 and are we great? Excellent. Good evening. This is a special meeting of the Burlington Board of Electric Commissioners. This is Wednesday, May 5th, 2021, 6 p.m. And the agenda is pretty brief this evening. The commission requested this meeting specifically because there is a budget review process coming up and we wanted to have an additional time to discuss it, review it, ask questions. So only four items on the agenda this evening. The first item is the agenda itself. And I wonder if anyone has any requested modifications, understanding that we have a meeting again next week. Okay, hearing none, we'll move on to the next agenda item which is the public forum. And Lori, if you clerk, if you could tell us. No one is here from the public at this meeting. Excellent. I don't mean excellent. I mean, thank you for the clarification. If anyone from the public ever chooses to join us, we welcome you too. We also have Mike Kenrick on the call who is the head of our team that directly supports all of our Burlingtonians and our ratepayers. So always feel free to reach out to the commissioner or the team itself. And then third on the agenda is the Burlington Electric Department electric vehicle tariff update. This is a discussion and a vote with James Gibbons as well as Freddie Hall. So with that, I'll pass it off to you both and thank you for getting the materials off to us. Thank you. So I'm gonna give a quick introduction and then let Freddie go into a PowerPoint. The quick introduction is that the Vermont legislature this year picked up a bill about electric vehicle charging rates. And in that electric vehicle chart, yeah, you may have had something to do with that, but in full transparency, I should, if viewers ever watch, I am a state representative on the House Transportation Committee and I'm actually the one who presented the EV rate discussion on the House floor. So if you're unhappy with that, you get a two for one by contacting me directly. And we are not unhappy with that, but we are, there are a whole series of requirements that that statute puts in place. Yes. And BED was actually one of the first, maybe the first utility in Vermont to have an EV rate. And what we'd like to do is make sure that our new, that we expand these EV rates to the small commercial and large commercial customers and do so in a way that's similar to what we've done for the residential customers already. We have in the past, and I include myself being the most important of the we here, been a little surprised that clear statutes have been interpreted by the PUC as either clear in ways we didn't expect or unclear. And so what we'd like to do is go ahead and prior to that statute taking effect on July 1st, go ahead and extend the rate that we've already offered to our residential customers, to our other small commercial and large commercial customers. So that we don't have different rate structures and that we don't have a set of rules that didn't apply when the first set of rate went in place, applied to a second set of rates. So we're trying to make it very consistent. We would like to have this put in effect before July 1st when the statute takes effect, just for simplicity, just to make sure that we don't get caught in a interpretation of statute that we don't understand. The proposal here is very much to extend a structure similar to the residential rate to the small commercial and large commercial customers. The other customers in Burlington are on time of use rates. So they already have the option to charge their electric vehicles at discounted electric rates under their existing time of use structure. So this is targeted for the customers that don't have that option right now. So Freddie is on a PowerPoint and we have a fairly straightforward set of modifications that we're proposing to the tariff to just extend its availability, okay? Now this proposal will have to go to the Board of Finance City Council and then we'll have to go to the PUC for final approval. So again, in the hopes of having it done before July 1st, we are trying to get it done very quickly here, relatively quickly. So we've added this to that agenda to do that. Aaron, do you have anything you want to add to that maybe? Okay, with that, Freddie, can you take over screen control and share the PowerPoint, please? Nicely done. Okay, I'm going to mute and let Freddie do the PowerPoint, please. I think you can all hear me, but if someone can give me just a thumbs up. All right, thanks James. Great. Just going to present mode. Okay. Everyone see the PowerPoint at this point? Correctly too, please. Good, thank you. So James, you have a nice overview of what we're going to be talking about. It's great to be back in front of you after I think maybe three years now talking about these amendments. So we'll go through some of the goals and timing that James touched on, some context of what was included in the first go around for getting this EV rate out there, discussing a charging option that we're looking to put forth in addition to the two that already exist, some discussion on the credit derivation for the small general and large general customers and then the next steps, which is the vote. So these are the goals of the amendment. I think they're very similar to what the first EV rate focused on residential customers looked into but applying this to the commercial workplace and also multifamily housing as well. So similarly, looking to avoid peak coincidence and provide flexible options for multifamily and businesses to work with a schedule that suits their needs. And in doing so, trying to increase the number of hours that are available for charging. James touched on the T bill that is in place. And so if we're able to get this approved by the PUC prior to 7-1, 2021, we would be exempt from those requirements. And that would, like James said, allow it to be very standard with the prior presidential EV rate that was already approved. Before you go on, I'll add something on the slide, Freddie. Go for it. Pardon me. We have been told by the PUC pardon me, by the DPS is the problem. We've been told by the DPS that they believe that our existing rate satisfies these criteria, but I'm a little concerned about criteria C, which is adequately compensate the electric distribution utility and its customers for additional, I'm sorry, not that one. Adequate B, sorry, I spoke, adequately compensate PEV operators and owners available for public use of the value of grid related services. That to my mind is a way of talking about vehicle to grid power, which is not really practical right now and which we do not have in our tariff. So I want to make sure that we don't get tagged by that. So that was the one that causes me some concern about how they might choose to interpret that. At this point, I'm not aware of any non-pilot vehicle to grid rate proposals that are out there. So I just don't want to get caught a foul