 Okay. We are now recording. Okay. Hello. Welcome to this meeting of the energy and climate action committee. I'm just trying to see if we have, we have no attendees yet. So, it's just us. Hi, Dwayne. So let me just, I'm sorry, I'm just running in here a little late today. I do want to get my notes up. So I need just a moment to do that. But meanwhile, while we're getting started, who is the note taker today? Let's see. I have the, who did it last time was Laura. It looks like Jesse or Don. Jesse and Don. Don, you want to take notes today? Oh, Jesse's here. Jesse, you want to take notes today? Let me, let me answer that differently. I will take notes today. Thank you, Jesse. And thank you for chairing last time in my absence. I had a good time. I did listen to the entire recording this morning over breakfast. You're the first. That's amazing. All right, so whereas I'm looking for today's I'm sorry. One of the things we have to discuss today is changing the time of this meeting if I'm going to chair them because I just came from a class and so I'm a little discombobulated. I'm trying to find the agenda, which I thought I had up. Do you want me to display it on the screen? Hang on a second. I think I know where it is. Agenda I've got it. Okay, I just mostly need it so I know what we're doing. So the first order of business is to review the minutes from last time. I'm going to get those up on the screen if folks want. I actually have those here. I have them Lori go ahead and put them up then. Yeah. Thank you, Stephanie. Sure. Give me a second. I will slip off screen and take another bite of my sandwich. Sorry, let me just get my folder was not accessible for some reason. And still I actually really appreciated all of the information about transportation in regards to the new school. And back and forth on that that was great. I'm sorry I wasn't here to ask questions. Great. Yeah, I mean hopefully it's a conversation that continues it sounds like it will. Yeah. All right so there are any questions or concerns on then. There's a type of scooters is spelled scooters. I'll make a note and correct. I think that might be with a D, but I think you're right. And that Western mass solar form has been fantastic. I don't know how you managed to pick on all of the best topics that are the most relevant to the town right now, Dwayne. And breathing them. Yeah. Any other comments. I don't know if it's worth going through this whole thing again is everybody already seen these. There are scooters. Ford F has the typo scooters. I am happy with them I will move to accept these minutes with that one minor correction. They're second. I'll second that motion. Well, I gotta stop. Right. I gotta do a voice vote. Okay, voice vote in no particular order roof. Yes. D. Yes. Goldner. I'm going to abstain since I wasn't here. Okay. Allison. Hey. Selman. Yes. Recker. Yes. Okay. So that was two abstentions. Okay. Minutes or no, we're good. I'm just looking at my other computer, which has my notes on it. It's it's complaining. It's not booting properly. Oh, well. It's lying without my notes today. Oh, there it goes. Okay, so the next order of business is. Is the comments from the public, but there are no attendees other than us right now. So I guess we'll come back to that at the end as always. And go right to updates. There is one thing. That maybe we should discuss right away though, actually, I think it's not on the agenda, but with your permission, I'd like to discuss the timing of this meeting. Can we do that now? Is that any objections? Most of us, I don't want to forget I brought it up two meetings ago and then listen here last time. I have a class that ends at 415. So, and it's a three hour lab. So after three hours of standing and interacting with students and running around trying to make sure they don't blow anything up. I have to run back to my office because I can't make it home and do this meeting from my office on public computers, which makes me a little uncomfortable. I usually try to keep my politics and my work separate. So I would really appreciate, I mean, I'm in my office, but it's a university computer, right? I would appreciate if we could move this meeting starting time to five. At very least 445, I might not quite make it home by then, but I probably can. Here we have a short discussion on that. Is there any any concerns about that? I would just quickly comment that this is not a place for your politics either according to everything I've read, but that five o'clock would be fine with me. It's not supposed to be politics, but facts here, baby, just facts. Yeah. I think this is mostly an issue for people with small children, especially Stella. How do you feel about moving it to five? Um, yeah, that's, that's mostly fine as long as I don't have to like do any like if I'm the minute taker, it might be problematic. Right. We can honor that, I think, especially if we get two new members. So, and then at the end of this semester, I'd be happy to move it back to 430. I, it's just, I, the next 13 weeks, 15 weeks, whatever it is in a semester nowadays. All right, so. Lori, that would go till so five to seven p.m. five to seven. Yeah, I heard the discussion last time we can keep it at two hours and try to end a little early, but we'll keep it for the two hours. Okay, so then you might want to make this a vote, actually. Oh yeah, that's, we probably should do that. So, is there a motion, can we have a motion, we probably need a motion, I suppose to do this. I don't know if I can move this chair, but if I can, I'd like to move, we've moved it to five. I'll second that. Assuming you can do that. Yeah. Or Steve, you could just make the motion. Okay. I moved that way for the fall semester up until, but through December that we shift our meetings from five to 7pm on Wednesdays. And we need a second. I'll second that. Thank you. Okay, and a vote, please ensure your microphone is on a roof. Yes. D. Yes. Goldner. Yes. Allison. Yes. Selman. Yes. And Brecker. Yes. All right, you've got your new time there, Lori. Thank you. And thanks for the going out of order here or breaking the order. So now we're back onto the agenda and we have updates. First from Stella on transportation. Any updates? Yeah, I guess sort of an open question of what people think would be helpful to work on. He's a V transport next, because it seems like we've had like. An education series. There was the great discussion last week. And I was hoping that like a clear action item for us would come out of that and it didn't, which is fine. But then it kind of raises the question of, of what would be make the most sense for us to try to move on with respect to transportation, whether that's like. More public education, like, I don't know. Something my partner suggested was like, don't park in the EV spots, because I guess people have been parking and like just parking at EV chargers. I'm not sure. So if anybody has any thoughts on that, feel free to either let me know by email or