e e e you muted sorry there you go yeah I said we're it's like a makeshift over here so bear with us no worries no worries uh waiting for everyone else to
show up how are you guys doing good and yourself doing all right you know the world's a little crazy but you know take it day by day and uh you guys get any snow there or uh uh we got some this weekend but very little you know maybe
two three inches so same you not bad for you honestly not even not even two inches I I live in Mall bro not even two inches wow no no one plowed nothing to it just sand we actually got plowed and we were not thrilled about that it was like we
don't need to plow and you don't have to like destroy our driveway it's okay well they're starving though right I mean we're in January first time we even had a shot at it so exactly that's that was you're disgusting it's like we're we're helping them make their
make their way and yes go I don't know if I told you like before I moved out here my wife and I lived for a year in marbor so it's so funny every everybody has lived him I feel like we go on many
calls so believe it or not Mike you're speaking with a Towny so we in M like I I've been here for 50 seven years now wow not that we're right now but what what's the oh the the fancy little Inn
that was uh Wayside in yeah the Wayside in so if you go by the wayside in and then you sort of it's like a diagonal you hang a right and you go up sbur Street yes sbur Street yeah so we're up maybe I don't know like half a mile a
mile up sbur Street yep I know well yep yeah my we lived in Arlington for years and then we had our first kid and like you know it was just when the market was starting to go crazy so between Arlington and marbor there was nothing we could afford and my wife my wife Liv
taught was teaching in Wayland And so it worked out well at the time and uh but we like did you rent there or did you own in on sep Street we bought it was was our first house very nice yeah it's a ni it's a nice area I have to say that
a really nice area the unfortunate part like we just sort of popped down with the one-year-old like you know it wasn't the way to sort of find out about the [Laughter] community hey
Nate how's it going good good good good I'm glad everyone could make it yeah really appreciate it yeah Denise we want to keep our guests on their toes so we don't really do the the link until the very last minute I was like I you know
I'm not the greatest when it comes to electron I'm like I'm gonna get there and I'm not gonna have an internet signal and I'm not G oh boy but it all worked out yes it did so we got three of us just waiting for
one more person Isaac to show up and I and N Gail I think I think Bert will be joining us at least he emailed me earlier so ter yeah and once once we get everybody we do a round introductions and I'll I mean
I'll start the meeting and then we'll go from there but Dale how you doing Okie do thank you GL to hear it how are you doing I'm doing all right you s surprised uh
yeah it's full days yeah between Town stuff and work stuff it's like a lot yeah here's Isaac you work locally Mike or you travel too I actually work out of my house I do Consulting so it's uh been
convenient I used to drive to Springfield which is about an hour but starting with the pandemic I left that job and I've been Consulting so it's sort of convenient and uh super convenient other than kids right yeah no kids andsbury has municipally owned
fiber which we got the year before the pandemic so it was perfect timing took us forever to get but we have really good service which is great no that's great news seriously yeah yeah so I think
there yeah here so we are I'll start the meeting at 5:03 and I think Nate are you up for minutes I can minutes Gail you did it last time right no I'm up for minutes I'm pretty sure oh okay Isaac you're up for minutes
cool love it wonderful okay so we ah and Bert is here two of Bert apparently let's see so Bert is a perspective member so I'm just going to welcome him and then we can just sort of jump in and uh I just do that so I can see the other
because I don't screen oh I see are you okay or do you want me to go back can I go down yeah in case you needed it I didn't know yeah because otherwise I can't get bir you're with us here you go B you can hear us yes I
can hear you can you hear me yes can't see you but we can hear you which is good that's half of the battle so uh just uh just for note taking purposes uh the The People Under Denise Ali Allard um just uh just to put in the notes for
public attendees I was gonna do introduction you will get it in a second IAC so Bert welcome glad you can finally make it to our meeting thank you yeah and uh so we have two we have two guests that are going to speak to the
first topic so I thought we'd just do a round of introductions before we get into public comment but um I think everyone knows me but I am Michael deera I'm the chair of the energy and climate action committee and Nate why don't you do it and then tap somebody sure I'm
Nate herd and uh I'm a member of the uh Shy's eak and I've been on a point person for um Municipal aggregation um of Le so uh and I'll tag Gail hi I'm
Gail fly Shaker and I'm one of the original members of this committee [Music] and that's it Isaac you're tapped yeah Isaac uh Isaac Goldstein current member of ecac and uh currently Point person on
uh EV charging and uh that kind of stuff so yeah and B we can go into more detail but why don't you just briefly introduce yourself so everyone knows who you are yeah I'm I'm a resident of shutesbury for three years and just saw a
notification in the newsletter about um this meeting and so great interested yeah after we do the presentation with cor we'll probably loop back and we can talk more about you know your interest and stuff and uh so you guys want to introduce yourselves
and then well I got to take a moment for public comment but there's no real public so but if you introduce yourself that would be great Mark cap on the colonial power Denise Allard also colonial power do you want him to spell his last name thank
you it's c a p p a d o n a okay capona capadona thanking I'm sure it gets misspelled all the time speaking from some all the time I called many many other things as well us yeah he's usually mik he usually gets
Mike so I will open it up for public comment and seeing none we can move into the the Community Choice conversation so hopefully everyone saw the the draft
plan that um Nate circulated from Colonial um and I think if it makes sense I'll I'll sort of hand this over to Tate and working Denise but I'm I'm assuming like we would go through it I don't know if you wanted to present the a little bit about it and then we can
ask questions or comments is that normally the best way to go for feedback so Nate shared your your comments written so I'm happy to run through those or we can just go through the plan it doesn't make any difference
to us I just want you to know we're well aware of this this is truly a regulatory document it's really not a document for uh the general public and it's unfortunate but this is the new um this is the new world order I'll say under
the Department of Public Utility the good news is with this plan you should have an an order once filed within 120 days which is light speed at the Department of Public Utility yeah yeah yeah well I'll just jump in and then maybe you could ask maybe Mark since you
you have my comments you could just sort of respond through them throughout but I think one of the things that I responded I I think I just sent up to you Nate I don't think I sent up to to everybody um but one of the the highlevel issues that
I brought up with working Denise was and I and I get that this is like handed out from the state but I'm sort of thinking about like how it plays in the community level so this is called a plan and the sort of placeholders and so since you
all know that we live in sh spr if we say it's a plan but it doesn't reflect what people were expecting people were going to sort of say hey how did you get to that so part of what I was hoping we could sort of figure out is if it has to be a called
to plan how we present it if there was a way of sort of calling it something that was different than a plan so it said felt more tentative or something but I think that was one of my concerns because we've made progress so far I think in sort of presenting this and getting people to understand it but who
wants to step into the middle of a controversy that you don't have that's self-inflicted um so I think that was but why don't you guys walk through it if if that makes sense and does everyone have a copy want do you want me to share
the screen with it would that be helpful I mean I I think initially at least just as we go into it right and we fully understand what you're saying Michael like when we were in the room for the working groups we had the same concern this is you know we do this every day and we're looking at this and we had trouble with the template right
we were like this is not not helpful to yeah the dpu can easily look at this and St and approve it but the average person in a town is not going to understand this um just a couple of things as we go into it right and I think we talked about this with the committee before
from Colonial standpoint a we like to keep as general as possible and as flexible as possible just so you don't have the state kind of regulating any Town decisions so although you may have made some decisions regarding products Etc um no need to put that in front of
the state and have the state lock you into a particular decision based on what's available today versus what may be available down the line so we truly believe in flexibility and keeping it as general as possible getting the town approved for kind of everything and then that way you don't have to ever re
reapply and I'll give you a perfect example so it was just approved in July we have a low-income Community solar program that if if you didn't have it in your plan or it wasn't flexible enough your plan they made you go back and
refile now with the 2367 you do not have to do that but it's just something to keep in mind and I'm I'm saying to you I I truly believe the department heard the state loud and clear meaning we need flexibility we have every right to do
this and they're they're stepping back from the shackles they had on that but I just want to keep that in mind when we're going through this plan I'm happy to make uh changes and again this is a town plan well we're here to do whatever you want for a plan just know that if
you step too far out of this we don't know where you end up meaning it shouldn't be more than six months but you're certainly not going to get it in four months you know they've made it clear to us we're happy to take any plan and we could go back to our old plan but
it may take longer than that because they don't have to do anything here and when they don't have to do anything they can rubber stand right they were they were comfortable with all the dbds Etc because then they say on the website you can just keep up ongoing program
information can be updated as it's fluid right as things change the website is kind of the Bible of where everything is and the documents Etc and then you know the Department's just going to kind of stamp approve this and then all the details show up on the website and in the documents Etc so cool gaale you got
a question yeah I would think that we'd have an advantage being able to present it that way to the town so if we present this with the flexibility you speak of to get approval at the dpu level that still leaves us with that flexibility what the town people want to see in
their particulars so to me that's a selling point not not a constraint if if we pitch it that way yeah and I I think the thing is it's the label like you know so one of thing maybe you can just at the outset can you just speak a little bit between the the
plan which this thing is which is really a template and then the product and I don't know I have to say we might be able to say I kid you not I like the term because I consider this to be more of a a template than a plan but if we said the municipal aggregation template
