 I'd like to call the meeting to order for the village of Essex Junction Planning Commission December, excuse me, 20th, 2018 on the agenda tonight. We have a public hearing for discussion of a joint town village energy plan. Before we get into that, do we have anybody that would like to disclose a conflict of interest or anything like that? Any changes or additions to the agenda? Anybody that will participate in the hearing tonight, please make sure you sign in. If you plan on participating, anybody that's going to present, can you please raise your right hand and repeat after me? I hereby swear or affirm that the evidence I give and the cause under consideration shall be the whole truth and nothing but the truth under the pains and penalties of perjury. Who's supposed to repeat that? Just say yes. Yes. Okay. Robin, do you have anything to add before we? No, just Melanie, really the meeting tonight, I told her about Melanie and her presentation, which she gave to the town commission. Okay. Few weeks then? November 8th? November 8th. Yeah, it was a while. Okay, and just one more thing before we get into the presentation, is there anybody in the audience that would, at this time, is anybody they want to have or talk about other than what's on the agenda? Nope. Okay. It's all you? Great. We're going to do these next first? Oh yeah, we can do them then. I forgot about that. Can we delay them? Can we make changes to them from last time? No, as far as it appeared, then we have not met since July 19th, which is suspicious. No, what I mean by that is I think we're supposed to approve these at the last one, but we didn't for some reason, if I recall. Okay. At any rate, does anybody have any changes? Yes. Okay. So it's just essentially a typo, but Doug Henson is spelled correctly in the other present section, and then throughout the rest of the document, his name is spelled several different ways. So we just need to make it fixed. Oh yeah, I see that. Doug Henson has changed all the Hansons to Henson. Henson, yeah, he's referred to as Hanson. Good catch. Anything else? In our decision, I just want to make sure that it was clear because I know I said it that the building design needs to come back to the PC. It's not just going to staff has to come back to the PC. That's the Pearl Street elevation. That's the whole thing. We haven't seen any elevations that reflect the actual floor plan in that building. They gave us a generic presentation that did not match and needs to come back here, the whole thing. I'll check the TIP and see what it says. Okay. Anything else? Do I hear a motion to approve the Nets from July 19th? As amended. So moved. Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Now on to the next. Good evening, everybody. Thank you for having me. My name is Melanie Needle. I'm a senior planner at Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission. My presentation will focus on enhanced energy planning for the Essex community and for the purpose of this presentation and the draft energy element that you have in front of you or have received via email, we are collectively referring to the village of Essex Junction and Essex Town as the Essex community. So the presentation is intended to be an overview of the Department of Public Service Act 174 energy planning standards and essentially what that means for the Essex community and how that plays itself out into an energy element. So, you know, I was here a year or maybe 18 months ago. We talked about the regional plan. The Regional Planning Commission has finished and approved the ECOS plan, which is the Enhanced Energy Plan for the region. And now we're focusing our technical assistance on municipalities. So I just wanted to bring everybody's attention. I don't know if you've seen the early December newspaper, the Essex reporter, there was an article about this project and the energy plan as a concept. If you haven't seen it, I encourage you to read it. I think the reporter did a really great job of, you know, summarizing the process and the work that, you know, we've been doing with staff and the Essex Town Planning Commission. So I just wanted to bring your attention to that. It was early December. I think it was like the December 4th or 6th newspaper. And you probably know you can access it online. It's on the front page and then it continues on to the back page. Okay. So Vermont Energy Goals that are rooted in both statute and the State Comprehensive Energy Plan means big changes for the state itself, for the region and for municipalities. And so as a starting point with the Energy Plan, the goals are to reduce total energy consumption per capita by 15% by 2025 and by more than one-third in 2050. An intermediate milestone is meeting 25% of remaining energy needs from renewable sources and then obtaining 90% of energy from renewable sources in, by 2050. And then weatherizing 25% of the state's housing stock by 2020. We're not on pace to meet that, but it's still a goal that we're shooting for. And then also greenhouse gas reduction targets below 1990 levels by 2050. So that's the framework for the Energy Plan. And that is what the Energy Planning Standards are rooted in. And then the remainder of the plan talks about implementation actions. What does this look like on the land in terms of renewable energy generation? What actions municipalities can do to lead by example to weatherized buildings, do fuel switching, those kinds of things, and we'll go into more detail. So in terms of where is Vermont now, total energy is 20% renewable. And when I say total energy, I mean transportation, heating, and electricity. When you just look at electricity alone, that sector is more renewable. It's 43% renewable if you are thinking about it from a source perspective, meaning that you are taking