now. I can. There's something one thing I can ask is, I was surprised to learn last week that that bike plan is not complete. And is that something we can help push forward. Yeah, so maybe it's kind of hard to say because I think they need to finish the map right. Yeah, without like, unless like we're going to finish the map. You know, because then, because if it were done done, then we could write a memo of some sort. I mean, I guess we could write a memo still. Encouraging town council to like. Prioritize that. Help them find a person to finish the map. Yeah, I think especially if they're going to be looking for money and do we doing doing a study even of those two intersections having that map there is really important. I'm worried about the discussion of sidewalks and walking because it seemed to leave out bicycles in some places and, you know, just a sidewalk won't do it. Right. It has to be. Right. So maybe I'll draft a memo kind of in support to the town council, right or town manager. I think that would be great. Finishing. That we also see the value in prioritizing this plan of tax. Yeah. Especially in so far as they're doing these studies now of those intersections and those are some of the worst places in time in town for bicycles. I mean, root nine. And Pelham Road and especially at those intersections. I, every time I go through them, I'm. I'm scared, you know, and I do it all the time, but. Well, I live in the same neighborhood as you know, and I, the only way I write my bike is straight across route nine to Amherst Woods and get on the bike path. I won't write down either those routes. But, but I guess what I wanted to. Offer and I don't know how much that is available and we're not a research group. So I'm not suggesting that we undertake this research project, but from my perspective. And from ECAC, I think what we're after, to a large extent with the. Facilitating by bicycle into school and bicycling generally and other transportation issues is its impact on greenhouse gas submissions, reductions. So I, I, and to the extent that the town or maybe pursuing funding. The, an analysis of greenhouse gas savings to add to a proposal would be helpful, I would imagine. So I'm, I, again, we're not a research group but and not wouldn't be able to undertake that from scratch but is there. I mean, is I think this is the, the transportation committee where I forget exactly what they're called but you know, do they do are they do they include any analysis of sort of increased bicycling and so forth that could be readily translated into reduced automobile use and greenhouse gas emissions that we could offer. I read the plan and I don't recall that Lori I think you also read their plan did do you remember anything like that. I don't remember seeing it it was a while ago now though. But that's an obvious thing to ask and I was just going to make a note here, one could do a quick back of the envelope just, but we really need to know how many people, what is the potential for this town for people to use biking and walking yeah and walking yeah and even even just as an exercise I know there's it was, I learned at the last meeting that there's going to be this. I forget what it's called walk to school or bike to school day. Yeah, it might be an interesting student project. That's right for the kids is it I'm not sure there's all the schools or the elementary school, particularly but a little school science project for them to calculate for that day at least what they saved in greenhouse gas emissions, and we could, you know potentially provide a little bit of guidance for them to do that. That little kid could do it for this big hook. This is a snake hook she's very interested in her pathology. Nice. I used to be big into catching snakes when I was at age. That's for an awfully big snake. Everglades. All right, so. Okay, and we're going to come back to that bike bike to work day a minute when we get to the block party tabling I think, but let's let's put a little star on that so we don't forget, but the idea of doing some quick calculations, I guess. I guess what we need as always is data. But maybe I'll maybe I'll dive into a little bit that's the sort of thing I like data. I would say 10% reduction in in vehicular travel. If we do, it's, it's like biking and walking is zero. So you can, if 5% of the time you bike then it's a 5% reduction. Yeah. Yeah, if we can even get some idea of what the, I think we have those numbers right for what the over. So the superintendents and I think that came up last, like two weeks ago, the superintendents have a list of everybody who's theoretically and walking and biking distance. So I think what, what Kathy or maybe Chris from tax said is that it's been hard to get their hands like back on that data, because of everything that's going on with the schools, but theoretically, that data is readily available from the superintendents. Like from the schools, like who theoretically could walk or bike to school and then from that. It should be possible like it should be pretty straightforward to like crunch the numbers on if all those kids were driving, you know, or you know if their parents were driving them. That is. Do they not have the option for the school bus. Is that from that. They do but I don't think it would be easy to learn how many of the children who live within theoretical biking walking radius would otherwise take the school bus. And that was the other thing that maybe you remember it sounds like school bus ridership is way down. Yeah, because the buses take a very long time to get where they're going. And so a lot of parents just drive their kids in, which is not great. And on the other hand I'm heartened by the fact that I see more and more of these Dutch style bicycles all the time with the big, you know, cribbing it for the kids for to stick to our three kids. They're they're all over the place now it seems and I could just imagine a day when everybody takes their kids to work in school that way right you drop the kids off on the way to work while you're on your, you know, giant e bike giant slow e bike but they're fast they're fast I they are pretty yeah I pick up I do preschool pick up in Northampton on it and it's great. Okay, only bad part is almost getting killed by drivers. Yeah, right. Right. Yeah, I'm always astounded there's one person who's been driving up and down Pellum Road with two kids in one of those things. And it just, I just, yeah, it's terrifying. I keep seeing them on the front page of the paper right it just, it's terrifying. I don't know how the kudos to them but it's scary. So yeah. Anything else. Yeah, I'm going to go out there. So you're going to draft a memo so the do I the. Yeah, I'll draft to the council. I guess I could reach out to like the schools about those numbers I feel like now is not a great time. Maybe like mid semester. And to keep this just focus on this memo keep it simple just a few lines you know just saying that you can't