 All right. Good evening, folks, welcome to the June meeting of the Board of Electric Commissioners of Burlington Electric. I'm looking at you all out there. We meet every second Wednesday of the month at 530 here at 585 Pine Street. As always, the public is welcome to come in and join us and join the conversation and see what's going on. It is your electric utility and we appreciate public involvement. So we'll start off with our first agenda item, which is the agenda. Are there any changes or additions to the agenda? Okay. Hearing none, we'll move on to the minutes of the May 10th, 2023 meeting. And other than, are there any substantive changes to the May 10th, 2023 minutes? No. I do have a change, but I think it can be done administratively. Hearing none, I would entertain a motion. Make the motion to approve May 10th, 2023 meeting. Motion made to have a second. Second. Motion made and seconded. Yeah. Let's sort of discussion on the motion. Hearing none. All in favor, indicate by saying aye. Aye. I'll say nay. You guys have it. Minutes of the May 10th, 2023 meeting pass. On to the minutes of the May 16th, special meeting. Are there any substantive changes? Nope. Hearing none, I'll again entertain a motion. The meeting. Motion made. Second. Second. Motion made and seconded. Discussion of motion. Hearing none. All in favor of the motion, indicate by saying aye. Aye. I'll again say nay. Nice habit. Minutes of May 16th, pass. Item number three is the public forum. This is a time for members of the public to address the board, whether online or in person. But it is your time to talk to us about concerns. Faults, failures, anything, whatever. It's your time. Do we have any, do we have anybody online in the public? We do have some folks here in the room. So this is your chance, this is your time if you want to come up and, if you have any things to talk to the board about, we'd love to have you come on up and have a chat with us. One of my more comfortable spots. Good afternoon. Good evening. My name is Dan Koss. I live at 120 Lyman Avenue. I've been a resident in that house for 43 years. So with the new changes in lighting that are being implemented by the Burlington Electric Company, I'd like to say I'm not too pleased to say the least. There are three main things I tried to be concise. One is aesthetics of these new poles that have gone in. Completely out of character for a family neighbor. My belief is I think there could have been a much better job in picking something that would fit the neighborhood. The height of the poles, the size of the poles are, in my case, shining right in my bedroom windows, which is completely unacceptable. I called Bob. He was very helpful. He put some shields up. It improved it immensely, but it's still not great. The second thing I'd like to talk about is the illumination of these LED lights. I know they're efficient. They have some very good qualities, but the color and the projection of them on our street is, again, unacceptable. And the amount of poles on our street. We had corner intersection lights always, and we had one utility pole with the light in the center of the street. Seemed to do a beautiful job for the last 43 years. No problems, no concerns. So now with that, they've added two more on our street, which now gives us light continuously from one end of the block between Wells and Richardson, I'm speaking. Continuous lighting all the way down between those two streets. And that gives us daylight hours, 24 hours a day. I have no respite from any light source from the sun to the lamppost out in front of my house at all. So that's a concern for me. It's not only outside of my house that now affected. It's invaded inside my house. The only way I can block that is to put a blackout curtains, blackout shades. Therefore, I can't open my windows. It's summertime. I don't have air conditioning. So the list just goes on and on and on. And with in connection with the illumination of these lights, I also feel this is a personal thing of mine, light pollution. We are worried about polluting the lake. We are very invested in recycling, in composting, taking care of what's around us. We're not taking care of the sky. I used to be able to look out my windows and see the full moon come by, look at the planets, the stars. I'm not an astrologer. It's just one of the benefits of living in Burlington, Vermont. That is going to change. Not for the better. When people come to Burlington, they want to see the quintessential scenery. We're losing that. We're losing it greatly. And I really don't think that more lights, brighter lights, and make for a better community. We're not any safer. I don't feel we're any safer. I didn't feel unsafe before, but I don't feel any safer now. In fact, I think it's a detriment to what we have now to live with. I'd like to know if there's anything that can be done by this board or whoever's in charge of that. What we can do to rectify the situation. I know you're listening. I know you're hearing me, but I guess I'd like some answers of what changes could be made to improve the situation, not only for where I am now, but for future installations all across the city. I've been walking around the city. I've been looking at light poles. I've been taking pictures. I guess I'm a little perplexed about why we're putting so many more poles in, where I don't think they're necessary. On the corner of Richardson and Lyman, there's not one pole lighting the intersection, but two poles lighting the intersection, where one pole was completely sufficient. Same thing with a lot of other corners that I've noticed. I did go down lakeside development, and I know that's an older development, and I walked around there, and I was kind of surprised. I saw one light pole at each corner like Conger and whatever the street names are there, and one light pole in the middle of the block, and another on the corner seems to be sufficient there. I don't know why we had to put three more on other places. I do have before and after pictures of what my street looked like before you put the lights in and what it looked like now, if you want to see those. Anything else? Yeah, I guess I just want to know where the formula is that came up that we need seven street lights between Richardson and Shelburne Road, and if we could reduce that for those reasons, because too much light. Light is light. I know they have nice light bulbs. They come down, but they affect everything. They reflect off the surfaces. It does bounce back. It's disruptive. If they weren't lit up because of the need, light has an effect for good and for bad, and I understand the good. I see the need for it, but with that comes a lot of bad, and I'd like to eliminate as much bad as possible. If you could help us with that, it would be greatly appreciated. Sixth Slime and Avenue. This cost was a substitute a while ago, but I guess kind of to go off what she was saying with the corners being a big negative, we live on the corner, and my bedroom is on wells. We live online, but my bedroom, the light is on wells, and we have one by those apartments that was recently put in, and then there's one on the farther side, and now we have that one in our front yard. So we have three lights within like an 100 foot radius, which just seems like a little bit of overkill to me, and two of them have put in within the past five years. Well, one, yeah, one, two, and yeah, so I appreciate Scott came out last night, we were sitting on the front porch to bitsing, and I'm like, hey, can we help you? So he took the time, I appreciate him taking the time to see the light that we're dealing with. Part of my surprise was we knew the lights were coming because of the, but it was the whole neighborhood, and we're the only ones who showed up in the rain, was under the impression we would get the, what we thought was more palatable, smaller poles that were put in on-scar because there was no overkill on-scar. So somehow the neighborhood got the message that that's what we would settle for, and that we would deal with lighting, and three of those poles we would deal with, but then the big industrial poles came, and they're right, and so I have three windows in my bedroom, every, I have a light outside of every bedroom, and Tate's got one, and we have one bathroom, and the clock would have passed one. So as far as ventilation and light, we got hit because we're the corner lot. The shade has helped, somebody put, did Bob have the shades? Yeah, the shield on the front, the new light, it would be great if they could shield the other ones, but the question is there's a lot in a short span. I walked the paces when Scott was there, it's 30 paces from my corner to, I'm the first corner on the lot. Everybody else, if you look at the position of the poles, it's three houses up. So I just got a double whammy from all sides. I got a little house, Bethany's been on my front porch before the light came, and we spend our whole summer fall, you know spring summer fall, it's our front porch, there's a bed out there that the kids sleep on, and it's a big ugly industrial light. When I thought, okay, I'll settle for a smaller, more vintage looking light. So it's just hard, I don't know what the solution is, it's here. I did walk around the night, that can be pictures of the light poles that's growing, I think growing could install. So the ones that are noticeable that I kind of like that could be an example, when you go down Plain Avenue into Oakledge Park, and there's the Liggins and Bowls, I'll call it a bath house, the shelter right there, and I'll look further one day on that. They installed a new light, and it's fairly nice, you know, a beautiful, you know, thin black candle and has a round disc and sheds light down on it. So it's made for underground lighting, and it sits there very nicely, and it's, I'm sure it was picked because aesthetically, it goes with the lake. It doesn't intrude on the beautiful water that we looked at, yet it, I went down when it was lit up, and it was sufficient lighting that people could see, people look safe. So that was one option. The other option when I was coming back up, I noticed into City Market, they have some nice light poles, a little modern looking, and as you go in, they're built up on a cement pole, only because I think of the types of trucks coming in and out. Again, that would be very acceptable in a neighborhood, a little modern looking. The other place I looked, I went into South Meadow, and that's been established, I don't think they've changed the lights in there for a long time, but again, they have square bases, probably 15 to 20 feet tall, and a little light coming out. Again, one light at the intersection, and maybe one in the middle of the block, and that's it. And if that's sufficient in those areas, why is, why wouldn't that be prudent to put it in all areas? And just as a side note, to make it a little levity, you put out the beautiful little calendars that the children put, you know, draw their pictures for Burlington Electric, and they've done it since tape was in school, and I looked at the particular one this year, you might want to look at it, and everything the children say, how to conserve energy, you do a great job educating the children, turn off the lights. Every kid, turn off the lights, they have a light switch, they tell you about, you know, go outside and play, you know, put your clothes on the line, whatever. But every one of them says turn off the lights, and we seem to be turning more on. And in particular, if you look at the one this year, towards the end, someone did a beautiful, I think it was a little girl, did a beautiful picture of how to save energy. And right down in the corner, she's got some lights there, street lights. And I said, those street lights don't look like the ones that I have on my street. So when children think of street lights, they don't think of these big industrial ones, they think of something quite inappropriate that they want to see or are used to. If you look at the calendar that Burlington Electric produces and wants people to read, got it, what you advertise as well, we should be seeing in our streets. And I've got a question actually from one of our neighbors who couldn't come here, email, can I just, you just wanted to talk enough. So John Davis lives diagonally across the street from me. And he said, I cannot make the time. I have a friend who has a light meter at the meeting. Could you ask if there is a design standard foot candle level that the lights are supposed to create that we can measure against? So as far as the lights aren't uniform, at least on my corner, I've got one, I've got here and I've got