 Okay, we are now recording. All right. Welcome everyone. Fighting meeting ahead of us here. We've got almost a full house of folks. Um, I, our, our family has nearly two years to the day managed to finally get the COVID. So my son, my son tested positive this morning. He's feeling fine. I mean, he's feeling a little sick, but fine. So him and his sister have been watching screens literally all day long. So they will might break in. We just don't know what's going to happen. Um, so just throwing that out there to start. Um, welcome Stella and Anna and we will definitely go through introductions in a minute, but first we're going to review and vote on minutes. So since you all worked in our previous meeting, you can obscene or on a, you wouldn't vote, but if you don't vote on minutes, you can just, you know, if you don't vote on minutes, Stella, you can just obscene from, from this. We're trying a new process where we look at the minutes in advance. So we don't have to spend time during the meeting scrolling through them. Um, just for your information for, for next time. Um, so with that. For the members that were here last time. I'll open it up for anybody that has any. Um, Someone can motion to accept them. I have one of the post correction under, um, section 4.0 EC member updates. Anna's last name is misspelled. In the first occurrence, it's not in the last sentence of that paragraph. That's it. Find a new liaison. I will correct that. Okay. To put it in your spell checker too. Otherwise I'm happy to move that we accept the minutes. I'll second that motion. Okay. Great. And then actually I should probably just, we should figure out who's next in the list here. To take notes. Hey, Laura, I actually put it in the order of. Okay. Okay. So best to just took them. So it looks like Don, your next in line. Is that okay? Sure. So Laura, I have to take a vote on the minutes. Yes. So we're going to do a voice vote. Um, so either yes, no, or abstain. So Rose. Yes. Roof. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. And D. I'm staying. Right. So the minutes are approved. Great. So let's see here. Should we do public comment first and then do introductions? And just see if there's anybody in the public here. Yes, we have three attendees. Okay. So we typically do public comment at the beginning and end of our meetings. So if anyone would like to make a comment now, please raise your hands and we'll give you. If there's anybody in the public who would like to make a comment, please raise your hands. If there's anybody in the public who would like to make a comment, please raise their hands. There will be another opportunity. Opportunity later. Of course you're also just welcome to listen in. Seeing no hands being raised. I will move on to. New member introductions. So as Stephanie mentioned. Or emailed us earlier this week. We have two new members of e-cat and one new counselor liaison, who has been on the phone with us for a long time. We do have a new user liaison. And she mentioned that. So we have a new person. Who's joined today. She sends her regard. She had a previously scheduled doctors appointment. And considering I just had to reschedule the kids. Dennis women's for tomorrow. And I couldn't get it until August. I am imagining she did not want to reschedule. But she sends a regards and she'll be here next time. But I would love to give Stella an opportunity to introduce and just give our names and one fun fact about ourselves I guess. Yeah, sure. Hi. My name is Stella D. I'm a current PhD student in agriculture at UMass studying pruning. I've been a practicing commercial arborist for the last five years or so and also doing some inventory agriculture on the ALB project. I have a master's in forestry and my undergrad was in archaeology where I did a lot of community gardening and stuff. I'm also the mother of a two-year-old. I grew up in St. Louis, Missouri and I would say my primary interest is in plants and vegetation and how that can contribute to climate change mitigation and decreased energy use both in their management practices and their placement and selection. Am I up Laura? All right. So hi everybody. I'm Anna. So it's Anna not Anna like the Disney Princess is my go-to if you are if that's a helpful reference. I'm a town counselor representing District 5 South Amherst and I will be your counselor liaison. So what that means just for a point of reference because I know this I will be EKX first liaison which is very exciting. I do not vote. Technically in the rules this is a little odd. I don't even have to be at your meetings. I plan on being at your meetings just to be clear but I do and I told Stephanie this I do have to typically duck out a little early from them but I will always go back and watch the recording from the time that I do have to miss and my job is to kind of carry forward and support the initiatives that you want to take on that are appropriate at a council level. So I think whereas like Stephanie has all of the executive components of it on lock I can help with the legislative components. So that's where I think hopefully I can come in and support you all there and then also keeping you up to date on what the council is working on that might benefit from a climate sustainability lens. Fun facts about me. I've been in meetings since 8am today so I'm a little fried. I apologize. I did I sort of grew up in Amherst. I went to Amherst High School. I actually grew up in New Salem but that's not that fun. I mean it's super fun but it's not that fun. My fun fact is that I am learning how to fly powered paragliders which is probably not super climate friendly because they are gas powered but when they come out with a solar one I'm all on it. Or lightweight batteries. I mean yeah exactly yeah need those ultra light batteries. So that's me and email me. My email is publicly available. It's my last name which is long and complicated I know but and my first initial at amherstma.gov. Feel free to reach out. Super excited to be here. Great thanks Anna. Just very quickly Laura Drocker chair of ECAC. I used to work at Amherst College as the director of sustainability. Now I work for a group called series which is based in Boston and focuses on using investor pressure and policy pressure to drive action on climate change and water issues and a few other things. My fun fact is that we just got a heat pump two weeks ago. It's very exciting and it's working great even with the snow. Okay. Jesse let's popcorn. Popcorn. I don't know what that means but I my name is Jesse Salman. I'm part of the ECAC. I'm a local architect in town. I've got two kids here in Amherst and a little sort of oversized backyard or undersized farm. And my fun fact is I just ordered I think all the wires and parts I need to turn my electric lawn mower into backup power for my house. And if I'm not at the next meeting it's because I electrocuted myself. There's so many questions. All right popcorn means you pick the next person. Dwayne B. That's me. Dwayne Breger here. Hi Stella and Anna welcome to our group and really great to have you. We really appreciate a larger group and new blood in their thinking. So great to have you. I'm also at UMass. Stella I'm the director of the Clean Energy Extension at the university which is in the extension programs but I'm also affiliated with the Environmental Conservation Department. I'll say hi to Chad because I knew Chad from my previous job. Good to see you Dwayne. Yeah good to see you. When I was at the Department of Energy Resources for 13 years about six years ago I guess my fun facts I got two adult kids have been through the Amherst school systems school system. My younger son who's a full-fledged professional now he works in town hall as a new planner. So Anna you might cross paths with him. Ben is his name and my other son my older son he's got us a grandchild so I'm two years into being a grand dad and can't get enough of it and I will pick Vasu. Hi everyone welcome to the ACAC. Great to have you all here. My name is Vasu Raghavan. I lead value engineering for Metronic. It's a medical device company 90,000 employees so I'm a lead two of the five networks so a pretty large portion of the value engineering. What that means is we go to different manufacturing sites we have 67 manufacturing sites 20 sites under my umbrella but we don't go to different manufacturing sites we get to take products apart we get to take our competitive products apart we try to find ways to solve and reduce cost and improve value to our customer. So that happens during non-covid time when I get to travel to different places and I do love to travel as a fun fact but another fun fact is I play tennis. Used to be the top three juniors in my country and I come from India and I've moved to the States 15 years ago but yeah that was a long time ago but I still play tennis. I used to teach a little bit to some of the college kids at Amherst College and I picked Steve Roof. The odds were getting getting short for me. Hi, hi Stella, hi Anna we've talked. I have been around in town for quite a few years now been a professor at Hampshire College since 1995 and before that I was doing my dissertation up at UMass. I do climate change research I've been doing that for 35 years now and my work for the last 10 or 20 years has been largely up in the Arctic where I've had a chance to study the rapid climate change that's occurring up there and it's been a wonderful experience. It's also been somewhat sad to see that over that the amount of change over that time span. I've also been getting into renewable