into consideration efficiency and line losses in transmission. It's a little bit higher when you're thinking about it in terms of site energy. It's about 53%. So electricity is our most renewable sector. Thermal, which is heating, a majority of Vermont is rural. And so people are heating with delivered fuels, propane oil, those types of fuel sources. And so thermal is 20% renewable. And the transportation sector is the least renewable. So that is the sector that we need to do the most work in and has the most impact on carbon pollution and climate change. So that sector is about 5% renewable, mostly from the small amount of electric vehicles that are driven in the state. So in terms of enhanced energy planning for the Essex community, the concept here is one plan for both jurisdictions that would be referred by reference in the updated Essex Junction comprehensive plan that's going through an update and will be approved and adopted in August. Same concept for Essex town, though their plan doesn't expire until 2024. And so what does one plan bring the two communities? And that is a determination. Well, so the Regional Planning Commission is the one who would approve the plan, grant the jurisdictions a determination of energy compliance. So we will look at the Department of Public Service requirements and checklists for these enhanced energy plans. And if a positive determination is provided, then the village and the town, once they incorporate the plan into their plan, will be given substantial deference in the Public Utilities Commission Section 248 process, which is the state regulatory permitting process for approving renewable energy generation facilities. And substantial deference means greater weight, greater influence, and that is, you know, the benefit for doing enhanced energy planning. So really the rubber meets the road in terms of these citing policies that we'll talk about later. Those are the citing policies that the Public Utilities Commission will use to make their determination on whether it meets the orderly development criterion in the Section 248 process. Before I go on, any questions about that? It's kind of a big mouthful if you're not that familiar with the 248 process. Where's this being funded from? Is it like federal and state? So the Regional Planning Commission has gotten support from the Department of Public Service to provide municipalities with technical assistance to update their plans. Department of Public Service? Yeah, so it's state funded. Can multiple regional regions have substantial deference? So if they all go through this process, can they all be at that level? Yes, all the 11, well, yeah, the 11 Regional Planning Commissions all have regional plans. And so they have all gone through this process. And because it's a requirement, whereas at the municipal level it's optional. But so all regional plans have substantial deference at the PUC. Okay, and from the municipality level, is that a substantial deference? Is that the norm? It's not. If you don't have an enhanced energy plan, it's due consideration. So it's less weight. The policies are looked at from kind of a guidance perspective. So they're not applied as strictly or transparently as if you have substantial deference. So you have greater say in the process. Your plans hold a greater weight in the process if you comply with the energy planning standards. At what point does the state determine if we're not on pace to meet our goals that changes need to be made? So the goals are in a sense just, I shouldn't tell you just, but there are pathways for understanding the order of magnitude changes that need to happen to get to the 90 by 2050 future. There are projections. Nobody knows how, you know, what the future holds. And so it gives municipalities a sense of how much energy we need to save through efficiency and weatherization and how many electric vehicles we need to have on the road. But there's no enforcement. You get your energy compliance if you have these projections and data goals in your plan. And we're going to be tracking them along the way. The Energy Action Network is coming out with a new dashboard that is tied and rooted in these energy planning standards. So it's a mechanism for tracking progress over time. So the Public Service Board has also put regulations in place governing new construction and alterations that will tag anything that goes through the construction process to meet energy standards. So like elite certified building, for example. That's a whole other realm, but they have targets for insulation and energy use and lighting that you have to meet. So that's a requirement, not just a guide. I'm just trying to get my head around what are the benefits to the municipality other than the environment to doing this. We get a place at the table. Okay, all right. That makes sense. So I think we went over this already from one of the questions. We're doing this in partnership with the Public Service Board. The basis for this is the energy planning standards. That screen's off now. Is that supposed to be off? It was on earlier. Was it ever on? It was on when we first started. Now it's off, so is it? It sounded really good eyesight. We were so impressed. Everything was working. I don't know. Do you have any solutions? I don't have two TVs. It looks like it's totally off for some reason. Is there a remote? We can switch it off and switch it on, I guess. Yeah, maybe it fell asleep. Just set the power button to see if it comes back on. Which one is it? Well, why do you have to return? You should have both fallen asleep then. Diane, you just turned it on. It just turned it on? Yeah, it was totally off from whatever it was. It'll take some time to warm up. Okay. You turned it off, you turned it off. No, well, if I had... If it was off, you hit