February 12, 2026 – Energy and Climate Committee – Video & Transcript
February 12, 2026 - Energy and Climate Committee
This is Ellen Tohn, Chair of the Energy and Climate Committee, February 12, 2006-730.
Pursuant to Chapter 2 of the Act of 2025, this meeting of the ECC Energy and Climate Committee
will be conducted via remote access in accordance with applicable law.
If this meeting has only remote access, which is the case, no in-person attendance will be permitted.
You can watch the meeting remotely with the link that can be found on the town website under calendar.
And it'll link you there.
So I am now going to call the meeting to order.
And I am going to do something else with just my screen.
Sorry, guys.
I'm a little behind tonight.
I want to be able to see the agenda and see all of you, which seems like a good situation.
Olivia's going to take notes when she's back on. Oh, really? Oh, that's fantastic. I was going to ask someone to do that. So let me first note who is in attendance. I see committee members Tom Siaka. I hear Neil Gordon. And I hear Steve Garone and Ellen Tohn. Our student rep, Kavya Swanker. Our staff person, Julie Gagan and Olivia Blanley. Although Olivia has a new last name, right, Julie? Lizardo. Lizardo. And that's all I'm seeing. I believe John Harper, our associate member, is going to join late after 8. Bill Huss can't make it. I know Clovis can't make it. And I never heard from Paul Dale. One thing we are going to really work on is finding a regular night, and if I can't make it, Neil will chair, and try to navigate through everybody's conflicts. So first, let me just ask, is there any public comment? I don't think there's anybody else on, right? There is a Marie Eisenberg, who is on, but her mic is muted. When I go to the view button in the upper right-hand corner of the screen, I get a display with... Yeah, yeah, Tom, that only works when you're a panelist. So that didn't work for us. Okay. Oh, you're on now, Ellen. Yeah. I think Seth is working on it right now. So it looks like everyone's in except for Marie. Great. Okay, perfect. So before we just get to public comment for one second, Olivia is working very hard to see if we can find a night, given everyone's commitments. Steve, would you please remind Olivia, you have a surface water quality meeting once a month on a certain date. What is that?
That's the one that bounces around a lot. The ones that I know about are the second Tuesday of the month and pretty much every Wednesday. Okay, so Wednesdays are bad for you and the second Tuesday of the month is bad. Mondays and Wednesdays... I can work around. Mondays and... And we all may miss a meeting here and there. That will happen. Mondays and Wednesdays are bad for Bill. So I think we're still looking at Tuesdays or Thursdays. And Olivia, is it the case that like, and Julie, that Tuesdays are just really hard nights for Zoom meetings for the town? Yeah, we've had trouble in the past. So even when we pick a meeting day and time, sometimes the town doesn't have capacity to support. I think we do have the next two meetings scheduled. So maybe we can confirm with everyone that those two dates work and then we can move forward from there. Let's do that and then we'll get to public comment. When is the next one? April 28th. We don't have one in March? Oh my God, I'm so sorry. March 17th. We're having a date switcheroo in our brains, so... Yes. It's March 17th and then April 28th. Is the both at 7.30? 7.30 on Zoom. Yep. And did you guys send out calendar invites for those? Not yet. We were confirming tonight and then we'll send them out first thing tomorrow. Okay, so that's a Tuesday and we'll end in March 28th. April 28th. I'm sorry. Thank you, Neil. April 28th. No, I'm not going to make the March meeting. And April 28th, is that a Tuesday? Yep. I might have a conflict on that thing. I think we're just going to have to go with dates and people will miss them, I think. This is how we're getting into trouble. So if people know in advance we have them, then hopefully people can... I don't know what else to do, Tom. We're kind of just having troubles. People are too committed. Too many things. It's a positive thing overall. Yeah, I mean, once Bill's finance committee meetings stop on Mondays and Wednesdays after town meeting, we can re-look at this question. Okay, why don't you send that out to everybody? And then I think you should plan the May one. What would the May one be? Like, just do the next, do through June. Yeah, great idea. They are what they are. And if people miss them, they miss them. Well, are those more likely to be Thursdays after the next couple? I think we're going to stay with Tuesdays for right now. Yeah, it would be Tuesday, May 19th. And... That would be okay for me. Tuesday, June 16th. That's probably okay. So why was it April 20... Why was it so late in April when the others are... Kind of mid-month? For us, and this is totally up to you if you want to keep it, but I'm away. It's April vacation week, and I'm away. I think we need to get Julie there. I don't really want to meet without Julie. Thanks, Ellen. So that, you know, and the rest of us can miss a bit. If we don't have Julie, I think it's less productive. I agree. Okay. All right. So I'm going to open this to public comment. Marie, we can see that you've joined us. Do you have public comment, or are you just listening in and introduce yourself? Hi, I'm Marie. I attend the COA climate change meeting. Oh, yeah. Great. I have an ongoing interest in the subject, and so I'm here to see what I can learn about what Waylon's doing. Ah, fantastic. That's great. And I will listen. Okay. Okay. But Marie, we have a very open and inclusive meeting approach. So at any point, if you want to ask a question or make a comment, do it. Okay. All right. We try to be really open and inclusive. So glad you're having a good experience with Tony and Margie. They're terrific. We're always thrilled that they're doing that, and they've done it many times for us. So terrific. So this is the committee. We're missing three folks, and Julie is our sustainability manager and facilities. Your title eludes me, Julie. But I call us our sustainability manager, and Olivia is our sustainability coordinator. All right. I will hand this over. And Olivia, thanks for taking notes. I will hand this over, Kavya, for you for update. I'm hoping you're going to tell us a little bit about fast fashion, slow fashion.
So we had our slow fashion show. It got delayed a lot because of the snowstorm. Because it's slow.
Yeah. And we had models. I think it ended up pretty good. Pretty good. For the, what was it? For the whale and post article, I have finished it. I just need to get all the models to sign the minor consent form. Okay. I currently have about half of them, if you include me. But other than that, it's done. That's great. Do you want to send it to June? And just to say, so for Marie's benefit, who's listening, can you just give us three, give her three sentences on what slow fashion was at the high school? So Green Team runs a slow fashion show every year during, like, the week after midterms. And basically, we have a bunch of models, like, student volunteer models. And we have them wear thrifted or upcycled clothes to show students, like other students, how dressing sustainably can still be fashionable. And you don't have to follow all these fast fashion trends. And Marie, we're trying to get as much information as we can in the Whelan Post, just to let people know what's happening in terms of sustainability. So Javia, offer to write the article. So I would just send it to June to say, I'm getting these things, but I want her to slot it in. And then you can also bug your fellow students to say, hey, this is the deadline. I really need this. Are they all in, if you don't get some of them, are there some pictures with just a few of them, so you'd still be okay? Yeah, most of them are just, like, full body shots so that you can see their outfit. There's not a lot that are big group photos. Okay. So if you don't get some of them, you could just eliminate that photo. So I would say, ask June what her deadline is. Just copy me so I can track along and help you out if you need it. So great. Other updates from you and the green team or anything at the school? No, not really. I think our next project is going to be Earth Week, which we're going to do the week before April break. And do you know what you have planned at this point or how we can help you? Um, I know last year we had a clothing swap and we did a photo contest. I think we might have done more. I'm not sure. I haven't, I wasn't there at the last meeting, so I'm not entirely sure, but I'll know by next meeting. Okay. Um, why don't we, uh, talk about it also at the next meeting and, you know, happy to have people brainstorm stuff. Yeah. About what. Positive. I can make it to the next meeting because March 17th is my birthday. Oh, okay. So for, for Earth Day, when you're, do you usually do like one event or I'm just trying to think about, you know, Olivia and Julia and others, other things we have going on that we would want to showcase. I mean, you guys are doing composting at the schools. Is there anything else you want to do related to the composting that would show like how much emissions we've saved or something about composting that you could do during that, um, week, the other thing is, um, I don't know how it works, but you know, we can always, I don't know if people leave the building, but you could do a little Evie, um, electric vehicle, electric car showcase. We could just put a few Evie's in that first parking lot, you know, have you were like right by the entrance and just get members of the committee and others, people in town to just bring their Evie, you know, students, some students have cars, students live in families that have cars and they could, you know, say, Hey, that's cool. I saw this ionic five is really cool. Like, have you guys, you know, that's the one other thought that occurs to this. No, we also run, like, I think on one of the days we make it walk to school day where we basically encourage people to walk or ride a bike or even carpool to school. And then we also have a trash pickup day sometime during the week. Okay.
Um, great. I think these are also a good thing to think about when you're communicating with June at the Wayland post. It's like, Hey, we're also going to do this. We could give you a little photo montage of things from earth week that the high school did. Like they love pictures. If you, especially include me, you could say, we're doing some things that would be in April. We could take some pictures and, you know, write a very short description. Yeah. Okay. Great. Anybody else have any other thoughts for the green team?
Um, I think the, there's like the walk and bike to school day happens in May. Katya. I don't know if that there's a local one. Yeah, there's a, um, there's a one that happens like many towns and it's usually like, I'm just looked it up. It looks like May 6th. So. Oh, maybe. Yeah. Um, but I, I think again, to just partner on what Ellen said, I love the idea of doing like an EV showcase. So if you need help organizing something like that, or if you think that would be like of interest, we're happy to like. I can ask myself about it. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and then the other thing is that we are working on the composting. I think Olivia updated you. Um, did she send you an email? Yeah. I think I was CC'd on the emails with the alumni. We're, we are working on it. It's, um, we're trying to figure out how much it, you still don't have an answer for like how much they've been paying. Um, but we have made some progress and I, it looks like we're going to add a compost bin in town, town building. We did an employee survey and everyone approved. So, um, that's one step closer, at least in the composting category. And hopefully we can get the bins figured out for the schools. Okay. Great. Um, great. We won't see you in March. We'll see you in April, but let us know how we can help. On Earth Day stuff. All right. Over to you, Olivia. Okay, um, thank you, Kavya. Um, updates from me. I've been in contact with HomeWorks, our massive approved vendor. I just met with the representative that's working with, um, me, um, earlier this week. And we got approval from Michael McCall to send out, um, the first mailer explaining HomeWorks, explaining where Waylon's landing page is on their website and how people can schedule their own home energy audits. Um, so that mailer is going to go out in two to three weeks. Um, it's going to have my contact information on it. And then also, um, the woman's name is Rachel that's been helping us. So her contact is going to be on it as well. And then, um, Jalen Bradica, who works in the town manager's office, she put together kind of like a graphic to post on town of Waylon social medias. And then also to put in our monthly newsletter, just so people know that this mailer is legit and, you know, just where it's coming from. Um, other than that, I would say working on the composting, as Julie mentioned. Before you, before you leave HomeWorks. Yeah. I don't know if this is possible, so I'm just going to toss it out there. Yeah. We have coaches through Energize Waylon to help people with solar EVs and heat pumps. And heat pumps definitely get covered in the energy audit. So it would be great if that mailer could say, you know, there's a community-based group that's been working for a long time that has volunteer coaches that could help you, um, you know, answer questions or talk about their experiences in these, in these areas. If that is, you know, of interest to you and send them to the Energize Waylon homepage, which has the two buttons for, like, heat pump coaches and, uh, solar coaches. So, you know, it's a town mailer sometimes. So I, I don't know, Julie and Olivia, first of all, I don't know what other people on the committee think about that, but it's always good to get the word out about coaching. Um, so I don't know what others think. And then the question is, you know, is, is that in bounds for the letter? But Neil, Tom, Steve, it would seem really smart if, if the, if the homeworks people were familiar with the concept of coaches so that when they were doing their audits and, and questions around solar or, or heat pumps or whatever came up, they could, they could talk about it. You know, that's a, a little more sort of on point and, and in the moment. And, and, and, you know, I don't know whether, I don't know who these homeworks people are and whether they have any idea that there are coaches. And my, my other thought about homeworks, by the way, it keeps bugging me thinking about it, is, is it the same as mass save? Yeah. They're a massive vendor. It's a massive audit. Yeah. So it's, it's a, it's sort of really confusing to me that to give it a different name than it's had for ever. I don't know. Are people, are people going to think it's a different thing? I mean, it's not, it's more just like, it's a, homeworks is a different entity from mass save. Mass save is the program that has the incentives in it. Right. Homeworks is a vendor that is working for the mass save program to help connect people with the mass save program. But the letter would say, this is a mass save energy audit. Right. Wouldn't say it's a homeworks one. It'll say. Got it. Okay. Homeworks. Yeah. Good. The branding here is very confusing. Yeah. I'm going to go to Steve, but I like Neil. I like Neil's suggestion, Olivia. And, you know, I'd be happy to chat with homeworks. I've offered many times, be happy to chat with homeworks about what the coaching looks like and how people can sign up for it. And, you know, our heat pump coaches are trained by the heat smart Alliance. So, um, you know, we've had the same solar coach for years. So I think, um, people have very good experiences of that and homeworks will certainly talk about heat pumps, but some people are like, Oh, I don't know. Oh, what do I really think? And, you know, having someone down has, and Tom's a coach, for example, um, as is Paul Dale, who's also a member of the committee. So, you know, Julie and Olivia, and then Steve, happy to go to your point. Could we do that? Could we, yeah, I think we had agreed last meeting to do that, to have homeworks come and do the meeting, right. Be the first touch point and then say, here's your results. Here are our recommendations. Here is a resource that you have. To help you accomplish that, right? Like, so homeworks does their outreach. They are bringing people into, they're going through the process that they do. And then they're connecting them with mass energy or with energize Wayland. I don't know if homeworks, when we did this before with Nico, and then the time before we did it with somebody else, it ended up that there were like one or two auditors that really got assigned to Wayland. Okay. And I don't know how homeworks is planning to do that. It's just actually helpful to talk to those two human beings to say, okay, this is what coaching really looks like in Wayland. Okay. They sign up here and this is, this is what the user experience will be. They sign up here. They're going to get an email. We have four coaches. They've done it for X number of years, you know, like really give it a little more flavor. And, you know, we could develop a, like Olivia could easily make a little one pager, a QR code to the website. And, you know, we have testimonials from people who have done the coaching. Like, I want to make it as easy as possible for homeworks to do what Neil is suggesting. Suggest. A hundred percent. Yeah, no, I totally agree with that. And Olivia and I can work on that. Um, I think it's, that's partly in the works, but we should formalize that more, um, and come up with a, and articulate exactly what it will be. Um, and I think once they get this initial, like, whatever, we, I'll, I'll take a look at, at everything, Ellen, and we'll, we'll bring you in at the appropriate point and make sure that we're doing that. Cause I agree. Like as a homeowner, it's awesome to have that initial touch point, but there's the, how is where people really struggle. Um, and so having somebody that can handhold them a little bit and then do a quick check in, like, Hey, I know you got your, your audit last month. Have you made any progress? Do you need any help with anything? And that honestly, speaking as a busy parent, um, can go a long way to be like, Oh, right. Yeah. I am supposed to do something with that. A hundred percent. Um, we'll make sure that that's part of it. Um, and we'll bring you in at the right point. Is there anyone else from Energize Wayland that should be part of that? Or do you want to? Um, Anne Harris. Okay. Right. Anne. Okay. Yeah. Cause Anne kind of manages a lot of the flow and assigning heat pump coaches. Um, Steve, you had your hand up and I didn't forget. Yeah. I have my hand up, uh, more of a question and this may just reflect that, you know, I, I'm relatively new to this committee. I may not have the background, but, um, if there are, if homeworks is a vendor, there are a lot of vendors out there that can do this. Um, have, has there been a process where we selected them and endorsing them? Okay. Yes. Olivia, you want to answer that? Um, sure. So we did put out an RFQ to the MassSafe approved vendors. If you go on MassSafe's website, they have a list of those vendors. Um, and I think we had three responses of the three, we vetted their references and homeworks ended up at the time it was myself and Abby Shute ended up being the best option, um, to us. And Michael, Michael McCall approved our selection. Kind of the idea of zeroing in on one vendor was just to give some like reliability for people and to build trust with residents. I know people get a ton of mailers and flyers about different opportunities and savings. And it can be like, um, how Neil said it's overwhelming with all the branding and different names and it would be nice to have a town seal on something so people can feel like they can trust it. So that was kind of the process and why we ended up going with one person. And I think the Steve is they know that they have this territory that they're willing to spend their money to do a mailer to everybody in town because they know that we're helping to promote it. We, we did this once before, and I think we had 282 people sign up for energy audits and 65 people ended up completing energy insulation upgrades. So the good news is then also we can track what's going on because we're just working with one and then we coordinated with them on where they were going to do outreach, you know, like you have a better, closer relationship versus just letting the market do its thing. Makes sense. Yeah. All right. Thanks. Thanks, Olivia. All right. Well, let us know, Julie, how we can all help with that.