energy researching that and teaching that with students at Hampshire College and monitoring some of the solar panels and systems that we have at the college. I find that quite fascinating. Fun fact I guess I'd mention that I have a wood stove, a regular wood stove here that I have automated so it controls the throttle by itself. It keeps the temperature in the room nice and steady and it makes a gong sound whenever we need to go and stick some more wood in it. And let's see who's left. Andra I think you are up for Andrew. Hi I am Andra Rose. I've been in Amherst since 2002, raised two kids here and great to fun fact my oldest and his wife who also grew up around here settled in Montague and are expecting in June. So every time anybody asks me what I'm looking forward to even if they mean in the next week it's like June, grandma. So I am one of the leaders locally and at the state level of mothers out front and particularly work on the legislative work we do at the state level. And also was one of the folks instrumental in getting Amherst, Northampton and Pellum working together to do a joint municipal aggregation is going to happen. Yeah getting closer every day. And the residents group that did start that is now called local energy advocates of western math and we got this really exciting event happening next Wednesday, Tuesday, yeah Tuesday 15th at 7 to hear from Ithaca about how they're going to decarbonize 6,000 of their buildings which is all of them by 2030. So let's see who else on the committee, Don did you go yet? I did not. Yeah, I've been taking notes furiously. My name is Don Allison, I'm a lawyer. My wife and I moved up here to Amherst in 1988 from Washington DC I had spent eight years at the United States Attorney's office as an assistant United States Attorney in Washington. Before that I had worked for a large very large law firm in Boston two most miserable years of my life I might add. I have four kids and they all went to Amherst Regional High School and I wouldn't be surprised if one or more of them weren't there when you were there. They're actually the fun fact about me is my four kids try to take me on adventures and I turned 70 on March 25th and so I won't be at our next meeting because my four grown children are taking me on a 100 mile hike in the Scottish Highlands on the West Highland Way. So you may know either Caroline Barrett, James or Ben Allison. I don't know when you finished up at Amherst Regional but they were 0405, 0709. I was 08. So right on the wall. Well, they were. The names sound familiar though. Yeah, that's my fun fact. So I have nothing to report except I'm a lawyer. That's whatever that sort doesn't mean. I think I'm the last one. So oh Laura, Laura, there's you. There's me. I did go. I don't know Stephanie. I think you know Anna and Stella but I don't know if there's any do you share. I think you should still have to share a fun fact and then we can get on with the agenda. I would be more than happy. Well besides the fact that I've worked for the town since 1997 so it's been a long time. Officially I really have only been here since 2000 but really I started in 97. But my fun fact is that I sing with a band. That's my fun fact. What type of music? Well I actually think you want us to guess what type of music. Yeah, actually that would be kind of fun. No, I actually sing with well two groups. One is a really big area chorus and they have groups all over which is called rock voices. And I sing with them. I sing with the Northampton group or sometimes the Brattleboro group. But I also actually am in a small band and we what do we do? We're kind of an acoustic group that does sometimes we do like Celtic Irish Scots kind of stuff but we also do you know we just do kind of more mellow rock sometimes but we'll also throw in some like 80s alternative because that's what I love. So we're kind of all over the map but we have a stand-up bass player, two guitarists. We did have a fiddle player but she's been really busy with family stuff. I sometimes play the Bodron Irish Celtic drum and what else is fun about our band? Oh the most interesting and fun fact is that we have a flute player who sometimes joins us who is Katie Coleman the astronaut. So we have fun. I wonder if you can play the flute in the international. She did she actually did that was recorded and you could look it up. I think she played with I think it was oh damn the chieftains were on stage and they somehow satellite linked her while she was on the space station playing her flute. Stephanie I'm not frantically googling this or anything but what was the name of your band? Oh it won't you won't find much because we we're really still we've hardly played out much but we're called Crowd the Plow, P-L-O-U-G-H. Nice. It's going to be an agenda item at the retreat right? Yeah yeah. Can I just say one really quick thing so sorry so just I don't want folks to think I am ignoring you but for most of these meetings I am not to participate unless you ask me to so I will have my video on and sound off so because otherwise I'm really inclined as you can see to jump in so I'm going to leave it and unless you ask me I will be here but video off and muted. Okay cool thank you Anna. Okay so I know that this has been enthralling for Eddie and Chad but I'm going to go ahead and move them up ahead of staff and ekech updates so that you all can get on with your evening and then we'll go back to the agenda that's okay with everybody so Stephanie I'll turn it over to you to kick that off. Okay well I think Eddie and Chad really can sort of summarize but they're working, they're from Cadmus Group and working with us on the Metagrant funded project which is a solar feasibility and analysis of specific sites in town so I'll let them say more. I just want to thank them both for their willingness to to join us and share the information with the ECAC and also to give you an opportunity to to sort of weigh in if you have comments concerns questions whatever this is a great opportunity to to share those with these guys so Eddie and Chad whichever one of you want to jump in and share your screens and take over. Great yeah thanks Stephanie I think I'll do the honors here so let me know when you're able to see this should be some slides here. Well well Eddie's pulling that up just a quick quick background on Cadmus where a sustainability and energy consulting firm have offices in Boston and Waltham but also 18 other offices around the country and also in in Germany and help a lot of different clients broadly speaking with decarbonization climate resilience initiatives from local governments all the way up to national governments utilities and then international development banks helping developing countries and other international clients transition to renewables and and become more resilient and Laura I've worked closely with Dan Bacall at Ceres about 20 years ago he and I were both at Rocky Mountain Institute at the same time and we have worked closely with DeWayne I think we published a paper together on a system dynamics model of the SREC market and Massachusetts back in like 2011 so you've assembled a great group and we're excited to be working with Amherst on this project we support a number of municipalities across the northeast helping them navigate solar potential and then procurement so yeah with that I will turn it over to Eddie. Thanks Chad yeah and one other quick note DeWayne my fun fact I'm in the offshore wind certificate program at UMass I've seen your your name toss around it's been great so far yeah oh that's great great yeah um but yeah anyways so we can dive in I think my colleague Katie presented these slides maybe two weeks ago to Stephanie and maybe a few others so apologies if some of you already seen these before but we wanted to give the the overview to the whole team here and just to make sure my screens are my screen is viewable here can everyone see yep okay great so agenda we're just gonna go through the team structure quick cadmus slide and an overview of our tasks and the approach data collection next steps and the overall project timeline um so uh I added this to these slides we'd sent out earlier um but yeah just quick overview on cadmus as a firm I think Chad summed us up pretty well I'm on the distributed energy resources team Chad is on the sustainability and energy team um you know so we've helped a wide range of clients we work a lot in massachusetts with mass massachusetts municipalities so we feel feel pretty qualified to help you out with this this task here overall team structure Chad will be overseeing the project as the principal investigator I'll be providing support and then my colleague Katie Harrison will be the main point of contact she wasn't able to join today and also supported by our other colleague Erica Blevins and then moving into the tasks and approach so we have four tasks kickoff meeting which is you know something kind of this and what we'd already had um then diving into the individual site assessments um looking at the solar so apologies for the acronyms here for folks you don't know PV photovoltaic solar ESS energy storage systems um so looking at solar and energy storage financial modeling for that third task and then tying it all together in the final task the feasibility memo which summarizes our findings um so approach aceline electricity uh our energy usage data here um looking at solar potential uh so how much solar could you know fit on site whether it be rooftop or solar canopy um looking at optimizing the energy storage sizing um based on some