there. And you know, the intersection because it even spills back to your house to houses back. So I know that Gary Couser is and Couser is a neighbor of ours and he's been here. He's like, where were you guys last year? I said, doing COVID doing my mother Diane, you know, there was a lot going on. So he said the standards have changed and that you were able to lower the lights on Richardson. And I don't know their shields, but the lights on Wells are horrible. I was going to use another word, but as far as their brightness. So that was the question John had as far as what are the standards? And is it going to be measured? Is it going to be measured? And is it equitable when you look? I mean, people on Ferguson were upset. I know the guy that shares the same block that I do, Ron's house, his pole was removed because I was dry. He's like, oh, they took mine out. I'm like, so I've got a lot of overflow. What's the meter at my corner versus your corner? I'm going to stop you right there. Because you've actually just perfectly weighed into your excretion. Exactly. And if you wouldn't mind, I would love to give the two experts here to the opportunity to address some of your questions because they actually just teed it up for them perfectly. So yeah, both of you guys. Yeah, my name is Muneer Kasti and I'm the manager of engineering and utility services and with me. Paul Nato, director of engineering. Yes. So let me start by going over the history of the street lighting in the city. You asked for this. We could be here for the next week, but I'll try to summarize it. Yeah, the readers digest. In 2014, the electric commission forming committee took them up with the street lighting standards policy, which included two residents. My recollection Bob was on that committee. We looked at, you know, what we need to follow when designing the street lighting in the city. And the recommendation was to follow the IES, illuminating engineering society recommendation for lighting levels. And that's really to protect us as the resident as well as the city from the liability. So the committee looked at, you know, the type of fixture to be installed, the elevation of the light when installed, the standard lights. We looked at different height for the poles. We looked at the typical height, 30 foot above ground. We looked at 22, 25. We looked even at one of the example was, I believe, Leonard Street when we did multiple design on that street. And then the consensus was, you know, if you go lower in height, that's me, you're going to have more falls and people don't like that idea. So we standardize on the height, which is, you know, stay within 29 to 30 feet. That's where we put it on our wood pole, you know, for aerial system and for the underground system, you know, people don't want to see the cable, the wire coming in on the pole if we keep the wood pole. So we went with the fiberglass pole, which everything goes inside the pole. So that's not, you know, it's not on the pole, it's not on the outside of the pole. And then, you know, the color is the standard color for those poles was the gray, you know, the picture, silver to gray color, and the picture is gray. So that's how we come up with the standard for the typical street lighting, you know, on the residential street. We had some decorative fixtures in the downtown area. And the policy really stated that, you know, the, the, the, the for decorative street lighting district BED will with the advice from the planning and department will select one decorative lighting fixture and pole that will be used in the gateway and in in the on the commercial areas. Also, we understood that there is some, you know, different type of fixture. I just want to call it, you know, decorative, but really, they're not decorative in some of the residential area at that time. And the policy said pre existing non standard decorative lighting will be maintained until the stock run out at which point they will be replaced by standard fixture and pole selected by BED unless a new district has been named. So on those streets where you see the town and all the town and county fixtures, you know, we had, we had, you know, some picture in the street in our stock room, LEDs, as well as the pole. So the consensus was we're replacing with the same on other streets such as Lyman Avenue. They had the wood poles on them. You know, so we replace, you know, when we, so we replace them with our standard pole and fixture, which is the fiberglass poles. So the policy calls for doing an engineering design to meet the requirement of the IS, which looks at the average light on the street, as well as the sidewalk, plus at, you know, horizontal, they changed it over the time. And now we have to look at the horizontal vertical like five feet above ground, but not just on the road, but also on the sidewalk. And in the IS requirement, there's different light level for, you know, downtown, for residential area. And the latest requirement, they dropped the lighting level and residential to the barely minimum level, in which that's what we're trying to meet. And usually the sidewalk, really, the sidewalk is where you have to pay attention to, we have to meet that. And the only, for the sidewalk, I believe the IS call for 0.2 foot per candle, that's the average on the sidewalks. And then on the road, about 0.3, all the sidewalks were exactly the design that we did was at 0.2. And also, we don't just look at today, we look at at the end of the lifetime of the fixture. So really, we're looking at 20 years from now, we need to be able to meet those light levels. So we designed it at 0.2 on the sidewalk, 20 years from now. We need to be able to get that number. Yeah, basically. You understand? You said there's a, because the light, you know, 20 years from now, that's still going to be me to standard knowing that 20 years from now, that light is going to dim over. Based on, there's depreciations, there is a lot of factors that goes into the software. Yeah, so, and then it's, you know, for the intersections, the light requirement is much higher because you have to account for two or three intersections. That's why we have multiple pictures, you know, around the intersections. Yes. And that, but that's all accounted for in the design. Yes, there's, I can't remember which intersections, but we still have to, you know, we still, we have to replace one of the higher waters on one of the intersection with a lower wattage. After we've done, once we finished Lyman Avenue, there's one fixture at the intersection where we have to go in and drop it by half. It's, it's well set. Well, well, it's just, right. Remember that, that well is when we saw that one. And the well one. And well seems higher. It seems more intense light than the new one. Yeah. Yeah. So the, so the new lighting on Lyman allows us to go to a smaller wattage bulb at that southeast corner of, well, I believe it's the southeast corners, that one. That's right. Yeah, one of them. Yeah. I think that southeast corner light. Yeah. Yeah. I believe we can drop it by half. Yeah. The output of that fixture. But then the question, the closest of light, the first block off, on that, you know, that's, you know, that's sort of architecture. Yeah. And really the, the design on the sidewalk is barely on point, the point, you know, the point, the requirement, the point or the average point two. So really we can even move the poles like one foot. That's going to drop it below the requirement. Or it's going to require more lights. Or it's going to require more lights, more poles, or, you know, increase the wattage of the, of the fixtures. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to give these guys a chance to. Yeah. So, so, so we are required anytime we reconstruct the street in the city to take a look at the street lighting and bring it up to the, the code, the is requirement as adopt as the policy, street lighting policy. So that's what we do right now. Anytime we reconstruct street, we take a look at the lighting and most of the street in the city, the lighting will, will change once we look at it because, you know, whenever it was built, it wasn't built to meet the is required. Hold that. Just one more. Just go ahead. The reason that we went for the fiberglass poles was because, as folks know, the, the overhead theater used to go behind all the houses online and so we had to move. So by undergrounding the whole circuit, moved everything street sites, the underground services, all the houses move on his underground. And because of that, we had to rip up those with poles. And so the standard designed to replace them is the gray pole with the overhead fixture. We have two commissioners that are neighbors. I just wondered if you, I'm not going to, you know, brand again, that if you've had any, any insight, I just want to open it up to your thoughts also. And I've got a couple thoughts myself about this. So yeah. So yes, I am a neighbor just about a house away from Wendy. And so right next to our house, the butts that well street fixture. I guess I don't have any, I'm in, I don't have anything specific I want to bring up right now. But I just want to keep hearing the conversation and understanding, understand what's happening. Okay. I had a chance to think about this a little bit today. And one of the, what struck me the most is he is, this is a subject that's near and dear to our hearts. And it comes up every now and then. And there's, there's the usual changes that happen when, when, when lights get changed out. But I think you guys are in a little bit slightly different a situation because of the scope of the, of the project. It wasn't just where on my street, they just changed out the cobra heads. You really don't didn't notice it. You had a much more bigger change to your neighborhood, which I think kind of made, made that just made it seem more, more dramatic than maybe it would on a different street, as well as the fact that I think that you all live in like the hundred acre woods down there where it's like an urban forest and darker than a lot of the streets around the city. So I think there's a few things that are sort of making this a bit more dramatic because of no, be literally because there's so many more things that are, that are getting changed in your, in your neighborhood. But would it be doing the job that it's there to do as far as, as far as everybody else, not just you and I'm not trying to, you know what I mean? So there's the balance. It's been a day, but the, the weather has taken away, but you know, there's an email chain going around and it's not the first go round. And so I think I thought we were going to get to more aesthetically pleasing. And I would find it, there's more of them on start. But we just made the assumption, oh, they're taking seven out there. We'll take their seven, you know, and it'll be an ideal. And the people were intimating that we talked to the workers, you know, at the conversation. And then when they showed up, it was like, oh, and then he's dead. And you look at it. So it's just about measuring and learning. Gary said the standard has changed. You know, Chip was on the board and he was off start. He didn't want them in front of Gary. He didn't get them. He said he was lucky to get grandfathered because of the old pictures when there's a new, that they on start, there was the old pictures. That's why they got the grandfathered pictures. We got a letter from him. Okay. So it's, we're adjusting. It would just be nice. And I wanted to make sure, and I hear, we hear what you say. No, I get it. You took the picture to come in and have a conversation. But I also wanted to make sure you heard where these guys are coming from. But it's just, I also think I appreciate all the hard work. And God bless them. I'm not a designer. I'm not an engineer. But I think they're both rules should be somewhat flexible for different areas. I mean, common sense, I want to call it. I don't live down town. I don't live on Oak Street. I because those are high density areas. We were out last night. If three people walk down that street, nobody or nobody or two people walk down that street at night. If three or four cars went down the street. Why do I have to live with all this life for for the density? Well, I don't know what you want to call it for the usage of the road during those times. Okay. I mean, out of all the safety, I think what we had before was sufficient. I'm not saying we shouldn't upgrade it and the point of fact, if I had come to you five years ago and said to you on the board that I don't feel safe in my neighborhood. It's not lit up enough. Could you please put a light out in front