I included it in the last Energize Whalen newsletter. It'll, it'll just be a running, um, article. If you have someone who goes through the program and has a good experience, I always prefer, Olivia, to also include a testimonial. So if you get one of those and homework should get those, then, um, we can include it. You know, that newsletter goes to about a thousand people now. Okay. Wow. Thank you. That would be great. Um, and I think that's pretty much it for me. Um, I, I, I have a question, Olivia. Uh, well, well, first of all, let me say, I absolutely agree promoting coaches or educating the public that coaches exist, the more, more, the better. I very recently ran into somebody in another context that I happened to find just chatting with them. They had, they were looking for heat pumps, had gotten three heat pump quotes and then found somebody who was willing to, to evaluate the quotes, but he had to be paid. And, and I said, well, why don't you use one of our coaches? It's free. What coaches? What's a coach? Uh, and when I explained, he said, well, how would anybody know about that? And, and this is someone who was lived, lived in town for many years. So yes, getting more publicity out there would be great, but a quick question, Olivia. Um, you happen to know if, uh, a homeworks does blower door and or, uh, infrared camera testing as part of their evaluation. Um, off the top of my head, I do not, but I can definitely get back to you. I can make a note of that and ask them what their like typical practices. Yeah. Like most recently, the answer is no. They sometimes do it as a QC thing at the end, but the mass state program eliminated last I heard doing blower door testing as part of the diagnostic and they don't usually do infrared. They, they, they have to follow their standard protocol. So it's, there's a lot of reasons why these are not fantastic. We can't change it. Okay. I, um, I, I would not bother with one without, uh, at least one of those tests. I mean, I, I know I have a leak and I, I would love for somebody to find it, but it needs to be a real devaluation. I mean, I think that could be a good question. They, I don't think they do a standard, but if someone said, Hey, could you bring an infrared? I'm pretty sure I have a cold spot here. I need to isolate it. You could ask them that question. Cause I think maybe they're allowed. They have some flexibility on a case by case basis. Okay. I'll, I'll definitely ask. And I can get back to you guys at the next meeting about that. That's a good point. I mean, one of the things I had suggested and I don't know a few others. And I see coffee has their hand up. You know, we could invite homeworks to one of these meetings. So people could ask them all these questions directly because first, you know, then you go ask the question, they come back and Tom said, well, that's not really what I meant. I meant this. I mean, they're an MOU with the town. If they're working with towns, they're used to doing evening meetings for 20 minutes. Not it's a zoom meeting. No one has to drive anywhere. So that would be my suggestion is that the committee just have a chance to ask them questions and brainstorm with them about other strategies for outreach. You've got a lot of people on this committee who've spent a lot of time in this town and know how to get to people. So it's an asset.
Oh, sorry about that. I was just going to say if that's of interest for the committee, I meet with them biweekly. So I can definitely invite them to our next meeting on the 17th, maybe for like a 20 minute window, if that works for people. Yeah, let's do it. Well, I'm not going to make the. So Tom, just send your comments, send your comments to Olivia, questions to Olivia, Julie, and me, and we'll make sure they get raised or send them to them and they can raise it in the Tuesday meeting and send you. But I think it'd be good. I think we've done this once before and we had some set of experiences and it'd be good to share that. And I can always invite Anne Harris if she wants to join me because Anne and I co-managed that when we did it last time with Nico. And I think there were some lessons learned.
Great. All right, Kavya. Sorry, this is all topic, but I was looking through the agenda. Is there anything you think that would be interest for the high school or for me to participate in? How about the school works grant? Yeah, that's the only thing I could think of. So why don't we go to that? Sure. And because I think it involves schools and what we're doing in schools. So I think, Kavya, that would be good. Yeah, I'll give you the quick version. And then if you guys have questions, I'm happy to answer them. Eliana had brought up the Green School Works grant a couple months ago and we had gone back and forth with it. We work primarily with Amoresco. We have an energy performance contract with them. So they're kind of like our go-to engineering team when we need to pull something together, especially quickly. And so we were able to partner with them on the Green School Works grant. The Green School Works grant is only $19 million and it's supposed to go to a lot of schools in Massachusetts. So I assume that it'll be somewhat competitive. The it's it's run by MassCEC, which is primarily focused on communities that have expressed need. However, this grant is open to everyone and they're looking for projects that are going to further electrification in schools. And I think I would add a layer of I think furthering electrification in schools in a short period of time. So rather than, you know, like one of those like wishes and hopes things where we haven't done anything, but someday we'd like to like that's not what this is for. This is for projects that are ready to go. The great thing about Wayland and our facilities team is that for the last year and a half, we've had a really great public buildings director that has put a lot of programs forward already very quickly. And so our team is kind of already in the space of doing updates to buildings. And so we had our list of projects already ready to go. We've had a lot of work that's already been done. So we're in progress on a lot of things, which means that we're able to quickly if we do get this money, capitalize on it and get the project done within a year, which is awesome. And that's unusual. A lot of schools and districts, it takes a long time to get these things going. And so what we are applying for is for Wayland Middle School. And as you know, from the decarbonization roadmap that we put together, that we have the lower elementary schools that are in need of like serious upgrades slash possible replacement in the next 10-ish years. The high school's new-ish. And the middle school is in its middle ages. It's, I would say like late teens, you know what I mean? It's not new, but it has hit the point where like a lot of the equipment has needed to be replaced. And so we're in a good place where we can, we need to do equipment replacement. And when we're doing that equipment replacement, we can electrify. So we've already replaced, we had to replace a lot of the gas boilers, unfortunately, like very quickly last year because they were all at failure point. And so we weren't able to do most of the heating system. But for this grant, we are applying to electrify, to get a heat pump to electrify the domestic hot water, which is a great project for us to do anyway, because it gives us some experience with electrifying domestic hot water in a building. And not a lot of municipalities have done this work. So that's, again, it's a great opportunity for us to learn. And then the second one is to replace some rooftop units for our heating system. And we're going to replace those with heat pumps. So we'll partially electrify our heating by doing that. And the project total cost, I want to say, is over $2 million, two, two and a half million dollars to do both of those things and all the engineering required to do, to build those systems out and that kind of thing. If we don't get it, it's not a big deal. I really hope at the very least that they give us the money to be able to electrify the domestic hot water, because I think it's a really awesome project and an awesome opportunity. And that segmented out is only like $330,000. So I think we've got like a good chance at partial funding. And I mean, why not reach for the stars? So we're going for more. We didn't need to replace all of our boilers and an emergency basis when we did it last year. But we do have like that remaining heating load that needs to get upgraded. And so this gives us the rest of that in electrified fashion. So we get a hybrid system, which is also actually like a really great learning experience for us as well, right? To have a partial heat pump and air source heat pump and partial gas fired heating system. So that's the grant. It's due tomorrow. So you can guess that that's pretty much what I've been doing this week in addition to prepping for this meeting. And that's what I'll be doing until it's due at 11.59 p.m. tomorrow night. Hopefully, I will not be doing it that long. Um, it's pretty much done. Um, so here's a great summary, Julie. Yeah. Would it be interesting to the green team? Like they all went to the middle school for Julie to come to like a green team meeting and say, you all were in this building. This is how it runs. This is the fuels we're trying to get off of fossil fuel. So here's what we're planning to do. This is kind of, uh, you know, the amount of fossil fuels it would displace, like give them a feel for a real project that we're thinking about. Do you think some of the green team would be interested?
Um, my final question is, is what, what, how would the green team help once they have that information? Sure. I would say this was more like a, for your information, like how are we doing our, how are we achieving climate goals? That's sort of like a building energy systems level. I mean, you could just do a tour of the boiler room if you want. Um, I mean, it's kind of, it's interesting. I think more from a data perspective, I don't know, but it would be more informational unless you wanted to do a building tour.
I'll have to think about it because we always have some kind of project in the works. So I don't know if we can, like, even when we're not working on the, like, I guess winter, like not winter, Earthly could be our next project. We're like tending to the garden. So I don't know if we'd be able to do that, but I can, yeah, that's totally like a 15 minute presentation by Julie to say, Hey, you all went to the middle school. You all experienced this. I'm guessing some people's, yeah, some classes were too hot. Some were too cold. We've had issues with controls in that building just to understand this is what we're doing in town to get off fossil fuel and make, you know, have our buildings be more comfortable and what we think it will, um, do, you know, to help us meet our climate goals. Yeah. Oh, and the other interesting piece of this is that we're retrofitting, we're doing all this building, um, energy efficiency work in part because we're looking at potentially making this an emergency shelter with like battery storage backup, which again, it would be like, it's super cool because not, not a lot of places are doing it. Um, so anyway, it's just for thought. Like you can think about it. And as it progresses, we'll see. Uh, FYI, the, uh, heat smart Alliance has been spending a lot of time lately talking about heat pump water heaters. We're having another meeting early tomorrow morning on the subject. Um, so that, that whole technology is of interest, um, seems to be not as well developed as space heating heat pump technology. So, um, I'll be interested in what, what you learn here. Yeah. We're, um, I mean, the project team is also like the engineers at MRSCO are really excited about it because they want to work on a project like this. And we, there just hasn't been a lot of opportunity. Um, so we're all kind of jazzed up about it from a really nerdy perspective. Yeah. So I mean, that's my people. Yeah. Bob Zogg, you know, did a really nice webinar on this for a bunch of towns. Um, and Bob's, Bob's pretty, pretty nerdy. Um, but that sounds great. So Kavi, it's just more like a learning opportunity, so I don't think it would be, it wouldn't be a project. It would just be at one of your meetings. Um, but talk to Sarah, Ms. Snow, and talk to the other folks. I was just thinking it's related to schools, but now if you want, you can leave and go do homework. Is that what you want to do? Right? Yeah. Thank you. Nice to see you. Bye Kavi. Yeah. All right. So Julie, back to you.
Um, the, the, um, contract renewal for Wayland Power Choice feels like old news. Cause we've been working on some other stuff. Um, so how do we want to frame this? Do you want to start it? I feel like. Sure. You guys remember Wayland Electricity Choice. We signed the contract last May. Uh, Bill and I were on the selection committee, um, when we picked, um, the consultant to help us and when we locked in the rates and we have three, we had three choices. I just wrote a piece for, uh, Olivia had something in the E-new, the news. And I just wrote something for Energize Wayland riffing off Olivia's. People have saved a lot of money on that program. It comes due in May. You got to sign the new contract in February by, we're going to sign it by February 24th or something. And in talking to Paul Gromer, which like John knows Paul and Tom Siakon knows Paul. Paul is a ex-DPU commissioner is to help lock the towns with their aggregation. Um, his strong advice to us was that there really is no, so Julie, you can feel the degree that, that we should go with not three choices, but one. And the reason is that the market for class one wrecks is completely different than it was two years ago because the Trump administration has canceled a lot of the large wind things. Um, we know the utility has to meet its RPS, uh, a renewable portfolio standard, the minimum amount of renewables. And right now there are not enough projects to meet that. So trying to seed the market to get more projects going, the market is already doing that because we don't have enough for the utility to meet their minimum. Um, so if we were buying class one wrecks, what actually is happening and that is money is going to the mass CEC to give out across the state, but more importantly, the governor Healy has taken that money once and is likely to do it again to subsidize rates for people all across the state. So in good and conscious, Ellington, I, and Julie, Gagan, don't feel like Weyland rate payers should, when they want to buy more grain, be doing that in a way that really is just providing grant money to the state or subsidizing rates for other communities. If you want to do less with fossil fuels, there, there are other things you can do with your money. Yeah. Um, so that's my summer. We, we're going to lock in the rate. What is it like the 24th, Julie? Yeah. Um, not this coming week, but the week after. Um, and so, yeah, I was just going to say, we'll do some pricing before that to take a look at the market and where it's landing. And then when we lock in the rate and just to make sure everyone understands, you all know this is for your residential electricity rate. So this will affect everyone's residential electricity rate. And rather than offering the standard green, the a hundred percent green, and then the basic service rate will just be offering that base rate. So everyone's going to get that lower rate automatically enrolled into the program. Um, and we've left it open so that. When we renew the contract, probably in two years, we have the option to add it back in. If the market on Rex is different. Um, the other thing that we did, you guys are, we're all tired of our frustration. I'm going to generalize that we never have money to do a mailing to anybody in town. Um, and so we were chatting with our consultant and it was like, I was like, Paul, we, when we wrote the original language to the DPU, we gave ourselves the ability to charge a little bit of a program fee that could support activities related to green energy in town. So I was like, Paul, maybe we can do that. And he's like, no, there's a better way to do it. It was so smart. When they're going to go out with the RFP to suppliers, they're going to say, give us your best rate for the minimum, the RPS and include in your bid that you will do an annual mailing to everybody in town. It's nothing money to them when they're bidding the supply contract, not only that they would have the money, but they would actually just do the mailing, right? Um, so I think out of this, we will get an annual mailing to everybody in town and we can write the content for that. So that felt like a very smart innovation. I think, Julie, that, that we collectively came up with. Um, so I feel, I feel, I feel good about that. I feel very shitty about the rec one, class one. It's sad. It's so heartbreaking because I fought so hard to add recs to all of our contracts in Weston. And now I feel bad because like we worked hard, you know, like we're paying more of a rate and that money's not going where it's supposed to, where the promise is not being fulfilled. And I think that that's the bigger piece. Like one of the things I will say, I just want to give Ellen a lot of credit because I think it's really hard for people in this particular space to go to say, to let go of that a hundred percent green and that standard green rate, just from a perception point of view. Um, so, but like the average Wayland resident, um, is, you know, like they're knowledgeable and at some point they're going to hear about it and then we're going to hear rumors. And so I feel like to some extent by being proactive, we're continuing that trust factor with people and saying that we're managing the program in a way that, um, is considerate of, of where the rate payers are. But that being said, that's where Ellen and I are. We were aligned pretty quickly on that. Um, the other thing I'll add before we open up into discussion is that, um, the city of Newton recently renewed their contract and they removed the two other green options. So they, we aren't the first, um, but we are the second. So, um, just keeping that in mind that, you know, it's a two-year contract. You can assume that Paul and, um, and his team are going to probably give a similar recommendation to everyone as they're renewing their contracts. Um, so for us to do it, we are early, but I would say in the next six to eight months, you're going to see this be more of a normalized scenario. So Neil, you got your hand up. And then John is a guy who's like a solar finance class, one rec kind of expert. If you have any comments and then we'll go to Marie. Right. Yeah. So, so, you know, I get why, why we're doing this. What I don't understand is what you think the public message is. Cause it's, you know, on, on the face of it, it's, we're not offering green anymore. Yep. And how does it, and if, and if your answer to that is, well, it's because the governor took the money and put it someplace that had nothing to do with it. Boy, does that really sound bad? So how does this not come out sounding like, you know, green's gone to hell and there's no way to fund it anymore. Or so you're all getting regular electricity. Yeah. I mean, we have some, we do have some information from the city of Newton in how they communicated. And I would say, absolutely. This is before we're sending anything out. I think we need to touch base as a committee, um, and discuss this more because I don't want, I don't want any of us coming out to say we did it and we're doing what's best for you. Um, I think it really does need to be conscientiously communicated. The good news is that once we get our rates locked in at this month, we have what March, April into May to make these communications ahead of like the, the options changing and everyone will be automatically enrolled anyway. So 80% of the people paying electricity rates are not going to pay attention or care. Um, but you're right. Like, Oh, we have like 4,000 people in the rate. I think there's like 130 that are on the a hundred percent green. Yeah. Everybody else is on the standard green or the Wayland economy. So it's those 134. The, as part of Peregrine's contract and the suppliers, um, there will be a letter that goes out to everybody, but I, and, and I agree the messaging will be really important. I think we're going to rely on Paul a little on how to do that and see what Newton did. And I agree with Julie, we should bring it back to everybody else for kind of a reality check on it. Um, it's very, it's, it's pretty discouraging. Um, it really stems from the cancellation of some of the large renewable projects and lack of projects. So, so John is a guy who financed projects in the pipeline. Any, any further thoughts on this? So run, run by me. The numbers of people who are on the a hundred percent green, it's like a hundred, 130. I think it's about 130 of the 4,000. And we know who they are. 3% of the population. I counted. Yeah. Yeah. We're like three or 4%. I don't know, but Paul knows who they are. Yeah. So we could do a separate mailing to them. Um, I, I just wonder if, if there are options outside of this that we could at least point them to saying, if this is something that's really important to you, um, that cohort might be willing to pay a premium price. It's not something we'd offer for the, but it's really that any money for class one Rex is just going to the CC and Healy's using it to subsidize rates elsewhere. So, but any other supplier that's offering class one is not telling you where the money's going. And I, I wouldn't recommend that. The question I have, and I don't know this offhand is whether or not there's any options outside of a electricity choice program where you can send the money to a supplier. So it might be community solar as opposed to buying Rex, Julie. So here's one thought is why don't we invite Paul? Paul's always happy to come to meeting. Why don't we have Paul come to like the March meeting we'll have locked in the rate and we can talk about communication and people like John can ask that question and Neil can ask his question. And again, it's not funneling through you and I, and Paul is Paul and Marlene are really pretty good at this. So that's my suggestion. Agreed. I think it messaging is really important. And I prefer it to come from Peregrine because they're going to be addressing this in every community that they work with, which is pretty much every community that does community aggregation. So, um, yeah. And yeah, this is a conversation beginner, not an ender, right? Like we're, let's open up and talk about it. You know, what I, I found really amazing when I read your, your, uh, demo, Julie, um, is that I hadn't heard about this before yours was the first time I heard about, I am on lots of mailing lists. I'm on a gazillion mailing lists. So it's like, they're hiding it at the state level. Yeah. Well, I'll tell you, Tom, I am a, how I'm an engineer, but like, to me, the things that I tinker with are like, how do programs work or like how did things work? So I, I tend to really dig into, but like how, where's the money coming from? Where is it going to, how has this been, if, you know, like understanding the systems in place. And so, um, I am very familiar with the rec market, but that's because I was curious about how it worked. And I'll tell you that even within other people that are in this role in other communities, it is not well understood or known. Um, so this is, we're unique in that Ellen is super knowledgeable. You know, a lot of you are very, very knowledgeable. And so we're able to make, understand things at a level that I think are, is not necessarily the norm, um, which makes it easier to be decisive when we hear things like this. Um, I think a lot of other communities are going to struggle a little bit more because you first have to understand how things work. Um, I do think Tom, nobody knows, people know that Healy is finding a pot of money to subsidized rates, but they don't know where the money's coming from. This was the first I really heard from it when Paul really explained it to us. So let's have Paul in and, um, you know, I think it'll become more clear as this happens with more, uh, communities. Yeah. Let me, let me make one other observation from your, um, what, what you, you sent out, Julie, when I looked at the, um, people who were on the a hundred percent green rate and and it also lists out their, uh, electrical usage by, by month, that is the, the only one of the three groups, which is winter peaking. So guess what? That means that they're the ones who have got heat pumps. So those are, are the people who are not just interested in, you know, the, the electric rates, but in general, they're the environmentally oriented people. And so. It's a good, if, if Paul knows those people, I would really love to send a dedicated mailing saying, make sure on the HP one rate. Uh, yeah, yes, absolutely. Yeah. Uh, we should just talk to Paul about, cause this mailings and, and maybe some segmented slightly different messaging, uh, would be interesting. I like that. And we can do more groundwork. Um, I'm going to meet with them next week to do a little, an initial pricing poll, um, anyway, and I'll be communicating with Ellen on this. So we'll do some groundwork between now and next meeting so that when Paul gets here, you, you all have a little bit more to work with, um, before we, before we discuss and talk with him, um, and then we'll come up with something, you know what I mean? Like, well, we'll, we'll do a good job with this. I'm confident in that. So Marie, did you have a question on this? Your hand was up and then it went down. So maybe we answered it or maybe we bored you. No, no, no, I'm not bored at all, but I'm going to have to leave. And I want to thank you very much. Oh, thank you for coming Marie. Okay. My pleasure. I'll do it again. Thank you so much. Thank you.