of that. So if I may, as someone who sat in the testimony and all of the testimony and then was on the floor, that is not what was discussed, James. Adequately compensate really just meant that the whatever rate was proposed would be representative. And I hear your concern and I'm happy to continue with this discussion and the conversation and the vote. I just want to say that for the record, that was not the intent of any of the discussion that was held. But I understand how things change, especially as years go by. Well, it's not that. It's that we, for example, Darren was involved in the drafting of Act 151 and we had the PUC interpret it differently than either we or the chair of the committee thought it should be interpreted. And not only that, they chose to interpret it differently and argue that it was unambiguous though. So we couldn't even argue that they were interpreting it wrong. It's not that we don't think we know what it means and we don't think the legislature, but we just don't really want to go down that path again if we don't have to and if we have a rate structure that we're currently pleased with. No, I understand that. And for commissioners, there was actually one of the things that the House Energy and Technology Committee did was specifically add language to represent the distribution utilities that were already offering this type of product to say that they were not required to change this type of tariff. So just for the record, that was the intent to not require utilities that are already offering these types of rates to have to change everything around. And we understand that too, but the way they actually put that language in says for the rates where they already offer it. So we can't expand it to SG and LG. So I'm saying we're just trying to make sure that we don't get caught afoul of the language. It's a little bit odd and it could be interpreted in a way we didn't like. So that's it. It's not that we don't understand what the legislature wanted, but we have been surprised once before. As have I in previous roles. Sorry to interject. Freddie, please keep going. Yeah, Freddie, over to you. All right. So this is some slides that you might remember with the Spaceman coming across. These are uncontrolled incremental load profiles that we've derived from customers that have purchased an EV looking at residential. And so, 40% coincidence with transmission peaks, level two will exacerbate this load. And then that's kind of what got us to start thinking about an EV rate for the residential folks. And this is some snippets from our website, touting the 60 cents per gallon of gasoline equivalent. That's what the EV rate will get you, which is roughly eight cents per kilowatt hour. And then this is the success story of how it's been working in the field with a baseline kind of counterfactual, which shows in the graph at the bottom in blue what the charging profile would have been like had it not been curtailed. And so this is a subset of customers that are from the Pactize Energy Charger. And basically on this peak day in May, that's when a transmission peak actually occurred. And this would have cost us over $100 to serve this load and up costing us about $2. And we're able to pass on savings to the customers as well for avoiding those peak times. So it's working well for the residential customers. The thing there is that most customers that are on that rate currently are avoiding peak times during a fixed set of hours from noon till 10 p.m. And when looking at load profiles for workplace and multifamily charging, I will caveat that we're still getting more data on both of those load profiles. About 75% of multifamily and 50% of workplace occur during that peak time. And so in terms of the flexibility that's needed to deviate from those times, there isn't as much as there is for the uncontrolled residential case. So we have to think about an option for calling peaks in a more dynamic real-time way. And then this is more refresher on the two rates that we're gonna be expanding or proposing to expand the EV rate too, which are the small and general, I might say SG, but that's just a shorthand for that as well as large general or LG. The first one is energy only rate for small commercial customers as well as multifamily housing. And they currently aren't built on demand. And in large general, the switchover from SG to LG occurs when a customer consumes 3,000 or more kilowatt hours per month for three consecutive months. And they switch over to that demand peak, which is $20 per kilowatt a month. So these commercial customers have unique needs that are different from the residential folks, which I discussed before, need for flexibility as there's more coincidence during the current time of use charging. And as I mentioned as well, this also includes multi-unit dwellings. So thinking about multifamily as well. And then the second part of this is some of these customers might not want to be moved onto a demand-based rate, which happens when they consume, as I said, 3,000 kilowatt hours or more for three consecutive months. So thinking about that, as well as a need for flexibility. And I think we can address that with more real-time peak calling as well. So the first two options that we see here, the fixed EV charging rate or charging option is what was explained before from noon till 10 p.m. That's when charging is avoided and that's pre-programmed on the charger. That represents about 42% of the hours in a year. And then as we get to a more flexible option, which we're currently testing with one customer that brings those hours down to about 17% of the hours in a year. And we estimate that with a more real-time option, we can further shrink down those numbers to about 8%. And that would give customers the ability to charge really as much as possible. And we wouldn't be calling on them to avoid those peaks as we'd have more certainty of when those peaks occur with more real-time control. So these are the kind of quick bullet points on the flexible real-time option. There'd be a real-time curtailment based on the current market data that we'd be getting in. And the customer would be notified when this occurs, but it wouldn't be subject to the current flexible option which is an eight-hour advanced warning. So we'd get a bit more insight into how the days is breaking out in terms of a likely peak up to the actual event. And similar to the other two options, curtailments wouldn't exceed 10 hours per day. And this would also be in BD's best interest to encourage as much charging as possible. And the last point that I believe is on there is the customer would maintain the ability to opt out of any of these curtailment events. So the advantages for BD from this are similar to what we have, initially with other capacity transmission energy costs, increased contribution to fixed costs as well. And then we also maintain the ability to