of my house? You would have said, I don't think that's possible. There's no electricity. That's what I think I would have gotten. I didn't have to do that. But I, you know, all the electricity runs down the alleyway in the back. There's nothing there. So I think it works both ways. So now that you put the electricity out there, why do I have to have more life? I'm not saying I'm not happy with, you know, I'm happy with one infer improvement. But I guess the following and that's what bothers me and what it's done to the street. And I know there are standards and you say you have to start with this standard. So you know, and 30 feet in the air is higher than the house that I live in okay. So when I go into my bedroom, there's the light. There's the light shining. And that house is not big. I don't like it. So I want to go into a dark room and sleep. I have to live in my back. That's the only dark room. It's in the back of my house. And that it hits because I have a new light in front of my house. You improve the light to the east, going up the street, toward Shelby Road. So now I've got that light coming in at me. And I've got that light coming in at me on the other side. So all my bedrooms are literally lit up. So the quality of my life inside my home is greatly affected. I have a question because so we've this is this issue, you know, first ones to raise it with us. Of course, we were doing this last year with Scott Avenue. And I think it was another neighborhood earlier. Like, is there a process to do any engagement before the new light comes in? And that's, I feel like that's, I mean, we've had lots of conversations about the standards and there's liability and all of that is definitely something that, you know, we're bound to do, right? I think there are clear experiences and things that have happened and that requires certain. But I feel like we're always behind this issue instead of in front of it. And we're letting, you know, is there opportunity before a project like this goes out? I mean, typically, there is some notification to residents and opportunities to sit down, talk up through, explain what's going to happen and why. And then if there's, so it's not after the fact, it's a little bit before and maybe there's a little bit of compromise, we could have done, move things a little bit here or there, still met the standards. But I don't know why we missed that. I guess that's my question. Did we miss an opportunity because of the communications? So we just brought this up. We were talking about this just before the meeting, especially with the scale of what went on on Scott and Lyman. It seems to be a big enough project that it should have, or could have, would have should have had a bit more. So we did, we did send out a letter to all residents affected, which is our standard practice. We send out a letter telling them this is telling them this is happening, telling them that it will be led to IES standards, telling them, I believe the letter also stated that there would be new polls placed in. It did not, it did not describe what type of polls are going to be in there. But that then on the note, it was a contact information for the engineer that was designing the project. And there was a number of residents who did call and asked for adjustments. And we tried to accommodate as many of those as possible to adjust them to make sure that folks were as happy as we could get them while still not compromised in the standard. So there was that dialogue and that feedback that was happening. So yeah, that's our standard process. Yeah, no, that makes sense. I also wonder if there's some sort of, I know nobody really likes community meetings or some sort of work, because also we want to make sure we don't hit people against each other. Yeah, yeah. Right. But some sort of collaboration. So we understand what, what be, everybody is, it's clear that why and I don't know, but maybe be like, no, I was talking with Scott about that prior to meeting. And I don't think with how we only have a handful of these projects that have been every fiscal year, I don't think it's unreasonable to maybe set up a street side meeting prior to this to actually go through the details. Here's our plan. Here's what the polls look like here where they're going to go. Here's why they're being illuminated to the level that they are. And have everyone participate, well, the interested parties, and then they have an opportunity to speak before the infrastructure is in. Because I feel like Scarf, I don't think you were here when we did that. I was not. Yeah, that was, that was a one that kind of took people by surprise, I think all of a sudden and that and stuff was removed. Yes, we pulled out. Yeah, we changed the lighting level. Yes. So I think this kind of maybe learning a little bit from that. And also just, I don't know if you remember that anymore, but we spend like few months on what we're going to do with the lighting. And we ended up right in the same place. Exactly. So that's distracted us really from our process. Could have started early. Because the standards are the standards we've looked at a lot. We've agreed to the standards and the streets are classified by type. So it's not the same level of lighting for every street in Burlington. And residential streets have certain standards. So but I do think maybe some conversation before things were put in could have helped maybe mitigate some of that. Because I was going to need to earlier, like is should there be a threshold or some sort of a thing that where you go, maybe this project on this street, we do a level to a next level engagement because of the the size and scope of what we're doing that. Yeah. So we don't we don't keep coming coming back and having these conversations over and over and over. And I think if you look at neighborhood, you're dealing with streets, right? If you we are a neighborhood, you know, the as far as looking at Star, Ferguson, those about everybody. Yeah, sure. And I think what people were looking at it's not why the scarf get that. Okay, their grandfather. I would prefer more lights that are prettier than and maybe not right in front of my house and 60 paces down rather than 30. It would it would affect me because of the corner. But I think you look at it as a unit. And then there's equity amongst neighborhoods. And it's not like I don't know exactly what the changes are for Ferguson. But there was there had to be changes for all of like, we figured we figured three times the time it would go right. But the guy that you hired to the contractor who did the digging, he was he had he was PR like, but nobody from the city was out. We had to reach out and you know, and I had my wife, so I didn't get here until it was actually great. I mean, and understand that that, you know, these folks here don't live in the neighborhood. So they're not looking at it from a I live here, I live here. Oh, yeah, totally. Yeah, people. And I think Gary had some people come down. But if you walk around before the plan, before the plan, but it's not uniform amongst even our streets, that's what that's what John was curious about. As far as it's not uniform lighting, we were told that yes, everybody's getting the free money. It's they're different falls, they're different heights. It's different. But if you look at it as a package within, like, the sisters, I don't know what's happening in the sister debt or looking at like those those are community neighborhoods in the city, at least the way the South that works. I think you also have to realize that in our neighborhood, our houses are not, I looked at South Wing walk through theirs and they have big tall poles and you know, older lighting, but they're set back off of their street is a lot better. That's a lot deeper, I should say, not better, just deeper. Whereas I look out my window and this the light at my bedroom window is probably 20 feet from my bed because it's up to 30 feet high. So that's another whole perspective, you know, putting little pole that up. And I think I'm in a unique situation. But so the depth of my from my house to the actual lamppost is really close. It's really close. So so that's that's that's that's what that's kind of what we're what we're stuck with to a certain degree. Yeah. Which makes it difficult for us because we're not really in a position to go, hey, you know what, because of these, we're going to change the rules a little bit. Because it really has to be, you know, we need to look out for everybody. And I hate to, you know, I don't want to give you the answer. You don't want to hear. But at the same time, we have to look out for 40 40,000 people. So that it's just interesting. But I just wanted to give Paul a quick chance to kind of kind of like kind of what the overarching, you know, Paul's our safety guy here. And he kind of is the is the where the where the buck star stops and a lot of these issues. And hopefully, maybe you can sort of chime in on this. So I've been here 29 years, this topic has come up several times. Right where we're back to 1996, when I was turning city attorney, my world, my realm of growth, a very definitive answer that's saying, no matter what we do, we've got to meet the standard. And you haven't seen a copy of our recent policy, you can see that spelled out in there. So we've had, you know, getting specific details about where every customer that may be called said was too bright. There's some that's called things dark, please, reach out to us several times, had a significant flame. And again, just to look it up, that's shaped or really influenced the legal insurance. We had four carriers that wouldn't bite us anymore. We had to scramble that it's gonna increase in our agreement because of a lighting issue in in Burlington. Yeah, so yeah, so you can look that up online. But anyway, so all that has shaped our prior insurance broker has made it clear and not go below IES standards and our current insurance broker is saying legal has weighed in in 2092 and 96 for the same answer. So for all those reasons from the risk management insurance legal liability, not go below IES standards, certainly at any time that the new street that's engineering, they'll go out and check the lighting level to make sure. So yeah, over the years, they've made change, but never, never have it dropped below IES standards. And of course, it doesn't make a difference on where you live or where you live on the corner and so on. So that's unfortunate, but the harsh reality from this perspective. Maybe just offer a brief comment. I'm Darren, I'm general manager, and I'm sorry that you're feeling the way you are. And I appreciate that you came to the meeting as well. I just wanted to note I was just confirming from near I think the changes that happened on Ferguson and Scarpe had to do with the IES standards changing while we were sort of in the midst of that project. And so we were able to go back with the updated standard and look at it kind of a second time and be able to make some accommodations there. So I just wanted to share that it wasn't arbitrary in that sense. It was really just the timing about the triangulation. I just was looking at the triangulation of the most well lit up corner in our neighborhood in my corner, and I'm 30 paces. I'm the first house and every single pool was three houses in. So I had the overspill. And it just, I got, yeah. No, understood. And so when, and Ron happens to be in that position, so I haven't had time to look at what the triangulation is on Ferguson, but they're also not, you left some of the old wouldn't pull up on Ferguson. Well, they're not all new industrial. So it's not, you didn't approach each street uniformly. So that's where like, well, why is there really, so we'll laugh, you know, in a sense, it's advocating for, you know, I don't have a backyard, everybody else finds my lot sub-device. So I can't get away from it. Understood. So, you know, it's just, if it had been between those streets and then moved it down a block, if somebody had walked it to see the impact of where the poles are, you could even rather position them on property lines, so they're not in windows. It's like, it's simple, it's quick, it's easy. It's part of what that thing talked about, you know, walking the street. It takes time, but I think when you explain to people what's going on, we're just hearing sort of people who've come and done this. So I don't want to take up any more of your time. Quick question. So I'm not, are coming here, and I know you've gotten another call, my neighbors have said they've called with their concerns. So I guess my question is, is there going to be any chance of replacing