support this effort and and here's why and you know and and we want to encourage you to finish this map as soon as possible and come up with a few reasons that makes sense, including the fact that they're about to do a study and you know having that plan in place would seem to be important. And then also because I was texted also encourage them to then adopt it like the same way to complete it and adopt it. Okay. Anything else for transportation. Don anything for anything new for pace any action there yet. No, and my discombobulated summer is finally over. Between the Azores and walking in England and in any event. I will touch base with Stephanie this coming week since my life has settled down. So hopefully at least I can have something for you two weeks from now. What may be from Maine because my Dwayne knows my oldest son, Barrett is getting married up in Maine on September 30. We're going to all be up there that Wednesday before, but I will be available for the meeting on Wednesday. So the last of my kids to get married so life will really settle in. It's a little bit of a mousel top. Oh, man, all right. So I don't have much with heat pumps either and we're still just waiting right Stephanie and except I did send around I asked Stephanie to forward to you guys today. And note that I thought was interesting on a lot of levels on mini heat pumps which I didn't really even appreciate were a thing. I really like the saddle shaped ones I might get one for my sunroom. They seem to me to solve a real need for renters. They're relatively inexpensive. I expect there are probably rebates for installing them need to find out more about that. And it just looked like a really interesting topic to talk a little more about some time or to publicize a little bit maybe at the block party or somewhere else. But Stephanie what's why don't we get a little bit of an update if there is one. Are we still waiting on. We had. Where's the heat pump. So the last exchange I had was just before Sean mangano left. And I had been requested to provide a little bit of information for legal counsel. I provided that and Sean said he would get back to me and then he left. And he didn't get back to me and I don't know if anyone else in the accounting department I'm there as you can imagine very overwhelmed right now. So, you know, two people who already have a full plate of a workload are splitting his duties for right now so. They're the people I would have to contact of course. So I'm going to follow up but I've got a whole host of other things that I'm following up with them about right now so. Yet another but but so right now it's still a little bit up in the air but I'm hoping. We'll be able to move the RFP forward. So what was Sean's position again. He was the finance director. It was the finance director. Okay. So that's where that stands. So you had gotten information back from legal which was good and all right so that was still going back and forth and now it's just dropped. That's too bad if there's anything that we can do to help. It's just the state of where things are right now I don't really think anything you could do to pressure anybody would be helpful. Yeah, so I think it's just, I'm, I'm going to, you know, it's like I'm trying to not overwhelm with too many things at a time I meant if there was if there was literally anything we could do to help with this research it needs to be done if there's phone calls it needs to be made I can I can spend a little time. It's now I it's where I mean it's just a matter of them saying to me okay and we've got a process and a way to reach out for getting interested parties. Made aware that we've got this RFP available so I appreciate that I just don't think that's kind of you know that's not what we just need our people to be able to say yes we can do this now and. To get the process moving. Right. So I think that's it for updates. And we did a discussion or I didn't see that on the agenda I wouldn't have skipped like that sorry about that. But we already did the discussion of the ECAC meeting time and we're to block party tabling. So there was some good discussion last week I think and some ideas about the block party. I was particularly I like the idea of the buttons how do we get buttons. It's too late. Does anyone have a button making machine. We used to have those back in the day. We could make name tags out of pieces of paper or. Yeah that makes sense. I mean that's not quite as nice as a button but you know the hello my name is tags. I think that's one of our I think we have local, a number of local businesses. That make buttons. Well that's the presses do I'll bet the collective copies probably will print you a button I bet collective probably does maybe sunrise printing might. Yeah. I don't know this probably was my idea if it costs money and is difficult so. Yeah, my, my, my daughter has volunteered some at the library and I recollect she said that she was making buttons as in the Jones library there. So, I don't have a machine for but I don't know if they'd be willing to let another group come in and punch some buttons. But that's a possibility to look into. That's something to Google real quick. Does the Jones library, you need to check out a light a button making machine from the library. Of course the internet, you know, you can get 50 buttons for $40 or 10 buttons for $20. Oh, they have a video on Facebook the great unboxing of our new button maker from the Jones library. So they apparently have a button maker. So maybe that's the thing to do is to come in with this a print out of what we want on the button and then just ask them to make it for us. That'd be fun. I can try to take care of that sometime. What should it say I'm on ecac ask me, ask me questions about. Ask me about what they're not knowing just do people know what ecac is they don't know what ecac is not the people we'd want to talk to. So, what should the button say. I'm on ecac ask me about it. It's actually not a bad idea. It must be mysterious. Okay. It could just say what is ecac with a good question mark. There we go I think. Prompt like asked me what is ecac. Everybody. Oh yeah there's a Rankins dragon over here. This is a real lizard. Awesome. Oh, awesome. Oh, there it is. Hard to say. Wow, that's a beautiful. Okay, gotcha. Wow. Is that free ranging in your house. No, we also have a cat so it wouldn't serve our very little. I knew someone who used to keep free range snakes in their house as mousers they were allergic to cats but not snakes. Oh, that's brilliant. I don't think Don likes that idea. These are really big colorful snakes from the Southwest he lives in Tucson. Yeah, really big pretty snakes. All right, any rate. It could make a good wedding gift. Snake. Probably needs it. It lives in the city. All right, so the buttons will say what is he asked me what is ecac. How about that. Is that what we decided on? Okay, if I can get buttons made, I'll get buttons made. But now what do we do have a table