uh thank you all for joining today as I mentioned my name is sa vasus I'm the Berto review board manager I will be leading us in a vote for acting chair does anyone on the Berto review board want to make a nomination for acting chair today nominate Steve Ellis awesome thank
you board member Nelson is there a second second second great thank you uh I want now vote how do you vote uh for the motion to nominate board member Ellis to serve as acting chair uh board member vote right we usually say either
in favor or opposed in favor uh for or counselor Keta safata hi everyone was that in favor in favor thank you yep thank you uh board member Ellis in favor board
member far in favor board member Ferris in favor board member Nelson in favor and board member Cil I don't even know uh this like I said I don't even know anybody so
uh seeing as everybody's unanimous I will go in favor this one time awesome thank you uh I will now hand the meeting over to act chair oh I'm so sorry board lore in favor thank you I will now hand the
meeting over to acting chair Ellis all right thank you uh good afternoon I am calling this public meeting to order at 4:36 p.m. in accordance with the building emissions reduction and disclosure ordinance regulations adopted pursuant to the building emission reduction and
disclosure ordinance Boston city code ordinances section 7- 2.2 the bordo BTO review board will hold a virtual public meeting at 4:30 on March 10th to review the following topics in regards to the reduction of greenhouse gases from
building energy production and consumption so as to promote the Public Health and Welfare of Boston residents in accordance with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts executive order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law we are conducting this public meeting online to ensure public access
to deliberations of the Berto review board the public May access this call through telephone and conferencing members of the public will have an opportunity to ask questions and provide public comment to do so please raise your hand or type in the chat in the
application via the zoom meeting platform if you are calling in and cannot use the platform you can raise your hand by pressing star9 or send your questions to staff via email at Berto reviewboard boston.gov for the record my
name is Steven Ellis and I am the acting chair of the board before we start the roll call I would first like to welcome three new board members to the review board so first welcome Jessica bwright Lorie Ferris and Reggie stoo thank you I
will now conduct a roll call of board members board members please say your name in the order that they appear on the slide Jessica Bo I will come back to the counselor uh Steven Oris Assan
farooqi Lori Ferris gaale ladimore Jack Nelson reg stov St and counselor are you still with us all right we'll check in with her again
momentarily staff will now introduce themselves hi everyone Hannah Payne director of carbon neutrality in the city of Boston's environment Department hi everyone Diana Vasquez the Berto review board manager in the environment Department hi ziki chin Berto review
board assistant in the environment Department thank you here is to the agenda for today's meeting meeting we are going to start with voting on nine building portfolios we have quite a few next we will have a discussion then vote on opening the uh Equitable emissions
investment fund for the 2025 application cycle after we will approve the meeting minutes from the January 13th meeting and then we will hear some administrative updates finally we will adjourn with a joury meeting starting off we will hear some
information about the building portfolio applications then discuss and vote on those applications given the number of applications on today's agenda I want to encourage board members to try to limit their questions to one question for the pathway one applications speaking of
pathway one applications I will turn it over to Diana and zigy thank you chair um since we have some few board member a new board members on the board I want to give an overview what building portfolios are and what pathway one requirements are so uh building portfolio are a flexibility
mechanism to allow owners multiple buildings um to comply with a single portfolio level emission standard so you have five buildings you can put them all together and bl uh depending on their building uses you have a blended emissions um standard and pathway one requirements um are include that all
buildings are individually subject to Berto and do not trigger environmental justice requirements and no hearing is required for this approval so that means that all their buildings are in EJ populations they have no chps um just very uniform throughout and then so the options for voting are you can approve
with standard conditions or the board can continue discussing the application before they feel comfortable voting on the motion and that could be at a um a next meeting or something like that so for the first application we have uh Codman Square n
DC okay well thank you for reminding us that uh zigy before we start with Codman Square and DC would any board member like to recuse themselves yes I will recuse myself as the executive director of cin Square n DC all right see you in a bit uh blore
thank you back to you Z great thank you so this application was submitted through pathway one includes 20 buildings in the neighborhood of Dorchester and the applicant meant all eligib eligibility criteria and application was deemed
complete uh these are the standard conditions that uh apply for a pathway one I'm just going to read them uh for our new board memb so timely compliance reporting and third party verification requirements uh requirements um sorry timely complements when uh the
submission of satisfactory emission standard compliance plan if that is applicable to the application and then the review board or need May inspect any building that's part of the approved building portfolio with reasonable notice uh just to assess the compliance with the terms and conditions of the building
portfolio and so the uh this is part one of the buildings list these are 10 buildings that they have uh the second part so 20 buildings in total and so the building Ed types was all multif family housing and since they
all have multif family housing their uh portfolio Mission standard is the same as multif family housing 4.1 for 2025 2.4 for 2030 1.8 for 2035 1.1 for 2040 and6 or 2045 and then of course Zero by
2050 and is a quick overview of common square n DC back to you chair thank you zy in the interest of time uh any representatives for this application are welcome to introduce themselves in the chat by introducing their name and the organization that they are with review
board members who would like to ask a question I'm going to ask that you please raise your hand or use your raise hand function in the zoom platform I will pause to see if there are any questions regarding Codman
squares uh pathway one building portfolio sorry I'm having trouble finding my hand that's all right uh board member vot right please go ahead um thank you and um appreciate the the
chance to ask a question I um have always really respected Codman Square a lot for your leadership in um in sustainability and in the area of carbon so this is less of a question about the Integrity of the application and just more of a
curiosity uh are there any specific um buildings that where you're anticipating a need for additional funding along a particular timeline in order to meet the the goals
that you've set out um in front of us today or are most of these buildings already scheduled for whatever upgrades you're going to need to make um thank you uh I can take that question uh so we do have two sites
where we've secured funding firstly from the Equitable funds from the city and the second one which is at talber Bernard homes we've secured funding from EP and the City of Boston for replacing the gas stoves and in introducing
induction stoves so we've secured additional funding through these grants uh but otherwise we are looking at overall upgrades when it comes to Energy Efficiency and also installing solar PV across our entire portfolio thank you thank you thank you
board member V right and thank you is it ready yes okay not a problem just want to make sure I'm capturing your name appropriately are there any other questions from the board so when we take in okay the application I just wanted to know one
simple question how who's going to make sure that all of these retrofits happen whose job is that thank you board member sto uh Ry are you able to take that question
yes and I will also invite Dominic my colleague to answer if required um so what we doing is that we are scheduling these upgrades as part of our development pipeline um so that will make us accountable to ensure that as we
line these up over the next four years we are in meeting the Border standards and the promises that we've made so in other words we have to take your word for it is that what you're saying we are making sure that we are including
the scope of work required in our Pipeline and we will report that as we keep doing these upgrades back to the city so the addition additional answer to that sir Dominic Butler when
residential the managing agent for uh Codman Square um every funer that we uh receive funds from as a uh you know not only a vetting process prior to the award of the funds but uh also an inspection and a certification process
after various ISD will have to sign off on many of these things uh depending upon where the the the funding source comes from they may require inspections and certification documents that the work has been completed and in many cases photos of the doc of the uh the
work that's been completed so there uh you know the concern that the money may not be uh spent wisely is I think uh uh not a major concern uh due to the amount of inspections and certifications and
then follow on audits that we also have uh where these questions would come up if I may also add good evening my name is marer Thor I Vice President of Operations at common square neighborhood Development Corporation in addition to
what the property management side had just said also on the real estate development side U some of these projects not properties not all of them but some of them will be going through what they call a refi rehab process and during that time we you know we try to
look holistically at at um R developing the buildings so there would be upgrades associated with meeting Berto requirements incorporated into our Redevelopment plans as well on some of these buildings
thank you Marcia Dominic and ready for those and thank you board member stoval again uh Hannah I see your hand up yeah if I may just jump in chair Alice um to the the question about how we hold
portfolios accountable um so just for clarification for any of the new board members um when a portfolio is approved um the all of the buildings that have to do their annual Berto reporting will have that portfolio logged in our system and the annual reporting for all of
those buildings within the portfolio will need to demonstrate every year that they're staying under their portfolio limit so all of the same enforcement mechanisms available to through Berto are um available so we will be the city will also be checking up every year to
make sure that the that Codman Square and any other building portfolios are staying under their portfolio limit as approved by the review board thank you thank you Hannah are there any other questions from our board members before
I ask if there's a motion is there a motion to approve Codman Square neighborhood development corporations application with standard conditions so moved is there a second
second on the motion to approve Pro Codman Square neighborhood Development Corporation application with standard condition how do you vote and the options are in favor oppose or abstained so how do you vote board member Bo right in
favor I don't believe okay I do see her back counselor in favor uh oh it may seem chair Ellis may have for we may have lost connection with chair Ellis let's just double
check oh he may be rejoining apologies everyone on second let's give him a minute um oh I think we have lost connection with chair Ellis