approve devices to control these different options. And that's similar to the first time that we put out this rate where we didn't have approved devices yet for the rate. But as we discussed with vendors and figured out which devices would comply, then we opened up those options to customers. And then looking at the advantages for the customer side, lower cost, you'd be charging more flexibility and hours of the day to do charging other than the fixed hours. And then that would also allow for more daytime charging, which the current time of use or fixed period doesn't allow for. And then the customer working with these charger apps can also monitor when they are being curtailed and opt out if that's desired. So this gets into the credit derivation part of this. And so this is the breakdown of the four rate classes that we have on the rate. As discussed previously, our EV rate is eight cents that's derived from four cents for the rate cost that's capturing energy, RECs and ancillary services. And then we have a fixed cost contribution as well as a contribution to the hardware which also includes software costs like API fees as well. And then a quick note here, as Janice mentioned earlier, PS stands for primary service, which is already a time of use customer. Currently, we're not allowing time of use customers onto the rate since they can already gain from off peak charging. And I'm just gonna jump to the next slide on this. And so this is what we're proposing here since the SG energy rate is very similar to the RS, we would keep the EV rate the same for the LG since the energy is at about eight cents per kilowatt hour. We could look at a demand credit for any EV charging that increased demand above what the customer would have otherwise paid. And then for the primary service since they are already on a time of use rate, we wouldn't be offering any credit, but they could use the off peak time to take advantage of that charging. And then the line below represents the cost based on all those for EV charging. So this is just to summarize what I went over. The first part, I think we went into on pretty good detail there. The SG tariff and LG tariff changes come with basically netting out or removing any controlled EV charging from that threshold that would push a customer from SG smaller general over to the large general rate which would incur a demand charge. And basically the thought process there is that we wanna send the signal that if you control your EV charging, you won't be forced on to a demand rate. And I'll stop there, see if there are any questions but we'll bring this slide up as well. This is Bob. Can you hear me? I can hear you. Go ahead Bob. Okay, I'm a little confused about what devices means. On one hand, I'm thinking of a packet in energy. On the other hand, I'm thinking about the API meetings we have already. Could you explain? Sure, yeah. So device in this context would be a metering device as well as a load control device when it is required. And they can be found in the same device which would be most EV chargers that we're using which have metering and load control as well. So we need the, typically the charger to be capable of measuring the consumption that flows through the charger. And ideally also to be able to accept signals to tell it to stop charging for active load control. If the charger can measure consumption by time period, we can do the non flexible option. If the charger can handle a signal to stop charging, then we can offer the two options where charging is interrupted and all times we come off peak except when we're sending the interruption signals. Okay, and along that line, you also mentioned, at least in some cases that folks can basically override all of this. Does that mean they push a button somewhere? Yeah, so, sorry, go ahead, Freddie. The two chargers that we're working with have apps, iPhone and smartphone apps that the customer can log on to, they'll get a notification and they will be able to opt out of charging when they see a curtailment event. Effectively, a customer can opt out of charging under all three options because in the straight time based ones, they just choose to charge during the on peak period. And if they do that, they're not going to get the credit for that month. In the two active load control where the device receives a signal that says stop charging, then they would have to take an action to override that. Okay, and if they did, then they would be penalized. They, our rate is not set up as a penalty rate, our rate is set up as an absence of a credit. So if they in any given month be towards those load control signals and overrode them at any point during that month, they would not get the credit for that month. Okay, thank you. Other questions? Well, okay, sorry for my own notification. Why do multi-unit residential units peak during the day? That's a really good question. And I was talking with a colleague on that as well. I would have thought that they would have had more overnight charges. I think the communities that we're looking at are made up of people and given COVID as well. There might be more folks who are retirees or are just home more because of COVID as well. But yeah, I would definitely caveat that load profile with those statements. What's the period of that data set you used, Freddie? Oh, that was 2020 up till now. I would consider that, yeah, very likely Bob that that has been COVID impacted. I know, for example, my house profile, now that I'm there 24-7 is materially different than it used to be. So those could alter over time. Other questions for commissioners? So if none, I have a question. So on slide 14, it says that the credit for small general is 0.068 and large general is $20.03. And then if I switch back a few slides, I see that, where is it? Slide nine, it says that great classes, small general is at 0.156 and large general is at 0.083. So basically the credit for, if you differentiate for small general, the credit is 15 cents minus 6.8, roughly seven cents. I can't quite tell what the credit is for large general because the other slide said like the earlier slide says 0.083 cents per KWH for large general and for the ED credit says $20.03. So just help. Yep, no, I think I know exactly where you're going with this and I think I can tell you why we did what we did. So we wanted to have where a credit was offered on energy, we wanted the same credit to be offered, even if that would result in a slightly different charging rate, because the alternative is we're trying to explain to people why does residential get a different credit than commercial? And I think that's a bad explanation structure. When you look at the LG class, their energy rate was already very close to that. In fact, it's right between RS and LG after the credit and that's what this slide shows. So if you take the residential rate minus the 0.068, you get eight cents. If you take the