does it does it put us off track see it's Uncharted Territory mik with the department so you know because I think it's more descriptive we said exactly the same thing we're like this is not a plan but they they just were like hellbent on
kind of what they wanted maybe they'll they'll accept it if we put in quotation marks for plan they won't get too freaked out and uh but if you could if you can just speak to the differ you of plan and the products because I think that would be helpful for the committee to sort of
jump in you or me you can know okay so the the think of it this way the products yes exactly I just want you to think of it this way the products are what you're going to be uh offering customers a meets product product
meaning the product is it meets RPS you need to meet certain requirements to serve um a retail load in Massachusetts so that might be your you know the most economical it would be the most economical uh product and then you might have something that has uh solar re you
might have something that has National wind Rec you might have something that has um Mass class one reck you might have something that has nuclear re all of these things are available in the marketplace those are the products that some aggregators put in their plan we
say do not put in your plan because those are Town decisions we want you to be able to say this is our product and this one and we want to change our product to um you know a cold fusion because it it became a thing and you know now all of a sudden we don't have
to go back to the department for you know the 120 days we have full flexibility we choose the products here at the Town level difference between the plan itself Mike is the whole whole thing meaning okay we we're sending opt out notices uh you know there's a
mailing uh uh the website that is the plan itself everything else that's there maybe a a low-income Community solar program right I would think of the plan as like what you have to do to statuto to meet the statutory requirements right
um that you know what you have to do with the utility how many days you have to put on the opt out and I noticed you mentioned greater period for opt out notice you can certainly do that but only get approved for the minimum 30 so that you're not tied into to longer um but you can certainly do whatever you want if you want a longer opt out period
fine you want to post the plan for longer than 30 days that's fine but the statutory requirements they just want to make sure you've met that and then and then the programs sit within this is just the Bible say and then the the pro the planam yes exact no and I
don't want to get into if we're going to go through it the reason go through it okay let's go through it because there's some things in there I think there's just just some misunderstandings and once we explain you're G to go okay this makes sense we fully understand why we are not we just we are not fans of this
but yeah you don't have to defend the state it's fine we'll just start with the introduction and I know you have a comment on the 1700 consumers so and I don't know why the department wanted the consumers and not households but you can look at this and not identically but I
bet there's somewhere in the somewhere in the range between 5 and 600 households in in shury and the reason I'm saying that is I it's normally on average across the state 3 to one the department knows that everyone in the business knows that so that's why they just always wanted to know how many people were in the town so that they
know how many consumers are leaving um basic service if you will okay so well so but we can change this yeah well I'll leave it I'm curious what other people think I mean you know there's always this sense of you know
Boston doesn't get small rural towns in western Mass and so you want to you want to sort of from that get-go say this is they they they're speaking to shutesbury and so when I think about 700 people I think well there's two year olds and
three-year-olds and foury olds and 5year olds that are in the 1700 number they're not really consumers they're coming along for the ride so as long as we're able to articulate that and you know on the very front end say this is the word that the State's asking for but it's
really the population then we're good so if it's statutorily required we can do it I just wanted to make sure that it it's not statutorily required that it's households I'm just saying this would be the uh we've done 99 of these Michael and we've always put the population in
so meaning but it's just language if you wanted to change that to households we certainly could I think to the department I know this is going to sound bad they're going to say wow this is a very small time because they going to read household I would just instead of doing the households to keep the number and just maybe put you know
parenthetically after consumers you know individuals or population or something like that so we get that it's the town population um no no problem that's fine yep we we put it in Fran yep so the and I I don't want to pass this by but the
definitions do you want to go through any of the definitions Mike any problems with anything you saw there I didn't did anyone else have questions about the defition Because unless it's self explanatory I want to make sure everyone understands that because unag language is not a
language it's not everyday language and I gotta be honest a lot of these definitions when it comes to the like consu um the educational materials we're not necessarily going to use the you know Auto enroll customers we think is a bit clumsy and it's not you will be automatically enrolled if you're on if you're on basic service but you're going
to get a notification it's not like you're just G to be swept so when we get to the the education materials we we try to make it a little more friendly um but this is this is the terms that they settled on when we were in the working group so cool it seems like we're good with
definitions okay okay so procedural requirements I'm just trying to look at your doc at the same time page two give me one second here7 and page five is the next time you have a question so on page four just
the first part is just the requirements and I'm talking about when you when you were at town meeting when the select board voted on the plan those kind of perun things that you have to check the box on each one of them otherwise you don't meet the statut statutory
requirements of U excuse me not 2367 but uh 164 134 yeah so we have the town meeting date in there we have the do consult in there we will fill in the posted dates before we file with Department it's just we don't know what they are yet it's finally even blank for the posting but we will be certain to
fill that in because we need to do that in order to get the approval so before it gets filed we will fill in C under three okay yeah and town meeting date is under debate it's one of it's either the end of April or May 10th one of the two the select board has yet to I think
finalize it is June 3 no Gail did you have an update did they well just that they're still even talking about moving it into June oh really yeah but this is you got already you already approved in June this is when you were authorized year and a half ago yeah I'm thinking
about this town meeting you're good you're all set on that that front here at you don't have to revote it Mike you do not have to do that so um um PL elements you know kind of the organizational structure the first what I'm gonna I like it the first table if
you will so what they're asking here is who's going to be doing what so that the the department of Public Utilities can look quickly if they ever had a question um who's doing what as far as representatives and who's the entity performing these things so the agent
before the department again it's it's a town plan so we have to click off the town and we're the consultant so we're according to our contract we're your agent in front of the department both of them get checked off the do do is a little bit different we're your agent we
we reach out to them you know we we have the um as we already have we we have that meeting set it up do what we had to do and move on and we thank you for that you're more than welcome the Distribution Company again a lot of things and I mean a tremendous amount of
things behind the scenes that we do as the agent making sure that we get the load data making sure the load data is correct make sure all the mailing addresses make sure the supplier has all the all the forms to fill out all of that so we're your agent and if the if
the um the utility National Grid um had any questions they call us they know us very well from from doing this so plan elements and I'm just going to run through them quick the the
procurement of Supply we our job is to make sure that you see everything that you want to see in the marketplace create a product if it's necessary do whatever it is that's our job your job is to make sure that we're doing that we don't make any decisions I just want you
to to know this town program we're the worker you tell us what to dig and where to dig and we dig it then you guys just make decisions it's it's really that simple across the board so um product determination again that's a town decision you're GNA you're going to
decide what that is other funding and cost that's up to you if you guys wanted to take a mill you could certainly do so uh you know any of those things are always your call uh the the customer enrollment that's the
supplier uh cut and dry it's through EDI or electronic um data interfacing literally it's all electronic now which is much better than it was years ago the consumer notification Denise creates all of this sends it to you for your okay as
soon as it's okay um we get then take it all over to the supplier and get their their printer uh to get it all printed and sent out what what I want you to know about this one here is I wish there was more flexibility in the in the language they
really want to make sure that things are standardized so there's some there is more flexibility today than there ever has been but it's still not fantastic this letter we're happy to work with you but there's certain language in there and a what a table in there that has to
be it just has to be the good news is I think it's straight away meaning it's your product up against basic service so everyone knows yeah there's certain there's certain elements that have to go on the table and then there's certain items that have to be like explained like
solar and loow income and taxable that all has to be hit in the letter um and what we have in there is previously approved wording by the department so we just we've been just going with it because they they don't have an issue with it so yeah you good you have another question yeah I'm wondering
since we most of the town is National Grid because I understand that we do have some in uh what youa call it um wumo or evos west yeah one street or something one street you determine that or are we supposed to supply you with
that information we'll reach out to uh everus Denise mcal and and ask the question okay they didn't give us any inkling that there was it happens in a lot of communities though but now that we have the heads up we'll make sure that we grab those customers okay good thank you no thank you appreciate the
heads up so um ongoing program information that's both and the reason that's both you're going to have a website and we're going to have a website meaning the department requires you to have a link on your website you don't have to update it the way we do but as long as you have that link with
and I don't know if if you ever wanted to check out exactly what yours is or yours is going to look eerily similar to take a look at Colonial powerg group.com and then choose any one of our communities your community will have a bunch of identical information just your