the pole, lowering the pole, or possibly, if you lower the pole, maybe the lighting will be as bright in people's windows, and they don't. I don't know. It does. I mean, I mean, light is light, and it's a different footprint. We just, yeah, I mean, I just, before I, today, I asked my engineers, his engineer, to look at 25-foot poles versus 30-foot, and then look at 20-foot poles, and then 20-foot poles, you know. 25-foot poles. But you end up having to add more poles, correct? He just looked, basically, he didn't have time, but he just looked at the existing location with those poles at 25 feet, and we don't need to say that. That's mean, if we go, you know, if we're going to go to 25, we need to add more poles. Going to 20 feet, we need to add more poles. You know, the higher the pole, the cover more, you know. The lower down the lower, the smaller the footprint. Right, and seeing up with more. Is there a way that, I mean, probably it's always back to cost, but is there a way, you're going to have a lower pole that has a, like, a wider, correct? A different light pole. I don't, I heard you sometimes do great find that we got, like, cheap at $600 per pole option. This is really the, this is our standard light fixture, and really, this is one of the best light fixture we have in the city to spread the light. The one you see on, for instance, on Main Street, these are decorative, expensive fixture, but you'll see how many, every, like, 40 feet that makes, they don't throw the light. Nice. I don't know that. Because it wouldn't be in my bedroom. That's what it is. And aesthetically, it's, we're an old, it's not historic, but, you know, we're not a fancy neighborhood, but people were in it. It's a 100-year-old neighborhood. I mean, it's not a community, but, and I don't know why, in this day and age, but so many new lights, and so many new, and then, there, there should be something that's more aesthetically pleasing, and still same, and still same. I mean, the fact that when I said that, like, what's coming into my bedroom, when I called and I said, this is unacceptable, they already had a solution. So to me, that said, well, somebody else must have complained about this problem before me, because they didn't have to go figure it out. They said, oh, we've got a solution, we'll put a shield on. We'll put shields on all of them, you know? So it's like, okay, so this wasn't, what was people saying about this like before? And not from our point of view, but from a manufacturer's point of view. They want to keep making their life and stuff in them. So we'll come up with a solution for all these people and keep selling them our lights. The thing is about balancing, though. Like, some people want more lights, some people want less. So you put the shield, so you have a design a light bulb that works, and then you put the shield in if people need that. But also if you put the shield in, it's going to look lightable, and you're going to need more, you're going to need possibly more fixtures. So the shielding is kind of cuts both ways, right? It helps whoever is looking at, whoever's experiencing the light coming in their window. But also if you don't apply it correctly, or if you do apply it correctly, it could mess with the whole light levels on the street. So there's a balancing act that is to your point. In particular on this street, where we're barely meeting the light level on the sidewalk. So if you put shield, you're going to mess with the whole lighting side. Yeah, go ahead, Bob. Then I want to try to wrap this up. I'm Bob Herndy, and I've been very engaged in this issue for a long time, creation. I heard some comments about just the dark sky. Full disclosure, I'm a member of what used to be called the Dark Sky Association. I was just called Dark Sky. What we call standards are recommendations from the IES. We've accepted them as our standards with strong legal reasons to do so. But there is some tweak room at the edge of that. You mentioned, for example, the color. That can be changed and has been in some places to warmer kinds of light. There is also some rumbling, I think, from IES, but certainly from other places, about dimming later at night. You don't need a certain technology to do that, but anyway, that's out there. So there are a number of things that are being rumbled about. You have the young people here saying, I don't know where you are in your educational practice, but stop in architecture. To get into this at a detailed level for this last project, and I see it would be a great idea, then you would be digging into out there at the edge where these things are coming. They'll come slowly, and especially here because of our legal background. But it's interesting stuff. It changes to occur in typically any battle these days, takes 10 years. I don't hope that's comforting. Anyway, so two points. Call me up and I'll poison your mind about how you can do a project. Somebody, not for me. And second, there are a few things out there that are tweaking at the edge of what we're talking about. It's unchangeable standards even for us, particularly color and dim, which right now we're not. Right, we heard about dimming last night. Yeah, yeah, I mentioned it. But in part, even looking at, we were talking even before the ride and just cutting them down. And I'll make, I don't know if I have to ask for a request that it would be great if somebody could put the shield on or adjust. Well, Kate will have to call, I guess, but the corner lights it and the well street is much brighter. So, my two takeaways, I think, Seth, I don't think we're going to, you're going to walk out of here with what you want to hear. That being said, and I hope that's because we've explained to you, and especially these guys have explained kind of the, the pretty tight, tight box that we're in. However, that being said, I think you're going to get some relief at that southeast corner of wells. So, especially for you. But even just looking at the other one on wells, can the lights on wells, that this is the question for the engineers, can they have shields on them because there's a lot of them. They're not, it's not underground. They just stuck a light up on a new pole. Yeah, we have to take a look at those. But I'll leave it with this. Let's just, can we at least take a look at that? I mean, and I guess it's just, and my question is just as the taxpayer, the president, is, is wells the same as, the thing we're reading is what's Gary, Gary Hudson and Richardson. So, are wells and Richardson uniform as far as lighting and, and light levels? And, and I don't know if somebody could email them, but they'd like levels. John's gonna, John will go out with this headlight. He'll do all the readings. That's sort of what he does. You know, I don't need, I don't need a headlight. I could garden with this bill back from the wells in my side yard and I only have a side yard in my front porch. So, if I had a bigger house kind of backyard, it wouldn't feel as important. Can I offer you this? I'll offer you this. Can we just at least take, confirm one way or the other what the, what the lighting levels are on the streets so that we all know that it's a uniform thing. A, and then B, just take a look at, take a look at the possibility of, and communicate with them about the possibility of guards on the lights we're talking about. Yep. One way or the other. Does that, does that, that work? I mean, I'm just trying to, I'm trying to offer some solutions in just this, in what little way we can. If we can offer that, then it's the, it's kind of the best we can do because we are kind of hamstrung by a lot of different. So there's, so if, the, the, the cost of the, what do you call it, the prettier lights you need more of them. Pardon me, I, I wouldn't care if the reform, because I've got it. If, if I had a nicer pole and everybody else had more poles, oh well, it's, I think aesthetically, that's what people were complaining about. Yeah. And the height in, in their, but the aesthetics aren't as important as the standard seats, but as a homeowner, and resale value and everything. Yeah. And it's harsh. Yeah. Yeah, I hear you. I just wish I, I wish I could give you a, different answer to them. I'm trying, I'm trying to, I'm trying to balance between, I'm giving you an inch, not, I'm not giving you a mile. So, so they were, where was the approach that they got those poles? How did, how did they get those, not into like, I don't know, she talked about the whole looking at it in the neighborhood, but like, if there was to be an approach for more poles that were lower, I don't think could be against that. And I know it's like, I've already been done the whole thing, but where, I guess like, where is, where did those come from? Because I feel like the big thing for me is the higher, they just, they don't look residential, looks like an airport. And if they were lower and more of them, I don't think that would get issued as, I think, where, where did those, I could, but I can, I can tell you, we do this on the, on the next street down, some other street down the other, they'll be like, why is there so many? And why can't we have just a few higher ones? I mean, we'll get just the opposite. But they answered the question. Yeah, they had those type of pictures on the preexisting. So really, the policy basically said, if they had them already, you replace them with that, but it didn't say to replace everything with that. But it is true exactly what Scott was saying, because when we've been through this in prior situations where you look at adding the lower poles, like you're suggesting, it ends up impacting somebody else in a different way than they are now. And it's a really tough situation. And I just, I also want to say, the last thing we want is to be upsetting our customers. Like we want to be helping supporting our customers, helping you with, with all the things that we, we try to do. And we're sort of in a challenging spot with this, because we've been tasked by the city with doing this, this work. And then we are constrained because of our liability insurance with doing it to a certain standard. So then we try within that to make everybody as happy as we can. But I appreciate that the impacts can be, you know, different in different lots. Yeah, no, I appreciate what you're saying. I just have a quick question about, like I said before, we had the one night everybody seemed to be happy. We had no problems. So, you know, liability wise, that type of thing. So, just because you put the wires underground. The policy says essentially anytime we do, well, there's two things that can trigger. So that's our policy, because we don't have enough money in a budget in a given year to kind of redo the entire city. So, so you have to take it incrementally to bring things up to code. And the policy that we have says, you know, if you called us as you talked about earlier, and you said, Hey, my street is not safe, like we would then do a lighting study, and we would get you on the list for a potential upgrade, regardless whether we're doing infrastructure work there or not. But then the second piece is, if we are doing infrastructure work, it's required under the policy that we look at the street lighting at the same time. And that's why this is happening the way it is. We were all satisfied with the amount of lighting that we had. Just putting wires underground, why would that change? Yeah, I don't agree with it. I understand. Oh, I understand. I mean, the bottom line, and I have a large street lighting pole that's opposite side of the street on my house that I can see. And yeah, I've gotten, I'm used to it, and I don't even think about it. But I understand what you're saying. I want to know is it, how wide, I mean, that's the other thing, the aesthetics of these gray poles, I mean, if you had put a skinny black pole, it might not be, we wouldn't be able to add that and still complain. But yeah, it's the bigger one. I don't know if it's gray or if it's sort of like a off gray color. I mean, I looked at the ones on Birchland, and I could wrap my hands around the base. Yeah, no, these are the poles that we have to learn. Yeah, yeah. The conference was just yep. No, so understood. Please don't do that. We will, we will follow up on the on the shield. Yeah, the shield and the light directly. Yeah, the light level. The shield improved it greatly, but still will not. And your change out process going forward, basically for residential streets, we'll, we'll put a meeting. Yeah, it might be nice to take a look at having maybe a second tier, you know, like absolutely figured out much where where something comes to like a level of difference