unfortunately um in that case let's give him one more minute to rejoin and then we can if we're still having trouble we can determine what to do but I think I think we should have a chair in the meeting so agreed uh bear with us thanks for
your patience apologies everyone e Dian any word from him okay I just said board member Ellis a quick text so we I'm going give him a chance to reply and see if he can read join same he experienced uh a power
glitch is what he's saying um I think he's planning on rejoining but I wonder Han if we should have a if we want to wait for him or should we have like an interim chair um I think can you try to confirm with
him if his power is back or um because I think if it's going to be a while let's let's vote for a new interim chair but if he's joining in like the next minute or so sounds good sorry everyone apologies
for this transparent facilitation happening uh confirming with Stephen now virtual meetings are a lot easier in many ways and then also you know deal with strange glitches like this where you don't have someone just disappear
from an in-person meeting Diana I'm wondering if we want to just vote for an interim chair if you haven't heard from him yes okay that makes sense uh oh he I have like the three little dots
so um yes he said you're seeing this in real time yes sorry he said go ahead and and vote for an interim chair um so uh some transparent facilitation in the past I know board member farooqi has
chaired as well um so just transparent board member fi would you be willing to serve as acting chair yes I'm happy to do so okay uh could I have a motion from one of the board members to thank you um is there a
second thank you um for those all board members in favor can you either raise your hand or say I I hi awesome thank you all for the quick uh pivot I will now hand the
meeting over um to acting chair Fuki thank you so much Diana so uh we can pick up on the vote uh on Codman Square's application um so I'll just redo the motion so on the motion to approve Codman Square neighborhood development
corporation's application with standard conditions um how do you move how do you vote uh board member vot right in favor uh councelor Keta zap in
favor uh I vote in favor uh board member Ferris in favor board member Nelson in favor and board member stovell in favor excellent all right with that sorry sorry chair I think oh just
kidding bman lad has recused yourself never mind ignore me no you're all good you're all good um so with that the motion passes the eyes have it and Codman Square ndc's building portfolio has been approved and per the regulation the environment department will send a copy of the written decision letter
within seven days so thank you so much thank you thank you so much everyone um next on our agenda is the application for um the children's hospital and so I will pass it back to
the environment Department to introduce the application thank you chairman Fuki um so the next one is the children hospital so this was also sub through pathway one and it is for five buildings in neighborhood of Longwood Medical area
the applicant meant all elig eligability criteria and application was deemed complete and these are the same standard conditions that apply for any building portfolio um so the building used types were Health Care storage and technology
and science and the way it was broken up for their calculate abundant emission standard uh four buildings had Healthcare as their primary building use and one building had at technology science and so their portfolio Mission standard is uh
15.9 uh 10 7.3 4.8 2.3 and then zero for 2050 and that is all for the Children's Hospital right thank you so much Ziggy uh once again any representatives of the application are welcome to introduce
themselves in the chat as I see some have already done um so thank you for that and um now we can turn it to our board if anyone wishes to ask a question of the applicant please raise your hand either virtually or in real life and we
can call on you okay I'll uh go ahead and ask the first question um to Brian I believe uh first of all uh first I also want to recognize that board member Latimore has rejoined the meeting um so welcome back board member Latimore um and on the
application um for Boston for the children's hospital I'll turn now to Brian um thank you for submitting this I'm curious if any of your buildings are powered by the medical area total energy plan or the matate plant and if so how many within this portfolio yes um I
believe all of them are excellent all right thank you and are there um any conversations that you've been a part of that you're able to share here around the decarbonization process for that plant or compliance for those buildings in light of
that uh yeah we're exploring all avenues currently um in discussions with the plant they're also uh I think in the very early stages of doing their own um investigation so we're kind of exploring all
ankles all right thank you um any other questions from any of the other board members I mean what's what's the size of the what what what's the scope of work that you plan to to get to that
compliancy for the first for the first block of years uh well we've entered into a virtual power purchase agreement that offsets 100% of our electricity uh so that uh depending on a lot of the negotiations we're still
still doing between the city and matep plant um gets us through at least the first five or 10 years uh maybe even further so are you going to do any retro fits to the buildings yes we're
exploring all avenues so you don't have definitive answer for me okay as far as our path to fully carbon zero yes uh like I said we're still in the very early stages of Investigation so we're
still exploring many different Avenues um technolog is changing basically on a daily basis so you know things that might have worked last year now they're already more efficient this year and will'll be more efficient next year
so every day we get closer and closer are there any other challenges that you envision with reaching Net Zero for this portfolio uh well one of our former directors used to say that operating a hospital is like flying of Boeing
777 uh and keeping it in the air 247 365 while also being able to try and do all of these upgrades and things um so it's definitely a challenge um just the you know 247 operations to be able to do upgrades on a lot of this stuff uh um we
have a lot of redundant equipment n plus1 n plus2 so that we can do maintenance and repairs on say one air handler while another one picks up the slack um or runs in in tandem or in its place I'd say that's probably the biggest challenge
um space space is also um at a premium especially in our little corner of the uh City great okay thank you so much for those um are there any further questions from any of the board members so I just want to ask one more
question and then I'm pretty much done so you're going to purchase power from a Greener plant is that what I'm understanding you said uh no we've entered into a virtual power purchase agreement um with many institutions across the city um Mass
General bringham Harvard MIT over in Cambridge believe the city of Cambridge Boston Convention Center um just to name a few of them um so the way that that works is that they are building um solar and wind
projects out in the Midwest and as part of that project uh we receive the renewable energy credits the Rex from the production I just asked you I asked you if you're purchasing it that way and you just said no okay I'm
good excellent um all right any further questions from [Music] anyone okay um if not and I'm seeing none um is there a motion to approve the
Children's Hospital application standard conditions motion to approve is there a second second excellent all right uh on the motion to approve the Children's Hospital application with standard
conditions how do you vote in favor opposed or abstained board member vote right in favor councelor Keta zata in favor uh board member Ellis I don't believe
has rejoined so I'm here in favor oh you're here oh board member Ellis all right how do you vote in favor all right thank you I vote in favor uh board member Ferris in favor board member
Latimore in favor board member Nelson in favor and board member stel I'm opposed to it all right thank you you so much uh everyone and with that the eyes have it the motion passes and
the Children's Hospital building portfolio has been approved further regulations the environment department will send a copy of the written decision letter within seven days and Brian thank you for being here on behalf yes thank you for your time
you all right our next application is the Stony Brook condo trust I'll turn it back to you Ziggy thank you chairman Fuki um all right Stony Brook condo trust it was submitted as well through pathway one with two buildings in the
neighborhood of West Roxbury the applicant meant all eligibility criteria and the application was deemed complete same standard conditions as other applications um this the building uses were all multif family housing so the portfolio emission standard was the same
as the default emission standard for multif family healing thank thank you excellent thank you Ziggy um any representatives of the application uh should introduce themselves in the chat
now and uh any board members who wish to ask questions please feel free to raise a hand physically or virtually we'll call on you all right board member Ellis yes thank you board member or chair faroo even and I apologies for that uh uh but
directly to Stony book I I'm just wondering you know there's only two properties of the exact same type um in this application and I'm just wondering if someone can clarify like how will this benefit you all because it doesn't seem to be changing the existing
structure of how you're reporting and uh and I'm not really sure how this flexibility measure is going to be helping you yeah hi uh this is Dan Carlton from Carlton energy Consulting we're the Berto service provider for this uh for
Stony Brook apologies I'm I'm uh mobile right now so I couldn't use the raise hand function of the chat to introduce myself uh but basically one of the buildings is uh exceeds its emissions limit pretty substantially and the other
building is below its limit so this uh port folio application is actually just a uh a starting point for getting the two buildings together below its emissions I mean we are pursuing uh some energy conservation measures there
mainly a a boiler control upgrade we think well the the root of this building being above its emissions limit is the the gas consumption of 4925 Washington and uh we think it's because uh of an outdated boiler control and so
so this building is actually going to be undergoing a boiler control upgrade in the next couple of weeks uh to install a system that takes into account apartment temperatures uh when calculating heat load just to make sure that you you're keeping the tenants comfortable but you're not the building isn't consuming
any more gas than uh what is necessary so we think that between this portfolio application and uh the upgrades we're pursuing there that we we should be able to get uh this these two buildings below their emissions limit thank you Daniel that's
helpful is that the only thing that you're changing or are you upgrading windows we are uh looking to encouraging as many of the units to switch to bcce Boston Community Choice electric uh as possible but we we're going to we
should have an idea of how much the building is saving uh on gas in in the May time frame I think we get it in within the next week or so there should be a a pretty noticeable savings for March and April and then by
that time we'll know we should have a much better idea whether this measure alone can get its below its uh can get the buildings uh below their limit regardless we're going to be trying to convert as many units to Boston Community Choice electric as possible but then anything after that we'll we'll
we'll make that determination when we see uh just how much 4925 Washington is saving on gas okay uh from as a result of the boiler control upgrade great board member Ferris thank you um in addition to I
guess a timeline for new controls to respond to the boiler issue is there a timeline for switching over the gas equipment to electric equipment that would probably uh come starting in the next cycle uh we we