of the electricity usage on site um as well as identifying additional benefits of storage looking at uh the resilience capabilities for um you know grid outages uh as well as some um you know higher like utility level demand response programs or the ISO New England independent system operator of New England's um demand response and for capacity market potentials as well and then we have the outcomes here kind of just summarizing what I just said with um you know highlighting project uh costs um overall economic returns financing options um and yeah some some planning timelines and next steps looking at the sites here that are to being in the analysis whether or not we're looking at the roof or the or also the parking canopy um is potential um for hosting solar and you can see asterisks at the bottom that we are looking at energy storage across these sites as well and then I added this graphic which is just a an example of you know some of the analysis that we can do depending on the uh level of granularity of data um so this is like a representative um picture of electricity usage across a few days at a sample building so in the top left here you have just the base uh standard building um electricity use profile over a few days so you can see kind of in the middle of the day electricity peaks you know as you know folks arrive at work and everything's operating maybe there's AC or lots of lights on um kind of dips through the end of the day and it's kind and it's a recurring period here so as we're looking at three three days or so so this is our base case and then you look at what energy storage by itself could do to the typical electricity usage um so you can see compared to the the base case the maximum electricity usage is capped here um so this is when the storage would be dispatched and this is a way of saving um money on the electricity bill since the the demand charges you know can be can be quite high on your electricity bill um so this is you know what storage itself could do and then down here in the bottom left what solar itself could do to the profile so you can see um it still increases pretty high but then as you know assuming we're in the middle of the day here the solar production starts to offset pretty significantly um the usage on site and then of course uh you know sunsets and solars not producing energy anymore so then you would see an increase um or you know there wouldn't be any offset so you'd have the normal business as usual energy um and then on the far right here you see the the benefits of having both energy storage to limit the peaks of usage and then the solar production to help offset uh electricity on site throughout the day so that's just like an example you know depending on the granularity of usage data that we get of the type of analysis that we can do for for saving um energy and money and then wrapping up here with uh just the our proposed timeline uh by task uh you can see kind of in the middle of of data collection here in March and then site analysis as well um then we start to look into feasibility throughout the rest of the month and into April as well as storage modeling and then kind of you know tie everything together uh for the feasibility memo um so we have version one set to be submitted by the end of May so the Amherst team can review it and provide comments and then we can address those comments in the finalized version two in uh mid-June is what we have here is our target date uh so then we just have some next steps on what we are going to be diving into um you know days and weeks to follow still working through you know like what are the top goals for energy storage for the for Amherst whether it be resilience uh you know cost savings etc so I'm not sure if we wanted to have that uh discussion here or I just wanted to uh kind of voice that that's what we are actively considering uh and I think with that yeah that that was all we had so I can open up the the floor to any questions or comments Jesse I see your your hand is raised yeah if am I understanding this correctly that you are as far as your baseline analysis you are only looking at existing electrical loads and not or will you also be considering um gas and oil a bit the the probably much larger fossil fuel loads and to what that would look like as far as if those technologies transition to electrical being able to predict that so the I can take that one Eddie so the I mean the initial scope is look at the existing data for the existing buildings and say what would happen if you put solar and solar and storage on those we we did we weren't tasked with modeling out what would those buildings if look like or what that load would look like if they were electrified but if if there is a particular building and you do have that data available we certainly can can model that um but we didn't we didn't have in our scope of work sort of hypothetically looking at a building and and then analyzing what we think it would take to electrify heating uh at that building but if you have already done that analysis and you know what that load might look like and you want to feed us that data we could certainly take that into account okay great thank you sure uh Dwayne I see your hand is also up yeah yeah great um and and something that may be affiliated with Jesse's question and that is on some of these sites um not that I know the data yet that you guys are digging into but it may there may be the potential to have well more solar than what the demand of the building is or the load of the building is I'm thinking particularly with the parking canopies but even you know I could cherry hill golf courses but not you know not a whole lot of demand there um and I'm wondering whether would you also be looking at not just matching the the solar with the load on the building there but in terms of the maximum potential solar that could be built out and then potentially net meter uh two other other meters on of the town yeah um I so I think we would be looking at yeah probably like two scenarios so one would be maximum solar build out and then one other one being sizing it to the town and then with the maximum solar build out you're right there's likely going to be definitely some cases where there's excess solar production relative to onsite demand um so we can look at um you know the the system as a whole and whether that could be or those credits could be a virtually net meter it to other town-owned facilities um and then keeping in mind the I think there's the 10 megawatt cap for for net metering um so we'd definitely be cognizant of that as well for the town um but yeah I think that that makes sense and is definitely an easy and beneficial uh task right yeah and and from a policy perspective it makes sense to maximize as much solar as you can possibly put it and the the policies in massachusetts are favorable to allow that because then you can you know put that excess to a different account um so that that's why we would do the two the two scenarios but if you if you tell us otherwise for a particular site um right like let us know but those are that's that's where we're starting from uh Steve so sorry Eddie yeah thanks I was gonna call Steve as well go ahead um I had the same same basic question that Dwayne just asked but um a subsequent question then is are you examining the finances of any of these systems or the financial models that the town could choose among for supporting these kinds of solar developments power purchase agreements or our own outright or loans those sort of things yep so what we typically do is we'll have like two ownership scenarios one would be the third party owned power purchase agreement um it's tough for us to say exactly what that would be as you know it can vary significantly by developer um but we have some you know internal uh like I think we can we can somewhat accurately predict what a ppa range or power purchase agreement range would look like based on market trends and um you know just economic returns and whatnot um so we'll we'll like estimate what we think a you know a realistic ppa would be um and then compare you know like the if it's solar like a 25 year savings of that versus whether the town were to own it outright and then we would want to look at any available loans or you know the town's like bond rate to try and um yeah capture that uh so to paint like a realistic comparison of the 25 year um savings by scenario that's great good um I have a second question and that is when I was involved at hamster college of getting quotes for the 20 acre system that we have there the companies that submitted quotes did a fair bit of the kind of work that it seems like you're doing here so with the work that you're doing will that be a package that the town could then use when to then give to companies that are potentially interested in developing so that it would sort of shortcut they wouldn't have to repeat some of the analyses that you're doing yeah definitely could and we've done that um in the past for for other municipalities um you know it's really up to to you all sometimes um you know maybe our estimates are a little bit more conservative or you know vice versa their estimates are a little too optimistic so we'll defer to you know what what you all think is is is best um but yeah it's definitely an option um and and we've also seen clients yeah put out our estimates and say that these are you know what the independent third party came up with you can use these or you can you know produce your own if you'd like for for the RFP response Chad do you have