SG rate minus 0.068, you get 8.8 cents. And if you take the LG rate and you ignore the demand charge by crediting it at the demand rate, you get 0.083 cents. So that puts all three rates after the credit within less than a penny of each other and means we have one credit that applies on energy and one credit that applies on demand. You don't have to explain to people why the residential credit is different than the SG credit. But if you can't credit LG on energy, right? Because they're already at 8.3 cents. You have to do something about that demand problem. So what this tariff says is if they are charging at their own peak, right? But not at one of the times we said don't charge. An effect of what we're doing is we're ignoring the demand charge for that portion of the load. So we're basically doing, we're taking a backdoor way of billing the EV charging under a separate rate. But we're doing it by crediting because our billing system right now can't handle virtual rates. It will be able to, but it cannot right now. So again, that number on the bottom row, cost of charging is after the credit, right? If they follow all of our signals, what will the cost of charging be? It'll be eight cents for residential, 8.8 for small commercial, 8.3 for LG and the reason the LG will be 8.3 is because that is their energy rate. They pay a demand rate on top of it. The other two classes do not. So if you net out the demand charge at the demand billing rate, you're back down to the energy charge only. And so this was the simplest way we could get a very, very similar charging rate without having a lot of explaining to do about why the credits were different. Does that answer the question, Gabrielle? Yeah, thank you, James, helpful. So my other question is, you know, there's been a lot of discussion about right now, you know, most folks are charging at home. That being said, you know, in the future, that could change and it could be more at the commercial space. I guess I'm a little cautious when I look at your graphs of when we see, you know, if I were to charge at a workplace, if I can't charge, I mean, I guess I can charge. I'm just gonna be paying, you know, not getting this rate, but that charge between 12 to like... Well, remember that we're expecting that those customers will be the ones that will take the flexible options and have us interrupting them during the critical times and letting them charge anytime. So you've got two structures. The residential customer can keep it simple. There's that block of time, right? If you have, if you're in SG or LG, we think it very likely you'll be offering for the flexible, which means really everything is off peak as long as we haven't sent a signal saying today we care. Yeah. Right? So that's the whole goal of this. And the reason we're expanding at the same time, we're offering the credit for LG and we're increasing by offering that flexible time option, which is no warning, but the least hours we can interrupt. So again, that's designed to work in conjunction with each other to give them that ability to still charge, like Freddie's showing here. You know, if you take that flexible, you're not gonna get any warning, but we're never gonna cut you off for a whole day and you're gonna be able to charge 92% of the hours in the year. So it's designed to work with that. We expect SG and LG in particular to be taking advantage of one of those two options, either the day ahead warning or the no warning, which will have the least number of hours, but you won't have a lot of warning that charging has been interrupted. I mean, I understand the rationale and it does make sense to me. Did you happen to run this by any potential SGs or LGs? Not on the timeline we were on to get this in front of you guys for May 5th. Okay. I mean, it's an option that they don't have right now. A worst case scenario is it's not the perfect option, but again, we can change it later. If we change it later, we'll be subject to the statute as all. Right. And what parts of the statute do you feel like this may veer from? The vehicle to grid piece that you're concerned about? That's the part that I don't know how they're gonna read that. Okay. And we just, again, we want to offer this. We were planning on offering a larger package of rate changes in September. This was one of them. We're just accelerating a bit, which is why we were able to do it May 5th. If after that legislation had passed and we had done no previous work on this, we would not have been well positioned to propose this to you today, but we were already talking about rate changes. There will be others in September. We're just leading this one up a bit front, a front of the other ones. So we will be talking about other types of rate changes in a package that we expect to offer that will be in conjunction with dynamic strategic electrification. Thanks, James. Other questions from commissioners? Freddie, can you skip to the last slide? Sure. So this is what we're asking for is really the authorization to take it on to the Board of Finance and City Council. I believe I sent all of you the language if you wanted to vote. Yep. And I just, for the record, I know that I'm the one who said, we should have this meeting and I really appreciate that the entire Burlington Electric team has been racing to prepare for it. I hope it'll make next week and future weeks a little easier because now you just like ran through sprinted. I guess in future I would love if it hadn't been the chair of the commission pushing for this meeting and combined with legislation that's actively being discussed. In the future, I would love to have some outreach to the SGs and LGs, just one of each, two of each. Hey, what do you think? And we've been talking about how to engage customers in these program design and rate design. So this is just an unusual occurrence in my mind and we're moving it a little faster than we expected. Commission, any thoughts? I mean, personally, I think it's thoughtful. I think it, I understand James' concerns having literally worked on legislation in the State House and walked across the street and heard it interpreted in a different way and had to raise my hand and say, that is not what was discussed. So I understand that concern and I understand that this is a value add to our customers and if they don't choose to participate, they don't have to but wondering how the commission feels this is a request for both a discussion and a vote. I'm fine with it, Gabrielle. Let me ask one question. I wouldn't have asked this if you hadn't said what you said, Gabrielle. I remember the good old days when there was this thing called the no losers consideration. Are there any losers here who don't have EVs? We've designed around the extra load for EV charging. So if you were a customer without EV charging, your bill is exactly as it would be under our existing tariffs. So again, we've tried very much to