own rates and products yeah and this this says like there was a significant change here just with the um with the new guidelines not in terms of the product information but there's a lot of ongoing template information that needs to be uploaded to the website with constantly update so we've updated the
website the web pages to include all the the recent um new new requirements so that would be that's easy to do yeah so so Pro program termination that's just you we cannot terminate this is Town program so that's that's why that's
where there is the en reports we are going to create them make sure they meet all the statutory requirements we're going to give them to you but we will do that work they'll certainly get a copy of them but we'll file them make sure everything's there there's also an electronic um data file that needs to
get to the do so that will also be created by us and delivered unfortunately we're happy to show it to you it's a bunch of gibberish so that everyone is um consistent across the board it's not easy to read the file but
again I'm happy to deliver the file but all that information you're going to know because it's specific to shutesbury aggregation um customer service so on this one here both the supplier and Colonial are going to take the Lion
Share but we put an X for the town just let me explain no one can prove that this is a town program but the town and we've found especially in the western lots of people um I believe the third party supply buyers have brought this on themselves people won't believe this is
a town program so they'll call Town Hall during those two weeks to say is this actually legitimate so that's why we have this checked off for you yeah and we also I think you saw at the end and we can get to that we have to provide a town contact primary Town contact that's a town official um for filing with the
dpu they'll be on the service list when we file as well as that's part of the new guidelines you have to put a contact for the town should anyone want it's not good enough that you just reach out to the town generally they want the name and it's typically the town manager the Town Administrator the town coordinator um just a town official so certainly it
could be a SEL Yeah well yeah so um but we would we would have to when we file we have to include the Town Administrator on the service list because it's docketed with the dpu so that would have to happen D where are you in the document I lost you after the
top of page five top of page five of the table we just just finished that as a matter of fact okay I was ahead of the game here and okay thank you yeah yep so the next section here is all the statutory we
have to we have to have universal access everyone has to have access if they if they live in shutesbury they get to join we can't hold them out for any reason that's perfectly fine they may get a different price if they allowed jua the reliability this is something I want to make sure that I'm clear on so
reliability used to be a hold over from way back when it had more to do with National Grid reliability maybe a little bit of wo in shury um it now means you're not going to go back to basic service they their biggest concern of
letting um letting us run if you will kind of stretch our legs is they don't want a bunch of aggregations flipping back from um basic service to competitive Supply and competitive Supply back to basic service and the reason for that is it creates risk
migration on basic service therefore jacking up uh basic Service pricing so reliability means something very different today so if and when we get there I just want to make sure that everyone understands they actually went so far as to say okay if you get a power
supply up and for whatever reason and I kid you not whatever reason like you said we're not going to go forth or the town decided you're not going to go forth with the next contract at that point point we we notify the utilities we notify the the department you're out of aggregation for two years and then
you need to resubmit and then we have to prove to them why we decided to suspend slash terminate the program whether or not we get the approval in that one there they they were they were they're a little sketchy on it I just want you to know so just don't take
reliability lightly I kid you not that that one there was it was I I said to them I said it's taking away a choice in the marketplace and that's not a good position for the Department to be uh to be at and I think we started to win them over it used to be allowed and this think about the statute hasn't changed
and it used to be allowed you could suspend your program um but they yeah they don't they're not keen on that so and then I just think we want we want to mention the large the large commercial and Industrial I know you had a note about that that's more um a reference to
utility rate classes corre right so um both eversource and national g large um there's a large industrial rate and that means something to the department in terms of um how we can treat them I just want to explain one other so let's
just call it three classes right you have residential you have commercial then you have industrial by industrial we just mean large uses over a million kilowatt hours and say over 150 KW you know on the big draw so from from as far as you're concerned most
most aggregations are really residential and small commercial that's really what an aggregation is about bringing that power to the market large industrial users probably the town of shutesbury goes out in their own and and gets those get has a contract right you guys do those kind of
things there's a Marketplace for you the small commercial and residential don't but Equitable across the class means if you so desired you could say residential has this rate small commercial has this rate or commercial has this rate and Industrial has has this rate So you
you're allowed to be Equitable but you have to be Equitable across the class I can't say that your customer class are ones on on the north side of uh shury has one rate on the south side it has another rate it has to be Equitable does
that make sense yeah yeah and I only highlighted it I mean it's easy enough to keep it in there just we don't have any industry I think the only thing that's technically industry is our solar installation because it's it was zoned as Light Industry but we have no one no
one using industry and we have very few actual commercial so and I I could do really across the state because even when you have a large of the city of mro tons and tons of commercial industrial but they're all out in
thirdparty contracts so they're not really participating in aggregation n did you have a question oh go ahead um I was going to pick it up um a little bit later because it it comes up later
but it just my only comment on the entire document related to uh this issue around termination and and having to revert back to basic service for two years before you could reapply uh for a municipal aggregation
under different terms and um uh it turns out that um if you want to alter your plan that is a a different that is open to us um and that termination is uh it
doesn't mean that you can't change your plan or go down a different path there there are modification Provisions that will be available to us in the future um and and our our paths like are not like foreclosed because of that language um
so I just wanted to like mention the that was the one question I had for this entire document and um I was like reassured that we're actually we actually have the the one thing I want to state is once you start taking power supply we want to keep power supply flowing that's when
they're going to say hey you're playing games when actually in my own opinion you should be able to back and forth the city of Boston maybe not right that's a huge load to return shutesbury malro in the whole scheme of things not very big but if you if you want to change the
operational structure right what the consultant does what the town does what you know how operated that you can you can do an amended plan hang it just submit it for information that's updating ongoing program information that's what that falls under so you can certainly do that I mean you know that
would be like um from a really minor scale like if the town just has a board of Selectmen and doesn't have a Town Administrator and then there's a Town Administrator whereas the select board chair was making decisions but now the town administ you know that's a minor one but operationally um all that's covered there so you would just revise
sounds like from what I got from Nate is that if if we were not happy with stuff the path is modification don't you don't want to you don't want to go to okay yeah you want to keep like Mark said you want to keep power supply going once you terminate power supply you know
and so for if you want to change something for your next contract you just think about that ahead before you go to your next contract you go to your next power supply contract with the different operational structure and does changing power supply mean changing products or is it
still like if you had three products and all of a sudden you have four or you had four and then you went to three you're still not going back to National Grid so it seems like that's the thing that they're trying to avoid that's exactly Bingo you could change all of that Michael but going back to na turning all
500 uh meters back to National Grid no no right and if you had if you have stated products and then you deviate from those products from one Supply contract to a next what you're technically required to do is prepare a new plan post it for the 30 days then submit it to the dpu and put it up on
the website that's why we're kind of um saying keep it flexible it allows you to change your products as needed as long as we're keeping the website updated but we're not the regulatory document you're not letting the state make you know stamp approve those decisions for you you're making those decisions at the
Town level so yeah hey before you go on hey Isaac you don't have to get all this detail just so you know I don't know you look like you're like concentrating yeah I'm working on trying to get all this stuff down but I I I think it's sufficient to sort of say that we reviewed the plan and we had some
questions or something and maybe maybe the high points but this this too way too much detail you don't have to capture it okay thanks so sorry you guys we where are we so we're at the top of
page six on the next I'll call table the tabl that's the tables and this this is nothing more than the town is going to the town full flexibility procurement rate setting uh what your
sources and costs customer enrollment uh customer notification ongoing Pro all of that is in your perview and we have full control over it that's all we're telling the department on this nothing full flexibility here many
of the other um aggregators don't do this this is important because it tells the department you're in charge okay of your complete plan the whole
enchilada um procurement of Supply is next and so there's a bunch of steps in here and I'm sorry to get so detailed but you wanted to run through it so I'm going to go quickly so there's a whole bunch and I'll let Denise actually take this one only because she's she does all
the notifications but when we is on RFP on your behalf so at some point here in the in the near future we'll get the plan out there we'll get it hung we'll get an order out we're going to go out to RFP view just to show you the market we do it very different than other aggregators we do something called indicative price and in doing that we
let you see the whole Marketplace but what the department wants to know is this table is all about letting the wholesale supplier at the uh Distribution Company or the National Grid know that you're now looking in the marketplace and you may
leaving so that your load is now that hey wake up this maybe these 500 met and all that load may be leaving so that there isn't it isn't a surprise to the wholesaler does that make sense so the actual steps um yeah so