it twice. Does that mean it's off again? It's off now. You can tell there's a little thing on it. Okay. There you go. There you go. Okay, there we go. Yeah. It's off again. We'll talk about it, Andrew. We'll talk to somebody over there for a minute. Could you pull it out a little bit? Yeah, like that. There you go. That's as far as it goes. Yeah. Okay, so the energy plan requirements, which you've seen, you know, make up the draft energy plan, include analyzing current energy use. We get that data from Efficiency Vermont. Identify a scenario for future energy use in terms of the three sectors I named before. Heating, transportation, and electricity. Setting renewable energy generation goals. Mapping energy generation. Potential for solar and wind. And then developing exciting policies for renewable energy generation. So in February 2018, we sent local data guide to all our municipalities, and these show the potential energy transformation that could take place between now and 2015. The modeling behind that was done by the Vermont Energy Investment Corporation using Elite Model. It's an accounting tool which looks at the fuel sources, the existing energy being used currently, and gives us a sense of what the fuel type and quantities need to be in 2050 to get to 90 by 2050. The model was done at the regional level, and then we have portioned out the data analysis of each municipality based on, for example, Essex Junction and Essex Townshare of commercial industrial buildings, residential buildings, and the assumption about heat intensity for those buildings. And so that serves as the backbone to the target standards for the Essex community. So in terms of real world or boiling it down, what that means is switching 89% of the light duty vehicles to electric vehicles, decreasing driving alone, so decreasing the number of miles that are driven through walking, biking, transit, car sharing, 38% of businesses and 60% of homes using cold climate heat pumps, which are powered by electricity, so that's a more efficient, renewable source of heating homes and businesses. 14% of homes using wood heat and 98% of homes and businesses using increased electric efficiency, so that's more efficient refrigerator and other appliances that are used in buildings. So I talked about energy generation goals. So as of October 2018, about 27,000 megawatt hours of renewable energy is generated annually in Essex community, so that split between 430 solar sites, half of the number 19 GMP hydrodam, I say half because it's on the Winooski River and we're counting these facilities in terms of where they're sited and the boundary line between Essex and Williston goes right through the dam. So half of Essex community and then half of Williston and we've done that and applied that methodology for Winooski and Burlington. So even though, for example, Winooski 1 hydrodam, even though BED owns it, half of the generation is being applied to the city of Burlington and the other half is being applied to the city of Winooski. And then also the methane digester at the wastewater treatment plant. As part of the ECOS plan, we set renewable energy generation targets for the region and then apportion them out based on each municipality's share of population and electricity consumption. So the aspirational target for the Essex community is about 183,000 megawatt hours of generation on the low end. And the low end is considering it's rooted in the regional plan target and the low end looks at Chittenden County's ability to share of solar and wind resources. So it's about 15% of the state and then the high end is based on Chittenden County's share of the state population, which is about 25%. So that's the difference. The low end is about 15% of the state's sort of resource and 25% of the state population. So we have done an analysis exercise that determines that 13% of the land area is needed to meet the renewable energy generation targets for the Essex community. And that is to assume if it was all done through 100% solar. Again, it's an exercise just to give you an order of magnitude of what this is going to look like. In total, the Essex community has about 8,600 acres of area that is suitable for solar energy considering incorporation of some environmental constraints. In terms of the environmental constraints and where they are, we have broken them into two categories. So the constraints are where development might be inappropriate and we've considered those possible constraints. So those are kind of the least restrictive. Some mitigation would need to be applied if something is a possible constraint. If something is a known constraint, that means 100% prohibition. That's the most restrictive. And the process also looks at preferred sites which are areas where renewable energy generation is strongly incurred. The state has a definition of preferred sites. So it's rooftops, solar canopies, previously disturbed areas, closed landfills, brown fields, gravel pits. And so those preferred sites get an enhanced benefit through net metering if they're over 150 kWs. So in terms of the siting criteria that's included in the draft energy plan, if you want to follow along with me, the siting criteria starts on page 5 and it's the second section, siting policies. And so this next set of slides is kind of a visualization of what these siting policies look like on the landscape. So the first one deals with, again, preferred sites. The intent of this policy is to strongly encourage development of renewable energy generation on those preferred sites. Rooftops, parking lots, previously disturbed sites, et cetera. In the state-designated village center, in the village of Essex Junction, the Essex Town Center and the Historic Preservation Business Design Control, there is an application of design standards