structure this around, if you're already, your existing loads will be charged as if they were already there, right? It's only the extra load that we're working with. And right now our belief is that that is not ubiquitous. It is not nothing like the majority that people have EV charging stations still. So really this recommends new load to BED and so we can treat it a little bit differently. But again, I think in an ideal world, we would simply use a virtual billing channel, separate the loads out and build this load under LG and this load under the EV tariff, but our system can't handle that just yet. Now the IT forward that you approved is allowing us to change the software to handle that kind of thing. So you could have rates for different end uses that would be billed and you wouldn't have to do it as a credit structure. Okay, but basically it sounds like in the case of that sort of classical, no losers criterion, it passes. I cannot think of a loser from this. And the one thing that we're being very cautious about and that set us back a little bit is wanting to make sure that somebody who was SG did not say, oh, great, you're offering an EV charging rate, put in EV charger, then break the 3,000 kilowatt hour barrier, go over to the LG, get a demand bill, and oh, by the way, if we don't offer EV charging for the LG rate, now you're really stuck. So that was the loser we were trying very hard to resolve and I think we have done that. So first and foremost, you would have to ignore our charging signals for three consecutive months before your EV charging would be the thing that could put you on LG. And even if you moved to LG, you can still participate in the EV charging rate. So that was a loser scenario that we were trying very hard to take off the table. Okay, thanks. Commissioner Shagnan, thanks for responding where you're at, Bob. Are you, how do you feel? Would you be ready to make a vote? Yes. Okay, and all I have is plus seven. Let me see. Do we have a Bethany yet? A commissioner Whitaker yet? No, not yet. Okay. Well, we do have a commissioner Moody, right? Yeah, I'm here. Okay. Commissioner Moody, how do you feel about moving on towards a vote? I feel fine with that. I think it was, and I appreciate the explanation because just trying to figure it out myself was a little daunting. So, but yeah, I'm good with this. Okay. Could someone please make a motion and could someone second? Sure. I move that the commission recommends to the city council that BED's EV rate tariff amendments and the accompanying small general and large general tariff amendments as proposed be adopted and that the city council approves Burlington Electric to file such amendments for the public utility commission. Second. And roll call, Lori. Commissioner Shagman. Aye. Commissioner Herendine. Commissioner Herendine. You're muted. Aye. Commissioner Moody. Aye. Commissioner Stevens. Aye. Thank you. Motion passes. Yeah, Brielle, could I just take two seconds and thank Freddie for all his hard work on this while I've been out of town and Darren and Emily for also covering for me while I've been out of town. So again, I really appreciate that from all of those guys. So thank them. I thank them very much. Thank you. Thank you for the help. And I just want to say, if you could make a note that, if this, assuming this moves forward, goes into effect July one, it'd be great to have an update like November, December, how things are going, what you're hearing from customers, from rate pairs. Freddie, can you make a note of that for me? Yeah. Thanks, Freddie. Oh, this doesn't get lost in my hotel room. Okay. So this was going to be a quick meeting. Now we're moving to the purpose of the meeting. Thank you, everybody. And again, thanks to the team for pushing this together really quickly. This is agenda item number four. This is a fiscal year 2022 draft budget update. This is a discussion. And I just want to leave off the fact that I see how much you were able to cut and also how much you were able to improve cash on hand. So I appreciate that as a start-off and general manager, springer. Thank you. So I'm going to give a few comments just overall on the budget, kind of where we started, where we are. And Emily is going to walk through some of the specific changes that we've made between the last meeting and this meeting. And we'll preview as well for you what we anticipate changing between this meeting and the next meeting on the 12th. As I think we've discussed, this has been the most challenging budget, certainly that I've been involved with of the five budgets that I've been involved with at BED. It will be the first year in 12 years where we will be recommending a rate case as part of the budget. We started with essentially a $10 million gap from where we needed to be in terms of cash on hand to end the year in FY22 with an ending balance that meets the 90 days cash on hand figure that we always seek to achieve for Moody's metrics and for our own fiscal health. We've made a lot of progress towards that goal. We have had to cut and defer in several areas. We've made some changes since the last meeting relative to looking at different things like sales, forecasts and COVID impacts on that. We have made some assumptions in the budget around pursuing a revenue bond. We've discussed that publicly. The mayor has discussed that publicly. We've, the mayor had a briefing earlier today talking about the vision for the city budget and the use of federal funds and mentioned the BED revenue bond as something that would be important for pursuing additional net zero and electrification efforts. In addition, as part of that, we've worked with the city such that there is 600,000 in city related arrearage assistance that's included in the materials you have this evening. The mayor did mention on the briefing today that because of further conversations that we've had relative to the need that we anticipate that that arrearage and pandemic relief recommendation will increase between now the materials you have now and the materials you'll receive prior to the meeting on the 12th. The city is going to do a little bit more with the federal funds. At least that's the mayor's recommendation to help us with arrearage and pandemic relief efforts. I do wanna mention just for context, we as a municipal utility were not eligible for the paycheck protection program. Emily and Cheryl with some help from Amber on our regulatory team with James looked at what we would have received if we had been eligible and rural cooperative utilities and investor-owned utilities were all eligible. Only municipals were not in a quirk of the federal legislation. We would have received nearly 2.9 million in assistance had we been eligible for the paycheck protection program. So that was a lost opportunity, unfortunately. And then we've, as we've discussed, we've had I think close to 5 million in impacts when you count up