once we once we get an order we have to it's really ironic because the utility is on the service list so they know the town got an order but once you get an order we need to serve that notice on the utility within two to four days and then within 14 days we need to update this table on a single siiz piece of
paper and submit it to the department and let them know when we plan to go out to RFP when we plan to evaluate pricing and it's if it's all TBD at that time you file it with the TBD and then monthly updates after that until you sign a contract and then once we file that with the Department then that
filing notice gets forwarded to the utility so the utility knows to Mark's point they know if you're looking out in the market and you might be coming out of basic service so it's a lot of um just table updates and filing that we didn't have to do before but they just want to make sure the utility knows
what's going on think of it as like a lot of towns have aggregated right there's like 190 aggregations but think about the remaining basic service load that's left especially like not National Grid it's dwindling too but like even think about eversource West even a smaller town gets pulled out of that now
um and it makes a difference on basic service because the the utility loads are are so much smaller now than were before all the aggregation took hold and I just want you to know many other not beating up other aggregators but from my perspective I I fought for this but I I
lost the battle just because you get an order does not mean that you're going out to the marketplace so Colonial has had um until the uh the pandemic and they had this huge shock uh which you guys have all been through the 33 cents
we had a the city of uh Newbery porn they had an order in 2015 they weren't ready we talk to them all the time periodically let them know what pricing was so forth and so on for whatever reason they weren't interested whether it's the mayor the energy committee a new new city council we don't feel
they're kind of pushing the envelope meaning protecting basic service they're saying Hey listen we want you check in the market and this is the other thing they've done which I'm completely against they're saying hey if you don't get out in the market in two years we got to go back through and and and just
notify them they haven't put any rules around it I think it's wrong because given market conditions I I'm making this up but if if basic service is at 3 cents a kilowatt hour we're not doing an aggregation we're going to take the basic service price for right now I'm
not saying that we won't get one going soon but it just doesn't make sense and it's six-month windows so after three terms we're in trouble so I just want you to know this this is another little it's a snafu I think that's in in today
but we had to meet the department that were more concerned about basic service than they were the Savvy people on on basic service there customers left behind I guess we had a we had three or four communities in in Southeastern Massachusetts who were on National Grid that got orders in 2017 that we the
pricing wasn't favorable when we went out for aggregation and they sat for three years until March of 2020 when the numbers were super low right and we took them out to bid in March of 2020 and they got low 10cent you know High nine numbers and they signed for three years and they launched with a big bang but
they had three years to sit there until the market was in their favor and that wouldn't be allowed under the new guidelines unfortunately but um they were really H they were happy about it oh no that's well because it was I don't want to say anything it was a local decision we're not moving right now we want to you know and as far as I'm
concerned that's whether this group wants to move it's up to you not us you know I mean our job is to make sure that you're ready you understand this is indicative this is where prices is where they are excuse me and these are the products that you wanted to see if you're not ready to go the price isn't good enough we don't go it's pretty
simple um the next table on page seven of the 17 this is where it's a very interesting thing and I just want you to know you get to choose whether your Municipal services our fee is the consultant services at 01 and then the
renewable content if you decided to they want us to have that filled in you know on a on an annual basis this this one here bothered me a little bit because I believe it's not none of their concern what you decide to do is your
decision this is them just uh Big Brother watching they don't put any constraints I want to state that there are no constraints but the problem is they're going to be be able to watch this and this information is going to go to the Department of energy resources so
just so that you're aware and I'll just run through them quick what they are renewable content what that is consultant Services that's us Municipal let's just say you said oh I want to see if we can hire an energy manager with three other towns in the area you know something of that nature you guys all
took a mill or two Mills you certainly have the right to do so and and hire an energy manager and have them do what they need to do the department wants to see this on an annual basis just so you're aware um and then any other services you might the do is big on that
direct investment I don't know if you remember Nate they're saying hey you could put something else on to build a solar array or or do something other that's the other services they were talking about direct investment um so anything this is the RPS you know the
class one extra re National wind say you had a a nuclear product whatever that whatever that cost was that that would go in there say it was an extra three Mills uh for uh a national wind a class one that was an extra five Ms we'd put that in there and we'd fill it in uh
supplied supplier name and then Mark interrupt for a sec I I want I want to stop here but also just TimeWise I want frame it I'm thinking if probably if somewhere around 6 a little after 6 maybe wrap up just because there's other stuff we want to
do and I don't want to go too much Beyond 6:30 with everybody for other stuff but the question I have here is with the voluntary is it possible just to do RPS class one and other because what what ends up happening need
it broken out they want it broken out we're actually going to have to put like an insert when we do the mailing to show what's required what's voluntary and what's Mass class one or other okay because the issue I mean this is it start this is the place where it seemed like we're starting to um project what
the products would be and this TBD yeah well it's it's only it's TBD in the rightand column but in terms of what's listed so the fact that we don't have say for example yeah it's not going to be your oh that's not so that's not
what you're going to pick for a that's what we have to report to the department so it's not it's not necessarily what you're going to pick it's just they want this reported and out with ongoing program information they want everybody to see the breakout they they don't want you to just say but
but I get what he's saying he's saying it looks as though we're choosing class ones they want it broken out by class one or other so if if you have class two it's going to go in other we're going to have to spell it out if it's nuclear correct but oh but you're saying these
is iiz these are standard right they don't want they don't want somebody with 100% National win saying it's 100% renewable and implying that it's a class one wreck they want to make sure everybody who has a class one product knows it's a class one and if it's the percentage is part of the required or
the voluntary part right above RPS is voluntary okay so these these these really are just rep large reporting categories back to the state and it has to go on the annual report like that and it's got to go on the mailer like that and Mike there's a lot just I want to make
sure I'm clear there's a lot of people that they really wave the mass class one flag and this is the gold standard and what you have to do there's a whole organization out there you know whether or not you're part of it that's perfectly fine with us but my my point I
don't think this needs to be the the department wants to know it so that they can wave their own flag look what what our aggregations are doing but for me that's really a town decision I didn't realize this is standard language because they want to know the mask CL right this this is new with the guidelines they want it they want it
broken out by required and voluntary and class one and and other or win like win would be zero or I just I tried to and I've been successful in getting it approved I eliminated the class one on the insert that we prepared and I think it was part of the consumer notification you would have seen the little insert
that would go in the mailer I just have required involuntary class one and other so you don't have to specify when um you know Isaac you had a question yeah um just two quick questions one was uh you'd alluded to like you know being
some you know not like some towns being in the market for three years that's not a thing anymore and you I think you may have addressed this but I kind of it skipped my mind like how how long are we out at Market is it like three months six months and then so you get 24 months 24 months
today 24 months you have like a free pass after 24 months we got to start worrying about it now normally I kid you not there'll be an opportunity in the marketplace Within 24 I've never seen there not be but you you get to decide hey this is a big enough spread between our aggregation price and the basic
service price to get this rolling yeah and then so then in the reliability column um if we wished to remain in CCA but we wanted to like maybe uh
attach on to another aggregate like aggregate program where there's like three other Talent and we want to be the fourth town on that that's a continuation of service so we're still good with that you're still good with that because you're taking power supply from not basic service you didn't the
only the the where you where you go a file you return customers to basic service right all of the customers as long as you're staying you're out in the third seven towns one town Two Towns you're fine so so changing in the third party Market is fine but back and forth
between basic service and and that is exactly that that's the F right there right we would always recommend that a town like you know file its own plan and get its own approval even if it wants to link up with other towns right because you should always even if you're going to go together you you should really
think about making your own product selections within that contract with the same supplier in the same term because otherwise if you're just getting one rate for a bunch of towns and you're not picking your own products there's there's subsidies right someone's going to subsidize someone else right we had the the larger Franklin County
aggregation and when they were coming up and running they they said oh we all want to like you we said we'll show you the pricing but I can tell you that deerfield's going to be getting a a better rate you know like a little town is going to be subsidizing a bigger town in Franklin County like that's the way that works right it's everyone's got to
pay for it it's just got to go somewhere so right get right got it thank you you're welcome and Mike to your point and I I AP my eyes are of a certain age I can't 550 550 I don't want to waste everyone's time just running through the
dock I'm happy to come back to the next energy committee meeting I'm I'm happy to do uh but I just want to make sure we answer everyone's questions before I I I run I continue to run the lip Mike no I I think why don't we see if people have questions and then what I was thinking
