust it mathematically it's easy we don't necessarily implement that's those are two different things fair enough and we don't necessarily know that we're going to receive the income data in in most cases as i think noted uh we use a third party in vermont to the department of children families which runs the fuel assistance program which is able to eligible kind of verify eligible customers uh from an income standpoint and let the utility know somebody's eligible or they're not we're basically doing that for the energy assistance program that we're running this year uh is is using the fuel assistance program eligibility as the as the metric at the moment okay so it's so it's binary it the again our current thinking is binary yes but again you know i do think it's fair to say that our current software implementation for billing is is still a little limited and we're working to change that it may be that we can do more things after the software is upgraded but right now we constantly run into billing limitations that i find very surprising um so again i my my tension is always to go and talk to the metering billing folks and say you know can you do this too so okay but you know just how difficult the math is if you've got the data the math isn't the problem bob i can calculate the impacts with with a tiered cutoff and all of that no problem can they implement it through the software system that way and how much work is it involved in implementing a tiered one versus a straight yes or no that's the part that i'm asking them about i have no words about the math okay thanks well again let me say i i agree with you the math is easy it's the it's the software and how many flags and on off variables and things like that we can handle through our existing vintage software system so i'm getting is the problem when bob um it's a really good point about the benefits cliff um i this this makes me um want to ask for a check up on it forward in terms of you know that billing system and so how is that i i don't know if darin's in a position to offer that but Emily is obviously the the project lead on that and so darin can you offer anything yeah i we've um we've been focused primarily on the meter data management system we've gotten some headway on implementation there uh we are leading into i think over the next fiscal year the customer information system which is uh the next piece and then there's the financial information system is the final piece uh multi-year implementation continues to be complex it's moving at the case at roughly the pace i think we had hoped maybe with a few pickups um here and there but um the systems will not in the next fiscal year in my assessment be ready to do something more complex it's possible uh within the next two to three years we might be in a position we're having uh percent discounts at different levels we're having multiple rate classes is a little easier to implement but i think james is accurately stating the limitations of our current system and we are probably in a two to three-year process to be at the kind of more the end state that we want to be um with it forward so one of the one of my stated goals from darin was we are trying to make sure that this takes effect when or you know at the same exact time that the current assistance program expires june 30th too so that there's not a a gap in benefits either for eligible people so that's again you know we're a little bit constrained in what we you know in terms of implementation what we may be able to do a year from now versus what we can do july 1st but again i do understand the point we did throw up one of the you know a rate structure that does have that we did that for a reason that's an it's a it's a point that is valid um and just quickly at the last one last thing bob for your to your point too which is the math is pretty easy on the eligible customer times assistance portion of this formula if you understand if you believe the data you have for eligible or for income basis the adoption rate is a bit of a wild card um because our current adoption is not very high but when you make the offering you're exposed to anything up to 100 adoption you can't turn it off either because you didn't like the the income statement impact so we're just cognizant of that as well as this is i'd rather open a program tap up than be horribly surprised by the income statement effect and have to shut it down or raise rates suddenly because of it or something like that in my perspective is what it looks like from the customer standpoint understood understood and can you just touch upon i know you went through this but um for from the customer's experience what this will feel like if they're leaving the old program and starting this one well we would one of the proposals we well our obvious proposal would be anybody that was on that program would immediately transition to the new program you wouldn't you wouldn't re qualify i mean unless we change the qualifications such that that becomes required i mean it's not our again i could say we're not trying to have people leave stop qualifying again if you'd i'd rather do anything it'd be to open a qualification up a bit right and handle the impact yeah and so it would hopefully be hopefully be a seamless transition for anybody currently receiving assistance what i can't say is that it would be at the same seven and a half percent level or or higher or lower yet without doing the rest of this math okay and you'll do that before you become a proposal for next meeting would be what would the eligibility criteria what