of construction, wherever we go, wait a minute, we need to have a more end up residents that they did not see the letter that it isn't up to something. Something's not right. Yeah. Yeah, we take that. I think the community engagement, I mean, I appreciate that you made the effort to come down. And I had said to somebody come down and have a beer and walk the street at night and and. Lo and behold, that's what I did. You know, we have the conversation, but you know, I guess it's saying it publicly so that more people hear where we're coming from. And I think your contractor who wasn't even a city employee because you contracted out, he had interpersonal skills and we sort of trying to smooth away, but it sounds like we need to rein that into because that seems like there was this, I feel like there was some there was some disinformation. Okay, right. I mean, I appreciate because I was home, I work in school, so I was home for class sometimes and saw it happening, but I don't think I don't know where, but we were all under the impression that we're getting black and that's what the shocker in the description. I got the first letter a year ago, I walked in talk to Stephen Scott about my concerns and that's all I did. Okay. Then when I got the second letter, I wrote them all by email them and his response was, I was like, in the second letter that was out in May, it said we're putting in polls and we're putting in the blah, blah, blah that meant nothing. I emailed them back I think that you'd feel a little more descriptive because he said this was May and then he said they're coming in June 5th to put them in and then he said it's a 30-foot poll, but you know whatever the light still didn't register with me because I have to say you know what it's gonna look like, but that's when the description came a week before they put them forward. You just take a picture of what you're putting in, send it out in the letter, I mean then you're not probably getting people reacting. I mean and we calm down. From last night you've calmed down considerably. So anyway I just want to wrap, I just want to kind of no thank you. So I just want to run and wrap this up. I think I think the engineers are going to reach out to you guys and help out what you can. It looks like you might get a little bit of help from that southeast corner over on Welles and I hope you understand. Thank you for coming. I hope this gives you and your neighborhood a better understanding of where we and the department are coming from and I want to thank you for this because out of this I think your participation here tonight is going to help our process with other neighborhoods going forward. So there's a positive out of this. Yeah no this is exactly the kind of engagement we want to have here on these Wednesday nights. So I appreciate you as much as you're not going home with the answer you want to get. But but but I knew after last night. Yeah I kind of laid it out. I didn't even want to show up in the rain but no we appreciate it because we got more out of this but there's a there's a chance for improvement here so that that's always a good thing. So thank you very much appreciate it. All righty. We move on to item number four commissioners corner. Do we have any commissioner items other than all that stuff we're just talking about other other things that are going on that commissioners want to bring up. You and I were talking we're we're going to discuss what happened yesterday at the biomass opposing. Yep maybe I think I think we would lead that off with okay yeah so we'll let we'll go on to item number five the general manager's update and I'm sure that'll be part of the conversation. Yep you have the floor. Great. So couple items before we touch on that. Strategic direction it's that time of year update the 23-24 strategic direction. We have a couple of items that I'm aware of that will bring to you. I'm hoping we can have this as an agenda item in July that will send you something ahead of time and you can look at it and then we can discuss it and you can add whatever you'd like and then we can adopt it. I'm aware of one mild wording change that the city attorney suggested in our equity focused bullet to make that a little more specific in a way that is appropriate so I've heard that from the city attorney. Our team is looking at it as we do each year sort of bottom up asking each area to take a look at their items and suggest any changes so we'll send something around hopefully in the next week or so and give you some time to look at it and also if you have thoughts if individual commissioners want to reach out to me with any thoughts or we can talk about it in July I just wanted to flag that that time of year. On legislative items I mentioned S137 was signed in law by the governor. There were some media stories including on Vermont Public Radio about BED getting this new authority to focus on these gasoline. They're calling them super users I don't know if that's the right term or not but essentially somebody who has a long commute and uses a lot of gasoline how helping them get into an EV could have a disproportionately beneficial impact from a climate standpoint and a cost standpoint so we have new authority that will hopefully be able to use starting in January of 2024 to help those customers and we're excited about that. There also was a renewable energy standard working group that BED will be a part of. I think just I'll share this because it's in the media commentaries. Renewable energy Vermont is making a number of statements about how Vermont relies on natural gas elsewhere in the region. I think that's not accurate in terms of the way that we account for energy use obviously we're all connected to the same grid and it's no secret that the ISO New England grid is over reliant on natural gas. It's also true that Burlington electrics more than 100% renewable using the standards that we use which is accounting for that with renewable energy credits to match or exceed our load and so I think most other utilities in Vermont are either getting there or a few of them are already there like we are so I think it's misleading to talk about Vermont's reliance on natural gas from an energy standpoint because Vermont doesn't contract with natural gas plants by and large for energy and Vermont doesn't necessarily rely on the system mix from ISO New England for a large portion of our energy mix so I'm concerned about that. This will obviously be part of a policy conversation that happens but we're going to be looking out for Burlington customers in that conversation. Carbon fee ordinance we have had some conversations and done some work with city counselors with the hopes that that ordinance will be introduced either at the next city council meeting which the chairman and I will be at on Monday no Tuesday Tuesday because we have Juneteenth on Monday it'll be 620 meeting or if not at a subsequent city council meeting that will work with the TUC and the ordinance committee this summer to move that forward that item was voted on town meeting day we'd like to implement that for 2024 and I mentioned a number of EV charging initiatives we had our press event on the 13th which feels like it was a long time ago but it was yesterday and that was at the old north end community center with car share of Vermont and with the Champlain Housing Trust to release the net zero 2022 data which is now up on our website which I'm going to run through with you in a few minutes and which we're sharing with the council as well on the 20th we also highlighted a new charging station and a new car share EV with the charging station that's available in the old north end courtesy of our partnerships with B light car share and cht and then lastly before we jump to the TUC forum our rate change for FY 24 was approved unanimously board of finance and city council I know that finance team is working on getting that ready for filing along with policy and planning and doing all that necessary work so we expect to have that filed in mid-June and it'd be effective on customer bills rendered September which is a change we've typically had it in August it's going to be one month later this year so that'll be happening we're also waiting for hopefully very soon action on the prior year's rate change which is a surcharge on the bill and which has pending approval from the PUC will be added to the underlying rates but we haven't gotten that approval just yet so we're waiting on that okay can I ask a question before you go to TUC forum yes so this idea of the super users for the super interesting yes because how do you identify them but it sort of leads into this larger question that we all have to figure out is instead of a gas tax moving to a VMT tax right and then the the answer would be more about incentivizing rather than identifying and right right on the VMT I think the transportation bill has that component in it this year the transportation bill that was just studied has a component about moving Vermont towards a VMT fee over the longer run so instead of paying at the gas pump because you have more EVs you still need to replenish the highway trust fund and support public transit so yeah that's interesting but for us you know the incentive could be as simple as saying you know send us your vehicle registration odometer reading or you know or something like that or it could be as easy as can you self-certify that you're driving x number of miles per year or more we found our customers generally are very accurate with these types of self-certifications for our income qualification for example we don't verify people's income when somebody says hey I am low income I meet the standard that you've set out on the rebate form we do a self-certification for that we do income verification in a indirect way for our low income rate our energy assistance program but we do that through other programs so we would try to make this as easy for a customer participate in as possible while still having some sort of a standard for what constitutes a person who is using more gasoline than the average for Burlington okay so it could either be like a highly inefficient vehicles or a high mileage vehicles well it's probably a bus is the best bet still yeah and and the group that's working on this nationally Koltura and we worked with v perg and Koltura on this authority they make the point that in a lot of ways this is an equity kind of initiative because in a lot of cases somebody who is commuting a long number of miles we're driving an inefficient vehicle the correlation with income qualification in their research is fairly strong so if we are able to boost those incentives on top of the income enhanced incentives that we offer we may be in the position of offering a certain of our income qualified customers and even better incentive which would be something we would be very excited about but more to come with teams working on updating our demand resource plan to accommodate this new authority so okay two forum we had commissioner herringing chair moody there our materials are all up on the website if you'd like to see them on the Burlington electric page under the McNeil sub bullet on the energy our energy page we have the McNeil page right at the top new reports there's my power point from yesterday evening there is the carbon and forestry analysis from innovative natural resource solutions and there is the draft greets score which is the carbon intensity model that is being utilized as part of the affordable heat act that passed by the legislature was developed by argon national lab that analysis was conducted by first environment and commissioned by vgs not by bev so what we shared was that the the carbon score for district energy came out for McNeil it's very specific to McNeil at a 3.6 grams of co2 equivalent per megajoule of energy natural gas is a 79 so that means that we're reducing emissions potentially over 95 percent in the greek score for district heat and that is consistent with the independent third-party analysis done by veic that also showed a reduction for district heat using an older version of the system the other analysis is from innovative natural resource solutions and that looked at a question that was part of the two questions for us which is have you been able to characterize on an annualized basis over a period of time what the forest change is essentially in the areas harvested compared to the stack emissions and one of the points i tried to make probably not as artfully as i wish i could to get information out is that with biomass accounting whether it's the ipcc or the epa or the federal council on environmental quality