was that I mean the goal is you want to be able to post this so we can start going so I think clarifying what is outstanding like we should confirm contacts if there's anything else before we you know say go
and we we put I know G you know you have Gabe now and I I know you didn't want to you don't want to bother Gabe certainly we can add another contact under Gabe we put the town contacts we put Michael and Nate right and then we have Gabe on there just because IM you know a main Municipal official um we can certainly
add another name under Gabe if if Nate or Michael you want to be listed under her and I just want to Gabe is we you know we worked with Gabe in the town of orange when she was there she launched their program she signed multi she is well vered in aggregation and is very good at talking about power supply all
you know she's made every decision individually until she left and she's one of the more equipped Town administrators to I would say let's let's keep her then I just wanted to make sure I mean given that she's got the background certainly check with her but she's great and I wanted to mention
one thing because I thought the I thought your question here was great it's and I don't know if everyone got these or not um it's on page 14 um it has to do with the um the 30 days yeah
one second here and I think it's the opt out and what I want to say is it's not I don't think it's as clear as it could be so the 30 days and the reason they use 30 days it's me to read to me to read right so we give everyone 30 days before
the program ever starts believe it or not it's really like 45 so should someone opt out in the or not opt out in their enrollment not uh get get rejected happens all the time with the utilities gives us a chance to uh to correct that but I just want you to know if you
decided to stay in the program or you decided to opt out of the program there's no limitation other than I can only change you on a metor so if I Inception right and Nate decides to that he wants to opt out of the program so he opts out of the program two months later
he wants to get in the program simply calls up goes online and gets back in the program someone else stays in the program says I'm not happy with this I don't like it for whatever reason simply they can sign the card go online give us a call get out of the program and get back in and opt in opt out every 30 days
without fear penalty it's all about Choice aggregation and I don't think that's clear here because I know you were saying oh I want to have a longer which makes sense to me someone's away on vacation so forth so on I just want you to know if they miss the window they haven't missed anything other than
initiation meaning it's started and if you don't do anything you'll just be saving someone money out of the gate we're not going to start the program above it and it sounds like this like you're saying this is the uh it's probably the minimum so if we wanted to extend it for operational purposes
because I think yes you know there's when it I know when we did you know the muni fiber it was a similar kind of thing of all of a sudden you're changing the way you get a utility you know we were instead of you know we weren't really getting much from Verizon but nonetheless you know you're paying a
monthly bill it's you're used to doing it it's about finances so giving people a sense of like you know you don't have to rush into it you might miss you know you might miss whatever so I think we can I guess one of the questions I'm thinking about
is because this a defined process so we have to post this so we'll post it on the website and you guys post it whatever and then you know public comment will come and go what's what what's the trigger we actually having that conversation to say
we got approve for 30 days the department now knows that this 30 days what AES Sho spray want to do in terms of design like what where in the timeline would that happen so I I think you're going to post it and we're going to submit it and then we can safely say
it's about 120 day window to an order so okay if if you want to start thinking about products but I think the thing we can't get we can't request utility data for the town until we get an order so to Mark's point about indicative pricing once we get that order will immediately request the town's data we'll we'll get
an RFP out there and we'll immediately we'll pick a random start date you get an order in November we try for a March start we ask the suppliers to price six terms all the way out to 30 six months to 36 months in six month intervals just to start for a handful of different
products then that comes back and we get back together and you look at what the products cost for the town's load for a a March start and we look at that and have the conversations and you have as much time to side as you want but if you say hey I want to I don't want to start in March because I want to give people
more lead time then we ask them to price a July start and what does that look like for the different terms so we it's hard to have an exact idea until you get the the data and put it out there and see what they're going to price it at but certainly any conversation can start within that 120 day and the one thing
like you said something that that just clicked in my head I just want you to know nothing changes for the end user so for you oh I'm getting a bill from Verizon I now have to put pay the town believe it or not there's a single line out on the on the bill 80% of our customers don't know that they're in
aggregations they just see the stability and the savings and they're not going to ask any questions I just I just want you to know that if they have a low-income discount if they get you know solar mass save all of that stays in place yes sir yeah I know just to clarify for solar I we may want to put it out there saying
like hey if you have solar net metering is still existing and it's also going to be paid at the basic service rate that that National Grid provides not what we're paying as as an Aggregate and you know what might be a good idea and Nate correct me if I'm wrong I think when you
were you trying to get some information out or is this from when you we there were FAQs right we went back and forth on FAQs maybe maybe it would help to post FAQs with the plan that have a little more specific information like to what Isaac's saying about general questions that are more user friendly um
we could certainly give you our list of FAQs and I know Nate we kind of you had yours you sent us something maybe that would be helpful like to you know for the average person that would be great actually because I think you know on our website if we because the way is does
the plan get posted on your website and we're just linking to it it's gon to get posted on your website and we're going to link to it because right now it's the town official website and then when we go program official we'll have the official website but most folks will see it on your website yeah I mean if we have it on our website like we have we
actually have multiple pages for eak so yeah we can put an FAQ that I think can get ahead of some of the things that we think might be you know trigger so for example you know this is the official plan to the state this is
not the products you know this says 30 days we still have to decide as a town do we want 30 days or 45 whatever um and some people will read that and that should be helpful but I think that's a great suggestion Denise yeah and I mean you don't and and think about it you
don't necessarily only have 30 days to decide after you get get an right you're you can launch whenever you want it's just right it's at launch the only thing you're unfortunately you're going out you want to launch your program so if you want to launch your program you're looking at the market that's there unfortunately because you're trying to
get up and running right going forward you're going to have a contract that's existing and then you're going to watch the market and we're just going to take advantage of a low point in the market right for the next contract but when you launch um the other thing we have to consider when we launch is just okay remember the
basic service rate changes in February and August now right for every utility so you want to launch this is another consideration that we talk about when we get pricing you want to launch when you also know what the basic service rate is for maybe three or four of the six months so you can guarantee some savings
against a known number right as opposed to hey I'm launching basic service rate is only good for another 30 days we don't know what the next one's going to be good luck to you like we certainly don't want to do that so there's all these considerations it just depends on when the when the dpu kicks the the order out and we can start those you
know we know the timing and we can kind of better discuss what makes sense for shuberry so I'm thinking tell me you know what do you all think but like you just laid out a couple of time frames that are really helpful in terms of understanding this you know so signing
it waiting the 120 days or approximately um putting out RFP getting Market rates figuring out when the you know when the start date would be Etc and like if we had that mapped out I don't know if Denise if you could probably do it in your sleep but it would give us the ability to sort of figure out at a
subsequent ecac meeting if there's operational discussions that we wanted to have in tandem so that we actually knew where we stood when you come back and say okay got approved what do you guys think well have done that interim work um and sort of just knowing and I'm
sure somewhere in the next short term we'll you know present to the select board um and speaking of which I do the select board has to sign this thing is that correct so not signed but but vote on it vote to approve so okay we that's and that's a it's not statutorily
required um we would we would highly recommend it right you're posting it for public review you want it to go in front of the select board know that the whole town is behind it there was a vote to approve it before it went on to a state agency you don't want to just haphazardly file with the dpu we just don't recommend that it's not you know a
a good look at the local level and just so you know if by chance the the select board that like asked to have us come out we'll answer their questions we'll come out to the select board meeting you know when it's going to get approved or even before so just let us know because once everyone gets the information it I
I mean this honestly it's Advantage aggregation it just once you realize the flexibility you have with aggregation and you have an open mind it's Advantage aggregation I want to sayate one thing there's one hurdle no one can get over that is the
automatic optin if you will you know you're in if you don't do something and that is going to anger certain customers no way around it otherwise you don't get the pricing yeah I also go ahead was that you just I I'm not sure if I saw this
but so if you want to opt out you have to call did I read that correctly no so you're gonna get a card everyone gets a card before the program ever starts all they got to do is sign their name put it in a stamp address already envelope and it's done or they could call they could go online it couldn't be easy no one's
trying to hold you in the program some people will say to you and it happens in every Community you probably know the three people that are going to say something right now just because that's who they are which is perfectly fine don't get me wrong but without it that's the only way you get that tight pricing
that everyone wants an aggregation hey everyone's in and I can tell you I expect three to five% of the customers in chuth to opt out of the program that's what I expect and the other good thing with the guidelines and I think we might have mentioned this before but now we can get a list of the folks that are on third party supply from from National