anything to add on that I know you probably have more experience there yeah I just said it can also just help inform once you put the projects out to bid and and develop a request for proposals um which of these you may or may not want to include so rather than just saying here are all the sites and letting the developers choose you might say here's some analysis we did we we'd like to prioritize these five sites these are others that seem marginal marginal tell us what you think or our analysis might point to say like you know two of these may not may not be worth it or you know it would be a very small system we storage might not work at this location something to that effect to help you at least just sort of fine tune in the request for proposals what exactly you're asking the developers to to do and which sites you want them to focus on did you put the slide up that shows the locations that you're considering or evaluating yep let me find that this one right here right okay is our is your evaluation considering the electrical grid connection capability of those sites yeah so I think what we would do is we would look at the utilities have those if you're familiar like hosting capacity maps which detail the infrastructure and yeah we would include that as you know like I don't I don't know how like current those typically are but they give you you know the best picture you're going to have is to oh you know this you could interconnect this no problem or you know this all looks great but you're going to need to pay a lot of money to upgrade the distribution system that it would interconnect to we would yeah we would flag um yeah we would incorporate that into the the feasibility you know this one looks good ready to go per our read of the the grid and yeah highlight where that might be an issue so that's a yeah good good point great good that that'll be really helpful and then and then as a next step is that after our analysis is done you could do a pre pre interconnection application to the utility prior to putting out an rfp for maybe a couple of sites you might have a question you get sort of a I mean the utility doesn't really commit to anything at that point but they might give you some sense of where they're where where they're thinking is but then the the full interconnection applications and all of that that would be on the developer to pay for that and do that as part of their bid for when they're responding to the rfp thank you Andrew I see you're raising your hand as well yeah I um would wonder if you are going to look um at the potential for um the like a connective possibilities for either charging stations um in solar parking um parking canopies um or the um yeah and and and then also the charger to building storage options um that was not within the scope of our analysis um so that could be like either a follow-on a follow-on project uh or it is the type of thing that you could ask a developer to propose in a request for proposals so if for those locations where we find that a canopy project might make a lot of sense you could put in the rfp that you would like the developer to also to propose two different options um when they are putting together their bid one for a canopy with uh with and without um EV charging infrastructure but we we're not doing that level of analysis uh for this for this scope okay and anything um with micro grids nope um we will identify the storage capabilities at the sites and then you'll tell us if if the primary usage for that storage if you'd like it to be with with storage the question is do you want the battery to primarily be sitting there and charged in case of an emergency or do you want it interacting with the grid to reduce demand charges and and generate some form of revenue either in capacity markets or the other programs that are available for incentives from the the state in the utilities um but we we're not exploring here the idea of um creating an interconnected set of buildings that can disconnect from the electric grid or reconnect so we're not really looking at any micro grid capabilities um so that could be a sort of a future scope of work or or or future analysis once you have these systems in place and you think okay these are some systems where solar and storage make sense um maybe they're close enough to each other that you might want to create a micro grid between some of these buildings um that could be again um additional analysis down down the road or something that you might ask developers to to propose um but we're not we're not doing a a micro grid analysis here for this for this scope initial scope vasu did you have your hand up at one point yeah i did and i had a same question as andra but i just thought of another one um and and this may be the question for stefanie so when we do the much the larger study will these be out of scope vasu i'm sorry what was the last part of that so will these sites on this list will that be out of scope uh they'll be yeah i think what will i mean we'll have to wait until we get there but um you know certainly that's going to be town-wide and what we might be able to do is maybe do a little bit of a deeper dive on some of these that are already being assessed as part of this analysis certainly whatever consultant we hire to do the assessment will be provided with the information from this report so we may take a deeper dive and i just wanted to say in response to andra's question um and the level of analysis that we have going there this was a grant funded project and it was very limited funds we only had fifteen thousand dollars maximum for this study so um it wasn't it wasn't a lot yeah stefanie my question was also around uh you know because we have the solar working group that's being formed this information we'll also have to feed in to that if it's going to remain out of scope for the larger study right that's what i'm saying is it won't right it won't be out of scope it'll be feeding into that that's what i'm saying is this information will be part this information will be presented with the previous studies that have been done to the whatever consultant we go with and some of that that's all a lot of that is to be determined to exactly what that scope will look like we're not we're not there we're not having that conversation yet okay thank you i see dwayne you have your hand up again was that a legacy hand did you re-raise it i know i did but i i think steve was was first oh sorry about that yeah sure steve do you want to go ahead yeah i was just trying to remember uh i think stefie and i attended a webinar by eversource back in november and they were promoting utility owned solar programs which i remember was that cited that was cited on company land within the municipality okay that's not exactly what i was thinking of i have heard of programs and i can't name the name now where the community government local government and the and the and the solar developers oh what co-owner co-operate a solar site and there are some benefits i believe in the smart program that help facilitate the approvals and developments um are you aware of what i'm talking about maybe dwayne does and if so would these sites that might be rooftops of parking lot canopies would they qualify for that kind of um arrangement i'm not sure i tracked the co the co-ownership model that between the developer and the municipality um that one's not that one's not ringing a bell for me is it are you thinking of a like a community having the project be a community solar project that's hosted on the government on on the town website but that participants from the town are subscribers to the project or that wasn't what i was thinking about but that could be an interesting model to yep to explore as an option but i think i bet you dwayne knows what i'm talking about well i'm not sure if i do but i i do i do understand there's a because this has come up in in shoots very with regard to much much much much larger projects but i think there there's and you know i left the oer while ago and i can't say i'm an expert on the smart program but um but i believe there's an adder in the smart program for projects that that demonstrate that they are are municipally owned or operated and i'm not sure if i have the terminology quite right yet yet there but to the extent that you know even if the town doesn't own it but they take a role in the operation of it then this adder can apply yeah yeah and i'm not sure if that applies only to larger projects but but it might be maybe that's what steve is uh referring to yes yes thanks that's what i got it okay well we'll dig our analysis will include all the different smart um iterations smart program iterations to try and maximize so we'll we'll make sure and include that as as one if it again once i don't have the details of that particular adder off the top of my head either um but we'll we'll make sure that we look at that one and and as as we typically do in terms of what are all the adders and how many can you possibly uh qualify for for any given project given some of the size limitations and location limitations so we'll we'll definitely take a look at that great i'm just going to jump in for a second here and um try to move us along on the agenda this has been really helpful thank you for this update um andra i see you have your hand up do you want to make one last question or point um yeah i was wondering if you'll be looking at any um ground mounted solar on um some of the properties that have more space i don't know that our initial go ahead eddie yeah i'm not sure either if