to ensure that rooftop solar is integrated into the built environment. And I need to add that we have the design standards in here as a draft, but in practice, because the municipality is there's not really a notification process, and the municipalities are not part of the administrative approval process that PUC staff does for rooftop up to 500kW, these may be, as we continue to digest this plan, these may be more like best practices as opposed to standards. I was talking with somebody at the Public Service Department today about that, that in practice, there's little way the municipality can require a solar developer to follow these, so we need to work that out a little bit more. The second policy is about ground-mounted facilities, and so that is talking about locating ground-mounted solar and wind turbines outside of the state-designated village center in the village of Essex Junction and the town center and the business and historic preservation design control districts shown in those maps. The intent of this policy is that the plan is prioritizing homes and businesses in these areas for growth or shopping and services over ground-mounted generation facilities. The third citing criteria deals with the constraints. Remember a few sides back, I talked in terms of known constraints, the most restrictive and possible constraints, the least restrictive where the possible constraints would require a level of mitigation. Development of renewable energy generation shall not take place in areas with known constraints and in areas with possible constraints they should first and foremost avoid them, and if they can't avoid them then mitigate the adverse impacts in the areas with the possible constraints. So there's a set of state-known constraints that are contained in the energy planning standards and that's the floodway, the river corridor, rarecretin and endangered significant natural communities, vernal pools and wetlands. The ones I just named are known constraints at the state level, state, you know, DEC, the agency of AG, other state departments will weigh in on behalf of those resources in the full Section 248 process. And then in terms of local known constraints, slopes 20% are steeper and conservation areas within the resource preservation industrial district in the town are considered known constraints. And so what that means in practice is that if an applicant comes in with a ground-mounted facility in the 45-day comment period, staff could write a letter if one of these known or possible constraints, if there's a presence of one of those known or possible constraints on the site and say, you know, kind of as a red flag, you know, hey, this resource is on your site. You know, it's we've identified it as a local known constraint and our policy says, you know, that area shouldn't be developed or if it's a possible constraint, these are our recommended mitigation strategies. The local possible constraints are actually this, so the state possible constraints are ag soils, the special flood hazard area, priority forest blocks, protected land and deer wintering areas. And then the local possible constraints are the scenic resource protection overlay district, industrial designated areas of the resource preservation industrial district. There's parts of the RPI that are known and possible slope 15 to 20%. And then just priority forest blocks and then the designated village center because of the design standards and attention to be paid on integrating it into the built environment. So the fourth siting criteria has to do with the resource preservation district. And the intent of this is to site generation facilities greater than 500 KW only in the industrial zones in the resource preservation district in the town. The fifth one, the intent of it is about co-locating the facilities with existing distribution and transmission infrastructure. So the map on the screen is Green Mountain Powers kind of a capacity map that shows where the distribution and transmission is. And so there are some areas that are constrained. Orange is a signal that interconnections on that circuit area may experience higher cost and delayed interconnection. And green has enough capacity remaining to connect to it. And so the intent of this policy is just to connect facilities in areas where there's adequate capacity and near areas with high electric load. The sixth siting criteria is related to the scenic resource protection overlay in the town. And that is a possible constraint. And there's mitigation standards associated with this in the appendix. Those mitigating factors are screening the ground-mounted facility with vegetation that provides screening all seasons, citing standards so that you're not citing the facility out of your line of sight but it's impacting somebody else's line of sight so that's kind of the intent of those standards. The next one is related to the resource preservation district and applies policies related to vegetative buffers within this zoning district. This is the eighth siting criteria regarding steep slopes. Anything over 20% is 100% prohibition. Below that is a possible constraint. And I think in recently there was some good results relating to this criteria. I think it's the Sand Hill proposal. The regional plan has these local constraints in our regional plan and we worked with the town in the spring and identified that the applicant facility was kind of encroaching on some of the steep slopes and they reduced the amount of vegetative cutting that they were doing because of the identification of these constraints in the regional plan. Next siting criteria is regarding wildlife habitat and that is also a possible constraint so the intent of that is to not destroy or significantly imperil wildlife habitat identified in this map and ask that