Grid so we have the ability to send a and we don't have to file this postcard we can just we're going to just we can just do it uh we've been sending a 6x1 postcard to folks on thirdparty Supply like you've been identified by National Grid as being in either National Grid Greenup or on third party supply um you
can join the town's program here's how to do it this is the product this is the term just make sure you check your you don't have $150 early termination fee right with like a constellation or a company that has one of those so okay but we can at least alert folks now we didn't have that ability prior to the
guidelines the new guidelines so it's worked out really well we've seen a lot of offs yeah very well so I would so I would say in terms of next steps you know I can let the select board know that we'd like them to vote on this um so and I can probably just forward the
version that you sent to me and uh yeah I need to get I need to get I need to put an n on the end of notification on the letter and get that I apologize Mor IFI so you know I think you know Nate and I can go Gail I'm I'm guessing you
probably come so we can we can notice it if you want but I I actually think you know they've been really receptive um you know we've done our due diligence and explained things all along the way so there's no surprises um and I think the US getting this explanation which is
at least for me very helpful to understand you know how this fits it's an easy explanation to them so I mean we're what's say January 14th I think I I'm not you know they meet every two weeks I'm not sure what the cycle
is so two weeks from tonight from tonight so they met they're meeting they met at meeting currently right so maybe webly get on the agenda for the end of the month which would be easy and then we could just let you know and then we mutually do the posting stuff so we'll
post it and send you the link Etc um and then the the clock starts going for the notice period for the public comment period and normally in case there's a a comment Mike just procedurally we'd hang the plan first and then allow you know
in case anyone had any comments and there was something that you that everyone decided yes we want to add that to the plan or what have you doesn't happen often anymore just given this table plan but if if that did happen we could end we could do that before the select board voted on the final plan
okay okay cool anyone else y so you will tell us specifically what we need to put on our website correct posting language and everything dict what gets put on y yeah there was actually a f one of the files they sent was the the website
stuff and uh so quick question on um you know posting the plan for public comment uh if there are changes that go into the public plan based on public comment is there does that restart the clock on how long we need to post it or it's just it's 30 days from when we post it no
matter what changes happen that is correct thank you and this is new but the the department is that is the plan it gets voted on you're fine years ago if it was subsid they'd ask you to refile but refile it on the you know on the website that's
not the case any longer though yeah we don't even have to we used to have to give all the comments and all the responses and they go through them and they you know we don't have to do any of that anymore so it's up the town can handle it great well this has been fantastic thank you both for taking the time um so
and thank you for having us yeah Mike mate if you beat us again just call that's what you hired us to do we're happy to get back on cool much I think we're good for now but I'm sure we'll be talking to you sometime in the near future so have a Wonder night okay Sor
to take up so much to the meeting this was worthwhile investment of time absolutely thank you thank you very much it's nice meeting you everyone yeah see by so we can I think before we
do other stuff we got updates about EV Chargers um anything about the decarbonization roadmap Grant Public hearing but before we do that mostly wanted to welcome Bert um just for your
interest and this is an unusual meeting usually it's more informal and talking we don't usually have this kind of level of detail but it was it's a long road and it was essential part but B do you wanted to sort of say a little bit bit more about you know what interested you or you know do you have any questions
for us yeah sure I'll try to be concise um I'm curious about what different residents motivations might be to kind of enroll in a type of program like this for me part of it was I wanted to put
solar on my roof um my property's too too treed I wasn't going to take my trees down so so I thought oh this is a potential opportunity to you know put my money into solar in a collective way now
I don't know to what extent other people's motivations are like that or if they're very bottom line price oriented you know I'm not sure the pricing structure I'm concerned about that but more concerned about kind of going the green way so I don't know if I fall in line with most other people who are
pursuing this kind of Avenue or not but that was what it was for me yeah and just to be clear I I was mostly thinking about your interest in the committee but I can answer that question which is you know with the too many trees welcome to shutesbury right exactly I mean I just had someone come out to do our look of
solar the second time around and there's still there's literally there's one spot on my property where they can do solar I mean it's just sort of crazy um you know and I think in terms of the options the nice thing about TCA is that it really does run the gamut so some people are going to come in and saying I'm paying
too much I want to pay less other people want to do green you know we know for a fact that we also it's not just your standard green but we want to do you know Solar without cutting down trees and so there's a whole range but um you know in terms of the committee are the
things that you're particularly interested in that you know you wanted to share well it's kind of similar to what I explained for you know my my personal interest and yeah it's it's um I'm very interested in you know
you know keeping a minimal carbon footprint personally and if I can participate in the town doing that as well that's a lot of it for me like curiosity about that um you know they mentioned there were different options as in plans as far as you know nuclear
is even an option which I don't know how the town would respond to something like that it's some not something I would want to choose personally you know as one of the sources you know so yeah does anyone have any questions for Bert just
you know welcome to town yeah thank you where were you before Connecticut outside of Waterberry okay oh we're we're outside of Waterberry I grew up in ngat oh I was in Middlebury oh okay there you go yeah yeah that's
great I I always see the sign for nog it sticks in my head for some reason it's funny it's funny well we're going to keep going but if you have questions you know just chime in and um you know part of the idea of sort of having someone come is just get a sense
of like what this committee does and you know I think the one thing that I'll I'll just say is it's you know we're really focused on sort of the municipal part of it like what we can do at the Town level whether it's through the town or moving the town
like so for the CCA there's a town component but obviously people are paying their own electric bills and making their own decisions in terms of how they would interface with this program but it's rather than because at the beginning we had a lot of conversations about how to help people
sort of do lifestyle changes to reduce their far carbon footprint and while important it's less what we you know since we're a town committee it's really sort of figuring out at the higher level like how can we sort of you know can we get you know saw on all the buildings
Can We R do Community Choice aggregation can we set ourselves up for doing Grant programs which is a full-time project anyway um it's because it's all complicated but so but let's shift Isaac you wrote up um update on EV charges oh
G sorry yeah I was just gonna H tell Bert that the when when Michael says municipal buildings that's Town Hall School yeah yeah right major Metropolis of
and I should throw in just quickly I have a fully electric car so I have a I have a you know level two charger at my home so cool thanks okay I'll uh I I forwarded along the the notes that I had from the
conversation with Nick valori from uh uh the East Coast renewable and and uh I can review kind of conversations with Town officials so um let me just share my screen all right so the conversation was
long and like ranging um so when I wanted to talk to him about like you know level two level three charging stations like he wanted to go into like the the Weeds on what that means and I'm happy to do that with you all now or I can kind of just keep
you guys can review this but you know did you like how do we feel do you want like to go through this kind of information here uh what do you guys think I mean I think I mean this is really like decision like this is like there are two different types of chargers all this information
will come into play when we decide what kind of product we want to pursue um you know in terms of what average charge time means what it means like you know kind of definitional stuff um you know why are these numbers how are they based like you know everything
is based on Tesla which is a large battery etc etc but so right now there are two incentives left in National Grid G did you have a question okay uh there and then there are two basic and that
the each level charger lives with a different type of a different type of incentive right so there are two different there's a public access and there's a fleet um option right so the fleet option is municipal Vehicles right
so you know the the fire department the DPW U Police Station East Coast Renewables will um install for free the charging ports for the fleet however they won't manage it because there's no money in it for them
the town is the town pays for the electricity that goes into these vehicles and and these are all level three chargers right these are faster charging Chargers um and and so and then we we're also on the hook for the maintenance which for level three
Chargers like I said before is uh $600 per Port which is $1,200 per charging station so that's one way to go and we can and then the public is um level two only but I guess there's like a supercharger option which is just a regular level two but they have this
thing on it called a switch gear which if you just have one car on a two-port level two charger then it can divert all the electricity to the one car and charge a percentage faster um but it's not a different it's not it's no
different from every level two except for the fact that they put in this little switch gear which allows this to happen and they'll post signage of like the difference the other thing is like we disc discussed before and a lot of this is disambiguation because conversations that I had previously
weren't clear on what's a level two versus a level three incentive right level three incentives don't have have an EV only parking requirement the level two does a level two also to CL like CL further clarification has those part
those spots have to be ADA Compliant but they do not have to be reserved for handicap parking so these are like important distinctions um in terms of conversations with municipalities right so um Chief Zano of the fire department
is not against it um you know he's a little concerned about it but if there was one at the station he's not you know not and then Chief Burgess I forwarded along because it was an email response she's Pro uh electric vehicle has her own but is against it for the Department
uh the police department for reasons she's articulated elsewhere that you know I I don't know I I assume probably in you know uh a committee meeting something like that uh and I haven't heard back from DPW uh conversation with the principal you know they're interested but had questions that I've