right now the priority is is getting the building's emission uh emissions below its limit for the current cycle but yeah we we are looking at Future cycles and it it seems uh it's apparent that the only real realistic way they're going to be able to do that is just full-on
electrification of the heating system so uh We've started that conversation no concrete plans just yet but uh we think to get to Net Zero it's going to require um electrification of the heating system so that's um something where we will
continue to pursue uh with the board thank you board member lore thank you yeah I was pleased to hear um the pursuit of the Boston Community Choice electric and just
wondered about the number if there are any um affordable units in in the development meaning subsidize or or otherwise I don't know that but I'd be happy to uh get back to you on
that thank you on that note um do you know more about the uh breakdown between rental units versus owner occupied units within the portfolio I don't uh they're mostly owner occupied uh but again I I take it
uh is would Ziggy be the best point of contact where I can uh get back to the answers to these questions so far it's you know the number of rent regulated and the proportion of owner occupied versus rental uh sure if you'd like to send any
sorry di here for for Rie manager uh I can put an email in the chat for any followup you would you know you would like to do uh it's Berto review board boston.gov multiple folks on the environment Department received any
emails sent to that email okay yeah I should be able to get answers to those questions pretty quickly ex thank you um beyond the challenges that you've articulated are there any other challenges you fore to
that zero compliance well I guess it it'll probably be financing uh for the conversion to an electric uh a full-on electric heating system um and it would be for both buildings as well um not to say it's not
insurmountable I think we can get there but that that's off the top of my head I think that the uh the largest the most significant challenge will be to finance the conversion uh to an electrical heating system for both buildings sounds good and you all are
looking into Mass Save and how that can help with this we are but I I think um at least you for the for the current cycle we think that a boiler control upgrade and Boston Community Choice electric uh should be able to get the
building below its emissions for the current cycle but not I I those two probably will not be enough for for future cycle so we will be exploring uh all options available for the future Cycles is said right now the the
priority is getting below its emissions for the current cycle sure of course yeah thanks um any further questions from any of the board members no okay um seeing none is there a motion
on this application motion to approve second all right uh on the motion to approve the uh Stony Brook condo Trust TR S Building portfolio application with
standard conditions um how do you vote in favor opposed or abstained board member Boatright in favor councelor Keta Zapata in favor board member Ellis in
favor I vote in favor board member Ferris in favor board member ladimore in favor board member Nelson in favor board member Stell in favor all right
great you guys have it motion passes and the Stony Brook Condo trust's building portfolio has been approved in further regulations the environment department will send a copy of the written decision letter within seven days thank you so much and thank you Dan for being here with us thank you all
you all right our next uh portfolio application is for the NB Development Group Siggy back to you thank you chairman faruki um also submitt this uh M Development Group was also submitted through pathway one and it's for seven
buildings in neighborhoods of uh Brian and Alon the applicant meant all eligibility criteria and the application was deemed complete and the same standard conditions that apply to um other building portfolios so they have um building you
s of assembly office storage retail and technology and science and on the next slide I'll show you the breakdown per um per building with a primary use type and again seven buildings so this is their Blended emission standard they had two buildings with assembly two buildings
with office one building with storage and then two buildings with technology and science so in total their Blended emission standard was 9.6 for 2025 5.5 for 2030 3.9 for 2035 2.5 for 2040 1.2
for 2045 and then zero for 2050 thank you right thank you ziki um any representatives of the application uh should introduce themselves in the chat at this time and if we have any
questions from our board please raise your hand virtually or physically board member stel yes how do they propose to get to their numbers for the first uh blck are they
here uh yes okay now I'm seeing yes uh EMT can we pass this over to you yeah absolutely um thanks for the question so um in terms of game plan to get to compliance um we have a highlevel plan at this point um it doesn't quite get
super specific um as we proceed into the later years of um adherence to the emission standards but um primarily we we'll be starting with tackling renewable energy Supply and then transitioning to um likely
electrification of our heating infrastructure which can then become dependent on our um electricity which will already be renewable at the time that conversion needs to take place okay great thank you port M
Ferris thanks uh since your portfol Olo represents quite a diverse uh type set of typologies I guess and the the Blended emissions is really a blend in this case I'm wondering if you can speak to how uh you know are you are you tackling the technology the higher
emitter buildings differently than some of the lower emissions typologies or do you have any kind of nuance to your approach based on what occupa occupancy type the buildings function with um thanks for the question I um
don't think our playing um quite gets um that specific at this point we're really kind of at that high level like I described earlier with just the um electricity first electrification
second plan um I at this time we don't really have a plan to tackle any um of those primary use types um first necessarily but we certainly be open to feedback um on kind of the dire we head
and what we choose to um tackle first especially when it comes to electrification thank you for M boat ride yeah it seems like I was just wondering if you could tell us a little
bit more about the portfolio itself and whether the um the standards that you're reporting are standards as of today or they're closer to stand ards you're trying to get to for 2029 [Music]
um they what what you're showing us is is a a really nice performance standard but in some complicated building so it' be helpful to know a little bit more about the age of the buildings um and and then that that other question about like is this where you actually are or
is this where you want to be in 2029 and therefore like per the time range you're you're sort of giving us a a Target it so for the the Blended emission standard we um
proposed um represents sort of the um describe it as a sorry go ahead Diana yeah sorry I was I can I can chime in a little bit on the Blended admission standard um so the Blended emission
standard comes from the Berto regulations and so it's proportionate to I don't know if this answers your question B remember B right but feel free to clarifi let me clarify if it doesn't um it's proportionate to the building use type to the gross floor
area of the building portfolio uh and so it sort of you know takes into account the different building uses proportionate to the gross floor area of the buildings in the building portfolio and so we we sort of have a template that folks who apply for
building portfolios uh use and that's how their Blended emmission standard is calculated do that answer the question yeah I guess I I still have the question of like it would be helpful to know a little bit more about the character and age of the buildings
because it you know it like the what what you've submitted here looks like pretty like pretty smooth sailing um but I know that the day-to-day probably isn't like that given in the diversity of your portfolio so just a little more detail on that would be
helpful yeah thanks Jessica I might pass that question to Keith if you're able to take that I know we have a pretty diverse portfolio so he might be able to provide um some more context to the age and um use like you're mentioning hi everybody Keith Craig with
NB Development Group um would you be able to pull the slide up that has the list of the properties yeah so um all of the buildings so 40 Guest Street 6791 Guest Street and 80 Guest Street those are all um you know makes up Bost and Landing those are new
buildings uh 40 Guest Street was um completed in 2018 67 to 91 um completed in 2022 80 Guest Street completed in um 2017 I believe um and then the uh other
buildings on the U on the left side uh 145 Newton 223 38 and 65 those are you know um uh much older buildings um kind of uh brick beam buildings um you know from uh you know
many Deca decades old and also much smaller buildings um uh for for example um uh 65 North Beacon is you know is a a on story you know approximately I think maybe 13,000
square foot building um whereas The Guest Street buildings are you know these these large mixed use uh complex new buildings thank you thank you any other questions from the board when you say mixed use are you
like talking offices and storage areas and such or storefronts or uh so mixed use meaning um you know for example the 67 to 91 Guest Street Building is uh you know 450,000 square
feet five stories uh a mix of um Sports uses retail music parking um uh uh you know storage um small uh um manufacturing lab
um so you know extremely diverse and unique buildings um character characteristic of Boston Landing okay thank you great all right uh not seeing any their hands up so at this time is there
a motion to approve the application of NB Development Group with standard conditions motion to approve any seconds second great thank you um on the motion
to approve NB development groups application with standard conditions how do you vote board member vote right in favor councelor Keta Zapata in favor board member Ellis in
favor I vote in favor board member Ferris in favor board member Latimore in favor board member Nelson in favor board member stovell in favor all right thank you the
eyes have it the motion passes and NB development groups building portfolio has been approved in further regulations the environment department will send a copy of the written decision letter within seven days thank you to our applicants for being here as well thank you for your time and
consideration of course um our next application is on Urban Edge housing Corporation I'll pass it back to Ziggy for more comments thank you chairman fi yeah Urban Edge housing uh corporations so this is submitted as
well through pathway 1 and for 26 buildings in the neighborhood of Jamaica plane the applicant met all eligibility criteria and the application was deemed complete and has the same standard conditions as previous applications so this is part one of
their building portfolio list it shows 13 of the 26 buildings and then this is part two that has the second half and for their use types is multif family housing assembly and education uh
25 five of the buildings had multif family housing as their primary use type and one had um one building had education uh but their portfolio Mission standard was um very similar and pretty much the same as the default for multif family
housing thank you all right thank you so much I see Ry has introduced herself on behalf of the application and uh if there are any board members who have questions please feel free to raise your hand and um if
we have you know if you have one question that'd be ideal in the interest of time we can also continue applications to Future meetings or call for a hearing on some of the applications if that's what needs to happen but um floor is open two questions sorry chair just oh sorry just
quick one click clarification so we we the board cannot request a hearing for pathway one application so just wanted to clarify uh but for pathway two and three yes yes thank you for clarifying that um so this is pathway one for everyone's context and that's this is an