the arrearage numbers, the loss sale to customers and the reduced customer capital contribution. So when you think about that $10 million challenge that we started off with, some of those numbers really bear quite heavily on that when you think of the pandemic impact. It's not atypical that we start a year needing to move a few million to the good from where we project, but 10 million is quite unusual. I would also just mention that we do plan to bring a budget to you next week that will have us ending at the 90 days cash on hand. That will include the rate case assumption. Our current working assumption is that we would file a rate case June 15th and it would begin to take effect on August 1st, roughly of this calendar year, which would be the second month of fiscal 22 for our budget purposes. And we can talk through a little bit more what that looks like. Another thing I just want the commission to be aware of is we had a late breaking development relative to an arbitration between the city and the IBEW over retirement benefits, which was decided in favor of the IBEW, which is presenting some fiscal, presented some additional fiscal challenge to our FY22 budget and will present fiscal challenges to future budgets as well. We don't have an exact number in terms of those impacts, but we are working with the city to identify those and we will plan for at least some contingencies relative to that in this budget as well. So that was something that developed fairly late in the budget process that we are responding to. And lastly, we will plan to talk in much more detail next week about the rate case number, what the rate case would mean for an average residential customer, how our rates will compare pre and post rate case to other utilities and try to reflect a little on how holding rate steady for 12 years has delivered some value, even with this rate case considered for our customers. But one thing that I do want the commission to know is this budget will include a low income customer relief program that will be designed to help offset the impact of the rate case for fiscal 22 for our customers who are on the state fuel assistance program. And that will be a one year program because we are pursuing at the PUC discussions around a potential low income rate. So we're hopeful that by fiscal 23 that that low income rate might be in effect and benefiting customers who might be facing a challenge with paying their bills. But this is meant to be a kind of a pandemic relief program. We certainly understand that raising rates coming out of the pandemic could be particularly challenging for low income customers and we don't wanna add to their burden. So we will work to offset that through bill credits monthly with this low income relief program during fiscal 22. So that's included in our thinking in this budget. So with that overview and some of those items, I want to hand it over to Emily to walk through some of the particulars and then we welcome questions and discussion from the commissioners. Thanks, Darren. So commissioners, I included in your packet a memo that summarized the changes we have made since our last meeting in April. I'm just gonna pull that up now. That wasn't right. As Emily pulls this up, Darren, this is just to be clear at this point, you have three different ideas for moving forward, one of which is the rate case. It's not necessarily that there is a proposal for a rate case right now. Am I understanding that? There will be a proposal for a rate case as part of this budget that we've I think settled on that at this point. We can give you an estimated range of the rate case based on the assumptions that are in here plus the assumptions around the contingency that we'll plan for the IBEW arbitration and the additional 700,000 in arrearage assistance that we're anticipating would be included in the city budget memo. But we are planning for next week's meeting to provide more of the detail around that rate case and the exact number and how it affects bills and impacts on customers. We haven't had that prepared yet because it was literally this morning and at the briefing today where we finalized some of these pieces with the city that help us reach that determination. Okay, thanks for the clarification. Thanks, so sorry, thanks for bearing with me. My computer has chosen, of course, this moment to become logie. So walking through the memo that I included in your packet, in April, we were the draft budget included a substantial gap as we discussed then a projected net loss of about 3.4 million and only just under $500,000 of days cash on hand. So here's the changes we have made since the April 14th meeting, notably a few of them are linked. So I'm not gonna go through this exactly in order but I'm gonna kind of cover them and cover all the items that related. So first on sales to customers, our initial forecast that we prepared in February had some assumptions about the level to which COVID would continue to impact our sales through fiscal 22. With a little bit more data from the spring and in terms of actual loads through mid April as well as updates from both the national scene and in Vermont on vaccination rates and the governor's reopening planned. We're feeling a little more confident than we were about sales to customers in FY 22. So this revised forecast does include some COVID impacts but at a reduced level than the initial forecast. So that is producing $225,000 more revenue and sales to customers. Related to that of course is the power supply expense associated to serve that load due to the sort of the timing of the loads projected that actually saved about $174,000 in power supply expenses as well. So those changes are linked to this sales number and then having more revenue will pay more gross receipts tax. So there's a little bit of offset and an increased expense there. The second change I wanna talk about with a couple of different impacts here is that we have had for a few years now vacant position in the sustainability and workforce development area. We are funding that position this year in FY 22, excuse me a second, sorry about that. So we are including funding for that position in FY 22. That position will be 75% funded by EU funds, 25% funded by BED operating funds. So you're seeing an inflow here of revenue, essentially a transfer of funds from the EU to the BED operating fund. And then here are the expenses for the position and then the labor overhead benefits pension, et cetera associated with that position. The third change is that in discussions with the city that were occurring as Darren said just this week and last, we had included a contingency for a potential payment for environmental remediation at the Moran Frame Project. Through discussions with the city we've reached agreement that that can be taken out and deferred to FY 23 at the soonest. So that improves resulting in $105,000 improvement. We've also