would the rate structure be what would the assistance be and what is the economic impact on our finances of doing that proposal okay yeah because if we've been offering seven and a half percent and then you know we go to them we're like here's four um that will be challenging for folks who really don't have very much margin as it is so i'll be interested to see what what you present when you come back and if you if you are you know if you start to see those numbers look like what i just said it would be great to reach out to us via email in advance the well a couple of things i just want to offer is we were very clear that the current seven and a half percent was a temporary program using you know the the uh the uh garen help me on this fund source was the uh arpa arpa thank you arpa funds right so we know that was never a tariff that is actually a return of some cash that we received okay this would be a tariff but it is a tariff with an 18 month limited duration unless we extend it but it would be you know again so i say we've been very careful this would be described as temporary too because until we actually make that extension request and get it approved this would sunset as well just just for some additional context i believe and my cannery can correct me believe we have about 81 customers currently signed up for the energy assistance program um it's it's been a slow kind of adoption curve mike is that right that is correct yeah it's it's been growing but but at a moderate pace and i think um you know to james's point we'll have to design this being that it's going to be a little bit longer duration 18 month program and it's not funded by arpa uh to assume and hope for frankly a higher participation rate among our customers but then to budget for that and make sure whatever percentage discount we're offering we're accounting for that reasonably in the budget without dramatically impacting the potential rate change that we'll have to bring forward so i think that's some of the math that we want to do over the next month and and bring you a fully prepared proposal on that i mean there's there's obviously a juggling act between eligibility of customers the number the percentage of your customer base is eligible and offering a discount in the extreme most extreme case if every customer was eligible offering a five percent discount would raise rates five percent i mean you have to juggle these two things a bit because you know you are you are taking it from a percentage of the population and giving it to another we have no other revenue source once the arpa money runs out so if so there's got to be a at least a theoretical ceiling of that of that of that impact on our on our budget that you must be looking at at least at a you know conceptual level right i'm going to add let darin answer that conceptual level but i'm certainly going to be looking to to calculate maximum potential impacts that we might think we would see in an 18 month window and then the question is going to be what does that do to our rate trajectory but darin if you've got more to add to that please do yeah i i think we're we're going to be looking at again depending on the adoption rate that you assume and the percentage rate i think we'd be looking at something that would likely have at least a five figure impact on the budget and potentially at a higher percentage rate higher adoption rate could have a six figure impact on the budget so i think we're going to try to design it in such a way that we can we can learn from it i mean that's the purpose of the pilot rate program is to offer something learn from it in terms of how many folks are participating what level of support is helpful and and adjust it as we go based on that and hopefully over the long run we'll get to a point where this is a a permanent program but i think we've gotten the temporary energy assistance program we've we've learned a little bit from that this will be a longer term and it'll be a rate like james said as opposed to a assistance program i think we'll learn from that and then we'll we'll try to have something more permanent um after that 18 month period expires i want to say i hear fully uh the concern from chair stebbins that if folks have been counting on the seven and a half percent even though it is a temporary program it would be potentially jarring uh to see that be lowered and we just need to balance that against what the potential participation rate would be with the new program and make sure we can manage it within our overall budget and rate structure but this is an important change for us at BED we've not previously ever offered a low income rate or a discount or an assistance program like this at least during my time and i know given that we do have upward rate pressure to some extent given the inflationary challenges that folks are dealing with this will be an important offering for our customers well i do think we would also be the first public power per entity to have a rate like this in vermont too so i mean again you've got vgs and gmp who are both investor owned entities um and i think gmp may have even funded the beginning of their program with money from either the velco sale of the merger i i'm not sure where i by this vague recollection that it was not initially funded out of rate base so but that's that's i'm not as certain of that as i would like to speak do you remember at all okay we can check into that too and just double check and make sure that they didn't tap a source of funding we don't have access to yeah it's it's a delicate balancing act um