application we cannot call a hearing for um and I think I heard B stel you were starting to ask a question yeah I just wanted to know how how we gonna get there how are they goingon to get there that's all if they have somebody to explain what they're going to do that's yes um
so again these are all affordable housing development and what we are doing right now is that we are undertaking renovation and energy upgrades so for a few of the buildings that we've identified is like egstone Crossing we've submitted a lean application for boiler replacement uh
for wmin court we' also applied for lean funding and this is going to be boiler replacement as well as energy upgrades which is going to focus on um LED lighting on uh air tightening for the entire building Envelope as well as installation of Wi-Fi thermostats and a
similar um approach for Wardman building as well as well as Howard so we are leveraging the lean application wherever possible to go for boiler Replacements and Energy Efficiency upgrades thank you board member
lore thank you um I wonder if uh any of the of your Energy Efficiency work is reliant on any of the federal tax credits or federal um Energy Efficiency funding Ira funding just curious
uh the ones that we identified right now they don't rely on EPA funding or IRA funding this is all relying on lean funding from the state thank you I'll ask a question here uh what other challenges do you anticipate with the Net Zero compliance for this
portfolio uh I think as the identified correctly if we are going to be relying on federal funding in the future we might face problems uh but for now we don't see that and also the cost of energy upgrades that might create uh certain
issues in the future so we might require additional funding from the city got it okay great thank you for showing that um any other questions from any of the board members okay seeing none is there a motion to
approve the portfolio application with for uh Urban Edge housing Corporation with standard conditions so mooved is there a second second second all right thank you on the motion to approve Urban Edge housing
corporation's application with standard conditions how do you vote board member Boatright in favor councelor Keta Zapata in favor board member Ellis in favor I vote in favor board member
Ferris in favor board member Latimore in favor board member Nelson favor and board memb stovel in favor great you guys have it the motion passes an urban Edge housing corporations building portfolio has been
approved in further regulations the environment department will send a copy of the written decision letter within 7 days thank you thank you Ry once again for being here thank you all right our next portfolio application is for win companies Ziggy I will turn it back to
you uh chair I will actually re review this uh to give Ziggy a little break from from the applications so I will summarize when companies building portfolio application similarly to the previous application this one was submitted through pathway 1 it includes seven
buildings in the neighborhood of Dorchester Brighton Mission Hill East Boston and the South End uh I believe R also represents wind companies so perfect perfect sequence um and then the applicant did meet all eligibility criteria and the application was deemed
complete uh and then similarly these standard conditions would apply should the review board uh vote in favor so this is part one of when company's uh building list so nine buildings here
and then 17 buildings here so part two so Berto ID and address so it's mostly multifam housing with a little bit of office so again the standard or the default standard for multif family is 4.1 one building uh had
a primary use of office and so their Blended emission standard uh very closely reflects or matches the standards for multif family housing because both buildings are mul family housing in this building portfolio and I'll will hand it back to you chair fruki great thank you so much
Diana and since the applicant has already introduced themselves uh we can open the floor to the board for any questions um I could start out uh Ry how do you and the applicant more broadly plan to sequence retrofits across
properties um especially given that you have properties in a number of different neighborhoods for this uh yes uh so again the owner has already planned to Energy Efficiency upgrad and renovation and currently we have
renovation going on at at least four properties where we are leveraging the lean funding and also we are aiming to get lead certification energy star certification wherever possible when we undertake a renovation so this will be part of the overall development pipeline over the
next four years okay got it but in terms of future developments beyond the ones already in progress do you have a methodology for how you're picking which ones go first um I will let Dominic answer
that good yes Dominic go ahead hi good afternoon everyone um so we don't have a a specific methodology it's a property by property approach I would I would say that you know obviously uh you know new construction is not something we're
considering it not applicable here uh it depends on the size and the scale of the property we do incorporate on all of our deals a uh a large degree of Energy Efficiency uh projects so I I I would uh
state that it's it's um it's inherent in in what we're doing in everything we're doing but I can't speak to a specific methodology per property uh you know we could talk about specific properties if you had one in
mind excellent all right thank you for the context yeah I think briefly I I don't have any particular property in mind but really am trying to understand if there's a you know how we're sequencing them across different neighborhoods given the existing air pollution that might already happen in in those neighborhoods from other
circumstances so um if you have any other contexts on that feel free to share uh if not we can turn it over to the next one yeah I'm sorry I don't have any more I can add at this time that's okay all right thank you for the responses uh I'll turn now to board
member Boatright yeah similar to the um to the question to the last applicant could you just let us know if there are any federal funds or other fun awarded public funds that that you're going to be relying on achieve your
goals um so so far in the list of the buildings that we've submitted for one of them which is Castle Square we were looking to secure EPA funding uh but that's going to depend now on the applications AR opening up next year uh in the coming year um so that is the
only one that was relying on EPA funding for now otherwise we are aiming at lean at Mass Save program and those are the two main sources that we are utilizing right now thanks board member
lore thank you uh just curious for those residential um properties which most of them are particularly the uh where the tenants pay their own electricity um uh are the I guess what do you have a sense
of the percentage and and how um and how and if uh when is working with the tenants to uh if they pay their own electricity to encourage uh them to um you know look at Boston Community Choice I know that some of them are subsidized
housing so lean is a a great source but I assume some of them may not be but maybe I'm wrong so anyway just curious about you know percentage of uh the residential units that where the tenants pay um their own electricity and if if
there's a you know marketing of the Boston Community Choice if if if that's applicable uh I am not aware of the percentage of the tenants paying their own bills but I can get back on that um and um Dominic do you want to respond to the other
question around the promotion of the Boston Choice electric program uh to the extent that we are doing projects that are applicable we have uh you know a large uh resident services component headed by Trevor
samio and they do Outreach on all of the these uh these uh programs and uh uh opportunities available to uh assist them in this process as we go forward with the uh the renovations and the uh the
upgrades thank you Dominic great thank you uh any further questions from the board okay um I just wanted to ask as well building off of board member lore's question um can you speak to uh the breakdown between market rate and uh
subsidized units that are in your portfolio and I'm talking about residential units here um so I don't have the exact breakdown but I would say that majority of these are subsidized units and we have a very small component of market rate units between all the 17 sites that
we've submitted but I can give back the addition the exact number great thank you thank you uh is it the case that all of them are rental properties or are there any owner occupied units as well majority are rental
properties all right great thank you um all right seeing no other questions from the board um is there a motion to approve the portfolio for win companies with standard conditions so
moved there a second excellent on the motion to approve wind company's application with standard conditions how do you vote board member vot right in favor councelor Keta
Zapata in favor board member Ellis in favor I vote in favor board member Ferris in favor board member Latimore in favor board member
Nelson in favor board member stovel in favor great the eyes have it the motion passes and when company's building portfolio has been approved in further regulations the environment department will send a copy of the written decision letter within
seven days thank you once again to our applicants all right our next portfolio is for Madison Park Development Corporation I will turn it back to Diana from thank you chair Fuki so you'll see there's a little bit of a theme so we
have another affordable housing uh applicate so Madison Park Development Corporation next slide please so they also submitted via pathway 1 they are applying for 17 buildings in the neighborhoods of Roxberry and the Fenway area uh the applicant meets all the
eligibility criteria and the application was deemed complete by environment Department staff uh and then similarly these are the standard conditions that would apply this is part one of their list of buildings so their first nine
buildings and then the remaining eight buildings here so all of their buildings in their proposed portfolio are multif family housing so their Blended emission standard uh essentially reflects the multif family housing emmission standard
and I'll hand it back over to you uh chair faruki thank you so much Diana uh any representatives of the application should introduce themselves yeah uh good good afternoon everybody good evening rather almost
yeah um my name is Antonio Rodriguez I'm the senior asset manager at Madison Park I can answer any questions that you may have about our application excellent thank you Antonio and uh as usual we'll uh turn to our board members uh who can raise their
hands and we'll start with board member lore thank you uh the same question um to Antonio just wondered if there are any um any of your uh Energy Efficiency work is is ring on any federal funding yeah one one project in
particular um St B which is a the property on Massachusetts Avenue we were awarded a grp um but given the uncertainty of that funding we don't know if we're going to be able to utilize that to do any of the efficiencies uh or any of the work
related to the efficiency and the uh decarbonization thank you and any well I'll leave it at that I know we're trying to limit it to one question so I'll leave it at that for now good thanks we can Circle back to you if you uh once we've had other board
members uh any other questions from other board members are there any um what are you goingon to do what what's the biggest project you have on in mind to get compliant I'm I'm gonna ask I'm always goingon to ask that
question yeah yeah no worries I I appreciate I appreciate the question so the biggest one is the biggest one is the one that had was contingent on federal funding if if you will in terms of like the highest uh emissions uh per property uh but we have a few others that I'm
working on with uh both new ecology and power options to for development of decarbonization plans and energy audits so that we can strategize on the best uh route for us to take to get zero overtime does that answer your question