I understand from listening to last week's. So and we're going to be in front of the fire station. So we need to have a schedule of who's going to be there and we also need ideas for what to do now I can bring all the same flyers that we had the sustainability festival but I think it would be nice. I think, you know, a lot of people, a lot of the people who come to this thing are going to be renters and I think it would be nice if we had something for the renters in particular. Can we, you know, offer them and also for the for the biking day right so we I think there are things we can try to be I like the idea of trying to get people involved in some way. So, you know, here's how you can be involved there's a October 4 visit there's a bike to work day right take your bike on so no, we can help tack advertise that right. And I think we should also maybe have something you know are you. You know, is your apartment cold in the winter. Are you using space heaters, consider, you know, a mini a mini heat pump right for a few hundred dollars you can stick one in your window and you can probably get rebates on it and it'll save the money right. And it maybe we can just give out information. You know, that might be helpful to people who are heating in an inefficient way or using space heaters, like I horribly. Here's my situation that you mass I have a, I have a, I have no control over the thermostat in my office, because they messed up again, and the thermostat is on the other side of a long skinny room. I would never set air conditioning thermostat at 70 my windows which are metal or the other side of the room. And so is the air conditioner. And so it goes full blast all the time right out metal, you know, basically heating and cooling the metal windows. And on this side of the room it's about 60 degrees and on that side of the room at 70 degrees and I'm freezing my ass off so I end up using a space heater excuse my language. In the middle. It's a little bit overspurated right so you have to wonder how many people are doing this sort of thing in their apartments because they have leaky that you know they can't afford to turn the heat up or they're using a space heater because something is messed up with the. I don't know about you but I've seen this all the time in friends of mine who live in apartments where the heating is they're doing all sorts of crazy stuff to try to save money and stay warm. And is the buildings are leaky and old and the heat is expensive. So if there's something we can do to help alleviate that, whether it's weatherization or just getting the word out that there are things they can do. And I think I could certainly put a flyer together for renters, but maybe there are specific ideas we can. Well, MassSafe offers, there's a webpage I'm looking at, energy savings for renters. Right. And so we may, one thing would just be to promote this, have that URL, it's masssave.com slash residential slash four dash renters. And people could go to that. There's, we could have a QR code so people could jump to it if they wish. There's two ways getting started on your own and working with a landlord. There's also, oh, there's a 58 minute video of accessing energy efficiency at a renter that I'm sure probably no one would watch. Oh, I saw that one. Yeah. So I think that's one thing. And I can't remember if anybody knew whether MassSafe was otherwise going to, or CET was otherwise going to be president at the fair, but one thing that would be easy would be to promote this MassSafe for renters program. And are we still looking for neighborhood leaders? Are we still looking for neighborhood people to do outreach, Stephanie? How are we set there? Well, because we haven't moved the program forward yet. So when the program moves forward, that's part of it. Okay. And that's something that the consultant would help us work on. All right. So I can put flyers together, you know, I'll try to get some, I think we even have a flyer for renters from last time. I'm probably already have the QR code from that and it sounds familiar. Actually, let me take a look at what I have. I feel like I'd be a little careful about trying to create original content about heat pumps and buying things. Right. I think that would get us into trouble the way every situation is different a lot and a lot. You could end up spending money and increasing your electric bill. And I don't think we wanna own that move. I don't think we have a renters flyer on the other hand yet. So just referring them to MassSafe to that renters page is probably a good idea. I really like the idea of this being an opportunity for us to support the work that others are doing. It's like we've got the MassSafe for renters, the bike walk to work day. Maybe we can kind of look around and see what else is happening. Cause again, I think putting together original content. When is the thing? It's in a week. Next week. Yeah. Week from Thursday. Week from tomorrow. Week from Thursday. Yeah, Stephanie, I don't know if you know of any other kind of interesting initiatives that are happening already. It would be like we could kind of cheer on and support QR code, but that feels like a really useful use. Yeah, not at the top of my head. And things like, you know, the walk bike days, you know, something that I think Stella probably got from the schools and you're probably as parents more connected than I am here in town hall. I'm very sort of focused on my area right now. So. Okay. So, and I think as always, the most important thing is just being there and talking to people. So having a few things like that and then just talking it up. I could bring back, I still have the, you probably have them too, Jesse. I have from the sustainability festival the ideas that people wrote down. I could bring those back if we want, but I don't know if it's, then we have to get easels and stuff too and worry about the weather. So I don't know if it's worth doing that again or not. We could, I can always have at least one piece of paper for people to write down any ideas they have that they want us to know about and clipboard or something. Or just that we talked about too, about just having a place for people to write down their email address. So as we... That's really good. As if and when we ever do outreach, you know, email and what do you want to know more about kind of thing? Yeah. Well, I will say, I don't know if anyone under the age of 30 has email anymore. What? Oh, no, they all do. They have to. They have to. Well, in college, but... No, no, and work. That's people still, everybody I know, I mean, it's all, it's all the connections are done. You might, everyone you know might not be everyone. I'm not, I don't know for sure. I know a lot of people that just simply don't have email. Jesus, it doesn't seem possible. What's happening in this world? Well, I think, I think in so far as an awful lot of work is remote nowadays, you know, I know people who are writers rely on it to be in contact with editors