been trying to answer but yes they are interested not sure of the numbers that they would be supporting but the questions from the principal are like you know are we going to have people off hours in the parking lot um who's paying for the electricity you know and that
the ultimate answer would be this would be a public service this would be Public Access so it would be paid for by the consumer um and again if if East Coast renewable does own the the charging ports they will do all maintenance they
will do like all of everything necessary they will assume all cost and and they'll take in all of the revenues from the uh electrical like charges but then we'll reconcile at the end of the fiscal year and we would get half of whatever
was there and now the good thing that I clarified was if there was problems with a port right and nobody nobody was there if there was a negative balance right on that we would not be liable for that that's all on on East Coast renewable so
um so that's a good thing to know all right uh let's see they had he got like because I mentioned like what our plan was right to like carbon carbon neutrality you know eventually like getting you know like solar on our municipal buildings and he said that
they could do solar as well but it's all revenue generation right they can only do it if there's money in it for them and there's like three ways they can do it right they would be they could be an installer if they wanted like if we wanted them to install it just like it would be like you know uh Greenfield
solar or whatever Solar Company and we would pay them for it and all the energy would be free or there was something it was uh let's see what do you call Community solar which is kind of like a CCA where you negotiate for a specific percentage off of the price of kilowatt
hours and that doesn't fluctuate right it's not like locking in a specific rate it's like okay we we get energy from basic service at a discounted rate of like you know 3% right and whether it's 3% of 15
cents an hour or kilowatt hour or 33 cents per kilowatt hour that doesn't fluctuate it's just that the percentage is is granted and then they would install they could also install the solar for free and we would enter a purchasing agreement with them for 20 cents a kilowatt hour you know so anyway
that's that that kind of came in on the like kind of unsolicited but I I capture that information um yeah and so if we decided to move forward we could apply for both grants
right so we could apply for the fleet as well as public right so we can get a public in the library we could get a public at at the um B behind um the town hall you get one you know at the school um and what and Nick is very forthcoming
of like yes I understand understand the more business I do the more opportunity for profit right so that's the motivator right there's there's no such thing as a free lunch however you know we you know he was he was saying in your in your proposal for the grant you can put in
for like let's say we want three th three solar chargers or three EV chargers at Town Hall which would be six ports um when we get approved we can say no we only want one or two like but like
to get in the queue uh is important and to be in the approval process and that can change before the actual install and all that stuff pursuant to the question about where's the grant money coming from these are not federal dollars these
are money with National Grid and I asked him about like all right well how much is left in the pot how long is it going to last and as an example he gave there was a public access level three incentive released of July of last year $25
million uh which comes out to five to 600 locations National Grid assumed it would last five to six years but it it was filled up within a year so giving that as a you know some sort of context um they're saying there's still a ton of
money for level two which who knows when it's going to run out and pursu back to the question of if we're in Q are we guaranteed no it's just just do we get it processed before the money Runs Out is is kind of the answer so uh and then
it was the uh do does the town own it versus does you know does East Coast renewable own it and really it's about liability right like for you know if something goes wrong with it we would we would call East Coast renewable but they would service it but we would pay for
the service whereas you know if they owned it and we would get 50% of the pro proceeds at the end of you know the the reconciliation um that's kind of what I like you know to make it as easy as possible for the town like I don't think this is a profit a pro like we're not
looking for profit on this we're looking for accessibility right and he's talking about for thinking so you know that's why he's saying like well you know in 2028 you know they you know won't be making you know uh fossil fuel cars um so you want to be prepared while it's
free to to have access to these these uh you know these actual things um the library is a challenge right because Maryann like there's limited parking um they have like conduit laid for two uh
EV charging ports but they're not going to go into it at a level two because they can't guarantee that that's you know for they can't guarantee those two spots it's like you know 20% of their parking would be um you know dedicated to EVs and you know that just won't be a
possibility for them at this moment um and then and she clarified with me which I didn't realize because there's this question of okay with a public charging port according to the verbiage of the grant you it needs to be um EV only and
who who monitors that she was saying that in the grant that she was looking at which I would assume is the same Grant um is the library would be on the hook like any any institution that it is outside of like if they're at the school the school is you know you know on the
hook for being like all right you got to move that car whatever how that happens I don't know what teeth exists is not documented anywhere um in asking Nick how this worked he would be like well if uh you know National Grid car drove by
if they were like checking their you know checking the stations and noticed fossil fuel cars there would there would be some that you know they would reach out I would assume to the institution right to the library to the town hall whatever um but again like what you know
you can't apply for the grant in good faith knowing that you won't be able to accommodate this uh you know this restriction however how that restriction is going to be enforced like there's zero information on enforcement from
National Grid um so I don't know how to get additional information from that who to call who to talk to and even if I found the right person to talk to I'm sure that they're not going to you know I don't there doesn't seem to be a plan in place because if there was it would be delineated right like first offense
you get a fine like that you have to pay something like that there's nothing so I have zero idea about that um so and then the last uh I haven't heard from the DPW I emailed um Dave and and didn't hear back at the general DPW email address
so Isaac thank you that was really thoughtful and a lot of work so massively appreciate that very welcome no it's it seems like a great opportunity and yeah again like the cold calls like they're they're business people right like but they're also trying to get these products out here it's not like a Fly by Night operation
where you know we're going to be left holding the bag and they run out of town with you know all the grant money um this is something that you know you know I'm I was pleasantly surprised in my conversation um so do
anyone have any G in talking with uh the I gather you're talking with the um principal at the school yes um did she sound as if I mean there's no way you can make it not 247 would that turn I think her concern
was I think the primary question was who pays for it with the assumed answer of if it was if it was free then then it's like oh well people will be here all night you know like in the parking lot like there's some sort of liability for that uh you know we didn't hash that out
in further details but I can pull up the questions that I had with I mean just having been on the school committee you know the normal concerns are safety for kids and so you want to you want to minimize people that you don't know in
proximity to the school so that's I think what they're always thinking about like you know whether it's talking about renting the space or you know having outside groups come in like it's just is an extension of that yeah so her questions were who pays for the electricity who's
responsible for maintaining does the school does this open the school lot to overnight cars yeah you know my response was where is that again you know it would be user via credit card
right charged by a set kilowatt hour price you know know it would be the third party energ you know East Coast Renewables would would do all the maintenance like it's not on the town it's not on if we if we do the them owning it and then while it's likely if
you own an EV like Bert you know like he's not going to rely solely on a you know a third party to like this is just I see this as teachers that have an EV that are parking in the lot all day charging it up there um and that would be like a level two so it would take a
little bit long longer to get that charge um so so yeah I mean she seems open to it like there's no discussion on number of spots that they would want to leave open and again like we' heard from previous you know other municipalities
like that they are going to push for more rather than fewer because that increases their profitability right um but also like I mean if you think about it if you think it through um yes you know like things are trending
towards EV right like we want an entire town full of electric vehicles if possible if you know the community can support that Etc so the having the infrastructure in place would be great now there was a conversation like when I talked about the fleet like he's like well you know if you got you know if you
got 12 Cruisers and two of them are trying to charge it I'm like we have three police officers and we have two like we have two police cars we have two Cruisers I don't see a fleet of 12 necessitating five charging port five
Chargers with like you know like 10 ports so like he understood the context of it he didn't really understand the size of the town so yeah so here's the question just I think to move us the next step like if I remember correctly the select board's the who
actually correct they had to sign off on it yeah so we would probably like you know uh submit a recommendation for moving forward in that recommendation I think we'd probably select the sites um whether it's public or Fleet and uh how
many charging stations per location oh and then the other thing is for the fleet the level three are um it's uh what is it that new the new wire that's
been put up through town three-phase power yeah three-phase energy so um I had that question about like um are there going to be a new metering situation or do we will they drop a line and that's again that's all in the utility but it's good information to have he's saying you know 90% of the
deals for brand new level three Chargers which would be the fleet they drop a new line and a brand new meter so and then generally level two pull from an existing meter so like if it's at the school it'll be on the school's meter um
so I guess really the yeah I wonder how that would work out right because you know it's oh go ahead G Gil well I was just going to say that what we've heard from both the police and the fire is that the equipment that they need and the
specifications of the equipment are not compatible with EV so I got to wonder why we would even I could see having public yeah but but not fleet Fleet well so haven't heard back