Um, so I'm going to, we're a little behind shocking. Um, I'm going to move us to ECC chair updates, um, to this proposed solar bylaw discussion. Um, we're hitting all these heavy topics. I feel like there's been a lot. This is very content rich. Yeah. And then the other ones will be, they'll be shorter, but I'm going to do the, while you're still all awake, this one, um, the, we were, I was made aware that there is a solar bylaw being proposed by the planning board. Actually, Bill Huss made us aware of it because Bill is the FinCom person reviewing it. And he reached out to me saying, do you know about this? I was like, actually, I don't. Um, it's a bylaw related to ground mounted solar systems to come up with a process to review, evaluate, and permit those. There is no state requirement that you have a bylaw currently for any solar stuff. It's, it's guaranteed by right. Um, I've reviewed the, so. Well, the roof mounted is guaranteed by right. Okay. There's nothing about ground mounted. Okay. Thank you, John. Um, our solar expert. Um, so that is happening. Concomitantly, the state is coming out with regulations that will go into effect March 1st, which you'll note is roughly two weeks from now. The intent behind these regulations is to streamline the permitting of solar systems, including ground mounted systems, so that communities can't tie them up for like years and years. The state said, we need more solar. Some of the solar has gotten stuck in multi-year permitting things as a state. We want more solar to be permitted. And so we're going to come up with regulations that say at a community level, you can't take more than X months. You can't do Y you have to, that, that really expedites permitting regulations come out March 1st. There is a sample model bylaw now, but we, so the regulations come out March 1st, they go into effect July 1st, and then Julie confirmed me, and October 1st, communities have to be in compliance with it. So Julie and my view on this, and the, there, there were draft regulations, we haven't seen the finals. There's an existing model bylaw, right, John? But with the draft, with the new regulations, it's possible that bylaw might also change. We have to just wait two weeks and see. So Julie and I, um, have been in touch with the planning board chair and the planner to say, hey, you know, we were unaware of this. Uh, they had a zoning hearing on it in January. We were unaware. We invited them to this meeting. I emailed them and said, we'd love to have a joint meeting. We'd like to be on your agenda. We'd like to put you on our agenda to talk about this. I think, um, and Julie chime in, my feeling, and I think Julie and I have a shared view on this, that the prudent thing to do is wait for the regulations to come out, look at the model bylaw, and then if our bylaw is not consistent with that, then pull it and do it a year later and give yourself the chance to revise it and have a hearing that you need to do on things like a bylaw. You're not going to have time to do that under this circumstance. Um, I've made our liaison, Bill Whitney, aware of this. He's also the liaison to the planning board. Spoke with him tonight about it. So Bill's aware. And Julie's, um, talked to Rob, the town planner, and to the town manager about this. So everyone's sort of aware of the situation. Um, yeah, I'll add my two cents in that on the backend. Number one, I don't like being surprised by stuff. Um, and this was a surprise and that's, that's odd because, you know, like we work in very close proximity to the planning department. You know, these are people that I see on a routine and regular basis. It's not like they don't know who I am or that I work here or that, um, I would be interested in doing this because we've interacted enough times that, do you know, like it, it, it's odd that we did not know, um, from a process standpoint, what I'm used to when it comes to bylaws is a lot of cross committee conversations, a lot of feedback, a lot of, um, consensus ahead of submitting something to be reviewed and, and voted on in town meeting. Um, I think, you know, we are the committee that has climate action goals and solar, you know, installing solar projects is a huge piece of meeting our climate goals. Um, and it's unclear why this is coming forward and why there is a sense of urgency around putting this forward, knowing that the state is coming out with regulations to, um, expedite the permitting process. So like the question, one question I would have is, does it make sense to add additional levels of permitting when we have, when the state's coming out with regulations that will supersede that, that will say we, you need to have everything done, all local permitting complete within 12 months of submission. So that's one example of what's coming out at the state level. Um, and then the other groundwork that I would like to do before, you know, making a position on this is what other community, what are other communities doing? Do other communities have ground mounted solar bylaws? What do those look like? How are those regulated? What is the process by which they're approved or permitted? Um, but it's helpful typically. Um, and I have enough experience with planning and zoning that like, there's always a reason why we're doing something. Um, Olivia has done some groundwork and research to try to figure out how many solar arrays there are in town that are ground mounted solar arrays that would fall within this criteria. And again, to Ellen's point, there's some definitions that make it hard to say what would qualify as being covered under the bylaw as it's currently written as it stands. Um, but there are, from what we can gather, there's only like two, three. Um, and so having a bylaw that is being, um, what feels like expedited in a short timeframe without a clear understanding reason why without engaging ECC in the process, right? There's some flags that are concerns. That doesn't mean that we wouldn't necessarily approve it. Um, but I, I'm a big fan of process, um, and building consensus. And so my feedback is same as what Ellen's saying. Like, I, I want more, um, I want to understand it. I want to look at it. I want to discuss. Um, and I just have not been able to receive that back yet. Um, and that's not to say that we won't get it, but we just don't have it at this time. Um, Billy, by, by way of, uh, background, um, I've been hearing for years, uh, from the lawyers around town on town boards that, uh, that, uh, they were unhappy with, um, not having an explicit legal, um, blessing for the few ground mount installations we have around town and then when we were talking about, um, uh, we, we were pushing, having one at the landfill and part of the pushback we got was that, well, it's not quite really legal because we don't have a bylaw that allows it. So I think the lawyers were actually just trying to kind of clean things up and, and that's what underlies this, why exactly it happened right now. I, I don't know, but I, I love that viewpoint, Tom, and I have in my hand here, a letter from KP law about ground mounted, adding a ground mounted solar bylaw, because this was discussed back in 2024. Um, so again, why are we at, in February, 2026, a couple of months before town meeting is happening, hearing about this? Um, and that's not entirely true because they did do some outreach back in June, um, with Abby and Olivia and Mike Faya to discuss it, but there's not been any, again, to the process point that we have expertise on this board that has not been leveraged in the writing and development of this. Um, and so again, I want to see what the state regs are and I want to see what like other towns are doing. And that's my standpoint, but I also want to hear from all of you and, um, get a sense of how you want to move forward with this, because obviously ECC should have a position. No, you're, you're obviously absolutely right. I'm just saying that it's not out of any nefarious motivation. I think it's out of, um, lack of communication. Okay. I'll just hear from other people. Neil, do you have any thoughts? I think we're, Julie and I would like to get a sense from the committee that, that our approach to like saying, Hey, let's have a joint meeting. Let's invite you to, you can explain to the committee why you want to do this. And also us to say to them, we're happy to give you comments, but we're not going to do it until we see the state regs and the new model bylaw. Cause it, it doesn't make any sense to do that. When things are changing in two weeks. So Neil thoughts. Is what's happening with the state their, their, their, their regulations go into effect at March 1st or are you saying regulations are promulgated March 1st. They go into effect July 1st. And then I think towns have to ensure that they're not in conflict with them by like October 1st, but we'll see when the regs come out, if that's what they really do. We have a fact sheet on it. Julie has a little bit more. So if we had a bylaw, for example, that was in conflict with the state regulation and it got passed to town meeting, we'd have to then have a process to pull it back, right? To undo. And that seems like, why would we do that? That's just meaning a lot of work for a lot of people. Yeah. And it doesn't even seem like there's an issue of it's worth waiting to see what's going to be promulgated because it won't, you know, it'll be a, it'll be a draft up subject to change before it's implemented, you know, for between March and, and do you say June or July, right? No, no, no. The regs are final March 1st. Yeah. We have drafted the draft version now. Oh, so that is, okay. That's what I was trying to understand what you were saying. Final regs promulgated March 1st in two weeks. Then we can look at them. And with the final regs, I think Julie, we anticipate being able to see a model bylaw, which might be what it is right now, but it might be tweaked a little. We just don't know. John, you have a. Yeah, this is getting into the weeds, but we're basically in the middle of the process by the state. The state has published the final regulations. It's on the website. It's, it's done. It'll be promulgated and made official on March 1st, but it is done. What's a follow on from that is they've got multiple guidelines that they're writing up on various aspects, like environmental conditions, permitting, citing, all sorts of stuff. They've got draft versions of those. They're getting comments on those for the next three months or so. And as part of that, they've got draft bylaws for both solar and storage. They published those last October, but they're signaling, hey, we may be changing these things to take into account all the comments that are coming back to us now or the guidelines. So it's just in process. That's what's going on. And the expectation is once all that's done, they're going to look to say to people, look, here's a draft bylaw. You don't have to take it word, absolutely the whole cloth. But if you don't, that may not be good. You know, nice house you got there type of thing. So there's a strong encouragement that we use the state's bylaw. So it's just, as Ellen says, it's just a question of timing. We're so close to seeing the official final version of the draft stuff. And this, if we, if the town passes the current proposed bylaw, it will have to change it. There's no question because it's in conflict in definitions and intent. It's incomplete in other respects. It's just, you know, it, you know, the gears are not meshing because... Is the town process such that Whalen could become consistent with the state model bylaw before town meeting? Or is it, is there not really time to make that happen? No, because the bylaw that's being proposed, it doesn't play nice with the draft bylaw, the model bylaw that the state has promulgated. It's nerdy stuff. Like one uses square footage. Another one uses acreage. They're just not consistent in your capacity. So you already know the answer to the question. Yep. Right. Is it going to have to change? And, and if there isn't time for it to change, then why is it in our position? It, it, it shouldn't move forward. It shouldn't be in the warrant. Well, we'll, we'll move to pass over a town meeting if they don't want to move it. And, and we'll go from there. Yes. We have to work it out after it's, sure. I mean, one argument that the planning board could take is, Hey, give us your best, uh, take at what the change is necessary to our bylaw. And we could try, but that would require legal input from outside council, town council, because it gets into some very tricky type stuff. We wouldn't have time to do that. So literally we have just a couple of weeks to finish that up. Yeah. Anything done that in that kind of hurried way though. Yeah. It's just not efficient. I don't think it actually works because they already had a hearing. So if there were substantial changes, they'd have to have a hearing. So I think John, and correct me if I'm wrong. I think the model bylaw defines projects in sizes based on megawatts and the Wayland draft law defines it based on acreage. So you can't convert Tom, like acreage to megawatts. And then we can convert, you know, feet to meters, but we can't do acreage to megawatts. Right. And there's some other things. And it just gets into the, it gets into the intent and the purpose and the driver behind why are we doing this in the first place. And I'll, I'll be honest, it reads a little bit like, you know, we're in a housing development and the HOA wants things to look a certain way. And it's just not, and I get that that's sort of the planning and zoning space, but I think you have to be really conscientious, especially because, you know, like our purpose is the technology, right. And the implementation and the climate goals. And I think we just have to make sure that we're integrating appropriately. Also, John, to your point, and I'm, I'm realizing this now because we went through this when the DOER came out with the specialized stretch code. Once they dropped those regs in March 1st, we're in a two to three month process of them coming up with guidelines that further explains intent that gives more information to communities. Like they, DOER had a town hall two weeks ago, Olivia, two or three weeks ago that we watched and they said, sorry, you know, we did try to get this out in time, but we are not going to have it ready for you all to start doing anything active for town meeting in the spring. You know, apologies. It's just not going to be ready in time. So if that's what's coming from DOER, we know that even if we have the language, we don't necessarily have all the components to make an educated decision. Again, it's sort of a wait and see. I think it gets to Neil's question. Should the, what I said to Julie today was, John, I hadn't, I thought the final regs were being published on March 1st. You're saying that being promulgated, they're already out, the final regs are already out. They're on the website. They were, yes, they're already out there. They're out there. They're just not official. What has happened is they're, they have to be technically have to deliver to certain legislative committees and the committees in theory have a couple of weeks to look at them before they're officially posted and made part of the binding regulations. So they're in the process. They're done now. They're written. So I, I guess as an individual, as someone who's worked in regulatory process a lot, I, I feel that we should not be writing this bylaw now until we get all the more detailed guidance from DOER. And so our position as committee should be, we should wait and do this next year. There's no compelling reason. It's not like 30 of these are being permitted a year in Weyland or Tom, we're not doing something on the landfill tomorrow. Like we should wait and do it because what I want, we're, we're applying where we want to apply for like millions of dollars from the state. I don't want to be in a category of people who have bylaws that conflict. I, I, Ellen's in a good, we're in the good citizen group around climate. I want to stay there as we apply for more money. You made the sale, Ellen. Okay. So Ellen, can I make one suggestion would be, I wonder if, if, um, Julie could have a conversation with Robert. What happens if a ground mount project shows up between now and when the town does adopt a new bylaw? Can we informally use anything that the state is promulgating or are we still basically in a state of grace where there's nothing on Weyland's books? There's nothing, there's nothing until the day that it affects, it goes into effect, which, and I don't know what it says in that bylaw, if it's immediately following town meeting or what I imagine there's a grace period. Yeah. Okay. I think that would, I don't know that there's a good answer, but it's a legitimate question of like, oh, you know, we've been working on this for X time. Um, what happens if something comes along? Yeah. People have been putting them in, not, not many, but there's a few and they put them in and there's nothing to stop them and they can do that again. And actually it, it only became an issue, John, when you and I started talking about, about solar on the landfill, uh, you know, that's, that's when the lawyers started. There was a, there was a large homeowner owned array also in town that went through. Um, but the town was not sure how to permit it because it was larger than what most people would think of as a homeowner one. They were using all the power on site, but it was still an unusual situation. So I think that also, as you pointed out, was a frustration to some people. Okay. So do we need a vote on this? That's my question. Yeah. What's the vote on? The vote would be to say that it is the sense of the committee that we should hold off on a bylaw until we see final guidance from DUR, DOER and how to implement the new state regulations. How about voting our, our intention to, uh, move to pass over such an article at town meeting? Yeah. Are we, are you ready for that though? Or do you want more time? I would do it. It seems to me obvious that it's the right thing to do. Well, is there, I mean, that's, that's, if it gets put on the, uh, warrant to begin with. Uh, yeah, we're suggesting already set. No, no, they can submit it, but it's not been approved by the board. Um, well, it hasn't gone to print or anything. Oh, oh, okay. Sorry. That's a mid-March and mid-March select board will review the articles. And it's, I believe in there's so, you know, I think it's some kind of motion, like what you were saying, which is that the committee recommends the town wait for final DUR guidelines, implementing the new solar regulations before finalizing any bylaw related. Is it the board has the ability to approve this being put on the warrant or do they not have that appellate? Who's the board? We have recommending the ability to recommend. I don't know which board. We're advisory. The select board has to vote to approve inserting this in the warrant, John. So isn't there, your motion might be that this advisory committee recommends to the select board that they not approve this bylaw. Right. For inclusion on the warrant. Yes, that's the right way to do it. Waiting until. Until. Even the state. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So, um, why don't we do a motion like that, but I, I can't make the motion as the chair. So, Neil, you want to take a shot at saying this? Yeah. Olivia, are you typing right now? You're ready to go. Okay. Good. Yeah. So, you know, I would move that this committee, um, convey to the select board, our, our recommendation that they withhold approval of, uh, whatever this is called. The solar bylaw, we'll call it. Solar bylaw until such time as the state regulations have been, and, and guidance have been finalized. Second. We'll let Olivia, let's let Olivia catch up and read it back, please. Um, I want to add two words to that. One, it's a ground mounted solar. Yep. Julie, you want to take ground mounted? And then the other piece is for the 2026 town meeting. Right. Perfect. So that we're clarifying that it's not off the table forever. It's just. Springtown meeting. Yeah. 26th annual springtown meeting. Yeah. All right. Olivia, I want to try and read that back. I know he spoke quickly. Okay. I have Neil makes a motion that the committee conveys to the select board that they withhold their approval for the 2026. And they withhold their approval on the ground mounted solar bylaw for the 2026 annual town meeting until state regulations are state regulations and guidance. And I would say until such time as the committee is able to review pending state regulations. Pending state regulations and model bylaws and associated guidance documents. Model bylaws and associated guidance documents. You would have a little, a little lawyer in you, Julie. Thank you. Okay. So I have review state regulations, model bylaws and associated guidance, associated guidance. Okay. So can you read the wording? There was a verb in there withhold approval or something. No, then we're, we're, we're recommending. How about, I think the first thing verb should be recommend the energy and climate committee recommends for that. Now keep reading, Olivia. Okay. Recommend, recommend to the select board that they withhold their approval on the ground mounted solar bylaw until it's not approval. Recommend that they, um, it's withhold inclusion of the bylaw on the warrant. Yes. Thank you, John. So they're not voting on the substance. They're just simply saying not ready for prime time. Let's not put it on the warrant. You got a little lawyer in you too, John. John has a lot of lawyer in him. Trust me. Oh, you were such nice people before that. Really? No, no, it's great. He's very detailed. The insults are flying heavily. No, that was a compliment. Why is that an insult? All right. Let me, let me try again. So the energy and climate committee conveys to the select board. And the energy and climate committee recommends that the select board. Recommends that the select board withhold the inclusion of the ground mounted solar bylaw on the warrant until such time. On the warrant for the annual 2026 town meeting. Yeah.