included funding. This is an expense here as Darren mentioned for low income energy assistance program for one year to assist with impacts from a rate increase. The next item, happily the PUC approved our IRP plan. The timing of when we would be required to update and do our next IRP was uncertain before that decision was handed down. We now know when their next IRP is due so we can remove, we won't need the forecasting work for the next IRP to begin until FY 23. So there was some expense of 40,000 that we could remove. And then these next three items involve the labor overhead rate. This was really just a difference in how this expense was accounted for in the budget. It was moved from a departmental expense to the overhead rate. And then based on updated information from the city about expected health, dental insurance, pension, retirement costs, the estimate we'd been using for the labor overhead rate could be revised downward. So that resulted in actually fairly significant savings because for every dollar of labor we're basically charging less for benefits in expense. And then as well, because we are charging less on labor, capitalized labor, there's a slightly less lower return to the operating fund from the administrative and general overhead rate on capital projects. So those are all related. Capital expenditures also save some money because of the rise labor overhead rate change. And then here as Darren just mentioned is where the city has agreed to provide some pandemic relief and a rearage assistance from federal funds. This version that we sent to you yesterday includes 600,000. As mentioned on the mayor's briefing this morning or this afternoon, that will be increasing to 1.3 million. So you will see that reflected next week in the final budget that you vote on. We have also included an assumption for current or proposed state programs. So depending on, this will be kind of like a first in, first out thing with the state programs. I think if we, what can I say? So the state has a rental program that is preparing to launch but has not yet launched. And then the Senate has recently appropriated 15 million but that has not been finalized. And it's uncertain what amount, if any, we will ultimately recover or our customers will ultimately recover from those programs. And then based on the forecasting that we're doing throughout fiscal 21, we've been able to improve our, or essentially our ending FY 21 starting FY 22 cash position by just under $40,000. So the net effect is that we're now projecting that loss of 2.65 million and an ending cash balance of 2.7, 2.8 million. So we still have about just over a three and a half million dollar gap to bring us to 90 days cash on hand ending June 30, 2022. Thank you, Emily. Questions from commissioners. The quickie, when would the rate case ideally kick in? Okay. So we would under ideal circumstances we would include the rate case as an item for you to vote on next week, along with the budget. Assuming we can also get consideration from the board of finance and city council to authorize that in a timely way. Our plan would be to file it on June 15th and then there's a provision for municipal utilities that a rate case can take effect 45 days from when it's filed. Ultimately, it could be decided by the PUC that the number changes, but the proposed number would take us back 45 days. So we would be looking at August 1st or roughly there about for this to take effect. On a service rendered basis. So any electric service rendered after August 1st would carry the surcharge. Other questions? Scott, your icon just went beep. Sorry, I just hit it. Double, double, hit it there. So Darren's trying to keep us in suspense till next week. So, but you did that. I don't think it's that. I think they haven't had time. I kid, I kid. But you were mentioning that you might be able to give us something of a range. And I guess I also wanted to re-ask you about some, you'd mentioned the last meeting there were some legislation or something like that coming down the pike about where municipalities or you break, you can change rates and I'm on a more regular, biannual or some sort of it. Hopefully you can explain a little bit more about that as well. And I don't know if now is probably not the time, but it certainly at some point, we as a, whether that's going to dictate or not, going forward what our policy is as far as rates. I can absolutely speak to all of that. Thank you, Commissioner Moody. So in terms of the rate case, our primary goal has been obviously to keep the number as low as possible while providing the 90 days cash on hand metric. Under any circumstance, our net income number is not going to be very impressive proposed for FY 22. Although keep in mind that the million plus of retirement non-cash that affects net income every year is included this year in the net income projection whereas in previous years it hadn't been. So take that into consideration. Our prime goal has been we do not want something like a double digit rate case coming out of this pandemic and I am extremely confident we will avoid that. It will be a single digit rate case number, but it will not necessarily be low single digits. I think we're looking at kind of mid to high single digits and we are assuming that that will be hopefully if everything else works out in the budget and the revenue bond. We are looking towards next year with the idea that we would like to avoid having as high a rate case next year. The legislation you referenced that we discussed at the last meeting has been signed by the governor. And so the good news there relatively is you have to have a regular rate case litigated at the PUC in order to have access to the provisions under that legislation. So we will qualify with this rate case that we'll be filing whereas otherwise we would not. And then you have, from my understanding you can up to five years within a given timeframe use this process to file for a 2% or less rate case and have that go via local control, which in this case would mean the commission and the city council approval and not have to go to the PUC for a traditional rate case process. So if going forward, the model is to have more regular and more modest rate cases that provision of law may be of use to Burlington Electric and may wanna be something we consider. And I do wanna comment on that because we've had this extraordinary run of 12 years without a rate increase and nobody is prouder of that or loves to talk about that more than me. It's one of the favorite talking points that we have when we talk about net zero and other initiatives if we present in any forum that's something that we always put on page one. That said, I don't think it's a particularly sustainable trajectory to try to replicate. I don't think we should consider the idea that we're gonna go another 12 years after this rate case. I do think that aiming for more regular and