reasonable means of minimizing the destruction should occur. And then the last... How am I reading this graph? Say that again? How am I to read this graph? The dark green areas are the highest priority wildlife habitat and the light green areas are you seeing that? Is it showing up on this screen? And then the light green is just priority wildlife habitat. Okay, there seems to be this gray block of the village. Why is it... Because there's no habitat. Yeah, there's no habitat and it's a screenshot from A&R's Bible finder and I think it's... I identified this map using just Essex Town so I think it's just... I don't know why there's a gray blob but I would... We don't count right. There is priority habitat in the northern part of the village between 2A and 289. So this is a screenshot for visualization purposes in the presentation. Any of the maps in the plan itself I mean they'll look like this but Essex Junction won't be grayed out. Sorry about that. So I have a question about the sighting criteria in regards to you prefaced each area by saying some are definitely not allowed and then some others you said are potential. Yes. Are these things that we have to decide on when we're writing our plan when we're rewriting our plan in words when you mentioned the scenic... You said potentially. A potential. Yeah. Is that something we can say we care a lot about and we're going to make it tougher to use those areas to sight? So I say potential in the sense that if something was proposed in that scenic overlay district there would need to be mitigation to ensure that scenic resources are not impacted. It's not potential in the sense that you need to consider it for inclusion although it could be but there was some upfront work done on the side of staff and the planning commission early on when we were doing the ECOS plan and we got feedback from both jurisdictions that these were the local constraints to be considered in the regional plan and that's kind of our starting point for getting to the municipal level. And so it's a possible constraint in the sense that maybe you can develop here and if you do you have to do X, Y and Z. Does that... Yeah. Does that answer your question? And then in terms of its relationship to the town plan there needs to be consistency. So like for example if you're saying that something is a constraint in the energy plan then in your natural resource plan it also needs to be the same level of constraint. Making sure that the ambiguity on the constraints is removed because then when the PUC is looking at it we try to include the siting policies all of them in the energy plan but they can also have town plans can also have land use measures in the natural resource and the land use policy and the PUC reads the entire document and so if there's contradictions then it makes it hard for them to make a decision on your policy. Gotcha. Okay. So the last siting criteria is related to storage. Storage is a big part of our energy future in terms of reducing peak demand, resiliency, reducing costs. So this is a statement that the intent of it is to encourage renewable energy generation developers to think about including storage in their projects where feasible. So it's an eye towards the future as technology is going to change. I think it's an important aspect of this energy transformation that we need to go through. Okay. So then in terms of the implementation actions as part of the energy planning standards these start on page six and they're broken down into conservation. So weatherization, button up workshops, switching out street lamps to LEDs or more efficient light bulbs. I think Essex has done some of that work. Making the wastewater treatment plant energy efficient, the methane digester. So those kinds of conservation minded types of things. Educating residents and businesses on efficiency of Vermont's programs, Vermont gas's programs. And just leaving by example and thinking in terms of if a vehicle needs to be replaced how can it be replaced with a fuel efficient alternative. As well as transportation energy demand so those implementation actions look like more biking and walking facilities, promoting GMT, car share providing telecommunication abilities for staff, promoting these activities, educating them within the community. And then land use is compact development. All these things I've mentioned before the junctions already considering it's part of the comprehensive plan. These aren't new concepts. So compact development. Also looking at the zoning regulations to see how you can incentivize energy efficiency in the new building stock and having buildings, you know, solar ready or passive. And also thinking about considering the Vermont stretch code which, you know, there's a Vermont state-based code that all new development needs to adhere to in Act 250 projects those larger developments need to adhere to the stretch code and so those have a higher insulation value your home energy ratings score increases if you have renewable energy generation and your project and so one of the recommendations is to consider having all development meet the stretch code. This plan, you know, kind of just sets the stage for thinking about that going forward. What exactly is the stretch code? Is this detailed outline of what is to occur? It's a state law? Yeah, so it's a state law for development, all new development to adhere to the base code and it has to do with the insulation values, the R values, how much air sealing is done, how thick the walls need to be what the glazing is on the windows information about the HVAC system how the building breathes and is ventilated so it's very technical but that's a summary version of what the base code says and then the stretch code it kind of has the same elements but it asks for development