or the agency natural resources here in vermont the idea is you do not want to double count the emissions from wood by counting them once when the tree is cut and once when a tree is burnt you can only count them once to be accurate and the way that all of those conventions discuss it is you count them in the forest and land use change when the tree is harvested and the net flux in that change is where the emissions are captured not at the stack this report covers our stack emissions it shows them on a chart from 2007 to 2020 for illustrative purposes and then it shows the land use change in the forest timber lands where we harvest and shows that between 2007 and 2020 we added over 24 million tons of co2 equivalent in the trees in the areas where we harvest now mcneill doesn't claim that from a legal standpoint we don't own those lands we're not the only forest user in that space but the report makes clear that neil's forest management plans sustainable approach is contributing to that and obviously if that was the other way if we had lost 24 million tons of co2 net in the areas we harvest i'm certain people would have a concern about that as would i um so the fact is is that the net additions are significantly larger on an annualized basis than the stack emissions from mcneill which points to at least the sustainability of the operations of the plant in that we're able to operate and we're able to continue to add net forest carbon the professors who were presenting from massachusetts had the point that we could be adding even more forest carbon if we weren't harvesting and there were a lot of discussions around that our point back and the forestry community that was present was that it's possible those lands might not be economically viable without the value for the tops and the limbs that mcneill provides and 88 percent of our fuel is essentially coming from what's called inwoods chips which are largely these tops and limbs that are left over from a higher value of paper making or saw log or furniture operation and we're providing an economic value for that that helps keep the land this working land so we can have sort of different hypotheticals different counterfactuals that lead you to different results we stand behind the analysis that's specific to mcneill that we presented obviously there's different points of view in the community and the key thing for us is the question really isn't whether or not to build a biomass plant we did that back in the 1980s and that remains a really critical resource for us from a regional reliability a vermont reliability standpoint a dispatch ability during times of the year where energy prices are high where renewable energy generation is low and where natural gas is constrained there's no question in my mind that mcneill will continue to play an important role for the near and medium term in terms of our energy portfolio the question is do we want to make the improvements to mcneill with district heat that would allow it to become a more efficient combined heat and power plant as it was originally envisioned and help us to displace approximately 16 percent of the natural gas use in the commercial sector in burlington consistent with our net zero energy roadmap and that's a question we hope to be able to bring to the city council if we're successful completing the feasibility work with district energy and getting term agreements with the key partners sometime in the next few months and glad to answer questions or glad to hear from from the chair or commissioner herring dean additional observations about yesterday as well it was obviously a lengthy meeting there were a number of perspectives shared and public comment as well well thank you but i was going to throw the ball to scott because the two visiting experts showed up at the mayor's breakfast this morning which i didn't know about but scott was there um you know a lot of the same topics from last night which was more i felt like it got less on mcneill so much more just about generally uh carbon sequestration um and what struck me um on their on their on their side was she had that last graph that was very blocky and that um i don't think she illustrated it well but she had a good point that you know we could we could stop today but there's there's a big lag in the in time for that for something we do today to really catch up to to itself you know there's there's a big lag in the system um the other thing that struck me was that and i don't know where where it's right or wrong um was their dismissal of of your point of of where all you know trees or that this above ground carbon cycle as and and and discounting all the the fossil fuels that are that were bringing up that have been sequestered for millions of years being additive to the amount of carbon or carbon dioxide in the atmosphere they were kind of dismissive of that and that didn't jive with the argument that they were trying to make about the overall argument of removing co2 from the atmosphere that that was so there was one takeaway that i that i felt in in their corner about one that i really strongly did not and i think uh to get to the kind of heart of it um and and you know not everyone maybe agrees with me about this uh but i as as somebody who's worked uh my entire career on climate and energy um my understanding from all of the scientific organizations that have called attention to this problem is that human activity primarily not exclusively but primarily the burning of fossil fuels since the industrial age is what's driving the carbon challenge in the atmosphere um that doesn't mean that land use change can't play a role it doesn't mean we shouldn't be responsible in terms of our forestry we absolutely should um but i think that the scope of the challenge from fossil fuels relative to the potential scope of the challenge from above ground carbon uh are really different we should recognize that and we should focus on what we can do to impact uh the use of fossil fuels which are a finite resource they're not a renewable resource um on any time scale that human beings have any uh thought about and so uh that that i struggle with that point because i think if we take our eye off of the ball relative to reducing fossil fuel use we've lost something in the efforts that we're making uh beyond that i think the real question is the iso grid marginal fuel when we operate mcneil is natural gas and when it's not gas it's colon oil if the marginal fuel that would replace mcneil was wind for example 100 of the time we might be having a very different conversation we'd be having a conversation about do you want to run wind or mcneil that's an interesting conversation um that's not the conversation we have um that's not the conversation we're going to be able to have for a period of time the region needs a bunch more wind and a bunch more hydro just to reduce its reliance on natural gas and when we get to a point where we've done that and we want to debate what's better is it is it wood is it nuclear is it wind that's a really interesting conversation to have a much more nuanced conversation um one of the points that uh professor kaseba from uvm who is with us um made was that vermont produces something on the order of 90 of the wood that we utilize as a state not wood energy just wood and that massachusetts which has stopped harvesting essentially and has not counted wood as part of its renewable energy standard anymore is only using about or only producing about two percent of the wood being used in the state of massachusetts that was her point and that that means that there would demand for furniture for anything else that they're using wood for is from out of state or maybe even out of country uh could be putting pressure on on development in places that we definitely wouldn't want to see it from a climate standpoint uh like the amazon was one of her points and so i think that's a really important point too because massachusetts has taken a really different approach with wood than vermont uh but this is a local renewable resource not something that's mined underground and piped in from somewhere uh you know out there this is something that's in our backyard that we're able to either you know utilize for good purpose so um there's a lot of nuance to the conversation but um uh we come to this with some thought as well and you know appreciate that there's an opportunity for community conversation absolutely what the political folks say the city counselors yeah um they were appreciative of the dialogue i don't think they i think they felt like maybe we had gotten somewhat closer but not all the way there in terms of having some common understanding and language but uh they acknowledged there remained a gulf i think in the room and uh i don't know that i could characterize it much beyond that yeah they didn't really have a whole lot to say they were just listening because there was a lot of people talking uh yeah i i talked to um the two and likewise in fact at the end it was kind of returned to the ideas we really have the adequate definitions and all that so i would say first of all i said to you last night i repeat that your presentation was super thank you really delivered every all the issues uh clearly and the power point i don't know who put it together but if if they're expert if their consultants stick with them and if they're in house um take them out for steak dinner it was just me but but we were pulling together information from the various reports that we you know wasn't it was it looked like a technical paper it was really cool thanks okay okay so having said that i i think the other guys uh mmaw and uh rooney uh didn't do that good a job of just laying out their case now i was being you know critical of sort of an academic but the word lacks which is absolutely crucial it was never uttered there was this slide you pointed that out scott that kind of delivered it if you were watching but that's the issue and so quickly just comment on that and say when it's all over i wish they made it more clear but in the end i think they were talking more generally as you pointed out about using biomass in general um first of all here's my tickling carbon from biomass it's like a poison arrow you're shot with a poison arrow and you can yank it out immediately or you can wait a week yank it out immediately you probably survive if you yank it out a week from now you're probably dead because the poison has been there so likewise when carbon is put in the atmosphere the question is how long it stays here that's the issue and there are lags in all systems uh if you're trying to take care of fossil fuel we're talking about tens of thousands of years millions if you're talking about biomass it depends but it might be decades might even be as much as a century and that's really the issue uh after that we get into questions and this was mentioned by um and Sherman of boundary conditions or assumptions what's the reference case which is tweaked madly depending on what i mean and then finally in the end there's always a reference to well we're small anyway anyway i saw that it said of a sequence that i wish it had been laid out and then at the end just saying look it's about lags people concentrate on the lags that's how much is up to how much last year how much last year fell out last year so a very academic thing is when i stick away from this i think i'll stick with that i think they could have done a better job and therefore folks who said they were still confused would have been somewhat less confused i just want to be clear the powerpoint's really drawing from resources from a variety of resources i'm not talking about yours no no i know but but both our our reports and then also kind of the resources we have from our forestry team from our our policy team so you know that's that's just the bed data is distilled to a powerpoint uh in in one place and it was dense on purpose it's not the type of powerpoint we usually like to do with more graphs charts pictures it was dense because we wanted to live on the website as a reference document for people who want to you know look at what we were putting and what the citations were for what we're putting out there luxury complete yeah no thanks we're still yours uh that's everything i have i know we're deep into our time um so i'll i'll stop there i think we have the financials and then two uh presentations that will try to keep as brief as we can for you uh from myself and from james but sounds good um thank you for indulging the the previous thing to visit the oh no it's important conversation to have as well um yeah and i just would encourage the other the the