Town meeting until such time. The committee is able to review state regulations, model bylaws and associated guidance. And I think that sounds like we haven't done our work until such time as the committee is able to review. Pending. Pending. Pending state regulations, model bylaws and associated guidance. Which are expected to come out this spring. Yeah. I wouldn't even say that the committee reviews, it's the town reviews because again, town council. Yeah. Yeah. It's not just us. Yeah. Good boy. Yep. All right. Let's read it again, please. Olivia, can you share your screen? Oh, yeah. It'd be easier for us. All of us visual learners. Probably be easier for me too. All right. Can you see? Almost. That. No. Yes. It's. There you go. Great. It's this bottom right there. Select board needs to be capitalized by the word, right? Okay. And then it withhold.
That it. Okay.
And make sure you're adding.
Right. Neil makes a motion that the energy and climate committee recommend. Make a motion that the. Energy and climate committee. Boy, I'm glad I'm not taking minutes. I couldn't have people watching me type. That would be. Six people on Olivia's shoulder. She's going to have a backache. If you want inclusion of the proposed ground mounted. Smart. Yes. Of. Of the proposed. Yep. And it's a proposed article. Yes. Zoning. Do you want to say zoning article? Uh, I think you could say the proposed ground mounted solar. By law. Proposed article to insert. I'm looking at the proposed by law. The article proposes adding a new section to the Wayland by law. Zoning by law to regulate blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So here you could say withhold the inclusion of the proposed, um, article to add. Yep. A section in the zone. Wayland zoning bylaws. Yeah. Regarding. Okay. You got that, Olivia. I'm sorry. Can John, can you just say that one more time? Yeah. After the word proposed, John, just speak slower. Please. Yeah. Um, the proposed article.
Sorry. My computer is not. Okay. Article. Uh huh. To add a new section.
To the Wayland zoning bylaw. Those are capitalized. Wayland zoning bylaw.
Regarding. Regarding ground mounted. So. Yeah. Regarding ground mounted. Sorry. Solar. Photovoltaic installations. And you don't need to capitalize, I think, ground mounted solar. Correct. Regarding. Ground mounted. Solar. Photovoltaic installations. Photo. This is, this is a buzzword for you, John. Photo I'll take. Yeah. Photovoltaic. It should auto correct you. V. Yeah. There we go. Oh, you got it. First try. Photovoltaic installations. Okay.
And I don't know. It says N associated battery energy short systems. This is good enough. That's enough. I know what you're talking about. Yeah. And get rid of the words bylaw. Because now we don't need those. Installation. And it's install. It. I don't think it's going to auto correct you. It's I-N-S-T-A. Installation. Yeah. S-T-A. Yeah. Oh. Install. Yeah. A-L-L-ation. A-L-L. There we go. And one more A. And I think it's withhold inclusion. Is it in the warrant or on the warrant? I think it's in the warrant. In the warrant. Yeah. On needs to be in right there.
Until such time as the town, not the committee. The town. Is that capitalized? Yep. Yeah. They will do. Pending state regulations. You can put in parentheses expected March 1st. You want? No. I don't think there. We don't know when the model bylaws are going to be updated. No. After the regulation. And guidance, right? And the guidance will come out later. It will come out at some point this spring. Yep. That's good. All right. So, Neil, do you want to read it and actually make the motion now? Yeah. I would make a motion that the Energy and Climate Committee recommends to the select board that it withhold the inclusion of the proposed article to add a new section of the whale and zoning bylaw regarding ground-mounted solar voltaic installations in the warrant for the annual 2026 town meeting. Until such time, as the town is able, right there, Olivia, right before the, as, the, lowercase, the, the, the town is able to review pending state regulations, model bylaws, and associated guidance, which are expected to come out spring 2026. All right. I need a second, please. That's Tom. All right. Any further discussion on this? We've had plenty. Okay. I'll take a vote. How do you vote, Neil? Aye. Tom? Aye. Ellen, aye. And nobody else is voting. Okay. So, it's recorded as a 3-0 vote. Thank you. John, you can give us your, and, oh, Steve, damn, I forgot Steve. I turned it off before, and I already forgot I turned it off. Yeah, I lost you visually. Steve, how do you vote? I was listening to every word. Okay, Steve, how do you vote? Aye. Okay, 4-0. John is non-voting, but John, just your sense of this, if you were voting, you would vote? Yeah, I think this is a great idea. Okay, great. We love the idea of having a bylaw. We just need one that's consistent with the state's pending regulations. Okay. So, I think, Julie, we could, we voted this, and you could certainly forward this to Rob and Michael and Annette, and say, we're happy to work on it, but we're, you know, we just can't give them a common set until this other stuff comes out. Yeah. Great. That's a great process. And I will include, at that time, I will also include the one pager that we have, and a couple of other links, too, that I got from DOER that are giving a little bit more explanation on the process and what to expect. Okay. Thank you. Since you're able to sidestep this, I think the whole questions of, of we, that the planning board has been hard at work on this for the last couple of years, you might say that, yes, that's great. Unfortunately, so has the state. And, right. So, they've made a lot of work. They've got a great draft, and we just have to modify it when the time comes to reflect what the state's doing. So, it's not negating the work. That's a great way to put it. Okay. Great peacemaker. I want to move on. Plug-in updates. There is a webinar on home rooftop solar by Boston Solar on February 18th. It's been publicized through Energize Weyland and the normal outreach channels. Olivia and Julie, I really would like to work with Olivia more so that Olivia can handle some of these emails to, like, the all schools, newsletters, and others, not rely on volunteers since that's, that's outreach. And I want to build those bridges, Julie and Olivia, with those people in town. And I know we missed the newsletter for the town, Olivia, but is there, like, a, there's no other calendar. Like, the town has a Facebook page where they put up events sometimes, too. Like, maybe, let's just, we're trying to be better at outreach. I put it on the Weyland Post calendar. You guys should always make sure you always add stuff to the Weyland Post calendar when you're doing things. It's just super easy on their website to add an event. So, maybe Olivia and Julie, you guys can see if they're, and then I really would, you know, we're doing these once a month and get Olivia's help in doing this. So, there'll be one more on heat pumps, I think, in March, which will be good timing as people start to think about cooling. So, that's, the other plug-in update kind of relates to this multifamily property owner outreach. I think I mentioned in the last meeting, the, the five, six communities of plug-in said they're going to try and do outreach to multifamily property owners, including condos, and Olivia and Julie, but I think mostly Olivia, pulled the list of, with help from the town of multifamily property owners. So, we have volunteers who have said they're willing to make calls to these folks. So, I just have to look at the list and we have to figure out how we get those names. So, I will probably reach out to all of you, because you all actually, other than Tom doesn't come to the Energize Wayland meetings, but everybody else does. You know, on the condos, we're going to have to find people we know who live in these condos who might know somebody on the condo board. That's really how we're going to have to kind of block and tackle this one. So, I think when I'll go back, I will kind of sketch this out and see, reach out to people, a whole bunch of people, saying anybody know people in these various condos. And then the other building owners, I'm hoping that, you know, some people will be willing to make a call or two, you know, to somebody. So, hopefully, I can get Neil to make two phone calls. And Tom, you're already heat pump coaching, but maybe Steve will make a call to an owner. You know, it's a pretty short script for a minute. We'll write it out. So, we've never done anything like this before. So, you know, we'll see. We've just never done any outreach like this to multifamily property owners. So, it's new for us. But good to try new things.
Any other things that neither Julie or I anticipated for the agenda? Anything else you guys want to share or get input on?
John? It's just a question, Julie. I don't know if you know the status. Is there anything going on vis-a-vis the landfill solar stuff? At the last meeting, there were some discussions about the old, old landfill on the south side of Route 20. But I didn't know if there's anything going on in discussions with the Board of Public Works. So, there is a meeting on the 17th, I believe, which is, what's that, next week? It's a meeting on the south landfill uses. And it's a hearing kind of thing. I mean, it's, I wrote an email to that committee and Tom Faye answered and said, why don't you come to our meeting on the 17th? So, I think if any of the rest of you want to come, you can express whatever opinions you want. I'll be wearing multiple hats because, you know, it involves the river too. So, but one thing, one issue that I might have, there's some talk there about using canopy solar, not just ground mounted. And as the river guy, I might have an issue with that. I don't want canopies visible from, you know, the wild and scenic river. But anyway, they'll talk about it next week. Can you send us the, I'll work with you, Tom, and then maybe distribute it to the group or something. But we should, I'd like to be part of that as well. Okay. Just to make sure we have eyes on it. Yep. Julie. Yeah, go ahead. Going back to the motion, if you could, since we voted that, if you could send that, also include Bill Whitney and Bill Puss. That's what I was going to ask you. Yes. Oh, Bill's on the call now. Bill, are you on? Can someone promote Bill?
Oh, sorry. Just give me one second. No problem. Um, I have two other very minor, uh, well, keeping things before we close out. And do we, and we have to approve minutes. And I have one other thing I want to say, but. Sure. Um, town hall asked about Earth Day. Does any, is there anything happening? Is there anything that we want to do? You know, we've done things in the past and last year, we put a huge effort. We had kind of a low turnout. So I think the volunteer base is a little burned out on this. Yeah. I mean, that's my sense in the last couple of years. If that changes, let us know. Um, and then the only other thing was, hold on. Olivia and I made a nice little list. Oh, next, you talked about bringing, um, the guy from the Lincoln Energy Committee on. Yep. Um, will we have time next month or do you want to do that? Why don't you look at the agenda? So, um, I had a conversation with a guy from the Lincoln Energy Committee. Seemed great. They amazingly got some mass CEC, $2 million, Tom, to do electric school buses. And I was like, well, how do you get that? Yeah, exactly. And, and so they're doing a pilot with their school buses. And I thought it'd be great to have him come talk to us about what they're doing, how they got that money. Anyway, I thought it would be interesting. He also has, is doing an interesting policy thing about excise taxes on school buses statewide, which I thought the committee might find interesting. So I do think next month's really important to do homeworks because it's actually happening. And then we might have to have some time on the solar bylaw again. And so maybe we'll just bump him to April. Agreed. Yeah. We also have to talk about, um, the community aggregation contract and language for that. I also, Julie, want to start talking about what you're thinking of for the climate leaders application, which is due in the summer. So I'd like to start that conversation. Sure. And if you just give us 15 minutes of your thinking in March, that would be, um, that would be good. That is already a very full agenda. Right. So let's put this guy on for April. Great. Um, I'm going to, Bill, we're going to catch you up in a second on what we discussed about the solar bylaw, because we actually took a vote. Before I do that, I want to say, um, a big thank you to Julie. I have spent a lot of time on the phone and an email to Julie. And it's, um, it's terrific to have a sustainability manager that really understands this stuff and is willing to take action and is, uh, happy to work with volunteers. So I really appreciate the collaboration, Julie. And I think we're, we're kind of off to a good start, um, with, um, us in the committee. You know, the hardest thing for us to find seems to be a night to meet. Uh, that seems to be the most vexing challenge for all of us. Um, Bill, we did settle on dates for the next six months. And, um, so it's, uh, I think it's a Tuesday night is that we said we tried to avoid your Monday and Wednesdays. Everyone's got conflicts. And if people can't make it, we're just going to still meet. But we, well, we did agree that it's Julie needs to be at the meetings because there's too much that Julie is essential for to meet without or it's not productive. Um, So we're doing a third Tuesday. That's great. Except in April. Sorry. I will be away. And if things work out, I will be driving an electric vehicle potentially on a very long road trip. So I can tell you all about it. Excellent. Excellent. Have you bought one now? We're going on Saturday. Oh, yeah. Cool. What, what is it? Um, right now we're going to, we're looking at the Kia EV6 or EV9. Um, so we'll see, but I need a third row. I have kids that need to have space from each other. And I, I ended up going with Volkswagen ID4, but I really liked that EV6. Yeah. It's a great car. Yeah. Good. Thank you. Well, I'll be testing it out this weekend. Yeah. We're, my kids are interested in the plugs in the back and the screens and all that. So we'll give some good feedback. Good. Um, Bill, we had a very long conversation about the solar bylaw. I'm going to let Olivia, we took a vote and I will, um, let Olivia, it was a four zero vote and Olivia want to read what the motion was that was voted. Sure. So Neil made the motion that the energy and climate committee recommends to the select board that it withhold the inclusion of the proposed article to add a new select section to the Weyland zoning bylaw regarding ground mounted solar photovoltaic installations in the warrant for the annual 2026 town meeting until such time as the town is able to review pending state regulations, model bylaws, and associated guidance, which are expected to come out spring 2026 and we had a four zero vote. I can also paste this in the chat because I know that was like a mouthful. I don't know how all of it works, but this is an article submitted by the planning board, not the select board. So Bill, the select board votes whether to include it in the warrant. They vote every single article. Yeah. That's the process. Oh, okay. I'm not aware of that. I just thought they voted on whether they supported it, but. No, they, they take two votes, one to include it on the warrant. Okay. Take a second vote about their position on it. Okay. So have we coordinated, I mean, rather than be, you know, in fights, you know, is the planning board on board with us? Probably not. So Julie and I, you missed this long conversation. Um, I reached out to Annette and Rob and Jesse who wrote it and said, Hey, we'd love to chat with you. Better understand this. Um, uh, love to have a joint, you know, agenda item or we'll join you meeting or you join our meeting. Annette responded saying, we've reached out to you before you offered nothing helpful. We spoke with Abby, uh, you didn't attend the zoning hearing. And, um, that's that I spoke with. And Julie wrote back a long email explaining that the state is promulgating new regulations on this that promulgate on March 1st. And then they're coming out with a lot of guidance, including possibly changes to their model bylaw and other guidance, which they will not have ready. They say until later in the spring, and they said to people, don't do anything in town meeting. Wait for our guidance. Um, Julie and Olivia attended a town meeting from DOER on this. And at first, quick review of the ground mounted solar bylaw in comparison with the existing model bylaw, there are inconsistencies. And so, um, we've offered, I spoke with Bill, um, Whitney about it tonight. Okay. The liaison to the planning board and to the energy and climate committee. He's in the planning board. Hey guys, would you be willing to take input from the ECC? They said yes. So I think we can't really give them input on a bylaw until we see the guidance coming out from the state. Right. And all of our outreach bill also has been, um, non-productive on the other end. Um, so the other thing that may happen is, uh, I'm not sure given that we we've said that there's no financial impact, but the finance committee will also be taking a vote. Uh, and so to the extent that you can give me the ammunition that I need to convince my fellow finance committee members that it should also be put on hold, uh, please send that along to me. We'll send you this vote. And what we, basically there are new regs and the intent of which is to streamline permitting. Um, and they're going to be guidance documents, just like with the specialized opt-in code. There was, you know, they came out with something and then there were all these guidance documents and they, they're just going to trickle out over the next couple of months. And we don't want to write a bylaw that will be inconsistent with the state regulations, which promulgated March 1st. I think they go in effect July and that towns have to be in compliance by October. So having a bylaw that would be in conflict. Okay. Not the place you want to be. And we can't be sure, well, there will be in conflict until we see all their guidance. And then first look, for example, the definitions are different. The bylaws written based on acreage. And I think the model bylaw, John, I thought it was based on megawatts. Yeah. It's on size of the size of the array. Size of the race of bill, as you know, you can't go from acreage to megawatts. No such conversion, right? Right. Right. And that's an example. And somebody like Phil Giudice will certainly appreciate this. Yeah. Yeah. He, Phil's actually the person that's going to ask me what's going on. So that's why I needed some background. Yeah. And Bill, we can, I can give you more context too, because I, like today, when I was looking through some documents, found a letter from October, 2024 from KP Law that discussed developing a ground-mounted solar bylaw in town. Um, so this has been in progress to some extent for a while without, without outreach, I guess, to, to this group. And it's unfortunate because, um, you know, like the outreach has been offered. Um, it's just, I think they did reach out to Abby when she was here, but, um, and to Mike Faya in August, there was a meeting and Mike and Abby said, like, said some things, but Julie's been here since October and no one's talked to Julie. We were not aware of the zoning hearing. No one reached out to us in draft language. Zoning hearing, what was January 7th? Yeah. When do you think the select board will respond? I don't know. We just voted it tonight. I will forward it. I will ask Julie just to forward it to Bill. Because the, the plan B is that, you know, I was not planning to do a write-up of pros and cons. If it actually goes before the town, this sounds like, even though there's no financial, significant financial impact, that we should do a pros and cons, in which case you can write a lot of cons. Right. But hopefully we can get it then not to go before the town. But if it does go ahead, I don't think we should have it as a blank. It probably deserves pros and cons. Yep. Yep. Yep. I mean, there would be a cost to the town if we pass something and it's not consistent, which it looks like it is not consistent at first look, but we got to see the final guidance. Right. So, so anyway, as soon as you hear back from the select board, you know, even if it's just a schedule, let me know, because we're kind of under the gun to get this resolved. Yeah, I will. I'll confirm with Michael McCall. Last time I looked, it was mid-March that the select board was planning to vote on this section of the town meeting warrant. Then we should have plan B because I have to be done by mid-March. So I'm going to have to write pros and cons on this beforehand. And I think Julie can help you with that. Yeah, yeah. I'm happy to support that. I think it's important for us to be really organized and just also demonstrate that we are investing the time and energy to do, you know, to productively discuss this. We're not against a bylaw as long as it's consistent with the state regulations. All right. Yeah. Okay. All right. Sounds good. All right. So that's where we are. Can we get a vote to approve the December 9th meeting minutes? Did you circulate those, Olivia? Did someone circulate those? I did, but I do recognize that there were a lot of emails from me because there was back and forth. So I can send them again if people don't have them. Are people comfortable voting this? Oh, are we talking about the December minutes or the January minutes? January minutes. Oh, that says December 9th. My mistake. It's maybe the agenda. I'm reading the wrong agenda. No. No. Mistake in the agenda. So the January 9th minutes says December 9th. Thank you, Neil. Are people okay to vote this or do you want to look at them? I'm sure I looked at them when she sent them and I don't remember having any reaction. Okay. So I need a motion. I move we approve the January 9th minutes. I need a second. Second. Steve, thank you. Neil, how do you vote? Yeah, aye. Tom? Aye. Steve? Aye. Bill? Aye. Ellen, aye. Thank you. Um, we are clear and then just tell, we'll get emails out with calendar invites for the next meeting and the next one just for Bill's, um, March 17th. March 17th. April 28th. So everyone can just have a green beer with them at their Zoom. Right. Sounds good. All right. Thank you, Bill, for joining at the end. John, for joining. Yeah, I apologize for being late. I know how hard it is to schedule these things, so. Yeah. But we're going to do our best, and I'm grateful that Neil's the vice chair, so if I'm not there, you're running the meetings, Neil. Yeah, good luck with that. Yeah, yeah. I would like you to overachieve so I can retire. All right. Bye. All right. Also, rest assured, we already have the Zooms in scheduled, because that's been another hiccup with our meeting. So we already have a March and April are locked in. We're getting ready, guys. I get back for my spring training baseball trip about three or four o'clock that afternoon. So I will be tanned, relaxed, and talking about the Red Sox. I love it. Tanned, rested, and ready. Can't ask for more. I'll put it in, Bill. All right. Thanks, guys. Have a good evening. All right. See you later. Bye. Bye. Bye.