more modest rate increases that track with the cost of doing business going up, something in the 2% or 3% range on a more regular basis is something we should consider and plan for absent extraordinary circumstances. So my hope would be that we come back to you next year with a budget that's improved because of the revenue bond, because of this existing rate case that we're talking about and because of improvements in sales to customers and other financial factors and that we're able to propose a rate case next year that is more modest. I can say, and James or Emily can correct me, we would likely be able to request a rate case and justify a rate case that'll be double what we're actually gonna ask for if you look at it from the PUC and Department of Public Service process. So we're gonna be going in with a very much more modest and conservative rate requests than what we might be able to justify under Vermont regulation. And that's correct. And we've also, Emily and I have both been dealing extensively with the DPS staff in preparation to just sort of talking about, it's been so long since we've done a rate case that's sort of essentially refreshing our memory about how they like rate cases done these days. But they've been super helpful. The DPS staff has been very accommodating and very helpful. And so I think we're getting the numbers together and we'll be in a good position to present them. I also just for the entire commission, I know this is something that you all take as seriously as we do. And we are making an effort to try to get you the materials including the rate proposal, well in advance of your meeting on the 12th and your potential vote. So we're working hard to try to get those to you Friday, if at all possible, so that you have the entire weekend and the beginning of next week to review the materials and consider that before you'd be asked to take a vote on Wednesday evening. So your, I guess the question that comes to mind is you're also mentioning a rate case next year. And so as a customer, that's all I can hear in my head going, what, another, they're jacking my bill up again. They just asked me for this six months ago. What have you taught? So, you know, is breaking it up into two, like that, as opposed to the larger number that you're talking about. I guess I'm wondering what the rationale is behind breaking what essentially is a double digit rate up into two, as opposed to asking for it right off the top of the, right out of the gate. Sure, no, it's a good question. Certainly there's a regulatory process that would allow for us to request a double digit rate case and impose that this year. We're certainly aware that, you know, coming out of the pandemic and looking towards economic recovery, that this could be a challenging time to have any kind of rate increase, much less a double digit rate increase. We don't want to put something in that creates a sticker shock for customers as they're paying their bills. So having something that's broken up will help mitigate the impact in any given year and hopefully provide more time for the economy to recover post COVID. In addition, if we asked for the entire amount that we could justify now, it doesn't give us the chance during fiscal 22 to pursue some of the things like the revenue bond that may mitigate some of that upward pressure and allow us to ask for a more modest increase next year than what we might have asked for altogether if we went with the double digit number this year that we could justify, if that makes sense. Yeah, there are things that we cannot include if we file a rate case today for the full amount, that if they become known between now and a year from now, we will be able to include and we think those things will tend to soften the effect, not making more. So rather than hitting it all now, we're gonna do what we have to do now and wait until we can actually see if some of those things happen. All right, that makes sense. Other questions from commissioners. Thanks for your work. And also just, it's helpful to go from the April meeting, which was 3.4 million net loss and now we're 2.6 and cash on hand in April was 478,000 and now we're 2.7. I'll be really interested to see next week, not so much the rate impact because as we all know, while that's our speak, folks really ultimately just see the end bill product, right? But really appreciate this. This is just a reminder to everybody, this is just a discussion so that we're not like geek next Wednesday and we have a better sense of where things are coming from. And again, I guess following up on Commissioner Moody's comment, it'll be very helpful to see what your work, what the bill impact will be and what your thoughts are on that. And just a reminder to commissioners that as we move towards this, this is partially our job to work with Mike Kennerick and the rest of the team to be helpful explainers and listeners to the community when they ask questions and they're wondering where this came from, particularly in light of, I don't know about everybody else, but like three weeks ago, I just got my property assessment nearly doubled. So, there are a lot of things coming during a pandemic. So just to commissioners, it'll be helpful for us to be additional community messengers about where this is coming from. We very much appreciate that. I agree and I think this certainly probably falls on Mike. I saw he came up to really do a full court press on getting the word out here and just what this means and the value that they've had over the last 12 years with where they've gotten out of it so far, just that there is a true need for this. And I'm willing to do whatever I can to help with that for sure. Thanks, Commissioner Moody. And Darren has emphasized that for a number of weeks now and we have a draft plan put together and we will tighten it up, but we will do our best to communicate as soon as we can clearly and try to make the impact, make sense to folks. I think just for the commission's benefit, it's likely as part of that plan that we would issue a public release the day following the commission meeting, assuming the rate case recommendation is advanced by the commission such that we can get information to the public and to the media and to our customers as quickly as possible about the rate case, the bill impacts, the low income program and our plans for a continued financial responsibility going forward. Well, thank you all for your work. If the commissioners don't have anything else or the team at BED, I know we would all like to sign off since we're gonna see each other next week too, which is always a joy, just, you know. Okay. Could there be a motion to adjourn? So moved. Second? Second. All in favor. Aye. Commissioner Shagman. Aye. Commissioner Herendine. Aye. Commissioner Moody. Aye. Commissioner Stevens. Aye. Thank you. We adjourn at 713. Thank you, everybody. Thank you all next week. A lot closer.