and people all over the world and people who are, you couldn't communicate. I'm thinking like, I'm thinking like waiters and bartenders and busboys that and... Yeah, okay. Landscapers that it's not writers necessarily, not people in the chair force. Every landscape right now has an email, but also every landscape right now is over 25, so. Maybe 25 is the cutoff for email. Excuse me. All right, so we need a schedule Thursday. Thursday, date is the... 21st. 21st. Ooh, is that the equinox? Or is it the previous day? And you're eight, Thursday, 21st. It's five to nine. So who is able to come during that time and what times do you think you can come? I'm not able to come. Just tell me it doesn't matter. Okay, I'm sort of in the same category. So who else has constraints that wants to be there but can only be there at certain times? I'm pretty flexible too. I think teaching till four, so I could get there at five. I'll take a first shift, five to six or six-thirty. Yeah, okay, that's good. Five, let's call it. I think if we can get one more, who do we have? We have Steve, me, Don. If we get one more, we got an hour per shift. Who else can be there? Jesse. It'd be fun to have more than one person at a time. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, it's fun too. Let's get one down and then we'll overlap a little. How about that? So, Jesse. More, I'm happy to go anytime. So why don't we go five o'clock, Steve, six o'clock. Jesse. Sure. Seven o'clock. I don't know, I guess I can show up at seven, eight o'clock. That's me. Don. And then we'll just overlap a little bit. I mean, if you want to come a little early, stay a little late, so there'll be two of us most of the time. So Steve, you start. I'd be happy to overlap, probably in the earlier, earlier part of the time frame. So how about you show up at like 530 or six? Yes, I'm like that. 530, Dwayne, six, Jesse. I'll show up a little before seven, probably stay till 830 and then Don'll be eight. Okay. And I may be there for the whole thing. I just didn't want to say that till the end. Send an email to Laura saying she signed up for the whole thing as well. Laura's not going to be here, so she already said she's unavailable this time. Yeah, put her on cleanup duty. That's why I'm staying for the whole thing. Do we need to bring anything other than a handful of the flyers and just for the QR code flyers and the not even flyers really just posters and a sign up sheet and maybe another, couple of clipboards, one for signing up, one for writing ideas down and buttons. I have like 30 clipboards. So do you want me to bring? I'll bring the clipboards. Yeah, bring a couple of clipboards and with a pad of paper on each. Yep. Great. Would it be crazy if we all agreed to wear, for example, a yellow shirt? Steve's yellow shirt looks so good. I don't think I own a blue shirt. Yellow is not my color. Purple, red, not yellow. Maybe blue. Lori, what will be the purpose of the pads of paper? So people can sign up there with their email and so that people can write down ideas they want us to take with us. Okay, I'm just making a note. Something they want us to talk about. So two pads of paper. Could be the same one, I guess. Well, I'll bring, I mean, I could bring four clipboards so each person has two clipboards. I think just leave them on the table. Those just stay on the table. Two isn't. Okay, all right, sure. I don't think they're gonna be, I don't think there'll be a line. You never know. It'd be nice if there were, but we'll take it as a, if there is, we'll use it as a lesson for next time. All right, so we got the block party tabling down. Anything else for the block party? Other ideas? All right, so I actually have to be there at five to drop stuff off, I guess. So I might show up at five and then disappear again until seven or something like that. I'll probably do that. Go home eat dinner, come back. All right, so let me make a note here. If there's nothing else on the block party, this next discussion I'm really looking forward to, but Laura's not here this week. This exploring this community grant for, or grant for community networked geothermal. You know, in a sense, this committee needs a next thing to work on, right? And it might be nice to find something that we make happen or we help make happen in the next year that doesn't, you know, put more of a burden on Stephanie in the understaffed town. If there's some way we can figure out to get folks involved. Laurie, when the heat pump program launches, there's going to be plenty of opportunity for you all to help with that because there's going to really need to be getting the word out in a really concerted effort. I'm thinking about the Solarize program and, you know, the Solarize program, you know, the state had created a whole process and, you know, it was sort of easy for communities to sign on and they just kind of encouraged you to like create a committee that's specifically going to do the outreach for this. And so there was like a solar team. So essentially you all kind of, in some ways, replace the solar team for the heat pump program. You all would be kind of the ones I'd look to to help get the word out because you're the ones who really know a lot about it. Which might mean tabling sometimes and some other ideas that you all come up with. Okay, cool. Well, it's still a discussion I would very much like to hear, but not this week because Laura's not here. So that would be great. So that's all the more reason that I, it's a little frustrating for everyone, right? Not knowing how long this seems to going to get held up because of the state of the towns roster. But hopefully this will happen eventually. All right, so let's just table that for now and we're up to staff updates. So go ahead, Stephanie. I'm sorry, there's, let's see. So because of some of the staffing changes, like I said, I haven't been able to move things like the heat pump program forward quite yet, but that's kind of like my next agenda item, my to-do item with the folks in the accounting department and procurement and see if I can actually release that. So what happens is once that gets released, usually we post things for a couple of weeks and then we'll look to see what we get for response. I anticipate that CET will definitely put their hat in the ring because they're the ones that I did the initial outreach with to sort of develop the RFP. And they've been asking me very regularly when the RFP is getting released. So I imagine that they will put their hat in the ring for that. But I don't, I'm assuming that there will be others as well that will certainly make the RFP available to, I would say probably most of the folks on the states list because typically what we do is we look at the states list because we can sort of move along faster if we go that route rather than having to just advertise and sort of wait to get responses that way. So I would say that's probably all said and done like by the time we actually like get the word