to be built to a higher standard so the insulation values are that much higher and every two to three years the code is updated so what is currently the stretch code now when the code is updated the stretch code then becomes the base code and then the stretch code is increased. I think it's going to be worse than that actually it's going to be better than that but the 2015 we've been working with for three years and there's a base code and a stretch code and there's a 2018 version under consideration right now which is what are they in the middle of comments or have comments and now they're responding to comments and so that'll be out shortly and it packs a whole other ratchet another rung on the ladder going up toward the overall goal of the state's energy goal. Okay, so I'm taking that in essence the citation on page seven should probably also be a hotlink. Okay, no problem. So that's it for my presentation I think next steps are review the draft in front of you send me comments, send Robin comments I need to work on the data update section because I was some of the data that we received from efficiency from Vermont had some missing information work on the maps and then integrate the energy plan into the town plan update process going forward. Is there any penalties that you know of if there's only a certain goal or residential buildings if there's anything like a penalty like this if you don't make it nobody's really watching So this in terms of the building energy code itself report so when a new building is built the contractor or the homeowner or the building owner files the energy certificate with the clerk and it's tied to the certificate of occupancy process so you need to file that certification of energy to get your certificate of occupancy We do that with a base energy code of demand I think it would be quite simple just to put it into the lines update the plan then shall we switch energy standards as per the date of this document and future iterations and we do get them decided we keep the coffee and we send garden coffee How does the plan take into account the future growth of the community is that already factored into what business growth and residential all of that's factored in? It is in the data in the sense that so when we ran the LEAP model it was consistent with the population and employment projections that were part of the ECOS plan so I mean it assumes that the population is going to grow That's the assumption and that same question I have in regards to the amount of acres so when you're looking at the 8600 acres for potential that's a finite number we don't have any so that's to the goal or is that help me understand how? Yeah the 8600 you don't need all 8600 sorry if I'm making people dizzy it's the 3200 acres to get to the minimum Presumably sort of balance or improved efficiency and size over time if you change that you reach the end of the useful amount See many need to use less than that Any other questions? Page 9 under actions number 1 fund an energy coordinator position can we have an energy coordinator now and we have an energy committee right and is that so that would be an energy it's something that the trustees and the select board has to kind of step up to the plane and do something there So in reviewing the actions and even the citing policies so these are conceptual suggestions and so when you're reviewing them think in terms of whether they're relevant or appropriate for the Essex community Yeah I have a tendency I have a tendency to think that our biggest opportunity is to be more efficient with energy it's a huge opportunity and it's the biggest hurdle because you have to have a little change It is a huge part of reducing the energy pie but as we start to electrify the transportation sector and the heating sector we need to meet that demand with more electricity I mean it's a more efficient use of electricity so that's where the renewable energy generation comes in so it's both it's generation and efficiency and you know we were both on the TCRPC Energy subcommittee Energy subcommittee and I brought in one time I remember it was an ad out of the paper from an automobile company for an electric vehicle and it said it cost less to drive, drive more so at some stage it's going to have to be like they said by petrol it's going to have to be put on it it encourages people to have good energy So at the same time we're pushing for these efficiencies and transportation the use of electric vehicles didn't I see a report on the news saying that most of the major car companies are sort of pulling their electric vehicle because nobody's buying them and they're selling more SUVs and trucks than they ever had before It's a presidential Well, it's habits too Absolutely But so we're putting in we see more vehicle charging stations showing up which is good There are certain fleet vehicles that you know Green Mountain Messager and other places are using more of these electric vehicles and they probably know where they can plug in So that's what I'm encouraging but kind of actually be good to have an action item which I can't remember that says in the village and the time we would encourage more charging stations as part of developments not just bike racks How much have we gotten when we've encouraged things before have we gotten this? People could get a 20% density bonus because it didn't make sense Well, I've heard to put it in We need to say more than we encourage something and we have to do something to make it Then we say it's shy The stretch code does require parking spots for large commercial projects to be EV-ready and multi-family residential If you want to check it out I'll have it in there So that'd be a quick link So it's up to Robin to encourage the stretch code Well, I'll just put it in and say must be