and i second sorry no i i just uh to your point in the extreme case you know if you offer it to everybody then you have to raise rates so that that is not where we're going so um i that's kind of what i was trying to get to is whether or not you know you know you take it what you what you got and and okay you know we were we were figuring this might have a $50,000 impact and oh my god it's $175,000 and we weren't expecting that you know where's that where's that where's that pain point where you go oh whoo whoo well that's that's the again that's the adoption rate question i mean the math is commissioner herning expresses is relatively easy is to say okay we have these many customers that qualify under this criteria and we're proposing this much of a discount if they all said yes this would be the impact and you know it's not likely just like a sending out a coupon right you know it's not likely they're all going to say yes but they could right you can't assume they won't because you can't pull it's not easy to pull a rate back and to say well you know no longer offered or something like that it's a rate so anyway so but like i say that's the that's the math we're working with and certainly i i did also hear to be clear commissioner herning's concern about you know the cliff and and i appreciate that point too so again i may poke on that a little bit more too well so two closing thoughts assuming that the commissioners don't have any any other thoughts so first is um depending on how this uh learning experience progresses um this is this you know if we were to continue this into the future depending on how this goes uh i think this is certainly something we would want our it system in the future to be able to handle two three years out if this ends up going in the direction um you know into a longer longer term time frame and i i also just i'm a little nervous that you're going to present something at the april meeting that the commission needs a little more time to to understand so i'm just vlogging that i can just from a timing standpoint i think the key for us is obviously if we have something that's prepared ahead of time and we can share it with you earlier we certainly will um we want to be able to uh file the rate by mid may to make sure it takes effect in fiscal 23 so it's specifically to take effect on july 1 right when when the temporary assistance program runs out it's possible if if we're not able to present something ahead of time and the commission isn't ready to vote at the april meeting we might need a special meeting uh to dispose of that item and and have a recommendation from the commission to the city council on it just to make sure we can stick with the time frame uh but certainly if we have materials ahead of time that we can provide um we will do that uh as a preferred route okay anything else from commissioners on this well uh thank you both i know this is uh you know more um research more digging but i know it also matters to people so thank you um last on the agenda is the commissioners check-in is there anything last minute that folks would like to weigh or bring up before we adjorn i guess i just wanted to it came as a total surprise to me i happened to get the message when i was at an event with the mayor um about this this stipend thing um i had no idea about this and all of a sudden um so and and i cool great i think it's awesome um hopefully that you know it encourages other folks to do this um i'd never expected it so i thought it was a nice sweet you know nice pleasant surprise and very cool and i've been very thankful and um come humble thank thank thanks that that's really cool um how does how's this gonna work is this is this something that's going to go on i didn't know i mean i was totally kind of blind sighted by this is this something that's going to go on in perpetuity or how does how does what what's the what's the story with it but and thank you and thank you to the mayor and city council but that's just what i wanted just wanted to get a little more uh how this you know just sort of it just sort of came out of the blue yeah my understanding of it is that there was an effort uh during the pandemic um to offer stipends for participation on boards and commissions for the city in an effort to ensure that there are more opportunities for folks who may not be able to uh volunteer their time um to be able to participate and have a compensation for that and um i believe it was the intent of the city to continue to fund that uh over the longer run i know the city is going to be going through its own budgeting process over the next few months so i imagine there'll be great you know greater clarity on that uh come the end of june when that budget process concludes but i've certainly heard the intent to continue that type of policy to encourage more opportunities for folks to participate boards and commissions and isn't this retroactive to last july uh that i misread that maybe yeah that may be correct yeah yes it is and i had to send um attendance records so if you miss a meeting you don't get the stipend well thank you hopefully hopefully it does have that impact this was chicago it wouldn't matter of course okay scott thank you for bringing that up uh any other comments from commissioners okay hearing none if we could have a motion to adjourn please and thank you everybody at bed for your work so moved second uh commissioner shagman hi commissioner herondine hi commissioner moody hi commissioner stephens hi commissioner woodaker hi thank you meeting adjourns at 701 thank you but keep well