that is within this scope this this was our initial like list that we got but so if there if there is a ground mounted possibility at one of these locations like let us know i mean we certainly can throw that into the analysis um but i the initial ask was roof and parking and some of these had it was already described that roof was sort of off the table or parking canopy was off the table but if there is ground it's less common to find um large open space that folks want to put solar on um within like the municipal owned buildings or nearby but if there is a site that you feel like is good for that let us know that might be something more appropriate for the next um townwide assessment i think this one was very like i said this was very limited in the scope that we had to work with because of the funding and target yeah and targeted to just a few locations like i yeah we don't we don't want to misrepresent that these are like the only places that solar could work that's not that's not what where this list came from yeah great um yeah this is going to be a really helpful um piece of the puzzle so thank you um Stephanie for getting the grant and Chattinetti for coming giving us this presentation i don't know Stephanie if you want to i guess if folks have other think of other things after this meeting feel free to send them on to Stephanie and she can pass them along um and Stephanie if you have anything to else to close out on this in terms of timeline or next steps uh no i think um as they pointed out at the end of may um will be the the final draft for review and i could certainly before it gets to that final draft in may maybe bring one of the the drafts for all for all of you to take a look at as we move the process along um so i could maybe give you an earlier draft before that final may draft and then we would certainly want you to weigh in on that end of may draft before the final june draft okay great um yeah jesse just a quick question i just want to make sure i understand this correctly um the site analysis all happens remotely so as in nobody from catamase ever comes in and to the sites which is fine i just want to understand and and if how that works yeah so we proposed remote site visit or remote site analysis um so a lot of the work would be done through um like we use a tool called heliscope where you can look at um google maps or whatever map program and can can estimate like solar hosting capacity based on that and then can look at the utility grid data also remotely um so yeah we've done it pretty successfully in the past and that's how we have it built up uh for this for this project cool let us know if it'd be helpful for any of us to run out there and take a photograph or a measurement on site many of us could do that easily for you yeah yeah that's that's good to know definitely yeah great okay well thank you eddie and chad um i appreciate you joining welcome to stay but we would understand if you don't want to do that great yeah right thank our pleasure having us excited to work working with all you guys so all right great take care thank you thanks bye bye okay great so um stephanie back to you for any staff updates um so i didn't really actually write things down there's a lot going on but um very quickly i was asked to provide um the arpa funding proposal for sustainability so i um can't really give the specifics because they have to be reviewed by the town manager first but i basically pulled projects from each of the four sectors out of the cap and i utilized um a lot of the feedback that you all gave um over time for use of those um for those funds so uh they do cover a project proposed in each sector um so that just went in and i think that just has to be it was really just a sort of rough summary and the town manager will review that and i don't know when i'll get any feedback as to you know how i can move that along further um but i will certainly let you know um when i hear anything um also the uh cca effort does continue to move forward we had a meeting today and we just had to get ourselves back around the jpa piece because um as you all know we had moved to utilizing a memorandum of understanding in order to hire the consultant uh that is being reviewed by legal counsel currently um does take a little time but we're hoping to get uh their response sooner than later so that we can sign the contract with the consultant once that happens we're going to very quickly want to move the um joint power agreement into um the uh signatory phase so that we can get people's signatures and um move that effort along as well because the consultant is going to want the joint powers entity to exist when the um uh the cca is sent to the dpu for review so uh those things are moving along i know there's a lot of acronyms and i can catch you up later but i just don't want to take a lot of time with all of this so if you have any questions feel free uh to reach out to me privately and i'll happy i'll be happy to to um give folks an update and still i just wanted to say i do have a meeting scheduled with lori for next week just to sort of talk about where the committee is and if you want to schedule some time i'd be happy uh to do that if you want to if you have any questions or um information that you want to know um feel free to reach out to me at any time yeah that sounds great that'd be that'd be really helpful and i'm sure a lot of this like it's already things are becoming more clear so but i appreciate it great that's all i don't really have more right now yeah steve definitely do want to say anything about the latest plans for the solar study and bylaw committee i saw what went on during the council meeting so i'm not aware but others might be sorry yes sorry um yeah a quick update just so the town council um the town manager presented the uh proposal for our creation of the solar bylaw working group to the town council and so the draft that i sent you was you know edited by the town manager so he changed the structure somewhat um he reduced it instead of a working group that had two subcommittees he really wants it to be just one working group with seven members and five of those members will be from committees ecac would have one slot um planning board one planning board member one board of health member one conservation commission member and one uh member from the water protection supply committee or water supply protection committee i always get that mixed up um so and then there would be two members from the community that would have expertise in solar end or forestry so um and those two members would have to go through an interview process with the town manager because they wouldn't be residents who currently sit on existing committees so that structure is being presented to the town council they had an opportunity to um to hear the proposal and they'll probably weigh in and make changes and eventually they'll hopefully vote on it at their next meeting i hope so that it can move forward to create that committee in the meantime i will say that um duane and i had an initial conversation about the rfp because the funding for the solar assessment is coming from uh the sustainability funds um i am at least right now um identified as the project manager uh for working with the with the solar bylaw development working group um so i'll be the main staff liaison to that committee um and there will be i will be getting support from someone from the planning staff either the planning director herself or someone she appoints from that um from that planning department staff to support the work so it will be moving along you all will be weighing in um you know you are identified as certainly being key to helping the solo the development of the solar assessment so you know it will be it will be coming before you all for review um and what will probably happen is that your review and feedback will go back to the working group so they'll be the ones primarily working you know they're they're going to be the ones tasked with developing you know helping the assessment will belong developing the assessment having that coincide with development of the bylaw but there's going to be you know the sort of side committees that will be feeding this will be the planning board and you all will sort of be the two committees that will review be reviewing this process and then ultimately the final product product is what will go before the planning board um and and the town council once they get the bylaw developed so um it you know it's probably going to take about a year really realistically it will take a year for this thing to happen i mean we can certainly try to make it happen faster but i would say realistically it will be a year if i can add my observation that town council was largely receptive to what all had proposed with some great additions by our liaison Anna as well as Mandy Joe several members of council also expressed they would like to see the study done sooner rather than later um so i think paul had put in was it a may 30 date for target completion and some counselors had asked if it could be completed sooner than that and he was hesitant at the time because he was worried some of the funding might not be available until after july first but i don't think that turned up to be the case no the funding is available for the yeah for that now i so it is on a fast track and that that there may be some tension there between trying to do a thorough job and um trying to meet the fast track that the council is hoping for yeah dwing and remind me uh stephen i think we went over this