good to the standard When you're talking to applicants The scary part is that it's not easy to get to the goals that are out there and the pace that we're going at right now will not get us there in the time frame we're hoping for There's a cost to it too We really have to do something serious if we want to even come close to that goal I won't throw a question, John but if we move from the basic energy requirements to stretch code ballpark, how much would that amount to $2,500 for this? I can't answer that I can tell you're just reaching the regular goal The two aren't that far apart like you're going from maybe our 30 installation above the decks I don't do residential so I know that's our 49 but I don't know like does it go to our 60 yet But you're talking about feet of insulation though, you're not talking about something that's easy In a multi-family building it will cost less per unit because you're fencing outside walls The major elements to improve are still windows and places where elites happen so all the air sealing and that's huge and the industry is maybe 10 years into knowing this so anything built the really big thing is that your older housing stock and it can be 15 years old is junk I mean it's just awful and that's because the building community didn't really get the importance of stocking all the leaks so you might have some decent insulation but you don't have the other components that really make a nice tight building so we could really use a lot of deep retrofits things where you go in and you fix that and that's hard to incentivize because it's fairly expensive because you're talking about all the building joints all the windows you know cracks and it's just everywhere so tough to do it's tough to get them to do it right now so going back and finding all the places where it didn't work before Of course I would have a lot of applications out there that have not even broken ground yet that's gone through the permanent in process now I know that we can't go back but could we they're already required they're required by this so there's Vermont commercial building energy standards and residential building energy standards and those are in place already so you're supposed to be certifying your designer and your contractor both have to verify that it was designed and constructed to meet those requirements so if it's under construction right now chances are that it's supposed to comply and if it's in our Village Robin can't give them a CO till they hand them a piece of paper that says we certify that we did this so there is a decent mechanism in place now and it's you know there is well the buck stops at the CO right I mean there's all this effort to get your CO and that's kind of the last hurdle in many cases is getting all that paper together Any other questions for our presenter just remind us of the upcoming process so there's another version that comes out and we look at it and the town looks at it and then there's a big meeting between the Village Plaintiffs and the Village Trustees during which we approve or we'll get you you mentioned this approved pending completion of the Municipal Plan if you really want that I have a question is it possible or maybe it's already there is it possible to post this on the Village website or something like it doesn't have to be word for word the more we can get the information out people will ask questions and have ideas maybe because we're going to be starting this this is just one piece of the project that we're going to be starting we're hoping to involve more people this time when we did the CODE it was like this I wouldn't like to I understand I'm just trying to create some interest We had the time at our committee we had a farmer we had four or five groups who were interested we personally invited and they came the process was great the feedback was great but I'd like to see more residents here in the seats the more of this kind of stuff we can get out and get people interested it'll be great especially if we got a press release out and say hey can we discuss this anything else? okay thank you very much thank you very much I do have a question for you guys before we adjourn does anybody have anything else they want to talk about? any other items? we may not be able to I'd like to schedule a work session we may not be able to do it in January because I know is the joint meeting supposed to happen in January? if everything comes back yes so you guys should be getting me and Terry information on typos and stuff because that's busy work that's not substance and then we can talk about the substance we should so maybe we can I know everybody checked their counters but I know that the 11th is a Friday I can't do that Thursday but the 10th I believe in this but I can see if we can do that if not we can shoot for the first week of February maybe nice or do you think in what time it would be roughly the same it would be six and because it's a work session we don't have to warn it correct do you have to warn it if it's a work session? it's best to warn it then but I do need some time the 11th I'll be at a time of yeah me too it would not work for me you don't have to miss a meeting until you've been you got so many the 10th and 11th yeah the 10th would not work for me because I'm out of town shoot for the next week what was the first Thursday of February I was going to suggest another day but I think it's best to have it on our normal on a meeting yeah I think it's a good idea because people get used to that yeah do you want to shoot for the 7th? yeah okay alright so we'll warn that and you know everybody communicate to Robin and Terry about ideas what you know plan on being here at 6 o'clock anything else? do I hear a motion to adjourn? second all in favor? alright thank you very much thank you