Reggie not really but okay um what so my my priorities are expense you're going to put out to the the um the Retro I mean what what are you doing for the retrofit so I mean standard work to some of our other cdcs I mean we're trying to
Electrify where we can um one property in particular could go full electrification um and then uh replacing appliances with energy star appliances uh taking out um you know low or
replacing previously lowf flow uh fixtures and toilets with newer more water conserving uh units solar panels were applicable I mean most of our portfolio has solar panels already um so there's not too much opportunity there
uh and then continuing to um make any adjustments to the Building Systems the building management systems uh where applicable where we have like centralized heating or cooling um where we can stand to do some upgrades in terms of the management uh
to try to save everyone a little bit of money there are mostly Section 8 or or um market rate or no they're all affordable they're all income income restricted um there's a few there's a few like you know the the percentage is
is uh minimal to how much we have in terms of like market rate um because it's just our mission to to primarily do affordable housing okay thank you you're welcome um one question I have
uh on the building for which you were supposed to receive federal funds and may or may not at this point uh can you speak to any contingency plan that you may have or maybe developing around that building yeah I mean the I guess the the less ideal
option would be to do a refinance um to try to support some of the work uh I mean preliminarily speaking some of the estimates that we had uh for the scope what wasn't going to be so it wasn't going to be such a large scope that we
couldn't support it through other means um so we may refinance or we may seek out uh a loan um and whatever programs are available to us and recommended in the decarbonization plans as as options or Avenues to try to secure that funding or fill in
gaps all right thank you for answering that um any further questions from any of the board members all right seeing none is there a motion to approve the application of the Madison Park Development Corporation with standard
conditions and motion so moved I'll second Reggie's motion thank you um on the application uh for Madison Park Development Corporation
with uh motion to approve Madison Park development corporation's application with standard conditions how do you vote board member Bel right in favor celor Keta Zapata in favor member Ellis in
favor I vote in favor board member Ferris in favor board member Latimore in favor board member Nelson in favor board member stovel in favor all right the I have it motion
passes and Madison Park development corporation's building portfolio has been approved further regulations the environment department will send a copy of the written decision letter within seven days thank you Tonio for being here all
right next we have uh our pathway 2 applications so I will turn it back to the environment Department I believe to Diana for more context yes thank you chair farooqi so
we have two Pathway to Applications tonight as well I'm G back one slide thank you um and so I just wanted to provide some context you know because we have new board members today um about
what pathway 2 necessarily means um so for path to the review board may vote to hold the hearing so the review board can what that what does that mean necessarily so the review board invites the applicant to prepare slides and come to a a future hearing and sort of
summarize on their application if there are questions that were asked um or you know that the board would like answered in a presentation you may vote to hold a hearing and have some of those questions asked um the applicant will then prepare their you know prepare that presentation
um and any sort of responses that the board asks for um and it because it's a hearing the board will accept public comments also so during hearings we give the chair usually opens a public comment period in which any member of the public can submit a comment um and so for today the
review board may vote to approve its standard conditions um approve with special conditions if you decide to have a hearing um and then you know or deny the application um and then just as a reminder what we mean by special conditions so these are conditions that
are relev sort of to the distribution of decarbonization benefits to environmental justice populations I know we recently Ziggy and I sent out what we're calling special condition guidelines um so also wanted to just quick reminder to review board members
if you haven't seen that yet we're hoping it's helpful to kind of um guide special conditions and if you have questions please feel free to reach out to zigy and I um but just a quick reminder on pathway 2 applications great and so our first Pathway to application uh comes from
Wentworth Institute of Technology so some background information why um Wentworth is submitting through pathway 2 uh they're submitting through pathway 2 because they have an on-site combined heat and power plant that uses non-renewable CO2
emitting fuels um and buildings oh that that is located in environmental justice population they're applying for 26 buildings in the neighborhoods of Fenway and Mission Hill and the applicant did meet all eligibility criteria and the application was deemed complete and just again here
are the standard conditions that would apply this is part one of their buildings list and part two of their buildings list so their Blended admissions is 10.1 but their building use types include colleges College universities of course
services and storage so they had a shipping and receiving building uh and a storage building that I am forgetting right now but I'm sure Eden and Mike may have more information on um so most of their most of their buildings have the College University emission
standard but one building had services and one building had storage and so their Blended is 10.1 5.2 3.8 2.5 and 1.2 uh and then as just a quick reminder for pathway 2 we ask applicants to submit these Maps um and so this is the
environmental justice map the little red pin is the combined heat and power plant and then the blue PL blue green pins are the remaining buildings um so this was the environmental justice map this is the asthma prevalence
map this is the urban heat island intensity map and then finally this is the respiratory Hazard index map and I will now hand it over to chair frie great thank you so much Diana I see
our applicants have already introduced themselves in the chats thank you for doing so and uh we'll now open the floor to questions from any of the board members and this is Pathway to so we can can ask as many questions as you want you know within reason uh board member
lore go ahead yes I have a number of questions but um for the sake of time I'll ask the one that you know I think is for me um a higher priority and that is um you know how how and if the surrounding Community
uh is engaged in Wentworth uh institutes institutional Master planning process and an understanding wentworth's climate resiliency strategies and do they have input into those uh that that's one question as I read your um EJ plan and I
didn't see a lot there um hi this is Debbie Shepard I'm the sustainability consultant I can take this one for the team if that works for everyone um so Gail I was actually the sustainability consultant for the institutional master plan so I can speak to that um the campus has a very strong
relationship with its neighbors and they you know Pride themselves and having lots of community engagement and a director of community engagement that has regular Communications um recognizing that it's really centered in an environmental justice Community um
the Wentworth taskforce was uh involved very much in the institutional Master planning process it was you know a long process that involved many meetings uh we actually invited them to the campus and had dinner with them one night to really just you know have the design team present everything and hear their
concerns and respond to it um so I would say that they are uh pretty well versed at least in the institutional m master plan and the overarching goals there um as it pertains to climate and resiliency we made a very concerted effort within the sustainability and resiliency
chapter to address the broader needs of the community um in terms of things like increasing Green Space increasing connectivity across the campus so that there's better access to um green spaces across you know over by uh the muddy
river and um the Southwest Corridor and kind of all those different places so that the campus becomes sort of more permeable to the broader Community um looking at increasing tree canopy um and then in terms of direct emissions if you look at the
institutional master plan there's a fair number of older less efficient buildings that are going to be torn down and replaced as those buildings are replaced they're subject to The Net Zero zoning requirements of the city so those are all going to be all electric Net Zero and that's that's really where we'll
have our biggest impact in terms of reducing um air pollution and then there's other initiatives that we have underway as well hopefully that helps to answer that uh somewhat so who who are the constituents in on the Wentworth
task force that you reference yeah um so there a lot of them are the direct neighbors I don't think Joanna Cena is on the call she's the director of community engagement But it includes um representation I believe
from the mission main Apartments um um from a couple of other community groups that is I don't have the list in front of me I apologize because that's sort of her role to to bring all of them to the table um if you give me a second I can pull up the list I just don't have it
off the top of my head yeah and I was particularly wondering about how you know the the folks that live in subsidized housing which surround yes so that's so it's like Ellis Taylor and Mission M are probably the two biggest ones because they're you know basically direct neighbors and and those are um
low-income housing that's adjacent to the campus um that Wentworth has a fair amount of conversation with those folks and is there any any um thing that came from those conversations with the particularly the the kind of low mod
income um subsidized housing tenants any any ideas thoughts or key issues that they rais during that process just curious yes um there were a lot of questions and discussions with that group group not really focused on climate and resiliency so much they you
know they were more curious about what projects were coming in how big they were going to be you know would that cause any sort of Shadow or shade impacts things like that um but not not so much around climate and energy I I was there for those sessions and we did
sort of present high level strategies to them but they didn't have a lot of feedback on that thank you yep can I just ask a followup to that sort of I'm out of order but just um I guess
I it would be helpful to understand how much of like what's in the actual proposal that we're seeing today was in the Strategic plan like how much how how similar are those details um so they again this is Debbie
sorry um the they're pretty well integrated so the institutional master plan it has a lot of ambitious goals for new construction so that you know by default when we're demolishing buildings that are part of this portfolio they're going to be replaced with net zero right so we're going to be reducing the
emissions associated with those buildings in addition to that um we do have high level strategies laid out within the master plan which includes um basically looking at um Energy Efficiency first because we've done a level two energy audit bringing an
engineering firm just to try to identify what additional measures can happen within the existing buildings as is um looking at electrifying the smaller buildings next at because those are you know more affordable essentially to do um then starting to Pivot to look at the
bigger more difficult buildings like a lab building like the Student Center um and figuring out how those could potentially be decarbonized and and the real challenge there is those bigger buildings are sort of the anchor to the district Energy System which has the CHP associated with it and anyone that's