before but maybe i think helpful for the group as well in terms of the um finding good candidates for the um at large community community members that have some expertise in forestry and solar what would be the method method by which we might um make make some suggestions would that be so just an email to you stepheny or or how would i think people people will have to express their interest to the town manager's office because there is a um i think it's i think they call it the ca of the citizen activity form the same form that you all filled out someone would have to contact i mean what you can do what i would recommend you do is if there are people that you know you can reach out to them and you can suggest that they contact the town manager's office if they're interested but they shouldn't necessarily i mean they can contact me i'm just going to direct them to the town manager's office okay so um but but you all are welcome if there are folks that you know that you think would you know uh have the relevant expertise then yes please direct them to the town manager's office okay great and i think um i think ana had to jump but she did send me a note that i don't think that um the council's not actually vote they don't vote on this right this is just i think paul is the ultimate decider right so i don't think they're voting on this yeah i think so i wasn't really clear to me what that process between them and paul is exactly because i understood him to be the one to sort of be able to just move this thing forward but he took it before the council so i wasn't sure if they had to vote on a final on what this finally looks like or he's just taking their input and guidance on on um what that will be is i guess the case okay actually it doesn't like ana's still on i don't know if she wants to just clarify anything on that she's in the participants though um i think get to let her talk Stephanie yep sorry i'm just uh oh there we go go ahead ana hi can you hear me yes okay awesome sorry so um yeah we it's paul's committee we don't have us a vote on it uh he was i think it was more of a courtesy because of how involved the prior solar project was with council to get our feedback and comments on it um so the poor man was subjected to like 10 of mine and a couple others and i think he heard our comments he's under no obligation to change the charge because of it but he i think is very receptive so it will not be coming before us again um and the message that we or the i at least was really trying to put out there was like this needs to start yesterday you know so um nothing else hopefully nothing else will delay it um i have some concerns about that but that's the message that we tried to send uh on monday and happy to answer other questions if folks have them but yeah thanks now thank you all right i'm gonna have to duck off now but y'all are doing a great job i'll see you next meeting all right thanks um any other questions for Stephanie otherwise we can move on to ecac member updates okay great um so ecac member anybody with ecac member updates also i kind of rolled in on counselor outreach to this so if you have an update on any counselor outreach you've done since our last meeting feel free to share that as well yeah jesse so i i've sent a number of emails to my person and i i wonder if anybody knows them um or has a pre-existing relationship it may be that um when you see an email from someone you don't recognize and you're a very busy person in these days i think it's quite understandable not to respond um so i just wonder if anyone might um if anyone knew alisha and could make an introductory email i would be grateful for that okay great yeah and i think now that we have Anna on board as liaison we could also utilize her maybe to do an introduction i could reach out to her directly for that yeah stella i think this is jumping back a little bit but i think i might have found maybe a partial answer to dwayne and steve's question from the presentation in the uh smart program frequently asked questions if you just google that there's like on page four maybe you're already familiar with this and this wasn't your question but um there's a thing about municipal municipal incentives and how that fits in great thanks nala any other member updates yeah andra yeah i just wanted to bring um attention to um there might be a need for us to educate our um um counselors that we're liaison to about the zero energy bylaw um i think there's some confusion about what it um actually um costs and um you know how it actually saves money in the long run it's like putting the solar on actually pays for itself over time and and saves money um in the long term so um there's been some talk about you know our very first building that that we're building that we all want to see happen it's gonna be really exciting to have our first zero energy building and um there's some uh fear coming up um already about the expense and and so just really want to get it out there that um actually it's not an expense it's an investment so um for people to keep their keep in mind when you're talking to your counselor that um um they may have questions about that and i was part of the gang of eight that helped renegotiate the original zero energy bylaw um and then it passed again in 2018 so i know it pretty well yes steve jevicon on that i'm just gonna ask andra could you provide us with all of us with some talking points to that effect that would um give us a little cheat sheet when we're talking to our council representatives sure yeah that'd be great i'll send that to stefanie to distribute yeah i mean from following the discussion it's not really the counselors it's members of our own community that are raising some of these points and so i think that our outreach needs to go farther than the counselors um and i think that there's a message to be made about i mean i think there's miscommunication about net zero in general right like that it's an add-on that it's a nice to have and that's not the case so um yeah i mean this kind of gets into maybe talking about our retreat and our next steps as a committee but i feel like there's a lot we could potentially do to help put out some ideally for lack of a better word bipartisan points about some of this some of this work yeah dween well i hesitated i guess i'll say it um i presume we're talking about the school uh uh and then you know i did note you know in the reading in the paper talks about the school and how it's going to be more expensive in one thought and and the one paragraph on there about why it's more expensive it's because of the ground ground source heat pump uh and so forth and it's like i think we have to think of two things one is yeah definitely you know for a 50 year investment for this town school and we're gonna then the town is going to be paying for the um uh the the heating and electrification that building for 50 years that this is a very worthwhile investment but second i think we have to be um cognizant of the of the uh hard place that the town is put in into with regard to yeah it's going to cost a few more millions of dollars uh and and that has to be budgeted and this the state doesn't seem to the the uh mass school building authority i guess it is doesn't um uh account for this type of investment in their capital planning it's it's just uh you know how much does it cost not how much does it pay back uh and so um i think we gotta sort of simply you know have some sympathy to the town and help you know and and and promise that you know the ecac would would uh work with the town to try to um resolve and and uh and justify the additional expense yeah can i even andra i had a different update okay so andra and then steve okay um yeah so one of the misconceptions is that the ground source heat pumps are a part of the net zero bylaw requirements it it's not that's just a recommendation of the architects and the school building committee can um say no we'd like to have air source heat pumps which would be cheaper less efficient but you know cheaper um the only thing that the zero energy bylaw requires is highly efficient envelope which you know and anyone would do nowadays anyway and um maybe maybe you know a little more but but the expense is not significant and the solar um and that does not come anywhere near the 10 cap um so the ground source heat pumps should not be counted in as a part of the um requirements for zero energy so it really is kind of a straw man all right so more to do on communications about all the things um steve you mentioned or somebody mentioned outreach and that reminded me i've been working a little bit to try to develop a community outreach plan and a centered on educating residents about the overall goals and strategies in the massachusetts clean energy and climate action plan in the 2050 roadmap and the um one of the great hopes i have is that this new group at umass the energy transition institute which dwayne is part of um would be able to help with that and i had some great initial conversations with their executive director and a goldstein um and they had a wonderful launch event last week which was really great really exciting um but then i just learned yesterday or two days ago that ana is um moving on from umass and um won't be continuing in that role so there's a little bit of a void there but i'm i'm working i've connected with a billy at the hitchcock center what's his last name billy um liking on that new director of it right spitzer yeah a new director there and i'm going to meet with him early next week and he's got a lot of