Olivia's going to take notes when she's back on. Oh, really? Oh, that's fantastic. I was going to ask someone to do that. So let me first note who is in attendance. I see committee members Tom Siaka. I hear Neil Gordon. And I hear Steve Garone and Ellen Tohn. Our student rep, Kavya Swanker. Our staff person, Julie Gagan and Olivia Blanley. Although Olivia has a new last name, right, Julie? Lizardo. Lizardo. And that's all I'm seeing. I believe John Harper, our associate member, is going to join late after 8. Bill Huss can't make it. I know Clovis can't make it. And I never heard from Paul Dale. One thing we are going to really work on is finding a regular night, and if I can't make it, Neil will chair, and try to navigate through everybody's conflicts. So first, let me just ask, is there any public comment? I don't think there's anybody else on, right? There is a Marie Eisenberg, who is on, but her mic is muted. When I go to the view button in the upper right-hand corner of the screen, I get a display with... Yeah, yeah, Tom, that only works when you're a panelist. So that didn't work for us. Okay. Oh, you're on now, Ellen. Yeah. I think Seth is working on it right now. So it looks like everyone's in except for Marie. Great. Okay, perfect. So before we just get to public comment for one second, Olivia is working very hard to see if we can find a night, given everyone's commitments. Steve, would you please remind Olivia, you have a surface water quality meeting once a month on a certain date. What is that?
That's the one that bounces around a lot. The ones that I know about are the second Tuesday of the month and pretty much every Wednesday. Okay, so Wednesdays are bad for you and the second Tuesday of the month is bad. Mondays and Wednesdays... I can work around. Mondays and... And we all may miss a meeting here and there. That will happen. Mondays and Wednesdays are bad for Bill. So I think we're still looking at Tuesdays or Thursdays. And Olivia, is it the case that like, and Julie, that Tuesdays are just really hard nights for Zoom meetings for the town? Yeah, we've had trouble in the past. So even when we pick a meeting day and time, sometimes the town doesn't have capacity to support. I think we do have the next two meetings scheduled. So maybe we can confirm with everyone that those two dates work and then we can move forward from there. Let's do that and then we'll get to public comment. When is the next one? April 28th. We don't have one in March? Oh my God, I'm so sorry. March 17th. We're having a date switcheroo in our brains, so... Yes. It's March 17th and then April 28th. Is the both at 7.30? 7.30 on Zoom. Yep. And did you guys send out calendar invites for those? Not yet. We were confirming tonight and then we'll send them out first thing tomorrow. Okay, so that's a Tuesday and we'll end in March 28th. April 28th. I'm sorry. Thank you, Neil. April 28th. No, I'm not going to make the March meeting. And April 28th, is that a Tuesday? Yep. I might have a conflict on that thing. I think we're just going to have to go with dates and people will miss them, I think. This is how we're getting into trouble. So if people know in advance we have them, then hopefully people can... I don't know what else to do, Tom. We're kind of just having troubles. People are too committed. Too many things. It's a positive thing overall. Yeah, I mean, once Bill's finance committee meetings stop on Mondays and Wednesdays after town meeting, we can re-look at this question. Okay, why don't you send that out to everybody? And then I think you should plan the May one. What would the May one be? Like, just do the next, do through June. Yeah, great idea. They are what they are. And if people miss them, they miss them. Well, are those more likely to be Thursdays after the next couple? I think we're going to stay with Tuesdays for right now. Yeah, it would be Tuesday, May 19th. And... That would be okay for me. Tuesday, June 16th. That's probably okay. So why was it April 20... Why was it so late in April when the others are... Kind of mid-month? For us, and this is totally up to you if you want to keep it, but I'm away. It's April vacation week, and I'm away. I think we need to get Julie there. I don't really want to meet without Julie. Thanks, Ellen. So that, you know, and the rest of us can miss a bit. If we don't have Julie, I think it's less productive. I agree. Okay. All right. So I'm going to open this to public comment. Marie, we can see that you've joined us. Do you have public comment, or are you just listening in and introduce yourself? Hi, I'm Marie. I attend the COA climate change meeting. Oh, yeah. Great. I have an ongoing interest in the subject, and so I'm here to see what I can learn about what Waylon's doing. Ah, fantastic. That's great. And I will listen. Okay. Okay. But Marie, we have a very open and inclusive meeting approach. So at any point, if you want to ask a question or make a comment, do it. Okay. All right. We try to be really open and inclusive. So glad you're having a good experience with Tony and Margie. They're terrific. We're always thrilled that they're doing that, and they've done it many times for us. So terrific. So this is the committee. We're missing three folks, and Julie is our sustainability manager and facilities. Your title eludes me, Julie. But I call us our sustainability manager, and Olivia is our sustainability coordinator. All right. I will hand this over. And Olivia, thanks for taking notes. I will hand this over, Kavya, for you for update. I'm hoping you're going to tell us a little bit about fast fashion, slow fashion.
So we had our slow fashion show. It got delayed a lot because of the snowstorm. Because it's slow.
Yeah. And we had models. I think it ended up pretty good. Pretty good. For the, what was it? For the whale and post article, I have finished it. I just need to get all the models to sign the minor consent form. Okay. I currently have about half of them, if you include me. But other than that, it's done. That's great. Do you want to send it to June? And just to say, so for Marie's benefit, who's listening, can you just give us three, give her three sentences on what slow fashion was at the high school? So Green Team runs a slow fashion show every year during, like, the week after midterms. And basically, we have a bunch of models, like, student volunteer models. And we have them wear thrifted or upcycled clothes to show students, like other students, how dressing sustainably can still be fashionable. And you don't have to follow all these fast fashion trends. And Marie, we're trying to get as much information as we can in the Whelan Post, just to let people know what's happening in terms of sustainability. So Javia, offer to write the article. So I would just send it to June to say, I'm getting these things, but I want her to slot it in. And then you can also bug your fellow students to say, hey, this is the deadline. I really need this. Are they all in, if you don't get some of them, are there some pictures with just a few of them, so you'd still be okay? Yeah, most of them are just, like, full body shots so that you can see their outfit. There's not a lot that are big group photos. Okay. So if you don't get some of them, you could just eliminate that photo. So I would say, ask June what her deadline is. Just copy me so I can track along and help you out if you need it. So great. Other updates from you and the green team or anything at the school? No, not really. I think our next project is going to be Earth Week, which we're going to do the week before April break. And do you know what you have planned at this point or how we can help you? Um, I know last year we had a clothing swap and we did a photo contest. I think we might have done more. I'm not sure. I haven't, I wasn't there at the last meeting, so I'm not entirely sure, but I'll know by next meeting. Okay. Um, why don't we, uh, talk about it also at the next meeting and, you know, happy to have people brainstorm stuff. Yeah. About what. Positive. I can make it to the next meeting because March 17th is my birthday. Oh, okay. So for, for Earth Day, when you're, do you usually do like one event or I'm just trying to think about, you know, Olivia and Julia and others, other things we have going on that we would want to showcase. I mean, you guys are doing composting at the schools. Is there anything else you want to do related to the composting that would show like how much emissions we've saved or something about composting that you could do during that, um, week, the other thing is, um, I don't know how it works, but you know, we can always, I don't know if people leave the building, but you could do a little Evie, um, electric vehicle, electric car showcase. We could just put a few Evie's in that first parking lot, you know, have you were like right by the entrance and just get members of the committee and others, people in town to just bring their Evie, you know, students, some students have cars, students live in families that have cars and they could, you know, say, Hey, that's cool. I saw this ionic five is really cool. Like, have you guys, you know, that's the one other thought that occurs to this. No, we also run, like, I think on one of the days we make it walk to school day where we basically encourage people to walk or ride a bike or even carpool to school. And then we also have a trash pickup day sometime during the week. Okay.
Um, great. I think these are also a good thing to think about when you're communicating with June at the Wayland post. It's like, Hey, we're also going to do this. We could give you a little photo montage of things from earth week that the high school did. Like they love pictures. If you, especially include me, you could say, we're doing some things that would be in April. We could take some pictures and, you know, write a very short description. Yeah. Okay. Great. Anybody else have any other thoughts for the green team?
Um, I think the, there's like the walk and bike to school day happens in May. Katya. I don't know if that there's a local one. Yeah, there's a, um, there's a one that happens like many towns and it's usually like, I'm just looked it up. It looks like May 6th. So. Oh, maybe. Yeah. Um, but I, I think again, to just partner on what Ellen said, I love the idea of doing like an EV showcase. So if you need help organizing something like that, or if you think that would be like of interest, we're happy to like. I can ask myself about it. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and then the other thing is that we are working on the composting. I think Olivia updated you. Um, did she send you an email? Yeah. I think I was CC'd on the emails with the alumni. We're, we are working on it. It's, um, we're trying to figure out how much it, you still don't have an answer for like how much they've been paying. Um, but we have made some progress and I, it looks like we're going to add a compost bin in town, town building. We did an employee survey and everyone approved. So, um, that's one step closer, at least in the composting category. And hopefully we can get the bins figured out for the schools. Okay. Great. Um, great. We won't see you in March. We'll see you in April, but let us know how we can help. On Earth Day stuff. All right. Over to you, Olivia. Okay, um, thank you, Kavya. Um, updates from me. I've been in contact with HomeWorks, our massive approved vendor. I just met with the representative that's working with, um, me, um, earlier this week. And we got approval from Michael McCall to send out, um, the first mailer explaining HomeWorks, explaining where Waylon's landing page is on their website and how people can schedule their own home energy audits. Um, so that mailer is going to go out in two to three weeks. Um, it's going to have my contact information on it. And then also, um, the woman's name is Rachel that's been helping us. So her contact is going to be on it as well. And then, um, Jalen Bradica, who works in the town manager's office, she put together kind of like a graphic to post on town of Waylon social medias. And then also to put in our monthly newsletter, just so people know that this mailer is legit and, you know, just where it's coming from. Um, other than that, I would say working on the composting, as Julie mentioned. Before you, before you leave HomeWorks. Yeah. I don't know if this is possible, so I'm just going to toss it out there. Yeah. We have coaches through Energize Waylon to help people with solar EVs and heat pumps. And heat pumps definitely get covered in the energy audit. So it would be great if that mailer could say, you know, there's a community-based group that's been working for a long time that has volunteer coaches that could help you, um, you know, answer questions or talk about their experiences in these, in these areas. If that is, you know, of interest to you and send them to the Energize Waylon homepage, which has the two buttons for, like, heat pump coaches and, uh, solar coaches. So, you know, it's a town mailer sometimes. So I, I don't know, Julie and Olivia, first of all, I don't know what other people on the committee think about that, but it's always good to get the word out about coaching. Um, so I don't know what others think. And then the question is, you know, is, is that in bounds for the letter? But Neil, Tom, Steve, it would seem really smart if, if the, if the homeworks people were familiar with the concept of coaches so that when they were doing their audits and, and questions around solar or, or heat pumps or whatever came up, they could, they could talk about it. You know, that's a, a little more sort of on point and, and in the moment. And, and, and, you know, I don't know whether, I don't know who these homeworks people are and whether they have any idea that there are coaches. And my, my other thought about homeworks, by the way, it keeps bugging me thinking about it, is, is it the same as mass save? Yeah. They're a massive vendor. It's a massive audit. Yeah. So it's, it's a, it's sort of really confusing to me that to give it a different name than it's had for ever. I don't know. Are people, are people going to think it's a different thing? I mean, it's not, it's more just like, it's a, homeworks is a different entity from mass save. Mass save is the program that has the incentives in it. Right. Homeworks is a vendor that is working for the mass save program to help connect people with the mass save program. But the letter would say, this is a mass save energy audit. Right. Wouldn't say it's a homeworks one. It'll say. Got it. Okay. Homeworks. Yeah. Good. The branding here is very confusing. Yeah. I'm going to go to Steve, but I like Neil. I like Neil's suggestion, Olivia. And, you know, I'd be happy to chat with homeworks. I've offered many times, be happy to chat with homeworks about what the coaching looks like and how people can sign up for it. And, you know, our heat pump coaches are trained by the heat smart Alliance. So, um, you know, we've had the same solar coach for years. So I think, um, people have very good experiences of that and homeworks will certainly talk about heat pumps, but some people are like, Oh, I don't know. Oh, what do I really think? And, you know, having someone down has, and Tom's a coach, for example, um, as is Paul Dale, who's also a member of the committee. So, you know, Julie and Olivia, and then Steve, happy to go to your point. Could we do that? Could we, yeah, I think we had agreed last meeting to do that, to have homeworks come and do the meeting, right. Be the first touch point and then say, here's your results. Here are our recommendations. Here is a resource that you have. To help you accomplish that, right? Like, so homeworks does their outreach. They are bringing people into, they're going through the process that they do. And then they're connecting them with mass energy or with energize Wayland. I don't know if homeworks, when we did this before with Nico, and then the time before we did it with somebody else, it ended up that there were like one or two auditors that really got assigned to Wayland. Okay. And I don't know how homeworks is planning to do that. It's just actually helpful to talk to those two human beings to say, okay, this is what coaching really looks like in Wayland. Okay. They sign up here and this is, this is what the user experience will be. They sign up here. They're going to get an email. We have four coaches. They've done it for X number of years, you know, like really give it a little more flavor. And, you know, we could develop a, like Olivia could easily make a little one pager, a QR code to the website. And, you know, we have testimonials from people who have done the coaching. Like, I want to make it as easy as possible for homeworks to do what Neil is suggesting. Suggest. A hundred percent. Yeah, no, I totally agree with that. And Olivia and I can work on that. Um, I think it's, that's partly in the works, but we should formalize that more, um, and come up with a, and articulate exactly what it will be. Um, and I think once they get this initial, like, whatever, we, I'll, I'll take a look at, at everything, Ellen, and we'll, we'll bring you in at the appropriate point and make sure that we're doing that. Cause I agree. Like as a homeowner, it's awesome to have that initial touch point, but there's the, how is where people really struggle. Um, and so having somebody that can handhold them a little bit and then do a quick check in, like, Hey, I know you got your, your audit last month. Have you made any progress? Do you need any help with anything? And that honestly, speaking as a busy parent, um, can go a long way to be like, Oh, right. Yeah. I am supposed to do something with that. A hundred percent. Um, we'll make sure that that's part of it. Um, and we'll bring you in at the right point. Is there anyone else from Energize Wayland that should be part of that? Or do you want to? Um, Anne Harris. Okay. Right. Anne. Okay. Yeah. Cause Anne kind of manages a lot of the flow and assigning heat pump coaches. Um, Steve, you had your hand up and I didn't forget. Yeah. I have my hand up, uh, more of a question and this may just reflect that, you know, I, I'm relatively new to this committee. I may not have the background, but, um, if there are, if homeworks is a vendor, there are a lot of vendors out there that can do this. Um, have, has there been a process where we selected them and endorsing them? Okay. Yes. Olivia, you want to answer that? Um, sure. So we did put out an RFQ to the MassSafe approved vendors. If you go on MassSafe's website, they have a list of those vendors. Um, and I think we had three responses of the three, we vetted their references and homeworks ended up at the time it was myself and Abby Shute ended up being the best option, um, to us. And Michael, Michael McCall approved our selection. Kind of the idea of zeroing in on one vendor was just to give some like reliability for people and to build trust with residents. I know people get a ton of mailers and flyers about different opportunities and savings. And it can be like, um, how Neil said it's overwhelming with all the branding and different names and it would be nice to have a town seal on something so people can feel like they can trust it. So that was kind of the process and why we ended up going with one person. And I think the Steve is they know that they have this territory that they're willing to spend their money to do a mailer to everybody in town because they know that we're helping to promote it. We, we did this once before, and I think we had 282 people sign up for energy audits and 65 people ended up completing energy insulation upgrades. So the good news is then also we can track what's going on because we're just working with one and then we coordinated with them on where they were going to do outreach, you know, like you have a better, closer relationship versus just letting the market do its thing. Makes sense. Yeah. All right. Thanks. Thanks, Olivia. All right. Well, let us know, Julie, how we can all help with that.