ever worked with campuses on energy knows that those are very Capital intensive systems and it takes a long time to develop the plans to decarbonize them and everyone is working on it um so with this pathway we have two years to
develop an emission standard compliance plan which will'll go into much more detail I kind of just wanted to share the highlights of you know an outline of the strategies that we're looking at right now hopefully that helps thank you for the questions and the responses uh board member Ferris thank
you hi debie um building off that last question I'm curious uh what I guess how um you're thinking about decar how the campus is thinking about decarbonization from the central utility perspective and What proportion of the emissions reductions will come in the near- term versus the long term from addressing the
central utility plant versus at the building bying level so I I can take that question um I am currently undertaking a study for the main campus which uh includes 13 buildings but one of them is the plant
so we'll we'll not count that one but uh in the study you know we're going to be looking into electrification of the boilers a low temp heating system purchase of green steam and uh you know or or a combination of those um you know hopefully with my preference would be
electric boilers but the technology has to be there for us but that is as Debbie mentioned that is to eliminate that main steam District as far as gas boilers in the main plant we'll also be looking this study will also be looking at the
co- generation that exists in that main plant thank you and has has the timing of the um these potential conversions of the the Central Equipment centralized equipment been taken into account when thinking about the building byb building
Renovations yes okay thanks great thank you um I can ask some questions now uh how many of the buildings in this portfolio are powered by the or purchased electricity at least
from the medical area total energy plant that's an easy one none great um in terms of the uh immense amount of work that I'm sure you have to do particularly on the uh um retrofit
and renovation side uh does the institution have any labor standards that you impose upon either employees or um contractors uh for this work um yes I can take that one so uh
there is uh let me see if I can pull it up there there is a vendor diversity supplier policy that the campus approved several years ago and since that time that was back in 2019 and since then um
I actually have a list of various construction firms Consultants uh operations support staff that are certified mwbe veteran-owned women-owned um so it is definitely a
criteria that's taken into account when they put projects out to bid and they have a pretty good track record of actually following through on that excellent thank you uh are you able to share you know what percentage of the contractors you use have an MBE
certification that is a question I can't I have the list of uh of providers I don't have the dollar values next to them so I'd have to follow up with the purchasing director to get that information but I can look into it for you sure thank you yeah I appreciate I'm glad you guys have that list and track
that um are are there particular standards for the work being done by these contractors and I I mean specifically in terms of the wages the safety standards um benefits hours Etc uh so that's a piece I don't tend to get too involved in planning and
construction would be able to answer that I don't know Mike if if you know I'm sure there's there's a whole series of uh requirements there around safety and and risk management yeah I'm not I don't I'm not sure with that answer I mean I can give you an example on the on the last project that
well the project is just about under completion here for the uh 600 Parker Street Garage and uh sportsfield I can tell you that you know that project had 51% of Boston residents 40% minority and 4% women on that project specifically
and that like I say it's it's we're just about to finalize that great well that's that's good to hear so I appreciate that um on the um next uh part of my
questions um I'm glad board member lore brought up the institutional master plan and uh I'm I know that you've made certain commitments as institutions do in those plans um can you confirm that uh you have either met or are on track to meet all of the commitments that you
made in the institutional master plan um so so this is Debbie I I can't speak on behalf of the senior Administration um I can tell you we were just sort of in the final stages of wrapping up the approvals for that I was looking to see if it was even on the the public website to see the latest version of it and it
isn't um but my understanding is at least um you know sort of the documentation that goes into that plan should be just about finalized um beyond that I would have to refer you to the you know sort of the VP level on on where things currently
stand thank you so much I appreciate that um my final question for right now is I know that um wenworth is subject to the uh the payment in Le of taxes program or certainly a participant in that and uh I'm curious um of the um
commitments that you've made through the pilot program um if you have uh earmarked any specifically for climate action or or environmental justice more broadly yeah so I have a list um from Joanna SAA that covers some of those
contributions I think it was uh just over 8 million last year um and it includes a whole series of things so it depends on how you want to Define that right so there's a fair bit of scholarships and early college programs
and the connection there is Wentworth is very strong in architecture construction management engineering and all these fields that are really at the Forefront of decarbonizing and the faculty or teaching classes on it there's a minor and a major in climate resiliency and building Sciences so I would say
indirectly yes they're you know training the pipeline that's going to help address some of these issues beyond that I'm just looking and you know there are things ranging from Community cleanups um to supporting the strive program which
uh actually employs Boston Public School students who are not capable of receiving a diploma it's a a career pathway for for them in facilities management and in recycling um so again sort of not like direct emissions reduction but it has an environmental benefit as well as a very strong social
benefit and has placed I don't know over 5,000 students in jobs over the years so it's quite successful and in terms of its social benefits um uh in terms of climate benefits on the transportation side the campus does provide an MBTA
subsidy for Wentworth employees that's that actually allows them to write the MBTA for free so we're you know always trying to reduce Transportation emissions which is probably the bigger source of local air pollution in the community at this point um and then lastly they take uh take care of the
evansway park on behalf of the city which is one of those sort of you know smaller respit areas that folks go to to get shade in the Sun so a little bit more indirect um and then I guess the other thing that I would say is um there's a pretty strong and active program for Wentworth students and
co-ops to work with the broader community and high schools and local nonprofits on everything from figuring out how to do LED retrofits to redesigning spaces um to you know improving green spaces so I would say in a very Hands-On way um the Wentworth
Community is is trying to support that broader Mission excellent thank you I appreciate that um are there any other board members who have questions or comments on this I just wanted to say thank you for
the uh Green Space getting rid of some of the heat deserts I did notice that in the um the plans and I was very happy to see that personally board member
lore yes um I wondered about the you mentioned the six um the gentleman mentioned the 600 Parker Street um project almost being completed and I saw that there were 47 EV um parking spaces and I just wondered are those um accessible to the broader Community or
are those limited to or specifically targeting um the the Wentworth um population in terms of assess yes so I can answer that one for now so the policy is under development um obviously faculty and staff will be
using it and o we lost is it just me or oh okay yeah okay yeah it seems like we lost you the policy on that is under you know like I say it's under under works at we've had
and there are charging there's charging stations for each of these 47 um spaces parking spaces yes y there's there's 47 ports and then actually based on the city's policy all of the other spaces are EV ready so there's actually conduit
under every single parking space so that in the future as demand increases more EV Chargers can be installed and those are within like in a in a segregated area within the um development not you know not ground
level or or or how where are they I'm just curious and and you're saying they the ability policy is under development but right now it's primarily targeting the Wentworth student and and other population is that what I'm hearing so right now the project is not fully open
um the construction is just wrapping up which is why the policy is not completely done as well um and for folks who aren't familiar with what that site looks like it is an athletic field with below grade parking underneath it so within that below grade parking is where
the EV charging is and um the campus doesn't you know they're not like a Garage operator so a lot of the conversation is how how to manage that facility in a safe way and make sure that folks can get in and out and access it um and so that's part of the ongoing
discussions and just a follow up on uh chair her's comments about and and my own about the institutional master plan I would be interested in you know getting access or link to the institutional master plan so if you could send that along that would be helpful and um also appreciate you know
being able to get the stats on MBE MBE utilization or the conversation um with that chair peruki had with you so thank you welcome board member
FIS thank you um this isn't necessarily about compliance with uh the letter of Berto but since uh some some part of the compliance plan seems to involve demolition of a large number of existing buildings I guess I would I would encourage Wentworth to consider the
impacts to air quality and uh and the local environmental conditions associated with Demolition and the removal of buildings and um and I also wonder if you've thought about any opportunities to to support the community through those activities through deconstruction or through uh providing materials bank or anything
along those lines hi Lori this is Debbie again um yes so the campus has followed lead equivalent standards since 2005 so baked into that there's you know construction indoor air quality management and construction waste management and we
actually have goals around um C and D waste diversion So within the institutional master plan we were targeting a higher threshold of 90% diversion um so we are looking to you know push the envelope as far as we can um to try
to minimize anything that would be going to landfill or incineration and then beyond that we've started to have some conversations with the Boston building resources Center because it's actually right down the street from the campus um so we have not you know formally started a pilot program or anything to that
effect but we've started to have some conversations between them and planning and construction to see what might be salvaged from those spaces uh and we actually had a co-op student this past summer look at one of the existing buildings on campus to try to come up with um sort of a checklist that could be used for construction projects and to
just you know determine what what are the sorts of things to look for and how to inform the cont contractors on that thank you thank you um two other questions on my end uh do you know what percentage of Wentworth students live on campus versus
off-campus um I don't have the exact statistics I want to say it's around half um and with the institutional master plan there is you know an part of one of the big strategies there was to try to