experience with climate change education and community outreach and so my vague idea that i'm exploring of many different people is this you know how can we do some kind of a program that helps inform residents more broadly about the need for decarbonization and the strategies that have been developed for doing so and i think that's really critical because when when you know we talk about building out solar to meet these goals the first thing people is is like wow that's a that's a big change to my environment i'm not sure i like it um but if they understand that in the context of what we need to do to stop burning fossil fuels and all the negative impacts of burning fossil fuels i think people will be able to evaluate that and and um come to you know support things differently once they see the bigger picture so i'm still working on this it's it's early early stages but um i hope to hope to create something that will help and that i think will be help i'll be looking for help with ecac as this goes forward great yeah andra i just wanted to um raise again the um tuesday the 15th um and i have sent all of you the um link to register and learn more but um i wanted to ask stefanie um if it's gotten onto the website or um or distributed to staff because this is going to be a you know staff member at in ithica speaking um and so i think it might be really interesting for staff yeah i can um i can certainly send it out to staff i can i can do that internally um but i can ask the communications manager if it's something we could put on the um on social media um i'll have to ask i just don't know sometimes i'm not sure like how directly that has to be from the town you know like the town um generated event so i'll just have to check but i can certainly share the information with staff that's an easy thing for me to do yeah that's too steve can you include me in that conversation you have next week oh sorry your your audio is a little okay it's a little tinny one more time now that's good okay yeah uh steve i was just i was just saying can you include me in the conversation that you have with billy next week yes okay yeah i can also help you think through what that communication plan needs to look like right or the education series that we were talking about last time yes yes that was my thinking too you've done some work on that we need to pull these threads together thank you yeah stella and just with respect to the communications for the event on the 15th i've gotten it from at least two different mailing lists and one personal email apart from this committee so it's definitely like getting out there that's good to know great um okay with that i think we can i think that's a pretty good transition into the next agenda item which is really just um following up on some discussions we had last time about how do we move forward on how do we strategically move forward on some of the projects how do we um sort of fold in our new members um you know dan and vasu both joined in january is that right no when did you guys join september i don't know october i can't remember either it was either september or october i think okay not january but not that long ago okay and the rest of us are are going on our third almost at three years which is also kind of hard to believe um so it just feels like a really good time to um we've tried this a couple times but because of the flux of the group i think we haven't really it hasn't really stuck in terms of kind of organizing us around projects and really making sure we're we're moving forward and i think now is the right time to do that um so something i threw out last week was the idea of a retreat um and so i threw together right before this meeting and i apologize for doing it so late um basically just kind of some notes from that discussion and some thoughts on how it might work and i'd love to get um get feedback on this and see how folks what folks think um so the first is just what the goal of the retreat would be it would be to get to know our new members we could invite ana um and really develop our work strategies around our key projects and activities some of which we know um you know the building electrification work the cca work the solar work the communications work some of which we may you know with stella with your expertise we may have other things we want to we want to bring into this um and then develop strategies around how to ensure our our committee is being utilized to the best of its ability you know really you know i think we're a resource for the town um you know are we are we doing that well is that clear is there ways we can make that more clear um so i thought that given that we all don't have a ton of time um i thought maybe one thing we could do is do it sort of in a couple couple sessions so are having our next ecac meeting really be a bit a bit about level setting and perhaps so steve has um been thinking about sort of the organizational structure of of ecac as they you know how when we did the car for those that were on the group then when we wrote the carp and when just throughout the carp letter he's kind of identified five key areas that ecac was going to work and we started i think last summer to try to organize ourselves around those five key areas so steve started thinking a little bit about bringing that back um so we can sort of talk get level set on that we could level set on a couple of our key initiatives like i'd love to get um we've been talking quite a bit about renewable energy because of all the solar discussions but i'd love to get an update on cca get an update on the building electrification um projects um and so we can maybe spend a chunk of our meeting next time sort of getting those getting those overviews and starting our brain thinking about where we want to take these and then when we have the retreat we can really focus on strategies around each of those so i think what we've talked about is terms of what ecac's sweet spot is is really educational outreach identifying the policy levers that we need to be helping to develop or helping to push doing any research needs or helping to lead research on any needs questions that folks have and identifying partnerships for key projects um so so we can spend you know a good chunk of our retreat really develop like laying out what do we need to do to make these things move forward and who do we need to partner with you know what's our timeline what what do we need um and really identify who's going to lead on some of these things so we don't over burden ourselves with too many things at once um and then the weekend the meeting following that we kind of review the outcomes and then go back to the organizational structure and make sure we've um you know we kind of have a clear picture moving forward with ecac i will be present on the meeting on the 20th although that might not be bad because i certainly um do not think i will be continuing as chair past this year i think i my chairness has um i've really enjoyed being chair but i hope in june we can identify me be a new chair from the group so um i haven't decided if i'm gonna stay on ecac but i might stay on ecac but i don't think i want to be chair after june so um it may be good to have someone else leave that discussion who knows um if we want to meet on the 20th but um i think that this could be like a good kind of refresh restart of the group with our new members and our plan done and ready to implement um so we'd love to get people's thoughts on whether this makes sense the things people want to see yeah stefanie sorry this is just a housekeeping thing in terms of having the retreat um i know that the council just had one in person but i but they are meeting in person and we still have the remote policy meeting policy so we may we definitely have to advertise it just so you know um and it may have to happen on zoom because of the timing versus being in person i just wanted to put that out there okay yeah that's why i kind of like to be allowed to do it in person maybe stephany if you could look into that for us a little bit more and let us know any other thoughts or questions things that might be missing do folks have a preference about when to do it i know it's hard to give up weekend time for this stuff but it's also hard to give up time like i mean we could do it for the two hours that we normally have ecac you know i don't know what folks i guess it also depends on if we want to meet if we can meet in person so maybe stephany if you can find that out and then we can sort of maybe do a doodle poll of like during our regular ecac time an extended ecac time it would be hard for me to start any earlier than four um just because of work but um our weekend another possibility if we can't be in person and um you know just an extended time is hard to do on zoom um we could add a meeting on the off week and continue the retreat so another way to do it yeah stop i would prefer not to do it in person if possible at least until the like two to five year olds can be vaccinated which doesn't unfortunately seem soon um i would be happy to do outside but i don't know if like in the next month if that's too uh cold still for people uh and just like weekends definitely i'd be happy to do um but kind of back on the small child thing anytime after like 6 30 or so uh gets into like bedtime territory yeah that's good to know yeah thank you so okay so we'll think a little bit about how to work this out in terms of um yeah we could get really lucky with a nice day in april but we probably can't count on that um any uh any