out, get responses and then conduct some interviews, you know, that could take at least a couple of months, two months maybe, if not three. So, you know, we'll try to move it along as quickly as we can. And I would think that when we get to the point where we're reviewing the responses to the RFP, we would want, I always ask for one of you to be part of that. So Laurie, given that you're the one who's helped develop the RFP with me and have been kind of leading this charge, I would maybe look to you. I'd love to look at that. So, other than that, I don't really, I mean, the solar, you know, Duane's reported on the solar bylaw that's, you know, winding down. And so that should be available at least a draft, a final draft, if you will. October 6th, it may still need some additional work. So it may not get to the council right away or to the time manager right away. But I think that's for the solar bylaw committee to be determining, excuse me, where they get to with that. Bikeshare is still, you know, we're, you're still having meetings. We haven't had a meeting in a while because of summer vacations. People weren't really available. So hopefully we'll be resuming our next meeting next Wednesday. So I should have more of an update at the next meeting after that about where we're at and what our next steps are. Those are kind of some of the bigger things that the community choice aggregation, again, kind of on hold for a little bit because we were waiting on one of the communities to provide information to the consultant that was needed for the application. And they didn't get that until this week. But they did finally get it in. They did finally get it in. So, but that just kind of, you know, we've had to wait for that. So I think we're gonna have a meeting a week from Friday, not this Friday, obviously, but the following Friday. I think we're gonna try to gather as a committee, but I don't know that we have anything quite yet from the consultant. I'll just have to find out where they are with the application in terms of its submittal. But again, you know, I anticipate that even with some of the changes in the regulations and legislation for moving review of the applications along, it's still probably gonna take a bit. I don't anticipate it's gonna happen all that quickly. So I think we're looking at at least probably a year because I think they're still backlogged. So that would be my guess. I mean, a year once it's submitted or a year to submit? Oh, a year once it's submitted for the DPU to review it because they had- When do you think it's gonna get submitted? So that's what I was kind of saying. We were waiting for this last bit of information from one of the communities. And now that we have it, I'll get an update on the application. Hopefully, I hope certainly by the meeting a week from Friday, but if not all I'm gonna ask sooner. I've already asked what needs to happen on our end. I haven't heard back anything. They're usually pretty good about getting back, but once we got that information, they didn't respond to me yet about what else they need. So I think they're just trying to pull it all together. It's a lot of information. It's kind of mind numbing because it's not, I mean, it's a lot of information when it's one community, but they're collecting information from three communities. So it's a lot. And that's it. Okay. CAC member updates. Anyone? I have one if no one else does. It were Stephanie and Anna and I met to review the FAQ for about the specialized code. And Anna will submit that at the end of the week to the CRC. And that meeting is September 21st. So I think that is a good, is that the same day as the block party? Yes. Well, that's interesting. Hold on a second. What time is that meeting? Yeah, I think it conflicts, Jesse. I saw that too. And I was gonna actually reach out to ask about that. Okay. So Jesse, right now you're not for six, but if you can't make it, I guess Dwayne will put you in. How about Dwayne, how about we move you to six o'clock with a little overlap on either side? Okay, so Jesse can't make it. Yeah, I can for sure be there at Jackson and relieve, I guess, Steve at that point or compliment Jesse if he's there. So, yeah. Okay. Yeah, the CRC means at 430 and I'm not sure what else they have on the agenda. Okay, well, if they really do meet you are excused from the block party, Jesse. Yeah. All right, I'll get a note from Mandy Jo and get it notarized for you. Notary, it's okay. Just bring it to me. Okay. CRC ought to meet on a stage right there at the block party. How about- Well, we could live stream it. We could live stream it at the ECA seat table. That'd be fun. It's entertaining. No, not. Did you see the, there was a wonderful email that went out from Lisa Cunningham. I meant to send this to you that had, let me just find it. Sorry, wrong keyboard. That went out to, from zero carbon mass, right? That had a list of all the resources for people trying to, there was apparently some, did you see the presentation that they did on passing the code, on specialized code? They did a, let's see if I can find it. I'm pretty sure it was from Lisa. Yeah, there was a specialized code workshop last Thursday. And- Oh yeah. Right? I didn't do it, see it. Did you? Okay, was it good? I didn't, I couldn't go either. But there was a summary email that went out that is rather long. I can forward it to Stephanie, maybe just forward it to everybody. But the thing that I noticed in it, number, point number three in it was, it's four, remember guys, it's four points. And it was like a single sort document with the four important things to remember about this code that answers most of the questions that were on your question sheet. For example, the first one is no additional requirements for additions, alterations or renovations with a little bit of a star, I don't know what the star is from the, I know it's just referencing this, the different codes that are already in place. No additional requirements for all electric new construction except number four, which is multifamily housing, greater than 12,000 square feet. You know, it's just, it's quick little points of these are the things that are different from what we currently have. These are the things that are, right? And I thought that was particularly useful, little one page summary of the code. So let me, let me send that to you, Stephanie. And if you would just forward that to everybody, remember, don't reply. You're allowed to cease. Yeah, you can see. Yeah, that would be great. That would be helpful, a little prep before. Yeah, see in particular number three. So item three in the big long list is the four points. And there are PowerPoint slides that you can use there. You know, there's like all sorts of stuff. They sort of summarized it and pulled all the information together into one place, right? So I thought that was particularly useful if extremely lengthy. So let me just go ahead and it's not even that lengthy on the scale of things. So I