increase the amount of oncampus housing so that it takes some of that strain off the surrounding neighborhood so as that plan gets implemented more housing will be available on campus for students got it and I take it there's no on-campus housing guarantee until the
Imp is fully developed uh no I believe there is a guarantee for freshmen I don't know if it goes through sophomore year but definitely freshman year I see okay thank you um and then uh finally the uh just turning back to the the pilot the
payment and L of taxes program for just a second um you mentioned you had made somewhere about $8 million of of contributions um can you share you know what percentage that is of the city's requested amount uh for the pilot
program I don't have that level of detail I'd have to ask Joanna but I'm happy to follow up with her and I'm sure she could provide a breakdown for you sure okay great thank you so much I appreciate that yep um any further questions or comments from any of the
board members I have a procedural question um has has the board collectively used any standards in the past to to decide what goes to a public hearing and what doesn't or has it been a case-by case determination
certainly I can say I I'll let Diana go first but I I'll say certainly like uh on both of the pathway to applications that we've considered before we have moved to a hearing yes happy to happy to jump in um so it's sort of been on a Case by casee
um basis based on some of the questions that the board members ask if there if there's sort of any followup that the board members would like responses to and maybe that need some time to research um those tend to be sort of the reasons why a hearing would happen Okay given that is there a motion
to hold a hearing I would motion to approve BAS B on the city of Boston's environmental Department's recommendation all right here Board memb toel second um all right on the motion to approve the application of Wentworth
Institute of Technology uh with standard conditions it if I just might jump in with a clarification um per Jack's motion I think this the city of Boston didn't we we didn't have a staff recommendation on how to move on pathway
2 so I would say you're free to make a motion to approve but just wanted to clarify that last piece but but they did meet all of the requirements to approve they met all of the application
requirements correct but so for just to clarify the differences like for pathway one if they meet all of the uh requirements we recommend the board approves um for pathway 2 we just notify the board whether all of the application
requirements have been approved for pathway 2 and it's up to the board to decide whether to approve deny or request a hearing so you're welcome to make a a motion to approve it's just what I'm hearing uh just a follow here a motion to approve
the application as opposed to motion to approve based on the environment Department uh recommendation those are two different statements so the first one is I make a motion to approve the application second okay oh chair you're M yep y uh on the
motion to approve the application of Wentworth Institute of Technology uh with standard conditions how do you vote board member vat right I guess I'm I'm just if we could have discussion about the motion for a
minute I I know I heard um board member ladimore asked for at least one or two things with some follow-up information I don't that's the only specific one I was tracking but I'm wondering if we're able to amend the
motion to include standard conditions plus um an update I know there was a request for an update on their plans for mwbe participation um I don't that's the one I remember but I see that Gail is unmuted so maybe
I'm following uh up with a link or information on the inst institutional master plan the stats on MBE utilization I think those are the two things that um were discussed between myself and chair
farooqi if I may acting chair um I think it it's totally acceptable for the board if they would like to make a motion to approve with standard conditions and with followup from wwor Wentworth Institute of Technology um regarding
mbwe hiring rates and uh the Imp and um sorry one additional thing was the um Clarity on the um accessibility of the EV parking SP oh yes and accessibility of the EV parking so I know this that's a long motion but essentially a motion to approve uh with
standard conditions and with an update from Wentworth regarding accessibil EV parking uh mbwe hiring rates and an imp link I motion to approve Wentworth Institute of Technologies application
with the uh spe not special conditions with the additional requests to have the Imp sent the [Music] mwb uh conditions and the information
regarding uh e evb parking spaces second that motion thank you uh before we conduct a roll call I just want to ask a point of inquiry to the staff um I know that one of our members of the public is raising a hand and may have a question or comment and I know that's not uh
typically allowed in the um within the context of a pathway 2 meeting is that correct is there um any jurisdiction that I have to hear the member of the public or should we direct that person to put their inquiry in the chat or send it to the
email yeah um as acting chair you you are welcome to accept public comments whenever whenever you would like oh okay great thank you um all right well the chair now recognizes Allison Bas I apologize if I'm saying that incorrectly and um you'd like to uh make any points
here yeah hi uh thank you so much um I wasn't sure either whether you took public comment at this point so that's that was part of my question um I I wanted to hear more about the power plant and also the sequence of a
demolition related to um all the buildings discussed in the master plan so um I I don't know if that's part of of your purview either but I appreciated that question about deconstruction because um I'm I'm hoping the city can
also be involved in a deconstruction um process helping at least figure out how to move uh you know Property Owners towards that uh because the building materials Co up uh on Terrace Street
can't handle everything uh they're that's more that's a small time operation so um those are all my questions but obviously you've already voted so yeah no just to clarify we have not yet
voted we've made a motion but the vote has not been made okay yeah I didn't understand about the presentation about the power plant and um whether it's being deactivated or what the process is
yeah thank you I'm happy to recognize the applicant again if you want to um respond to the question yeah no the power plant is not being deactivated what I had mentioned is it is part of uh 13 billions on the main campus but as
far as reporting that is not the square footage of that main plant is not taken into consideration and I guess I I'll just reiterate what was said earlier Allison in case um to help try to clarify it so because there are so many buildings on
campus and because the district Energy System is a a big Capital intensive complex system it's not a quick and easy thing for us to answer um we do s sort of have our near-term path for how we're going to maintain compliance and stay below those thresholds we know the
campus is in good shape for several years which will give us some time to plan those bigger more Capital intensive potential changes that would happen to the power plant um but what we're looking at is the more cost-effective measures in the interm while that planning is ongoing so we do know that
there are some Energy Efficiency measures still lurking in the existing buildings we've worked with the utilities for since 2017 on efficiency we actually have a meeting with them tomorrow because we meet with them every six weeks to try to look for efficiency projects so that's where we go first so we can take advantage of the mass save
incentives um and then we're going to look at electrifying smaller buildings and then trying to figure out what to do with the bigger more energy intensive buildings that are tied to that power plant hopefully that helps okay thank you so much I and I I
assume you've already uh talked about what buildings are served by the power plant right uh we didn't lay it all out we were not we're not allowed to do slides for this level but okay Mike can list them off it's it's a it's mostly
academic buildings uh and then a few of the residents Halls thank you okay thank you uh always great when we have members of the public here so thank you for asking the question Allison and um with that um I know board member
Ellis has put a motion on the floor so uh on the motion to approve the application of Wentworth Institute of Technology with standard condition and with a uh commitment of the institution to follow up with more information as
requested by the board hopefully this is an accurate way of describing it uh how do you vote board member vote right in favor thank you um board member I'm sorry col councelor Keta zap in
favor board member Ellis in favor I vote in favor board member Ferris in favor board member ladimore in favor board member Nelson in favor board member stel in
favor all right thank you with that the eyes have it and the motion passes and Wentworth Institute of Technologies building portfolio has been approved further regulations the environment department will send a copy of the written decision letter within 7 days thank you all thank you to the
applicants and our staff and board members for being flexible around this yes thank you and we will follow up with wwth with with the three items that we're asked for follow up so thank you very much thank you thank
you so um The Time Is Now 6:24 and we have this meeting scheduled for another six minutes um I want to uh ask uh given the items still to come on the agenda if uh board members are able to stay on until 7 p.m and if so we can um continue
this meeting if not we'll have to continue the applications for a subsequent meeting uh can we just get a show of hands people are able to show stay on or willing to stay on until 7 as well um I just want to let you know I have to just change devices that's
it a question chair would we lose uh Corum just because I have to be at a neighborhood meeting at uh right at 6:45 I can stay on until then great thanks councelor yeah Diana
do you have a count of that so we need five for Quorum and we currently have six so if counselor CL us the leaves we should still have Quorum I only have 6:45 yeah I can't go past
645 all right then I think we can continue the meeting until 6:45 and then we can um adjourn at that point and table anything to a subsequent meeting okay thank you for your flexibility obviously there's there's a lot of stuff to get to here so uh with that I will uh
now recognize the environment Department to introduce the Boston Medical Center application thank you uh chair faruki I will try to quickly go through bmc's application so bmc's application was submitted via pathway 2 uh it's
submitting it's submitted via Pathway to because it has an onsite uh combined heat and power plant it's applying for four buildings in the neighborhoods of Roxberry and the south end and the applicant meets all eligibility criteria and the application was deemed complete
and again the list of standard conditions so the building is or sorry the portfolio is for four buildings uh three of the four are under the healthcare emission standard uh and one building is has a primary use of office and so they're building they're Blended Mission standard uh is the last row on
this table it's a mix of mostly Healthcare and in one office building and this is the environmental justice map the little yellow arrow is the location of the combined heat and power plant and then the three Red Pins are the four
buildings this is the asthma prevalence map the respiratory hazard map and then this is the urban heat island intensity map which shows the locations of the buildings and then the next slide will show the yeah the urban heat uh
Island intensity um we had to like try to the image we had a little bit of technical difficulty but we made it work so this is the last map and then I will hand it back over to you chair frie thank you so much Diana um I see
the applicant has introduced himself in the chat so thank you turn over to the board now for questions we'll start with board member lore thank you um you know I I I really just want to say that I find the EJ plan