I included it in the last Energize Whalen newsletter. It'll, it'll just be a running, um, article. If you have someone who goes through the program and has a good experience, I always prefer, Olivia, to also include a testimonial. So if you get one of those and homework should get those, then, um, we can include it. You know, that newsletter goes to about a thousand people now. Okay. Wow. Thank you. That would be great. Um, and I think that's pretty much it for me. Um, I, I, I have a question, Olivia. Uh, well, well, first of all, let me say, I absolutely agree promoting coaches or educating the public that coaches exist, the more, more, the better. I very recently ran into somebody in another context that I happened to find just chatting with them. They had, they were looking for heat pumps, had gotten three heat pump quotes and then found somebody who was willing to, to evaluate the quotes, but he had to be paid. And, and I said, well, why don't you use one of our coaches? It's free. What coaches? What's a coach? Uh, and when I explained, he said, well, how would anybody know about that? And, and this is someone who was lived, lived in town for many years. So yes, getting more publicity out there would be great, but a quick question, Olivia. Um, you happen to know if, uh, a homeworks does blower door and or, uh, infrared camera testing as part of their evaluation. Um, off the top of my head, I do not, but I can definitely get back to you. I can make a note of that and ask them what their like typical practices. Yeah. Like most recently, the answer is no. They sometimes do it as a QC thing at the end, but the mass state program eliminated last I heard doing blower door testing as part of the diagnostic and they don't usually do infrared. They, they, they have to follow their standard protocol. So it's, there's a lot of reasons why these are not fantastic. We can't change it. Okay. I, um, I, I would not bother with one without, uh, at least one of those tests. I mean, I, I know I have a leak and I, I would love for somebody to find it, but it needs to be a real devaluation. I mean, I think that could be a good question. They, I don't think they do a standard, but if someone said, Hey, could you bring an infrared? I'm pretty sure I have a cold spot here. I need to isolate it. You could ask them that question. Cause I think maybe they're allowed. They have some flexibility on a case by case basis. Okay. I'll, I'll definitely ask. And I can get back to you guys at the next meeting about that. That's a good point. I mean, one of the things I had suggested and I don't know a few others. And I see coffee has their hand up. You know, we could invite homeworks to one of these meetings. So people could ask them all these questions directly because first, you know, then you go ask the question, they come back and Tom said, well, that's not really what I meant. I meant this. I mean, they're an MOU with the town. If they're working with towns, they're used to doing evening meetings for 20 minutes. Not it's a zoom meeting. No one has to drive anywhere. So that would be my suggestion is that the committee just have a chance to ask them questions and brainstorm with them about other strategies for outreach. You've got a lot of people on this committee who've spent a lot of time in this town and know how to get to people. So it's an asset.
Oh, sorry about that. I was just going to say if that's of interest for the committee, I meet with them biweekly. So I can definitely invite them to our next meeting on the 17th, maybe for like a 20 minute window, if that works for people. Yeah, let's do it. Well, I'm not going to make the. So Tom, just send your comments, send your comments to Olivia, questions to Olivia, Julie, and me, and we'll make sure they get raised or send them to them and they can raise it in the Tuesday meeting and send you. But I think it'd be good. I think we've done this once before and we had some set of experiences and it'd be good to share that. And I can always invite Anne Harris if she wants to join me because Anne and I co-managed that when we did it last time with Nico. And I think there were some lessons learned.
Great. All right, Kavya. Sorry, this is all topic, but I was looking through the agenda. Is there anything you think that would be interest for the high school or for me to participate in? How about the school works grant? Yeah, that's the only thing I could think of. So why don't we go to that? Sure. And because I think it involves schools and what we're doing in schools. So I think, Kavya, that would be good. Yeah, I'll give you the quick version. And then if you guys have questions, I'm happy to answer them. Eliana had brought up the Green School Works grant a couple months ago and we had gone back and forth with it. We work primarily with Amoresco. We have an energy performance contract with them. So they're kind of like our go-to engineering team when we need to pull something together, especially quickly. And so we were able to partner with them on the Green School Works grant. The Green School Works grant is only $19 million and it's supposed to go to a lot of schools in Massachusetts. So I assume that it'll be somewhat competitive. The it's it's run by MassCEC, which is primarily focused on communities that have expressed need. However, this grant is open to everyone and they're looking for projects that are going to further electrification in schools. And I think I would add a layer of I think furthering electrification in schools in a short period of time. So rather than, you know, like one of those like wishes and hopes things where we haven't done anything, but someday we'd like to like that's not what this is for. This is for projects that are ready to go. The great thing about Wayland and our facilities team is that for the last year and a half, we've had a really great public buildings director that has put a lot of programs forward already very quickly. And so our team is kind of already in the space of doing updates to buildings. And so we had our list of projects already ready to go. We've had a lot of work that's already been done. So we're in progress on a lot of things, which means that we're able to quickly if we do get this money, capitalize on it and get the project done within a year, which is awesome. And that's unusual. A lot of schools and districts, it takes a long time to get these things going. And so what we are applying for is for Wayland Middle School. And as you know, from the decarbonization roadmap that we put together, that we have the lower elementary schools that are in need of like serious upgrades slash possible replacement in the next 10-ish years. The high school's new-ish. And the middle school is in its middle ages. It's, I would say like late teens, you know what I mean? It's not new, but it has hit the point where like a lot of the equipment has needed to be replaced. And so we're in a good place where we can, we need to do equipment replacement. And when we're doing that equipment replacement, we can electrify. So we've already replaced, we had to replace a lot of the gas boilers, unfortunately, like very quickly last year because they were all at failure point. And so we weren't able to do most of the heating system. But for this grant, we are applying to electrify, to get a heat pump to electrify the domestic hot water, which is a great project for us to do anyway, because it gives us some experience with electrifying domestic hot water in a building. And not a lot of municipalities have done this work. So that's, again, it's a great opportunity for us to learn. And then the second one is to replace some rooftop units for our heating system. And we're going to replace those with heat pumps. So we'll partially electrify our heating by doing that. And the project total cost, I want to say, is over $2 million, two, two and a half million dollars to do both of those things and all the engineering required to do, to build those systems out and that kind of thing. If we don't get it, it's not a big deal. I really hope at the very least that they give us the money to be able to electrify the domestic hot water, because I think it's a really awesome project and an awesome opportunity. And that segmented out is only like $330,000. So I think we've got like a good chance at partial funding. And I mean, why not reach for the stars? So we're going for more. We didn't need to replace all of our boilers and an emergency basis when we did it last year. But we do have like that remaining heating load that needs to get upgraded. And so this gives us the rest of that in electrified fashion. So we get a hybrid system, which is also actually like a really great learning experience for us as well, right? To have a partial heat pump and air source heat pump and partial gas fired heating system. So that's the grant. It's due tomorrow. So you can guess that that's pretty much what I've been doing this week in addition to prepping for this meeting. And that's what I'll be doing until it's due at 11.59 p.m. tomorrow night. Hopefully, I will not be doing it that long. Um, it's pretty much done. Um, so here's a great summary, Julie. Yeah. Would it be interesting to the green team? Like they all went to the middle school for Julie to come to like a green team meeting and say, you all were in this building. This is how it runs. This is the fuels we're trying to get off of fossil fuel. So here's what we're planning to do. This is kind of, uh, you know, the amount of fossil fuels it would displace, like give them a feel for a real project that we're thinking about. Do you think some of the green team would be interested?
Um, my final question is, is what, what, how would the green team help once they have that information? Sure. I would say this was more like a, for your information, like how are we doing our, how are we achieving climate goals? That's sort of like a building energy systems level. I mean, you could just do a tour of the boiler room if you want. Um, I mean, it's kind of, it's interesting. I think more from a data perspective, I don't know, but it would be more informational unless you wanted to do a building tour.
I'll have to think about it because we always have some kind of project in the works. So I don't know if we can, like, even when we're not working on the, like, I guess winter, like not winter, Earthly could be our next project. We're like tending to the garden. So I don't know if we'd be able to do that, but I can, yeah, that's totally like a 15 minute presentation by Julie to say, Hey, you all went to the middle school. You all experienced this. I'm guessing some people's, yeah, some classes were too hot. Some were too cold. We've had issues with controls in that building just to understand this is what we're doing in town to get off fossil fuel and make, you know, have our buildings be more comfortable and what we think it will, um, do, you know, to help us meet our climate goals. Yeah. Oh, and the other interesting piece of this is that we're retrofitting, we're doing all this building, um, energy efficiency work in part because we're looking at potentially making this an emergency shelter with like battery storage backup, which again, it would be like, it's super cool because not, not a lot of places are doing it. Um, so anyway, it's just for thought. Like you can think about it. And as it progresses, we'll see. Uh, FYI, the, uh, heat smart Alliance has been spending a lot of time lately talking about heat pump water heaters. We're having another meeting early tomorrow morning on the subject. Um, so that, that whole technology is of interest, um, seems to be not as well developed as space heating heat pump technology. So, um, I'll be interested in what, what you learn here. Yeah. We're, um, I mean, the project team is also like the engineers at MRSCO are really excited about it because they want to work on a project like this. And we, there just hasn't been a lot of opportunity. Um, so we're all kind of jazzed up about it from a really nerdy perspective. Yeah. So I mean, that's my people. Yeah. Bob Zogg, you know, did a really nice webinar on this for a bunch of towns. Um, and Bob's, Bob's pretty, pretty nerdy. Um, but that sounds great. So Kavi, it's just more like a learning opportunity, so I don't think it would be, it wouldn't be a project. It would just be at one of your meetings. Um, but talk to Sarah, Ms. Snow, and talk to the other folks. I was just thinking it's related to schools, but now if you want, you can leave and go do homework. Is that what you want to do? Right? Yeah. Thank you. Nice to see you. Bye Kavi. Yeah. All right. So Julie, back to you.
Um, the, the, um, contract renewal for Wayland Power Choice feels like old news. Cause we've been working on some other stuff. Um, so how do we want to frame this? Do you want to start it? I feel like. Sure. You guys remember Wayland Electricity Choice. We signed the contract last May. Uh, Bill and I were on the selection committee, um, when we picked, um, the consultant to help us and when we locked in the rates and we have three, we had three choices. I just wrote a piece for, uh, Olivia had something in the E-new, the news. And I just wrote something for Energize Wayland riffing off Olivia's. People have saved a lot of money on that program. It comes due in May. You got to sign the new contract in February by, we're going to sign it by February 24th or something. And in talking to Paul Gromer, which like John knows Paul and Tom Siakon knows Paul. Paul is a ex-DPU commissioner is to help lock the towns with their aggregation. Um, his strong advice to us was that there really is no, so Julie, you can feel the degree that, that we should go with not three choices, but one. And the reason is that the market for class one wrecks is completely different than it was two years ago because the Trump administration has canceled a lot of the large wind things. Um, we know the utility has to meet its RPS, uh, a renewable portfolio standard, the minimum amount of renewables. And right now there are not enough projects to meet that. So trying to seed the market to get more projects going, the market is already doing that because we don't have enough for the utility to meet their minimum. Um, so if we were buying class one wrecks, what actually is happening and that is money is going to the mass CEC to give out across the state, but more importantly, the governor Healy has taken that money once and is likely to do it again to subsidize rates for people all across the state. So in good and conscious, Ellington, I, and Julie, Gagan, don't feel like Weyland rate payers should, when they want to buy more grain, be doing that in a way that really is just providing grant money to the state or subsidizing rates for other communities. If you want to do less with fossil fuels, there, there are other things you can do with your money. Yeah. Um, so that's my summer. We, we're going to lock in the rate. What is it like the 24th, Julie? Yeah. Um, not this coming week, but the week after. Um, and so, yeah, I was just going to say, we'll do some pricing before that to take a look at the market and where it's landing. And then when we lock in the rate and just to make sure everyone understands, you all know this is for your residential electricity rate. So this will affect everyone's residential electricity rate. And rather than offering the standard green, the a hundred percent green, and then the basic service rate will just be offering that base rate. So everyone's going to get that lower rate automatically enrolled into the program. Um, and we've left it open so that. When we renew the contract, probably in two years, we have the option to add it back in. If the market on Rex is different. Um, the other thing that we did, you guys are, we're all tired of our frustration. I'm going to generalize that we never have money to do a mailing to anybody in town. Um, and so we were chatting with our consultant and it was like, I was like, Paul, we, when we wrote the original language to the DPU, we gave ourselves the ability to charge a little bit of a program fee that could support activities related to green energy in town. So I was like, Paul, maybe we can do that. And he's like, no, there's a better way to do it. It was so smart. When they're going to go out with the RFP to suppliers, they're going to say, give us your best rate for the minimum, the RPS and include in your bid that you will do an annual mailing to everybody in town. It's nothing money to them when they're bidding the supply contract, not only that they would have the money, but they would actually just do the mailing, right? Um, so I think out of this, we will get an annual mailing to everybody in town and we can write the content for that. So that felt like a very smart innovation. I think, Julie, that, that we collectively came up with. Um, so I feel, I feel, I feel good about that. I feel very shitty about the rec one, class one. It's sad. It's so heartbreaking because I fought so hard to add recs to all of our contracts in Weston. And now I feel bad because like we worked hard, you know, like we're paying more of a rate and that money's not going where it's supposed to, where the promise is not being fulfilled. And I think that that's the bigger piece. Like one of the things I will say, I just want to give Ellen a lot of credit because I think it's really hard for people in this particular space to go to say, to let go of that a hundred percent green and that standard green rate, just from a perception point of view. Um, so, but like the average Wayland resident, um, is, you know, like they're knowledgeable and at some point they're going to hear about it and then we're going to hear rumors. And so I feel like to some extent by being proactive, we're continuing that trust factor with people and saying that we're managing the program in a way that, um, is considerate of, of where the rate payers are. But that being said, that's where Ellen and I are. We were aligned pretty quickly on that. Um, the other thing I'll add before we open up into discussion is that, um, the city of Newton recently renewed their contract and they removed the two other green options. So they, we aren't the first, um, but we are the second. So, um, just keeping that in mind that, you know, it's a two-year contract. You can assume that Paul and, um, and his team are going to probably give a similar recommendation to everyone as they're renewing their contracts. Um, so for us to do it, we are early, but I would say in the next six to eight months, you're going to see this be more of a normalized scenario. So Neil, you got your hand up. And then John is a guy who's like a solar finance class, one rec kind of expert. If you have any comments and then we'll go to Marie. Right. Yeah. So, so, you know, I get why, why we're doing this. What I don't understand is what you think the public message is. Cause it's, you know, on, on the face of it, it's, we're not offering green anymore. Yep. And how does it, and if, and if your answer to that is, well, it's because the governor took the money and put it someplace that had nothing to do with it. Boy, does that really sound bad? So how does this not come out sounding like, you know, green's gone to hell and there's no way to fund it anymore. Or so you're all getting regular electricity. Yeah. I mean, we have some, we do have some information from the city of Newton in how they communicated. And I would say, absolutely. This is before we're sending anything out. I think we need to touch base as a committee, um, and discuss this more because I don't want, I don't want any of us coming out to say we did it and we're doing what's best for you. Um, I think it really does need to be conscientiously communicated. The good news is that once we get our rates locked in at this month, we have what March, April into May to make these communications ahead of like the, the options changing and everyone will be automatically enrolled anyway. So 80% of the people paying electricity rates are not going to pay attention or care. Um, but you're right. Like, Oh, we have like 4,000 people in the rate. I think there's like 130 that are on the a hundred percent green. Yeah. Everybody else is on the standard green or the Wayland economy. So it's those 134. The, as part of Peregrine's contract and the suppliers, um, there will be a letter that goes out to everybody, but I, and, and I agree the messaging will be really important. I think we're going to rely on Paul a little on how to do that and see what Newton did. And I agree with Julie, we should bring it back to everybody else for kind of a reality check on it. Um, it's very, it's, it's pretty discouraging. Um, it really stems from the cancellation of some of the large renewable projects and lack of projects. So, so John is a guy who financed projects in the pipeline. Any, any further thoughts on this? So run, run by me. The numbers of people who are on the a hundred percent green, it's like a hundred, 130. I think it's about 130 of the 4,000. And we know who they are. 3% of the population. I counted. Yeah. Yeah. We're like three or 4%. I don't know, but Paul knows who they are. Yeah. So we could do a separate mailing to them. Um, I, I just wonder if, if there are options outside of this that we could at least point them to saying, if this is something that's really important to you, um, that cohort might be willing to pay a premium price. It's not something we'd offer for the, but it's really that any money for class one Rex is just going to the CC and Healy's using it to subsidize rates elsewhere. So, but any other supplier that's offering class one is not telling you where the money's going. And I, I wouldn't recommend that. The question I have, and I don't know this offhand is whether or not there's any options outside of a electricity choice program where you can send the money to a supplier. So it might be community solar as opposed to buying Rex, Julie. So here's one thought is why don't we invite Paul? Paul's always happy to come to meeting. Why don't we have Paul come to like the March meeting we'll have locked in the rate and we can talk about communication and people like John can ask that question and Neil can ask his question. And again, it's not funneling through you and I, and Paul is Paul and Marlene are really pretty good at this. So that's my suggestion. Agreed. I think it messaging is really important. And I prefer it to come from Peregrine because they're going to be addressing this in every community that they work with, which is pretty much every community that does community aggregation. So, um, yeah. And yeah, this is a conversation beginner, not an ender, right? Like we're, let's open up and talk about it. You know, what I, I found really amazing when I read your, your, uh, demo, Julie, um, is that I hadn't heard about this before yours was the first time I heard about, I am on lots of mailing lists. I'm on a gazillion mailing lists. So it's like, they're hiding it at the state level. Yeah. Well, I'll tell you, Tom, I am a, how I'm an engineer, but like, to me, the things that I tinker with are like, how do programs work or like how did things work? So I, I tend to really dig into, but like how, where's the money coming from? Where is it going to, how has this been, if, you know, like understanding the systems in place. And so, um, I am very familiar with the rec market, but that's because I was curious about how it worked. And I'll tell you that even within other people that are in this role in other communities, it is not well understood or known. Um, so this is, we're unique in that Ellen is super knowledgeable. You know, a lot of you are very, very knowledgeable. And so we're able to make, understand things at a level that I think are, is not necessarily the norm, um, which makes it easier to be decisive when we hear things like this. Um, I think a lot of other communities are going to struggle a little bit more because you first have to understand how things work. Um, I do think Tom, nobody knows, people know that Healy is finding a pot of money to subsidized rates, but they don't know where the money's coming from. This was the first I really heard from it when Paul really explained it to us. So let's have Paul in and, um, you know, I think it'll become more clear as this happens with more, uh, communities. Yeah. Let me, let me make one other observation from your, um, what, what you, you sent out, Julie, when I looked at the, um, people who were on the a hundred percent green rate and and it also lists out their, uh, electrical usage by, by month, that is the, the only one of the three groups, which is winter peaking. So guess what? That means that they're the ones who have got heat pumps. So those are, are the people who are not just interested in, you know, the, the electric rates, but in general, they're the environmentally oriented people. And so. It's a good, if, if Paul knows those people, I would really love to send a dedicated mailing saying, make sure on the HP one rate. Uh, yeah, yes, absolutely. Yeah. Uh, we should just talk to Paul about, cause this mailings and, and maybe some segmented slightly different messaging, uh, would be interesting. I like that. And we can do more groundwork. Um, I'm going to meet with them next week to do a little, an initial pricing poll, um, anyway, and I'll be communicating with Ellen on this. So we'll do some groundwork between now and next meeting so that when Paul gets here, you, you all have a little bit more to work with, um, before we, before we discuss and talk with him, um, and then we'll come up with something, you know what I mean? Like, well, we'll, we'll do a good job with this. I'm confident in that. So Marie, did you have a question on this? Your hand was up and then it went down. So maybe we answered it or maybe we bored you. No, no, no, I'm not bored at all, but I'm going to have to leave. And I want to thank you very much. Oh, thank you for coming Marie. Okay. My pleasure. I'll do it again. Thank you so much. Thank you.