just sent it to Stephanie to forward to ECAC. All right, I hope that's useful. Anything else on any other updates? If not, I have a short one. So I was supposed to give the annual report to town council along with our goals or suggested goals for the town manager and found out on Friday that we weren't on the agenda after all. So that got put off. I can't do it next week because I have an important meeting with a lawyer regarding my mom's situation in the evening, believe it or not, on Monday. And then the following Monday is Yom Kippur. And so this puts it off almost a month to October 2nd, three weeks. So I will give that report on October 2nd now. That's that. Is that, you can do that yourself, Lori, or do you want some support company from other members? I don't know that it's necessary anyone else be there. I did put together notes that Stephanie marked up and that I was gonna edit again that I can send to ECAC for next time if you wanna see it. If you, I think it would be nice. There were some, let's see, Stephanie's gonna be there. If you are there, it wouldn't hurt because if there's a question that's more up your alley, I can deflect, see, ask. The person who knows all about this is right there. But if not, then it's okay. It's just gonna be a fight. We only have 10 minutes on the agenda, five to summarize the report and five for town manager goals. And I'm actually gonna skew it a little because I can't talk about the town manager goals without talking about the report. And the things that I think are important, right? So I'm probably gonna spend more like seven or eight minutes on the report and two or three minutes on suggested town manager goals and I'll make the connection between what we just reported and this goal addresses that concern, this goal addresses that concern, right? If folks want, I wouldn't mind since we now have time, putting it in the, I can put my draft notes, sort of the distilled version of the annual report down to one page in the next ECAC meeting packet. And if you folks, if people wanna comment on it, I wasn't gonna read it, but I do find it useful when I'm trying to put together a presentation to pretty much write out what I'm gonna say. And then hopefully I don't end up reading it. Yeah. So Laurie, we'll put that as an agenda item and- Sure, that's- With the goal that people bring comments to the meeting, you can put it on the screen and people can comment. Right, so I have to remember to send that, yes. I've got a note as an agenda item, so I would ask you. For the thing, right? Okay. And Laurie, did you have a time, do you know the time slot on October 2nd when you would be coming up? I think until they have an agenda, I have no idea, but my suspicion is it'll not be at the beginning of the meeting. Right, and those are like six hour long meetings sometimes. Yeah, and even if it's a time that is not likely to be right on time. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. You can, yeah, you can kind of figure it out. It's kind of an impressive actually. I was able to watch a meeting from home and see where they were in the agenda and then leave, go and get there early for the part that I was at and then go home and watch the rest of it. So these are in-person meetings or you just wanted to be there in-person? They are, the town council is there in-person and it is my opinion that being there in-person is a nicer way to communicate with them. It's a little bit like that scene in the beginning of Superman where they're being judged, they're sort of around you and you're at the table in the middle, but it's kind of fun, Senator, that kind of thing. Oh, great. Maybe I will read. Here's a conflict of what I'm going to say. No need for me to say anything at all. No. All right, I'll plan on being there in-person then. I hadn't initially planned on that, but I think you're right. I think their meetings may be hybrid, though everyone is not there. They're hybrid. They are hybrid, for sure. So you're not required to be there. I'm just letting, you know, that's in the realm of all the things that are possible, you can certainly be there live but you don't have to be and they are hybrid because some of the council members are not in the room. Right, okay. All right, I'll think about it. I'll see what I'm talking about. I would actually, you might also reach out to Anna because she's our, I think she's our liaison. Right. No, no, Alicia Walker is our liaison. Anna is no longer our liaison. Got it, sorry. That's okay. She is copied on these meeting notices and everything she's on our list. Yeah. Okay. So where are the notes? I lost the agenda again. Where are we on the agenda guys? I, for some reason it disappeared. We're done. We're done. Items for next meeting. Oh, we have, we have items for next meeting. We also have, there's no attendees. So I guess we don't have to open the floor for questions. So items for the next meeting then are Laura's discussion. What didn't we discuss? There'll be, does the annual report? Well, you have your updates as always. Updates as always. And I know that everybody's pressured for time, but it would sure be nice to have a couple of new members so we can plan a, some sort of a, you know, so we can plan the next year, sort of figure out what direction or directions we're going to go in, waiting of course for the heat pump program to start. I mean, I think you're right. I think after that gets going, we'll probably have a lot more on our plate. But I feel like we have, there are things we, there's always more we could be doing, right? So what should we be doing and what, how do we organize ourselves? Well, you know, I still have some time just to think about that. But any idea when new members will be coming, Stephanie? No, I mean, you've done the encouraging as I suggested. It's like I said, it's just, you know, some of, we lost our communications manager, director, we lost our finance director. And those are two positions that probably worked most closely with the town manager other than the assistant town manager and, you know, other departments. But those two were in pretty much constant contact with the town manager. So I think there's kind of a big hole that is, you know, we're scrambling to fill. And even the situation with the superintendent, I mean, even though that's the schools, the town manager and the superintendent of schools used to meet a lot. So, and there's a lot of things that happen at the schools that impact the town, obviously. So it's just a really, it's, I mean, I feel right now like my only comparison in all the years that I've been here to where we currently are is when John Musanti suddenly passed away. And there was suddenly this kind of gap of leadership. And it's not that Paul isn't, is a gap of leadership, it just that he doesn't have the sum of the support that he's relied on. So it's gonna, where things are gonna, it's gonna take a while for things right now. Because we've also got staff that are trying to fill