thoughts on things that might be missing or anything missing from the level setting discussion i i was trying to make sure i captured everything but um i know steve you had mentioned oh yeah jesse go ahead what can you tell me what level setting means oh my gosh a corporate speak is coming out like just bring everybody up to the same page okay yeah got it thank you i i probably a level that's an architecture thing right like like you make a picture no no we it's all these everything's to skew these days and very so with me it's like um bringing us all up to speed getting everyone on the same page cool i'll be using that you're so old school jesse yeah get get on the level here so so the three main things um that we would focus on at the next meeting would are um steve's proposal for structure work groups um key initiatives that include the um renewable energy solar cca and building electrification the rental properties initiative um so i'm just trying to think are there other things that should be you know like if we hadn't lost track of it should have been a work group that we did get a start on yeah stefanie did you have a uh yes to add sea pace outreach for sea pace yeah i was trying to decide if that was like uh yeah we should put that in there what sea pace is and um yeah it should definitely be in there i mean maybe it ends up being part of the um retreat itself but i feel like we should have an open q and a about the carp for all of us but particularly for newer people yeah i was thinking about putting that on there like maybe having stefanie do a five minute overview of the key outcomes of the the key like you know the roadmap put the roadmap up and maybe talk through anything that's you know is is already working its way through the town versus things that seem like they don't have coverage and is this sorry is this for next meeting or for the retreat next meeting yeah let's do it next meeting so we kind of do all the info sessions at the next meeting and then we can spend the retreat time really um and so in terms of i think for those of you that are doing an update on this you know i think it just be helpful to overview like what is it what the what is the current process and like what are the what are the things that you hope to happen with this in the next one to two years right so we kind of have a sense of where it needs to go um the only other thing i think of that um i'd like to level set you know we have this experience of some significant outreach to community members who aren't often included in um i think at this you know level of development um in putting together the carp and maybe just sharing some things about that process and how we how much we thought about um environmental justice and inclusiveness yeah that's a great idea and Stephanie i think would be best suited to do that as well and part as part of the carp um does that work for you Stephanie sorry i'm putting stuff on your plate that's really okay so you want me to i mean you just want me to do a five minute overview of the carp i mean that that to me is like how it gets launched really because that was the foundation of starting the whole process so yeah that would be included great good suggestion andra um that's too yeah i was thinking you know we have all these action items in the carp that we want to take and those are the ones that will filter out in the agenda for discussion i just wonder if there's things that we need to think about about our process not actions but what are we good at and what are we bad at as a group and discuss that as a team and maybe it's our structure that we need to change i think that should be discussed as well yeah totally and that's what i was thinking the retreat would really focus on is like what are um and yeah i mean i've identified just based on our previous discussions these three general buckets of educational outreach policy levers and research needs but there could be more and you're exactly right i think we should identify because ultimately we need i mean this we're all volunteering our time here right and you know we want to be doing things that act that we're interested in and excited so that we find the time in our otherwise really busy schedules to do do this work so um that should also be a really important consideration like what do we actually want to do like i find for personally for myself like leading educational outreach sort of feels like it's not in my wheelhouse so like what could i do what could i bring to the to the group where other people may find that that's exactly what they want to do right so that's a really good point yeah i also wonder you know the week the um meeting next week about uh from the uh the itica uh city uh maybe there's opportunity to talk about their governance and how they're managing their actions to there might be some questions that we can ask them and learn from them yeah i i agree it would be um yeah we should keep that in mind as well is that going to be recorded um andra do you know yeah it will be recorded and that'll be on the um local energy advocates website right yeah jesse at the risk of continuing the conversation now and not later i i feel like basu's premise also needs to include the conversation about the kind of inherent challenges of working um in the context of maybe this is just also obvious but i feel like it's not just what we're excited about and what we're good at and bad at it's like there is a pretty intense state legal system that mandates how we are allowed to do this work right now i'm just like brainstorming how to how to work best within that those constraints and so i'm just kind of planting that seed before the conversation yeah that's a good point okay i've been taking some notes and i'll recirculate this um to everybody um i think the main thing we need to nail down is sort of what we want to do for the next meeting and i think we've highlighted that so that's great and then we can continue to iterate a bit on the schedule for the retreat um and maybe we break it into two different meetings or or if we can't find it because i agree with andra more than two hours on zoom is too much so um we'll figure out how we can do it in a way that um feels productive any last thoughts or questions on this i think the other agenda item let's see i lost the agenda here um so future items updates and ongoing projects retreat discuss a future projects items for next meeting agenda okay i think we covered most of that is there anything anybody wants to raise um that we didn't cover oh yeah best do yeah laura i know we were supposed to talk about the timeline um we'll find some time to talk about it so yeah and we can talk about maybe we can find some time to talk about it and how we get fit it into this schedule because it feels like um that could be something you know after the retreat we really nailed down that timeline it seems like the right timing time yeah i was just going to bring that up now that if the retreats plan for the next meeting or the week after i think we should wait okay great um okay well then i will see if there's any public comment is there any public still here it's like kathleen has her hand raised kathleen go ahead you're allowed to speak now thank you so much um it's really impressive to see you all working on these issues i have a simple question of how does a retreat fit into the context of open meeting laws could you please explain that so that those of us who are very interested in what this process is can actually continue to watch it going on thank you bye yeah great question i'll turn over to stephanie yeah um yeah the committees are public bodies so whenever a quorum um is assembled meaning in this case uh there are are we up to nine members now we have nine members um so we have a quorum of five members so if five or more members meet it has to be open to the public so if they have a retreat um it has to get posted uh if the members are all present so that does mean the public um it has to be available if public wants to attend typically retreats the agendas are posted um i think usually with retreats there's kind of an understanding that it's an opportunity for the group to to delve deeper i know in some cases some retreats people actually share personal information as part of a bonding experience so um but it's still it's sort of understood that it's still an open public gathering so either if it's a retreat that's in person it means it's going to be posted so you'll know where they're going to meet and the time that they're going to meet um and then if it's not it will be a zoom meeting so it will be like this and it will be posted as they usually are um you know even the retreat will be posted in the same manner so it will be on the town's website in the calendar section um and uh it will be you know we'll post the agenda as we always do on the ecac website as well yeah great thanks Stephanie and thanks for the question Kathleen i think yeah we probably like wouldn't necessarily do we have to do public comment during retreats Stephanie or no i don't think you do actually um you don't yeah yeah we're sort of just using retreat as a fancy word to say we're gonna like think harder about stuff and try to try to organize ourselves add to euphemism for a long meeting yeah sounds it sounds nicer if we're in person Stephanie will bring us food she'll she'll sing for us yes no all right well i think then we can go ahead and call it for tonight thank you guys for another um good meeting and um we'll be in touch in a few weeks all right good night everyone i think so thank you