three of you to watch that but it was a very compelling uh discussion um yes i'm moving on to uh item number six financials emily it's up to the preach good evening everyone here to present the results for april fy 23 uh for the month we had a net income of eight hundred and sixty eight thousand dollars um way better than our budgeted net loss of 1.376 million dollars big story with that is it's due to the timing of the receipt of rec revenues that we got early so we budgeted to receive them in may we received a bunch of them in april so therefore that's the the reason for the the big positive variants to budget uh going through our usual our usual details um starting with revenues sales to customers was better than budget by 63 thousand dollars so just very slightly that's about evenly split between residential and commercial customers other revenues was better than budget by 167 thousand dollars most of that ee view reimbursements and then on the third line you see the um positive delta of 975 thousand dollars that's the power supply rec revenues that we um received in april instead of in may when we had budgeted to receive them then moving on to net power supply expense we had a positive variance there to budget of 146 thousand dollars again net power supply expense is made up of fuel and transmission and purchase power and capacity and sale of any excess energy so looking at those components um fuel was 163 thousand dollars favorable um mcneil was off the entire month we had planned to run a little bit so that accounts for the the variance in the fuel uh transmission fees were slightly favorable and then those those variances were offset by um the 128 thousand dollar mystic charge as well as some um we saved also on the purchase power side a little bit with some lower wind production and because mcneil was offline we were um we didn't have access energy to sell we were purchasing from the exchange and luckily for us prices were low when we were buying from the exchange so uh we had lower than budgeted energy prices for the for those purchases other operating and maintenance expense was favorable to budget by 739 thousand dollars um some of that 100 about 150 thousand dollars due to labor and overhead savings from vacancies we also had a big favorable variance in outside services a lot of that due to if you remember we had an overage and operating expense that i told you was related to work on the gt that we were going to capitalize so we've moved that to capital expense and so therefore there's a a positive variance there uh now in april other income it was favorable to budget by 133 thousand dollars made up of um customer contributions that came in in april as well as interest income about 50 thousand dollars better than budget so year to date we stand at a net income of 231 thousand dollars it's about 1.7 million worse than where we had budgeted to be at this point in the year questions on income statement activity before i go to capital in the cash getting bigger or smaller sorry the very you know the negative or um it's getting worse or better it well it's looking better at the moment because the rec revenue right is coming in early so it's it's going to kind of be back to where we thought it would be essentially so it's temporarily better right but then in may we'll see that we had budgeted to receive rec revenue and then we you know it came early right so we'll have a negative variance in may are you also just asking generally trajectory is it we stop the the can you just look like you're the better picture um yeah actually i can so in terms of net income right we talked about the accounting treatment right to amortize the four million dollar loss of revenue from sales of excess winter energy we're going to include that request in our rate case when we file on Friday so that will help with the income side and the adjusted debt service coverage ratio on the cash side we shall just go there i do a question speaking of rate increases we actually sold less a few kilowatt hours than we expected to but we have increased rates so that's why we have a positive variance on the no we have not implemented the the rate okay so then a question yes we sold less energy than we budget but we got a positive variance on the let me check out the slide you're looking at page three page three total oh yes you're right could be which kilowatt hours we sold and what rate they're at right so yeah this is the total that's the total and then if we look at residential that's below budget commercial below budget yeah i need to check into that questionnaire dean we might have a it might be that the graph is off oh right so let me let me follow up on that one so i'm gonna come back to your questions about cash and forecasting your end so capital spending we've as of april had spent six and a half million compared to a budget of around eight at that time so about 72 percent of the capital budget may and june are busy busy months for capital work so i expect we will do pretty well in terms of spending our full capital budget this year as you know for you those of us who are those of you who are here during covet we we had a lot of a lot of budget money that went unspent during that time so it's good to be catching up as of april 30th we had total operating cash of 5.73 million so i'm just looking for my notes here oh i closed my notes get them back um that's compared to a budget of 9.1 million dollars so about oh sorry no compared to a budget of 9.8 million dollars um so we're about 4.2 million dollars off of kind of where we had budgeted to be at this time and i checked we've been 4 million dollars short of cash since december so has it gotten better no but the delta has not grown either right we've been four million dollars short of budget since december um and as you can see that's 85 days cash on hand for the most recent 12 months and we have a adjusted debt service coverage ratio for april of 0.92 and the regular debt service coverage ratio is 2.96 so in terms of cash um we have reached out to our moody's analyst to kind of give him an update on how our year has gone uh what the winter prices were the impact that's had on us and specificular cash position our plan to seek um regulatory approval to get accounting treatment to amortize that expense uh we let him know we'll be filing the rate case on friday as well as let let him know that we are expecting to end the year with less than 90 days which you know has not is not typical for us um as of the last forecast we did a couple weeks ago we're forecasting to end around 65 days for the year so yeah um our may results were slightly higher than we had projected them to be so maybe there's a little bit of upside opportunity there that'll be better than 65 but that's that's where 90 huh yeah so i'm gonna be 90 right not gonna be 90 yeah yeah exactly we're evaluated on the three-year average so that'll remain above 90 and i think given that this was sort of a unique winter pricing issue that we can address the adjusted debt ratio with the accounting order you can't address the cash uh at least not immediately but the trajectory shouldn't prove with the new budget because we're not going to be assuming some of the same assumptions that we had in this budget so it's a it's not a fully conservative budget but it's a more conservative budget um and obviously we get the benefit of the additional rate change in september to hopefully address that as well any other questions that's other questions any other questions all right um next item on the agenda would be the net zero update and that would be from general manager springer yeah i'm gonna share my screen here um thank you Emily so i'm gonna move through some of this relatively quickly because you already know it um we did just have this uh three years in a row now i think that we've been the top city per capita and solar in the northeast and now really in the east i think the mayor phrased it as east of the mississippi so this is the environment america shining cities report in terms of solar per capita in addition i think we've talked about this in the past we continue to strive to be above the orange line here which is the required amount for tier three electrification incentives through the state and we had a big jump in 2020 when we had the two electric buses in the hula geothermal and even without those we've been able to exceed it both in 21 and 22 we are hopeful there will be some additional electric buses coming in the near future we also have our electric bucket truck arriving soon and some other geothermal opportunities including at the high school so some opportunity to continue to drive this up even as we also grow our eb and heat pump adoption and other incentives we've talked about this one before as well when we launched the green stimulus in the midst of the pandemic in june i believe of 2020 if you compare residential tier three residential heat pump in incentives and installations we're over 22x compared to where we were then so really sizable growth in the residential heat pump sector which is great still not at the level we need trajectory wise but getting getting up there and then just a reminder in terms of net zero roadmap you know it's a focus on the electric thermal and ground transportation sectors being 100 percent renewable in the electric sector trying to become 100 renewable in the thermal and the ground transportation sectors by 2030 it's not just a bd initiative it's all departments of the city having a role to play we know for example dpw with its work on the fleet for the city walking and biking planning and and being a part of that as well permitting and inspections with a variety of our building ordinances bca is a great partner they're doing work to try to make the building just down the street a real example of a net zero approach for building the library with education so many partnerships throughout the city on this and a variety of departments that are moving towards ebs in their fleet and then the data itself comes from synapse energy economics and they draw from bd vermont gas systems the department of motor vehicles in vermont and then vermont chitlin and county travel data some of which are is provided through the chitlin county regional planning commission as well so the good news the relatively good news here is in the ground transportation sector where for the third year in a row we continue to be ahead of the pace the very ambitious pace of the net zero 2030 roadmap you can see we had a big drop off in emissions in 2020 obviously with the pandemic but the news here is we've been able to hold that decline essentially more or less steady and the reasons are we are continuing to see reduced vehicle miles traveled we're seeing more ev adoption certainly and we're seeing less vehicles registered overall in the city of berlington so i talked about car share yesterday we know car share plays a role in that we know having free transit right now is helping with that the bus the gmt system being free so we're seeing less vehicles more evs and less miles traveled equals the result that you have here i should mention that in terms of the data we're always a one-year bob mentioned lag we have a one-year lag here with what is chitlin county and what is vermont travel data so synapse for 22 has the vermont travel data extrapolated for berlington in 21 and prior years they're able to use the chitlin county data and next year we'll have the 23 vermont data and the 22 chitlin county so it's always subject to a one-year lag revision but this is the data as we have it right now so this is a positive on a less positive note we are seeing some rebound in building sector natural gas use and this is not weather normalized so some of this can be weather variants and i'll break it down here into residential and commercial you can see both sectors are still down from the 2018 baseline that we began with for the road map residential sort of came down and has more or less flatline it's it's not really going back up in a steep way commercial came down but is having a little bit more of a pronounced rebound as you can see here and in addition to the potential weather variants it's possible we have units coming online that were permitted before we had the renewable heating ordinance for example we also know that it's possible that buildings are using their ventilation systems differently post pandemic and so that may be a driver as well the you know i'll talk about some of the potential you know solutions to that challenge in a moment but this is the overall combining the thermal and ground transportation sector 2019 through 2022 you can see that we had that