those voids who haven't done that work or like I said, already have a full plate of work that they're doing and they're having to now add to what they're doing and learn some of these other things the other people were doing. So it's just gonna be, it's just, I think people need to adjust their expectations right now. Okay, all right. So I won't ask about that again. That's okay. All right, so just the usual, if anyone has any other agenda items, send them to Stephanie, send them to me, just we know what comes up and still no attendees in the audience. So I think we'll just, yeah, go ahead. I just, I had a question. If Dwayne had any updates from the solar bylaw working group that he'd like to share with us. I guess Stephanie sort of outlined procedurally where we're at and that we have a deadline October 6th for our deliverable. So we have a few more meetings left. We have a meeting agenda for this Friday to really hammer out in quick order some of the key issues that we've discussed but have to make decisions on. That'll be primarily the focus for and try to get through the gamut of those issues remaining on Friday. We are trying to reserve a final full meeting to then do a read through from sort of beginning to end of what we put together. We meeting Chris particularly in terms of the drafting but reflecting the group. And then there's another issue that we would probably seek to squeeze in between those two is a little bit separate from zoning which is sort of the permitting process and procedure for large scale that's all about large scale solar in different potentially in different zoning districts I think they're called in the town. So whether permitting would be through special permit or site plan review in different categories of zoning districts across the town. And so that's sort of where we stand on that and sort of the broad outline of what we're trying what were our plans for winding this thing down and wrapping it up. With the understanding that and the clear understanding that our deliverable is a draft recommendation. It's not the bylaw, it's not the town's bylaw. It's the recommendation from the committee and there may be interest in the committee members or the working group members to provide an annotation on the bylaw with regard to other opinions and thoughts on the matters that were discussed but not integrated into the bylaw. If we find that to be helpful to the council and to the town manager as they deliberate what we put together. And I have to say again, I'm wondering how many folks here have been going to the solar forum that Dwayne? This is different from the solar forum. I know, I know. But how many have gone to the solar forum? Because yeah, because I've been very impressed by how to the point. I mean, I love the first session it got right into forests and land use even from coming from the state, right? Everybody is concerned about land use. And last week, I had no idea that the forest land in Massachusetts was declining as much as it has over the last decade or so. And I had assumed that it was staying pretty steady or because I knew that in general, the trend in New England for a long time has been more forest. So it was actually a little, it was quite a, I learned a lot. And it was an interesting bunch of speakers. One thing I didn't learn is what is causing that forest conversion across Massachusetts? I mean, according to, I think it was John Rogan, it was like only 10% of that was solar. So it's 90%. And I think that's development, but. Big box stores. I thought he said, yeah. I thought he said development. It was being lost for development. He didn't say specifically, but. Yeah, I think he offered sort of a general answer development, housing and commercial development, but not, it'd be interesting to see a more specific study. What are those threats to forest? And further, how can we address those? Let's not put the onus entirely on solar as the threat to forest, but what are these other things and how can they be addressed? I did just want to double check Dwayne, the solar boiler working group is this Friday at 1130 to 130? Yes. Okay. And I assume there'll be an agenda posted on the town. It's already posted on the website. Oh, I didn't see it a minute ago. Oh, I posted on that. You have to look where meetings are posted, not in their webpage. The official postings are in the calendar. So if you go to the town's website, there's a calendar at the bottom. That's the official posting for all meetings. I always do that first, because that's the one that has to get posted. Because if that doesn't get posted, we can't have the meeting. Yeah, I'm looking at the solar boiler working group. Yeah, their page is actually, and sometimes I don't even get to it till like the day of, I'm always, it's always the website is the first place things get posted. Go to the calendar. Okay. Yeah, always go to the calendar. Yep. But the packet, other packet information would be in the bylaw folder. Yeah, that'll be in their meeting folder. And again, I, but again, I'm not even, I try to get to those sooner, but especially with this group in particular, solar bylaw working group, there's a lot of information that comes and I don't get it at the same time. So trying to even just figure out what needs to go in there is a little bit cumbersome sometimes. But it will get there. Okay. Yeah, it will be nice to see kind of what the latest draft is of the bylaw that the committee will be discussing. I'd love to see that. There'll be sections, but it won't be the complete draft yet. She was going to get that in, but didn't, and it may happen still. But as of right now, Chris didn't have it available to me today. So I did send the packet out to the committee members and I will get that. I'll do it now because actually you're ending early. So I'll have a little time. So I'll put that online. Their packet items as of right now. And if it gets added, it'll go in before the meeting, but I don't know that you'll have it yet. Okay. Thank you. Sure. And those are fun meetings for other members of ECAC. If you haven't attended and watched Solar Bylaw working group meeting, they are also very informative. You can always go back and watch them. Yes. Inform me about, you said fun. I'm not sure. For some maybe. Not for poor Dwayne. Yeah. He's doing a great job there. Dwayne, I think of running those meetings. Yeah. Thanks. I give Stephanie a lot of credit for coaching me and maintaining some order as well. It's, we have a great group here and we have a great group in the bylaw group, but it's a little bit different dynamics. All right. So with that, we have a move to adjourn. I will move to adjourn at 545 p.m. Second. All right. Well, in favor. Yay. All right. See you all in two weeks. Thanks everybody. All righty. Thanks. See at the block party. That's right. Party. See at the block party. And the CRC meeting. I'll send out the, what do you call it? Time the schedule. Okay. Add it again. All right. Bye. Thanks everybody.