Um, so I'm going to, we're a little behind shocking. Um, I'm going to move us to ECC chair updates, um, to this proposed solar bylaw discussion. Um, we're hitting all these heavy topics. I feel like there's been a lot. This is very content rich. Yeah. And then the other ones will be, they'll be shorter, but I'm going to do the, while you're still all awake, this one, um, the, we were, I was made aware that there is a solar bylaw being proposed by the planning board. Actually, Bill Huss made us aware of it because Bill is the FinCom person reviewing it. And he reached out to me saying, do you know about this? I was like, actually, I don't. Um, it's a bylaw related to ground mounted solar systems to come up with a process to review, evaluate, and permit those. There is no state requirement that you have a bylaw currently for any solar stuff. It's, it's guaranteed by right. Um, I've reviewed the, so. Well, the roof mounted is guaranteed by right. Okay. There's nothing about ground mounted. Okay. Thank you, John. Um, our solar expert. Um, so that is happening. Concomitantly, the state is coming out with regulations that will go into effect March 1st, which you'll note is roughly two weeks from now. The intent behind these regulations is to streamline the permitting of solar systems, including ground mounted systems, so that communities can't tie them up for like years and years. The state said, we need more solar. Some of the solar has gotten stuck in multi-year permitting things as a state. We want more solar to be permitted. And so we're going to come up with regulations that say at a community level, you can't take more than X months. You can't do Y you have to, that, that really expedites permitting regulations come out March 1st. There is a sample model bylaw now, but we, so the regulations come out March 1st, they go into effect July 1st, and then Julie confirmed me, and October 1st, communities have to be in compliance with it. So Julie and my view on this, and the, there, there were draft regulations, we haven't seen the finals. There's an existing model bylaw, right, John? But with the draft, with the new regulations, it's possible that bylaw might also change. We have to just wait two weeks and see. So Julie and I, um, have been in touch with the planning board chair and the planner to say, hey, you know, we were unaware of this. Uh, they had a zoning hearing on it in January. We were unaware. We invited them to this meeting. I emailed them and said, we'd love to have a joint meeting. We'd like to be on your agenda. We'd like to put you on our agenda to talk about this. I think, um, and Julie chime in, my feeling, and I think Julie and I have a shared view on this, that the prudent thing to do is wait for the regulations to come out, look at the model bylaw, and then if our bylaw is not consistent with that, then pull it and do it a year later and give yourself the chance to revise it and have a hearing that you need to do on things like a bylaw. You're not going to have time to do that under this circumstance. Um, I've made our liaison, Bill Whitney, aware of this. He's also the liaison to the planning board. Spoke with him tonight about it. So Bill's aware. And Julie's, um, talked to Rob, the town planner, and to the town manager about this. So everyone's sort of aware of the situation. Um, yeah, I'll add my two cents in that on the backend. Number one, I don't like being surprised by stuff. Um, and this was a surprise and that's, that's odd because, you know, like we work in very close proximity to the planning department. You know, these are people that I see on a routine and regular basis. It's not like they don't know who I am or that I work here or that, um, I would be interested in doing this because we've interacted enough times that, do you know, like it, it, it's odd that we did not know, um, from a process standpoint, what I'm used to when it comes to bylaws is a lot of cross committee conversations, a lot of feedback, a lot of, um, consensus ahead of submitting something to be reviewed and, and voted on in town meeting. Um, I think, you know, we are the committee that has climate action goals and solar, you know, installing solar projects is a huge piece of meeting our climate goals. Um, and it's unclear why this is coming forward and why there is a sense of urgency around putting this forward, knowing that the state is coming out with regulations to, um, expedite the permitting process. So like the question, one question I would have is, does it make sense to add additional levels of permitting when we have, when the state's coming out with regulations that will supersede that, that will say we, you need to have everything done, all local permitting complete within 12 months of submission. So that's one example of what's coming out at the state level. Um, and then the other groundwork that I would like to do before, you know, making a position on this is what other community, what are other communities doing? Do other communities have ground mounted solar bylaws? What do those look like? How are those regulated? What is the process by which they're approved or permitted? Um, but it's helpful typically. Um, and I have enough experience with planning and zoning that like, there's always a reason why we're doing something. Um, Olivia has done some groundwork and research to try to figure out how many solar arrays there are in town that are ground mounted solar arrays that would fall within this criteria. And again, to Ellen's point, there's some definitions that make it hard to say what would qualify as being covered under the bylaw as it's currently written as it stands. Um, but there are, from what we can gather, there's only like two, three. Um, and so having a bylaw that is being, um, what feels like expedited in a short timeframe without a clear understanding reason why without engaging ECC in the process, right? There's some flags that are concerns. That doesn't mean that we wouldn't necessarily approve it. Um, but I, I'm a big fan of process, um, and building consensus. And so my feedback is same as what Ellen's saying. Like, I, I want more, um, I want to understand it. I want to look at it. I want to discuss. Um, and I just have not been able to receive that back yet. Um, and that's not to say that we won't get it, but we just don't have it at this time. Um, Billy, by, by way of, uh, background, um, I've been hearing for years, uh, from the lawyers around town on town boards that, uh, that, uh, they were unhappy with, um, not having an explicit legal, um, blessing for the few ground mount installations we have around town and then when we were talking about, um, uh, we, we were pushing, having one at the landfill and part of the pushback we got was that, well, it's not quite really legal because we don't have a bylaw that allows it. So I think the lawyers were actually just trying to kind of clean things up and, and that's what underlies this, why exactly it happened right now. I, I don't know, but I, I love that viewpoint, Tom, and I have in my hand here, a letter from KP law about ground mounted, adding a ground mounted solar bylaw, because this was discussed back in 2024. Um, so again, why are we at, in February, 2026, a couple of months before town meeting is happening, hearing about this? Um, and that's not entirely true because they did do some outreach back in June, um, with Abby and Olivia and Mike Faya to discuss it, but there's not been any, again, to the process point that we have expertise on this board that has not been leveraged in the writing and development of this. Um, and so again, I want to see what the state regs are and I want to see what like other towns are doing. And that's my standpoint, but I also want to hear from all of you and, um, get a sense of how you want to move forward with this, because obviously ECC should have a position. No, you're, you're obviously absolutely right. I'm just saying that it's not out of any nefarious motivation. I think it's out of, um, lack of communication. Okay. I'll just hear from other people. Neil, do you have any thoughts? I think we're, Julie and I would like to get a sense from the committee that, that our approach to like saying, Hey, let's have a joint meeting. Let's invite you to, you can explain to the committee why you want to do this. And also us to say to them, we're happy to give you comments, but we're not going to do it until we see the state regs and the new model bylaw. Cause it, it doesn't make any sense to do that. When things are changing in two weeks. So Neil thoughts. Is what's happening with the state their, their, their, their regulations go into effect at March 1st or are you saying regulations are promulgated March 1st. They go into effect July 1st. And then I think towns have to ensure that they're not in conflict with them by like October 1st, but we'll see when the regs come out, if that's what they really do. We have a fact sheet on it. Julie has a little bit more. So if we had a bylaw, for example, that was in conflict with the state regulation and it got passed to town meeting, we'd have to then have a process to pull it back, right? To undo. And that seems like, why would we do that? That's just meaning a lot of work for a lot of people. Yeah. And it doesn't even seem like there's an issue of it's worth waiting to see what's going to be promulgated because it won't, you know, it'll be a, it'll be a draft up subject to change before it's implemented, you know, for between March and, and do you say June or July, right? No, no, no. The regs are final March 1st. Yeah. We have drafted the draft version now. Oh, so that is, okay. That's what I was trying to understand what you were saying. Final regs promulgated March 1st in two weeks. Then we can look at them. And with the final regs, I think Julie, we anticipate being able to see a model bylaw, which might be what it is right now, but it might be tweaked a little. We just don't know. John, you have a. Yeah, this is getting into the weeds, but we're basically in the middle of the process by the state. The state has published the final regulations. It's on the website. It's, it's done. It'll be promulgated and made official on March 1st, but it is done. What's a follow on from that is they've got multiple guidelines that they're writing up on various aspects, like environmental conditions, permitting, citing, all sorts of stuff. They've got draft versions of those. They're getting comments on those for the next three months or so. And as part of that, they've got draft bylaws for both solar and storage. They published those last October, but they're signaling, hey, we may be changing these things to take into account all the comments that are coming back to us now or the guidelines. So it's just in process. That's what's going on. And the expectation is once all that's done, they're going to look to say to people, look, here's a draft bylaw. You don't have to take it word, absolutely the whole cloth. But if you don't, that may not be good. You know, nice house you got there type of thing. So there's a strong encouragement that we use the state's bylaw. So it's just, as Ellen says, it's just a question of timing. We're so close to seeing the official final version of the draft stuff. And this, if we, if the town passes the current proposed bylaw, it will have to change it. There's no question because it's in conflict in definitions and intent. It's incomplete in other respects. It's just, you know, it, you know, the gears are not meshing because... Is the town process such that Whalen could become consistent with the state model bylaw before town meeting? Or is it, is there not really time to make that happen? No, because the bylaw that's being proposed, it doesn't play nice with the draft bylaw, the model bylaw that the state has promulgated. It's nerdy stuff. Like one uses square footage. Another one uses acreage. They're just not consistent in your capacity. So you already know the answer to the question. Yep. Right. Is it going to have to change? And, and if there isn't time for it to change, then why is it in our position? It, it, it shouldn't move forward. It shouldn't be in the warrant. Well, we'll, we'll move to pass over a town meeting if they don't want to move it. And, and we'll go from there. Yes. We have to work it out after it's, sure. I mean, one argument that the planning board could take is, Hey, give us your best, uh, take at what the change is necessary to our bylaw. And we could try, but that would require legal input from outside council, town council, because it gets into some very tricky type stuff. We wouldn't have time to do that. So literally we have just a couple of weeks to finish that up. Yeah. Anything done that in that kind of hurried way though. Yeah. It's just not efficient. I don't think it actually works because they already had a hearing. So if there were substantial changes, they'd have to have a hearing. So I think John, and correct me if I'm wrong. I think the model bylaw defines projects in sizes based on megawatts and the Wayland draft law defines it based on acreage. So you can't convert Tom, like acreage to megawatts. And then we can convert, you know, feet to meters, but we can't do acreage to megawatts. Right. And there's some other things. And it just gets into the, it gets into the intent and the purpose and the driver behind why are we doing this in the first place. And I'll, I'll be honest, it reads a little bit like, you know, we're in a housing development and the HOA wants things to look a certain way. And it's just not, and I get that that's sort of the planning and zoning space, but I think you have to be really conscientious, especially because, you know, like our purpose is the technology, right. And the implementation and the climate goals. And I think we just have to make sure that we're integrating appropriately. Also, John, to your point, and I'm, I'm realizing this now because we went through this when the DOER came out with the specialized stretch code. Once they dropped those regs in March 1st, we're in a two to three month process of them coming up with guidelines that further explains intent that gives more information to communities. Like they, DOER had a town hall two weeks ago, Olivia, two or three weeks ago that we watched and they said, sorry, you know, we did try to get this out in time, but we are not going to have it ready for you all to start doing anything active for town meeting in the spring. You know, apologies. It's just not going to be ready in time. So if that's what's coming from DOER, we know that even if we have the language, we don't necessarily have all the components to make an educated decision. Again, it's sort of a wait and see. I think it gets to Neil's question. Should the, what I said to Julie today was, John, I hadn't, I thought the final regs were being published on March 1st. You're saying that being promulgated, they're already out, the final regs are already out. They're on the website. They were, yes, they're already out there. They're out there. They're just not official. What has happened is they're, they have to be technically have to deliver to certain legislative committees and the committees in theory have a couple of weeks to look at them before they're officially posted and made part of the binding regulations. So they're in the process. They're done now. They're written. So I, I guess as an individual, as someone who's worked in regulatory process a lot, I, I feel that we should not be writing this bylaw now until we get all the more detailed guidance from DOER. And so our position as committee should be, we should wait and do this next year. There's no compelling reason. It's not like 30 of these are being permitted a year in Weyland or Tom, we're not doing something on the landfill tomorrow. Like we should wait and do it because what I want, we're, we're applying where we want to apply for like millions of dollars from the state. I don't want to be in a category of people who have bylaws that conflict. I, I, Ellen's in a good, we're in the good citizen group around climate. I want to stay there as we apply for more money. You made the sale, Ellen. Okay. So Ellen, can I make one suggestion would be, I wonder if, if, um, Julie could have a conversation with Robert. What happens if a ground mount project shows up between now and when the town does adopt a new bylaw? Can we informally use anything that the state is promulgating or are we still basically in a state of grace where there's nothing on Weyland's books? There's nothing, there's nothing until the day that it affects, it goes into effect, which, and I don't know what it says in that bylaw, if it's immediately following town meeting or what I imagine there's a grace period. Yeah. Okay. I think that would, I don't know that there's a good answer, but it's a legitimate question of like, oh, you know, we've been working on this for X time. Um, what happens if something comes along? Yeah. People have been putting them in, not, not many, but there's a few and they put them in and there's nothing to stop them and they can do that again. And actually it, it only became an issue, John, when you and I started talking about, about solar on the landfill, uh, you know, that's, that's when the lawyers started. There was a, there was a large homeowner owned array also in town that went through. Um, but the town was not sure how to permit it because it was larger than what most people would think of as a homeowner one. They were using all the power on site, but it was still an unusual situation. So I think that also, as you pointed out, was a frustration to some people. Okay. So do we need a vote on this? That's my question. Yeah. What's the vote on? The vote would be to say that it is the sense of the committee that we should hold off on a bylaw until we see final guidance from DUR, DOER and how to implement the new state regulations. How about voting our, our intention to, uh, move to pass over such an article at town meeting? Yeah. Are we, are you ready for that though? Or do you want more time? I would do it. It seems to me obvious that it's the right thing to do. Well, is there, I mean, that's, that's, if it gets put on the, uh, warrant to begin with. Uh, yeah, we're suggesting already set. No, no, they can submit it, but it's not been approved by the board. Um, well, it hasn't gone to print or anything. Oh, oh, okay. Sorry. That's a mid-March and mid-March select board will review the articles. And it's, I believe in there's so, you know, I think it's some kind of motion, like what you were saying, which is that the committee recommends the town wait for final DUR guidelines, implementing the new solar regulations before finalizing any bylaw related. Is it the board has the ability to approve this being put on the warrant or do they not have that appellate? Who's the board? We have recommending the ability to recommend. I don't know which board. We're advisory. The select board has to vote to approve inserting this in the warrant, John. So isn't there, your motion might be that this advisory committee recommends to the select board that they not approve this bylaw. Right. For inclusion on the warrant. Yes, that's the right way to do it. Waiting until. Until. Even the state. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So, um, why don't we do a motion like that, but I, I can't make the motion as the chair. So, Neil, you want to take a shot at saying this? Yeah. Olivia, are you typing right now? You're ready to go. Okay. Good. Yeah. So, you know, I would move that this committee, um, convey to the select board, our, our recommendation that they withhold approval of, uh, whatever this is called. The solar bylaw, we'll call it. Solar bylaw until such time as the state regulations have been, and, and guidance have been finalized. Second. We'll let Olivia, let's let Olivia catch up and read it back, please. Um, I want to add two words to that. One, it's a ground mounted solar. Yep. Julie, you want to take ground mounted? And then the other piece is for the 2026 town meeting. Right. Perfect. So that we're clarifying that it's not off the table forever. It's just. Springtown meeting. Yeah. 26th annual springtown meeting. Yeah. All right. Olivia, I want to try and read that back. I know he spoke quickly. Okay. I have Neil makes a motion that the committee conveys to the select board that they withhold their approval for the 2026. And they withhold their approval on the ground mounted solar bylaw for the 2026 annual town meeting until state regulations are state regulations and guidance. And I would say until such time as the committee is able to review pending state regulations. Pending state regulations and model bylaws and associated guidance documents. Model bylaws and associated guidance documents. You would have a little, a little lawyer in you, Julie. Thank you. Okay. So I have review state regulations, model bylaws and associated guidance, associated guidance. Okay. So can you read the wording? There was a verb in there withhold approval or something. No, then we're, we're, we're recommending. How about, I think the first thing verb should be recommend the energy and climate committee recommends for that. Now keep reading, Olivia. Okay. Recommend, recommend to the select board that they withhold their approval on the ground mounted solar bylaw until it's not approval. Recommend that they, um, it's withhold inclusion of the bylaw on the warrant. Yes. Thank you, John. So they're not voting on the substance. They're just simply saying not ready for prime time. Let's not put it on the warrant. You got a little lawyer in you too, John. John has a lot of lawyer in him. Trust me. Oh, you were such nice people before that. Really? No, no, it's great. He's very detailed. The insults are flying heavily. No, that was a compliment. Why is that an insult? All right. Let me, let me try again. So the energy and climate committee conveys to the select board. And the energy and climate committee recommends that the select board. Recommends that the select board withhold the inclusion of the ground mounted solar bylaw on the warrant until such time. On the warrant for the annual 2026 town meeting. Yeah.