very much lacking in information and so for me that is a an issue that I think calls for as far as I'm concerned a a hearing I can't vote in favor of that based on based to approve BAS on the uh
lack of information in the EJ plan so that's just wanted to comment on that there's there's very little information to inform us thank you board member Ellis you know I second what uh board member L Mo stated and you know I just
want to at least hear from the applicant if they have you know any intention or can share a little bit of information about you know what they would hope to include in a future hearing because I would agree with what board member lador um asked and then I have a follow-up question so I'll pause there for a
second hi good evening this is Matthew Keith with Bridge energy um I hear your feedback on the environmental justice plan could could you illuminate as to what it was that you were looking for was this something
that was part of the submission I only recall a small paragraph for for input was there something specific that you needed I think if you take a look at
what the I think the city provided some guidance on kind of the elements that or the kind of things you may want to put in an EJ um plan and I found that there was very little information and also you know can refer it back to some of the
plans that other organizations that are in pathway 2 have submitted which is all public information to get a better feel for it but I found there was really no information it was one you know like four lines or so of um which didn't give
any context for how um and if the um if the institution has worked with the community in what ways and you know how the community is impacted by um any of the plans uh or had input into any of the plans so there's a I think there's guidance that the city provides if I'm
not mistaken on you know the contents of an EJ plan and their examples from others this is Corey P I don't think BMC will have any problem pulling together an environmental justice plan and portfolio and package that can be put together with complete information and
details on all the programs and platforms we support and drive throughout the community thank you Corey and uh as a followup question pivoting for a second I he you know given the location of your you know your central heating plan and
recognizing that you know the hospital is a very high-intensity energy user I guess with if this application was to be approved uh and knowing that you have a the immediate 2025 threshold approaching uh will bmcb below that threshold with
an approval of a a building portfolio yes I feel strongly that we would be by leveraging our positions with our community solar programs that we've invested heavily in over the last several years uh in the improvements that we're doing around the campus with Energy Efficiency we are currently
looking and uh brought up earlier we're negotiating with vicinity on their eam program and working on that to look at portions of our portfolio that we would look to um Drive some of that steam through um
their program so there's a lot of things that we're currently working on right now um we're currently evaluating a couple solar projects we're looking to determine how those solar projects will play out um whether we would use those strictly for the recks or we would roll
them into our clean power prescription program that we're doing for the community as well um so we got to see how we can balance that as well there's a lot of things going on right now BMC has been a leader in the healthcare industry as as well as in the city for environmental justice as well as
sustainability and social programs so thank you Corey and my last question is you know pivoting to the central heating plants I are you able to share or maybe in the hearing we might be able to uh highlight this a little bit more uh some information regarding the
decarbonization of your your central heating plant yeah so we are looking as I mentioned we do run our Coen plant which does support and provides extra resiliency to our campus for inpatient care areas for heating as well as
electrification as we go through our phase two of our uh campus Redevelopment plan we are looking at bringing on new technologies of High Energy Efficiency through the use of ground Source um heat pumps uh geothermal heat pump
systems that we're looking to implement into these programs um we're looking at different technologies that we can use within our building automation systems and looking at Technologies like AI to help go one step above where we are
today with some of our energy cring and how we can cut and reduce some of our energy within the building but unfortunately our campus is growing we are in the process of adding additional 80 patient beds five operating rooms uh and that's to better support the community as you all know Boston Medical
Center is the largest safety net Hospital in all of New England we see over to Patient visits on our campus we have the busiest emergency department in the city 11th in the country we have the busiest Trauma Center we are constantly
reinvesting and developing into our campus every single day and we really understand the point for every dollar I can save on energy that's an extra dollar that I can invest back into our patient care for our community thank you
any further questions from the board board member Ferris thank you um I I expect maybe we'll hear more about this next time but uh given the space constraints are that you just mentioned the fact that you're growing and adding space I wonder if you um foresee a need
to uh to empty out any of the currently occupied spaces in order to complete the energy transition um or any of these upgrades and if so if you have any plans for how that swing space will work um with against the pressures you're facing for space
currently well we're pretty heavily utilized the existing space that we have today um you know we're very limited most of our buildings have been renovated probably within the last 10 to 15 years uh we do have one property left
on the campus that we're looking at long term and how we can renovate that or maybe something new in its position um we are working with our planners to figure out how we can better utilize the existing space that we've got um you
know during our master plan that we went through over the last 10 years we have shed a lot of space we did sell off space to uh the state um we are trying to really intensify the space that we are using though
today thank you any final questions from the board I'd like to make a motion to request a hearing please second all right on the motion to request a hearing um how do you vote in
favor abstain or oppose board member vote right in favor councelor K Zapata in favor board member Ellis in favor I also vote in favor board member
Ferris in favor board member ladimore in favor board member Nelson in favor board member Stell in favor thank you uh with that uh the eyes
have it and the motion to request a hearing passes and so we will um the applicant is invited to present on their portfolio application at a hearing at a future date and we look forward to hearing from you then and the
environment department will reach out with future with follow-up details and I'll direct all of our board members to uh follow up with the environment Department staff with any additional questions that we would like to hear from the applicants all right thank you uh to our representatives from the application
team for being here as well and yeah uh with that uh we can move to the next item about the Equitable emissions investment fund application cycle and I will turn it back over to environment Department staff Diana yeah um and seeing that we have
about seven minutes or eight minutes left I will just say at the top of the meeting I could I'm totally happy to continue this topic to the following meeting um but happy to just do a very
quick overview of the fund so next slide we are planning to open the second round of the fund uh as folks may remember from our last application round the board voted to release up to $750,000 uh with a preference to make multiple Awards of around
$250,000 uh with this new round we wanted to take some time to ask the board if they had any priority areas that they would like to uh we sent a Google form trying to see if folks had any sort of priority areas we're happy to send that again um I
won't go through too much but we did hear from board members that they thought they would be Merit into allowing applicants from the previous round to roll over their application to this found founding round so we also proposing that very quickly next
slide so our timeline would be our proposal is to open on Monday March 31st and close the application on Friday May 30th uh so very similar to last year you know nonprofit eligible to nonprofit organizations uh with the caveat that applicants from last year can roll over
um and then the projects must include some sort of reduction in building emissions in Boston and benefits to environmental justice populations and the next slide so it be again very similar to last year Google form as the application form uh we make a grant announcement that outlines all
of the requirements for the application and hopefully make Awards of around $250,000 for a total of$ 750 and we would propose two information sessions in which uh potential or interested applicants could come and ask questions
from the staff about eligibility and so forth and then this would be the timeline so again close on May 30th open on March 31st and then allow the board to review and evaluate and then ideally make Awards or announce Awards in August
so just very quickly um chair recognizing we have five minutes uh happy to like answer questions if we want or happy to continue this conversation to the next next scheduled meeting great uh thank you Diana yeah just in the interest of time um I think
it's probably more time sensitive that we approved the meeting minutes from the previous meeting so um if it's okay with you all on the staff I'd love to um move directly to a vote um to approve the meeting minutes um this um so I will make a motion to
approve the previous meeting's minutes this is from January 13th um before doing so I just love to open the floor to any questions or comments regarding the meeting minutes board member Ellis yes uh very quickly just wanted to uh double check because I
know we met in January and we had uh requested a public hearing from Mass General ringham uh I am just asking the city you know are we still in the appropriate timeline for us to be able to okay I see the thumbs up thank I can um provide quick update we
did hear from MGB uh we initially asked if they were available in March uh they actually asked for a little bit more time so tentatively we we're probably happen in April thank you all right um second motion okay
thank you so much um great on the motion to approve the meeting minutes board members may vote in favor oppose or abstain if they did not attend the last meeting those in favor of approving the meeting minutes please say I or show
your hand I I board members abstained say abstained abstained abstain board members opposed say nay okay believe the eyes have it and so the
meeting minutes from the previous meeting are approved thank you all for doing so um Ziggy how many uh administrative updates do you have is this a three minute conversation or should we continue the updates till the next meeting um I'm just GNA give one quick
update about the webinar just and then we can continue the ministrative updates to the next meeting uh our next webinar is on this Wednesday at on March 12th uh it will cover the launch of 2025 uh ber reporting and Emissions compliance season just want to flag that and all administrative updates I'll give at the
next meeting excent thank you so much are there any questions on the administrative updates that you just presented comments okay um thank you all for the flexibility with uh changing around the
agenda and uh um now if there is a motion to adjourn hope to hear that so move so move all right is there a second second all right uh on the motion to adjourn the meeting board members in
favor say I hi all right the eyes have it the motion passes and the meeting is adjourned at 6:43 pm. thank you all for staying on thank you all all right
goodbye good right