from DPW I don't know if if they have any apparatus that would you know like I mean there could be like a pickup truck right or something like a you know but like you're not going to have an excavator or a backhoe that's electric right you're not going to have an electric firet Tru now this is this is
short-term thinking right this is 2025 thinking right now but you know with a you know like I kind of like I would imagine this to be Like the Model T days right I can never imagine a world where everybody drives an automobile it's only
meant for the wealthy right but now you know as like if if we enter a world where fossil fuel cars are no longer produced then all automobiles will be electric right and the reliability Factor will have to be solved right all
that kind of stuff so we might be in a position where a fleet would make sense in a future time now if they install it you know we don't have to use it or like public right so we so if we go the public route we can do at the you know behind the town hall you know if if it
becomes you know that we just put up a sign it's like well you know it's well you know the police cruisers are on it you know so I I don't know how that works out in 10 15 20 30 years from now like it's hard to have that that long view of things but I I yes as things
stand right now there you know the police is adamantly against you know the you know the police cruisers as electric vehicles I think the only possible candidate at this time would be the the the fire chief's uh personal vehicle
right to to respond to scenes with now I don't see that that being replaced within the next 10 years so you know this is just a a fairly recent like I think this car will last for a while I don't know if the rescue could be an electric vehicle and again like haven't
heard from the DPW to even persue Fleet Town Hall I mean Town Hall rather Personnel so you know yeah of course yeah but again like the model of the fleet versus the model of the public access is who's paying for the solar or
who's paying for the electricity right with the fleet it's restricted to Municipal vehicles and all the charges go to the town which is why there's no profit margin for you know uh East Coast renewable to to gather from that so then
we would be on the hook for you know the $1,200 a month per charging unit maintenance my what I would suggest just in the interest of time since Colonial sort of blew out our meeting time is if we think
about next meeting trying to come up with a recommendation so now that we've had you know Isaac's information and explanation if we ruminate on it and the goal would be to sort of figure out can we make a recommendation to the select board come to an agreement based on what
we know um and use that time because then you know like we won't wait too long to blow the opportunity but it'll give us a chance to do it and we can probably get in before things speed up for town meeting but does that sound right for to
everybody yeah can I ask a quick question yeah please about the school charging did you say that would be a free charging or no that would be public so that would the Public Public charging would be consumer based right so you
would put in your credit card um you know and and charge per kilowatt hour and again like they set the rates but we they consult with us on the rates and they want a competitive rate because they want people charging there because you know that's how they they make their revenue right so if they charge 50 cents
kilowatt hour nobody's going to do it but if it was you know 20 cents or for 15 cents like a reasonable rate you know they're not looking to gouge they're really looking to find the sweet spot where they can they can allow like have incentivize people to charge and pull in the
revenue so I have one just random thought and then we can move on but I'm also as we think about this we might want to think about the current library parking lot because at least for the short term it's across from town hall and it's not going to I don't know if
there's any use yeah I don't know what the what the use of the library the current Library will be after the new library is is completed so that is a possibility um I can talk with Maryann
about that I'm sure she has some insight or knowledge about what the plans are for that building after new library and uh whether that makes sense the official but I mean the viable yeah the viable options seem to be Town Hall possibly the the old library or the
current library and the school and then just working with the different constituencies to see how many would be acceptable where they would be like I'm uming like in the school parking lot probably the back right corner you know even though it's a little bit farther like you know I don't know how many you
want like you want people to be able to access that don't necessarily have an electron electric vehicle so I don't know that that's all like down the line right now you know it's about um recommending and moving forward great well Isaac thank you again
this is like really great work thanks um so I don't know moving on Nate did you hear anything about the carbonization Grant not yet I did I did learn that the next the next window is uh opens in like March 1
or something like that so if we get rejected you know we we can hit the next window presumably they have to tell us in time so we can turn it around so you said March 1 is the next window so we would definitely hear before then right
yeah presumably Isaac presumably presumably yeah yeah you didn't get in but you also missed the window for reapplication exactly exactly Sorry Charlie go so I the only other thing
that's on here besides minutes is we're going to talk about a plan for a public hearing and forum for the climate leaders thing which I think we can push off to next meeting um just you know if we have to do we have to do a public hearing before town meeting so right now
it sounds like town meeting is somewhere between the end of April and somewhere in June so if we discuss it in March and do a a a hearing at a public forum in March that's probably sufficient because it's the hearing is more
educational I mean the for is educational the hearing is required statutorily so I justes just generally speaking does March feel right and if March feels right we can um talk about it and then I mean knowing what we've
done before it seems like the short thing is come up with the date do the town announce put it on the website and get some and then work on materials but between February and March we can work on the materials and the content you know the content of the Town announce so
um if that sounds like a general plan we can just sort of talk about specifics next time um on for next time yeah does that work sounds good and you were goingon to ask the fellow from Leverett to come talk about the town gr oh yeah right Richard
nordor um thank you for that I forgot to so every did everyone follow that no so I'm trying to remember it's yeah I'm trying to remember where I was when he talked about it but you know
I think it's an interesting thing because they're trying to do an electrical MLP the difference that he said is that that's sort of ridiculous they don't have to cross the road so the road that goes through
Leverett this the school the public safety folks and the library are all on the same side of the street and if you remember like a year and a half ago we were talking about like the utility if you have to cross lever Road in chatsbury like the utility has to give you permission so which they never will
do so I'm just sort of piecing things together I haven't heard of out his mouth but he did say the thing you should know is that we're all we have one giant parcel on one side of the road um you know and even though we're teeny we're a little bit more spread out I mean granted Town Hall I guess Town Hall
the library and the fire station are all on the same side of the road so when the library moves we'll be we'll be in the same boat but um if we maybe I'll invite him in April is that is that too far out or March what
do you yeah because there's nothing pressing about that no his name again Richard uh it's it's in the minutes okay I'll send it to you thanks yeah cool so the last thing we got to do is just to
proove the minutes and uh did any we get a chance to to see what got sent out I I would had one edit suggested I made the change and we're good to go cool okay uh so I want to move to approve the the
minutes of I forget the date uh 127 127 I would like to move to approve the minutes um from our meeting in
12:17 I'll second that cool any other discussion okay hearing none Nate how do you vote hi yeah how do you vote I Isaac how do you vote I and I am an I so the minutes are approved so before we
adjourn um I what I would suggest ber have we not scared you away yet you haven't okay that's good um when I would maybe suggest just because our usual routine
of of our meetings really got blown out with the colonial I mean if if you're since you're not scared away I'll just you know let you know in well we're going to set a meeting date now so you'll know what it is and then just come next month and you know what we've done in the past is you should just
participate in the conversation you know all you just don't get to vote on the minutes but other than that you know and then if that all feels right whoops we can just sort of you know move a recommendation at the select board the way it works is since we're all appointed
so if if you felt like you wanted to you know continue on what we would basically do is vote to recommend you to the select board then the select board appoint you so it's usually I don't know somewhere between a month or six weeks depending on getting on the selectboard
dance card but um I think that would probably be the best way to go for now if that makes sense everybody cool so let us see what um our next meeting date situation
is um so that would be February 11 uh let's see yeah February 11th all right so that that gets into the oh yeah you're 6:30 class thing right yeah so remind us what
the limitations are again you're taking the class so I have a class that goes from 4:00 to 6:30 it could get out a little bit earlier but like um I you know I think by 6:30 I should be able to be be on a meeting because I'll bring my laptop even if it's in the classroom
I'll find a quiet place um after everybody leaves to to to drop in cool and you said February 11th is that right yeah and Nate in terms of hockey that's gonna work for you that'll work yeah I I can I'm
flexible Gail you guys if we do 6:30 yeah cool okay so February 11th at 6:30 will be our next meeting and we'll assume we'll do our usual hour and a half we will we'll pick up the discussion
about the hearing we'll talk about recommendations in terms of the EV Chargers and I think the other thing is in terms of oh I guess just before we adjourn circling back to the CCA thing
so Nate if you it sounded like um Denise had to make do some small stuff and then yeah so she send that to you yep um and then you and I can I'll I'll reach out to the
select board to see if by getting on there I'm presumably the January 20th agenda so can you make January 28th if I pitch that yes let's see if I can do that uh January
28 cool I can do that too so we shoot for that and then if it gets approved then we can sort of do a quick turnaround and Gail they can get you the information on the website so we'll have it I mean it's already in one of the files but I I think it's pretty simple it shouldn't be
a problem for us to do that but I can't put that up until it's been approved by the select board correct correct right but it sounds like uh Gabe is going to be a real asset yeah that was then and there y he can do the pitch
to The board for us while we're there um so okay everyone cool anything we left out okay any want to move to adjourn I would like to move to adjourn on this meeting I second okay
any other discussion no hearing none Nate how do you vote hi yeah FL I ISAC yes hi and I am an I so we Jed B thanks for joining us we forward to seeing you next month back have a good night
everybody good night thank you bye