big drop off and we've mostly held on to it we're essentially up 3.2 percent between 2020 and 2022 the us is more than double that in terms of rebound between 2020 and 2022 so we're doing a better job overall than the nation as a whole in terms of holding on to some of those gains that we saw in the pandemic in terms of a reduction in emissions we are 11.2 percent lower today than we were in 2018 based on this data so we're not yet kind of bending back towards the net zero curve but we are holding on to some significant gains in terms of you know lowering our emissions so i think i just actually covered this slide just with what i just said so i'll jump to the next one which is also something that we've kind of touched on i think more or less i i know again we are not yet on pace with electrification to the levels that we need to be in terms of evs and heat pumps the reduced vehicles and reduced vmt is masking the ev number for the moment you know we'll need the ev number to grow in order to maintain it and build on that progress in terms of you know where we go from here what are we focusing on in the building sector the rental weatherization policy that was passed but has only just really begun to be you know implemented and the renewable heating ordinance for new construction those will begin to have some impact in the coming years an even bigger impact potentially from the carbon pricing and policy that could come into effect in 2024 which would essentially ensure that new construction is being built renewable clean or paying carbon fee and that large existing buildings and city buildings as they replace heating systems water heating systems are coming into uh compliant with that goal as well so that could have a really a transformative impact in terms of the building sector the other piece that would have a transformative impact in commercial sector natural gas use is district heat 16 percent reduction right off the bat with district heat and then obviously the incentives from the federal legislation should give us a little bit of a tailwind combined with the brumont rebates and the earlington electric incentives in terms of helping us get more adoption for EVs and heat pumps so there's some reasons for optimism with that we have work to do the two most important things in my mind in 2023 are can we get district energy approved and can we implement the carbon fee policy if we do those two things will have made a significant impact on future updates of the net zero roadmap yet may not show up right in 2023's update but by 24 and beyond we'll start to see that impact having a material benefit for us um so that's uh that's the slides I went through them a little quickly um we are going to run through them again on a Tuesday evening at city council and this presentation as well as posts on our website uh burlingtonelectric.com slash nz for net zero energy so that it's available for the public as well questions is there a more detailed report that's accessible uh there's nothing more detailed what we get essentially and it's it's probably the best deal around because we don't have to pay a significant amount after making the initial roadmap investment we have a model from synapse that basically is an excel sheet that we're able to update each year and so they build the kind of charts here off of that excel sheet so there's no other written product because we are trying to keep you know the costs of doing the update low but uh this is um this is the data that I think is kind of the pertinent data we also obviously track for the commission our own incentive update you know uptake as you know heat pumps and EVs so sometimes we'll try to do a net zero update that focuses on some of those pieces as well for this one we really focused on the top like data were there any questions though that you had commissioner that we could provide more detail well specifically when you say so much bottom veal fuel is used in burlington yes where's it come from and what was uh you already talked about that a bit uh that's probably the tough one the gas you just talked to vgs the gas is the easier one because you can get that direct from vgs for burlington uh the yeah the gasoline and diesel is really a function of looking at the vehicles registered types of vehicles vehicle mile travel estimates that they have for the burlington area a number of EVs so it's not a literal this is how many gallons were sold in burlington it's really meant to be for our customers regardless where they're traveling whether it's in the city or outside the city we don't track travel in burlington which was one way of cutting this um or consumption of fuel in burlington literally that would be hard and and we really feel like we can impact our customers travel whether it's in or outside of burlington so we track uh the you know residential commercial you know bus fleet uh meet you know vehicle miles traveled what type of vehicle uh how many vehicles registered and then they extrapolate the data but you ved actually gathers that in a bone inputs into the spreadsheet uh we help synapse but they synapse creates the spreadsheet we help gather the data where we can or make contact with uh the vermont dmv for example so that they can get the data from the dmv okay and i presume synapse is stuff is is sorry it's not available to somebody like me right oh um if you were interested in the kind of the underlying spreadsheet where i pulled these graphs from we could share that all right but their model itself is proprietary i believe okay uh this is a side question has there been any work comparing how much electricity people use when they go to a heat pump versus how much gas they used previously there has been some characterization of that at the department of public service and i know our our energy services team is working on that because it really is an underlying calculation for our incentives um and i think particularly in the centrally ducted heat pump space there's been some challenge around some of the assumptions um somewhat in the mini split space as well but particularly the centrally ducted because those uh have a set point typically a switch over between 30 40 degrees external so you're not necessarily going to get the you know entirety of your fossil fuel use out by switching to a centrally ducted you can reduce it it's very much a hybrid system uh the mini splits have the potential in a well weatherized you know building to be a hundred percent source in fact i was in a building uh earlier today in burlington a new multi unit apartment building that is a hundred percent heat pump mini split for the heating with a really significant weatherization insulation so we know that can be up to a hundred percent but we're doing work along with the department to sort of characterize what the averages are relative to you put in a heat pump how much fossil fuel use can you assume you've reduced um and updating that uh chris burns could provide more detail if you're interested okay thanks and there's potentially growing opportunity with um centrally ducted cold climate opportunity when they're moving away from hybrid to the more like all in one electric opportunity yeah coming and coming quickly which is great but not but still it's still a challenge when the um on the coldest days but i think the cold climate opportunities in terms of specifications are that could be a big uh big opportunity uh for our for our climate and for customers who have ductwork yeah absolutely other questions any oh okay move on to item number eight on our agenda this evening which is the irp update with mr gibbons it's with us remotely he was by saying you're with us remotely apparently you can hear me so i am well good evening everyone uh my my qualitative update uh is that the tnd chapter is nearing completion and we intend to provide that to the department of public service we're not sure which which uh the generation chapter is target completion date is next wednesday so those may be going over the department very close to each other we're not going to hold anything we're going to release to the department as it's ready in draft form so they have as much time as they can to review it um as darin mentioned the carbon report for mcneal is is now been released as of yesterday and we will be providing that to the department the economic report that goes along with it i'll use the term is nigh done um i'm just making sure that that a couple of terms like expense and expenditure have been correctly reflected in it and uh that should be done tomorrow and the last note is that we thanks to emily uh contact that emily received we have and emily can correct me if i'm wrong i think he's a post masters or even a phd student who is going to join us emily emily if you can correct that for me phd student phd student who will be joining us in a week and a half or so who is going to work with me on the net zero chapter where we're going to have a bunch of different uh analysis that don't fit well into the other chapters but advance the general mission of bed there is an update i will be providing subsequent to this meeting um but i want to be careful not to say specific specifics about it tonight just because there's a timing of an announcement it's not a huge deal but i think it may be helpful to the irp and as soon as we announce that tomorrow night um i'll be happy to share that information as well with the electric commission um with those notes and i'm not trying to be terribly cryptic i apologize but it's just something that happened today and and it'll be announced tomorrow and i just don't want to pre pre pre precede the announcement um i'm available to talk over the be integrated resource plan i do note that it's kind of getting a little late so i leave it up to darin and the commission as to whether they want to go through the i'm sorry the uh forecast power point at this point or whether you would rather punt that again to next meeting sounds like sounds like i will have more time to get ready for it we've been straight out this week if it's next week but i can't a next meeting but i can do it tonight if it's desired it would also be inclusive of information that we're holding the moment so that would be that will be provided in advance of that and has nothing to do with the forecast directly so um sounds like we can does it hurt to wait till the next meeting or is it good i can't think of any personal reason sounds like sounds like the uh the consensus is to wait till the next meeting and and to give you a little bit more time to go deeper into that but again i'm going to be presenting for him so i i would love to have a little more time but again i can do it tonight at bb sounds like so james what documents will be available uh between now and the next meeting online my anticipation would be the tnd chapter draft the generations chapter draft the carbon report which is available but will be provided as an irp component shortly and the economics report on mcneil and then the and then the mystery announcement will be notified that they're out there i would provide them to you directly to be my plan because at this point they're not going to be put on the website as drafts sorry i mean i met on our personal account okay yes correct i guess we agree on that part do you have any more no thank you i'm done uh with the updates for this last month okay any questions questions um james's update uh no it's for checking okay okay all right uh thanks james uh onto um yep onto item number nine commissioners check-in last uh round of uh anything we want to bring up scott i was i was thinking of sending a note to the folks who were here today about lighting um sort of making the reference to the things i talked about and also send me seriously saying hey young man for a young woman i want to choke into this question is is that cool it's a be as a person not as representative i have no problem was it i think you're good okay yeah i mean i'll get addressed for you um anything else hearing nothing on commissioners check-in than that i will uh entertain a motion motion made uh do i hear a second second motion made and seconded um discussion on the motion i was like that one none all all uh um um yeah that's what i'm looking for all in all in favor of uh who's yes right are you down with all in favor of adjournment say aye aye all opposed we are adjourned thank you very much everyone thank you see you next month question did you like did i handle that right with those people or did i okay well i think we're just coming to a two-way i was feeling like i was going a little rogue that was good i have no no precedent like i'm so thought though