Town meeting until such time. The committee is able to review state regulations, model bylaws and associated guidance. And I think that sounds like we haven't done our work until such time as the committee is able to review. Pending. Pending. Pending state regulations, model bylaws and associated guidance. Which are expected to come out this spring. Yeah. I wouldn't even say that the committee reviews, it's the town reviews because again, town council. Yeah. Yeah. It's not just us. Yeah. Good boy. Yep. All right. Let's read it again, please. Olivia, can you share your screen? Oh, yeah. It'd be easier for us. All of us visual learners. Probably be easier for me too. All right. Can you see? Almost. That. No. Yes. It's. There you go. Great. It's this bottom right there. Select board needs to be capitalized by the word, right? Okay. And then it withhold.
That it. Okay.
And make sure you're adding.
Right. Neil makes a motion that the energy and climate committee recommend. Make a motion that the. Energy and climate committee. Boy, I'm glad I'm not taking minutes. I couldn't have people watching me type. That would be. Six people on Olivia's shoulder. She's going to have a backache. If you want inclusion of the proposed ground mounted. Smart. Yes. Of. Of the proposed. Yep. And it's a proposed article. Yes. Zoning. Do you want to say zoning article? Uh, I think you could say the proposed ground mounted solar. By law. Proposed article to insert. I'm looking at the proposed by law. The article proposes adding a new section to the Wayland by law. Zoning by law to regulate blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So here you could say withhold the inclusion of the proposed, um, article to add. Yep. A section in the zone. Wayland zoning bylaws. Yeah. Regarding. Okay. You got that, Olivia. I'm sorry. Can John, can you just say that one more time? Yeah. After the word proposed, John, just speak slower. Please. Yeah. Um, the proposed article.
Sorry. My computer is not. Okay. Article. Uh huh. To add a new section.
To the Wayland zoning bylaw. Those are capitalized. Wayland zoning bylaw.
Regarding. Regarding ground mounted. So. Yeah. Regarding ground mounted. Sorry. Solar. Photovoltaic installations. And you don't need to capitalize, I think, ground mounted solar. Correct. Regarding. Ground mounted. Solar. Photovoltaic installations. Photo. This is, this is a buzzword for you, John. Photo I'll take. Yeah. Photovoltaic. It should auto correct you. V. Yeah. There we go. Oh, you got it. First try. Photovoltaic installations. Okay.
And I don't know. It says N associated battery energy short systems. This is good enough. That's enough. I know what you're talking about. Yeah. And get rid of the words bylaw. Because now we don't need those. Installation. And it's install. It. I don't think it's going to auto correct you. It's I-N-S-T-A. Installation. Yeah. S-T-A. Yeah. Oh. Install. Yeah. A-L-L-ation. A-L-L. There we go. And one more A. And I think it's withhold inclusion. Is it in the warrant or on the warrant? I think it's in the warrant. In the warrant. Yeah. On needs to be in right there.
Until such time as the town, not the committee. The town. Is that capitalized? Yep. Yeah. They will do. Pending state regulations. You can put in parentheses expected March 1st. You want? No. I don't think there. We don't know when the model bylaws are going to be updated. No. After the regulation. And guidance, right? And the guidance will come out later. It will come out at some point this spring. Yep. That's good. All right. So, Neil, do you want to read it and actually make the motion now? Yeah. I would make a motion that the Energy and Climate Committee recommends to the select board that it withhold the inclusion of the proposed article to add a new section of the whale and zoning bylaw regarding ground-mounted solar voltaic installations in the warrant for the annual 2026 town meeting. Until such time, as the town is able, right there, Olivia, right before the, as, the, lowercase, the, the, the town is able to review pending state regulations, model bylaws, and associated guidance, which are expected to come out spring 2026. All right. I need a second, please. That's Tom. All right. Any further discussion on this? We've had plenty. Okay. I'll take a vote. How do you vote, Neil? Aye. Tom? Aye. Ellen, aye. And nobody else is voting. Okay. So, it's recorded as a 3-0 vote. Thank you. John, you can give us your, and, oh, Steve, damn, I forgot Steve. I turned it off before, and I already forgot I turned it off. Yeah, I lost you visually. Steve, how do you vote? I was listening to every word. Okay, Steve, how do you vote? Aye. Okay, 4-0. John is non-voting, but John, just your sense of this, if you were voting, you would vote? Yeah, I think this is a great idea. Okay, great. We love the idea of having a bylaw. We just need one that's consistent with the state's pending regulations. Okay. So, I think, Julie, we could, we voted this, and you could certainly forward this to Rob and Michael and Annette, and say, we're happy to work on it, but we're, you know, we just can't give them a common set until this other stuff comes out. Yeah. Great. That's a great process. And I will include, at that time, I will also include the one pager that we have, and a couple of other links, too, that I got from DOER that are giving a little bit more explanation on the process and what to expect. Okay. Thank you. Since you're able to sidestep this, I think the whole questions of, of we, that the planning board has been hard at work on this for the last couple of years, you might say that, yes, that's great. Unfortunately, so has the state. And, right. So, they've made a lot of work. They've got a great draft, and we just have to modify it when the time comes to reflect what the state's doing. So, it's not negating the work. That's a great way to put it. Okay. Great peacemaker. I want to move on. Plug-in updates. There is a webinar on home rooftop solar by Boston Solar on February 18th. It's been publicized through Energize Weyland and the normal outreach channels. Olivia and Julie, I really would like to work with Olivia more so that Olivia can handle some of these emails to, like, the all schools, newsletters, and others, not rely on volunteers since that's, that's outreach. And I want to build those bridges, Julie and Olivia, with those people in town. And I know we missed the newsletter for the town, Olivia, but is there, like, a, there's no other calendar. Like, the town has a Facebook page where they put up events sometimes, too. Like, maybe, let's just, we're trying to be better at outreach. I put it on the Weyland Post calendar. You guys should always make sure you always add stuff to the Weyland Post calendar when you're doing things. It's just super easy on their website to add an event. So, maybe Olivia and Julie, you guys can see if they're, and then I really would, you know, we're doing these once a month and get Olivia's help in doing this. So, there'll be one more on heat pumps, I think, in March, which will be good timing as people start to think about cooling. So, that's, the other plug-in update kind of relates to this multifamily property owner outreach. I think I mentioned in the last meeting, the, the five, six communities of plug-in said they're going to try and do outreach to multifamily property owners, including condos, and Olivia and Julie, but I think mostly Olivia, pulled the list of, with help from the town of multifamily property owners. So, we have volunteers who have said they're willing to make calls to these folks. So, I just have to look at the list and we have to figure out how we get those names. So, I will probably reach out to all of you, because you all actually, other than Tom doesn't come to the Energize Wayland meetings, but everybody else does. You know, on the condos, we're going to have to find people we know who live in these condos who might know somebody on the condo board. That's really how we're going to have to kind of block and tackle this one. So, I think when I'll go back, I will kind of sketch this out and see, reach out to people, a whole bunch of people, saying anybody know people in these various condos. And then the other building owners, I'm hoping that, you know, some people will be willing to make a call or two, you know, to somebody. So, hopefully, I can get Neil to make two phone calls. And Tom, you're already heat pump coaching, but maybe Steve will make a call to an owner. You know, it's a pretty short script for a minute. We'll write it out. So, we've never done anything like this before. So, you know, we'll see. We've just never done any outreach like this to multifamily property owners. So, it's new for us. But good to try new things.
Any other things that neither Julie or I anticipated for the agenda? Anything else you guys want to share or get input on?
John? It's just a question, Julie. I don't know if you know the status. Is there anything going on vis-a-vis the landfill solar stuff? At the last meeting, there were some discussions about the old, old landfill on the south side of Route 20. But I didn't know if there's anything going on in discussions with the Board of Public Works. So, there is a meeting on the 17th, I believe, which is, what's that, next week? It's a meeting on the south landfill uses. And it's a hearing kind of thing. I mean, it's, I wrote an email to that committee and Tom Faye answered and said, why don't you come to our meeting on the 17th? So, I think if any of the rest of you want to come, you can express whatever opinions you want. I'll be wearing multiple hats because, you know, it involves the river too. So, but one thing, one issue that I might have, there's some talk there about using canopy solar, not just ground mounted. And as the river guy, I might have an issue with that. I don't want canopies visible from, you know, the wild and scenic river. But anyway, they'll talk about it next week. Can you send us the, I'll work with you, Tom, and then maybe distribute it to the group or something. But we should, I'd like to be part of that as well. Okay. Just to make sure we have eyes on it. Yep. Julie. Yeah, go ahead. Going back to the motion, if you could, since we voted that, if you could send that, also include Bill Whitney and Bill Puss. That's what I was going to ask you. Yes. Oh, Bill's on the call now. Bill, are you on? Can someone promote Bill?
Oh, sorry. Just give me one second. No problem. Um, I have two other very minor, uh, well, keeping things before we close out. And do we, and we have to approve minutes. And I have one other thing I want to say, but. Sure. Um, town hall asked about Earth Day. Does any, is there anything happening? Is there anything that we want to do? You know, we've done things in the past and last year, we put a huge effort. We had kind of a low turnout. So I think the volunteer base is a little burned out on this. Yeah. I mean, that's my sense in the last couple of years. If that changes, let us know. Um, and then the only other thing was, hold on. Olivia and I made a nice little list. Oh, next, you talked about bringing, um, the guy from the Lincoln Energy Committee on. Yep. Um, will we have time next month or do you want to do that? Why don't you look at the agenda? So, um, I had a conversation with a guy from the Lincoln Energy Committee. Seemed great. They amazingly got some mass CEC, $2 million, Tom, to do electric school buses. And I was like, well, how do you get that? Yeah, exactly. And, and so they're doing a pilot with their school buses. And I thought it'd be great to have him come talk to us about what they're doing, how they got that money. Anyway, I thought it would be interesting. He also has, is doing an interesting policy thing about excise taxes on school buses statewide, which I thought the committee might find interesting. So I do think next month's really important to do homeworks because it's actually happening. And then we might have to have some time on the solar bylaw again. And so maybe we'll just bump him to April. Agreed. Yeah. We also have to talk about, um, the community aggregation contract and language for that. I also, Julie, want to start talking about what you're thinking of for the climate leaders application, which is due in the summer. So I'd like to start that conversation. Sure. And if you just give us 15 minutes of your thinking in March, that would be, um, that would be good. That is already a very full agenda. Right. So let's put this guy on for April. Great. Um, I'm going to, Bill, we're going to catch you up in a second on what we discussed about the solar bylaw, because we actually took a vote. Before I do that, I want to say, um, a big thank you to Julie. I have spent a lot of time on the phone and an email to Julie. And it's, um, it's terrific to have a sustainability manager that really understands this stuff and is willing to take action and is, uh, happy to work with volunteers. So I really appreciate the collaboration, Julie. And I think we're, we're kind of off to a good start, um, with, um, us in the committee. You know, the hardest thing for us to find seems to be a night to meet. Uh, that seems to be the most vexing challenge for all of us. Um, Bill, we did settle on dates for the next six months. And, um, so it's, uh, I think it's a Tuesday night is that we said we tried to avoid your Monday and Wednesdays. Everyone's got conflicts. And if people can't make it, we're just going to still meet. But we, well, we did agree that it's Julie needs to be at the meetings because there's too much that Julie is essential for to meet without or it's not productive. Um, So we're doing a third Tuesday. That's great. Except in April. Sorry. I will be away. And if things work out, I will be driving an electric vehicle potentially on a very long road trip. So I can tell you all about it. Excellent. Excellent. Have you bought one now? We're going on Saturday. Oh, yeah. Cool. What, what is it? Um, right now we're going to, we're looking at the Kia EV6 or EV9. Um, so we'll see, but I need a third row. I have kids that need to have space from each other. And I, I ended up going with Volkswagen ID4, but I really liked that EV6. Yeah. It's a great car. Yeah. Good. Thank you. Well, I'll be testing it out this weekend. Yeah. We're, my kids are interested in the plugs in the back and the screens and all that. So we'll give some good feedback. Good. Um, Bill, we had a very long conversation about the solar bylaw. I'm going to let Olivia, we took a vote and I will, um, let Olivia, it was a four zero vote and Olivia want to read what the motion was that was voted. Sure. So Neil made the motion that the energy and climate committee recommends to the select board that it withhold the inclusion of the proposed article to add a new select section to the Weyland zoning bylaw regarding ground mounted solar photovoltaic installations in the warrant for the annual 2026 town meeting until such time as the town is able to review pending state regulations, model bylaws, and associated guidance, which are expected to come out spring 2026 and we had a four zero vote. I can also paste this in the chat because I know that was like a mouthful. I don't know how all of it works, but this is an article submitted by the planning board, not the select board. So Bill, the select board votes whether to include it in the warrant. They vote every single article. Yeah. That's the process. Oh, okay. I'm not aware of that. I just thought they voted on whether they supported it, but. No, they, they take two votes, one to include it on the warrant. Okay. Take a second vote about their position on it. Okay. So have we coordinated, I mean, rather than be, you know, in fights, you know, is the planning board on board with us? Probably not. So Julie and I, you missed this long conversation. Um, I reached out to Annette and Rob and Jesse who wrote it and said, Hey, we'd love to chat with you. Better understand this. Um, uh, love to have a joint, you know, agenda item or we'll join you meeting or you join our meeting. Annette responded saying, we've reached out to you before you offered nothing helpful. We spoke with Abby, uh, you didn't attend the zoning hearing. And, um, that's that I spoke with. And Julie wrote back a long email explaining that the state is promulgating new regulations on this that promulgate on March 1st. And then they're coming out with a lot of guidance, including possibly changes to their model bylaw and other guidance, which they will not have ready. They say until later in the spring, and they said to people, don't do anything in town meeting. Wait for our guidance. Um, Julie and Olivia attended a town meeting from DOER on this. And at first, quick review of the ground mounted solar bylaw in comparison with the existing model bylaw, there are inconsistencies. And so, um, we've offered, I spoke with Bill, um, Whitney about it tonight. Okay. The liaison to the planning board and to the energy and climate committee. He's in the planning board. Hey guys, would you be willing to take input from the ECC? They said yes. So I think we can't really give them input on a bylaw until we see the guidance coming out from the state. Right. And all of our outreach bill also has been, um, non-productive on the other end. Um, so the other thing that may happen is, uh, I'm not sure given that we we've said that there's no financial impact, but the finance committee will also be taking a vote. Uh, and so to the extent that you can give me the ammunition that I need to convince my fellow finance committee members that it should also be put on hold, uh, please send that along to me. We'll send you this vote. And what we, basically there are new regs and the intent of which is to streamline permitting. Um, and they're going to be guidance documents, just like with the specialized opt-in code. There was, you know, they came out with something and then there were all these guidance documents and they, they're just going to trickle out over the next couple of months. And we don't want to write a bylaw that will be inconsistent with the state regulations, which promulgated March 1st. I think they go in effect July and that towns have to be in compliance by October. So having a bylaw that would be in conflict. Okay. Not the place you want to be. And we can't be sure, well, there will be in conflict until we see all their guidance. And then first look, for example, the definitions are different. The bylaws written based on acreage. And I think the model bylaw, John, I thought it was based on megawatts. Yeah. It's on size of the size of the array. Size of the race of bill, as you know, you can't go from acreage to megawatts. No such conversion, right? Right. Right. And that's an example. And somebody like Phil Giudice will certainly appreciate this. Yeah. Yeah. He, Phil's actually the person that's going to ask me what's going on. So that's why I needed some background. Yeah. And Bill, we can, I can give you more context too, because I, like today, when I was looking through some documents, found a letter from October, 2024 from KP Law that discussed developing a ground-mounted solar bylaw in town. Um, so this has been in progress to some extent for a while without, without outreach, I guess, to, to this group. And it's unfortunate because, um, you know, like the outreach has been offered. Um, it's just, I think they did reach out to Abby when she was here, but, um, and to Mike Faya in August, there was a meeting and Mike and Abby said, like, said some things, but Julie's been here since October and no one's talked to Julie. We were not aware of the zoning hearing. No one reached out to us in draft language. Zoning hearing, what was January 7th? Yeah. When do you think the select board will respond? I don't know. We just voted it tonight. I will forward it. I will ask Julie just to forward it to Bill. Because the, the plan B is that, you know, I was not planning to do a write-up of pros and cons. If it actually goes before the town, this sounds like, even though there's no financial, significant financial impact, that we should do a pros and cons, in which case you can write a lot of cons. Right. But hopefully we can get it then not to go before the town. But if it does go ahead, I don't think we should have it as a blank. It probably deserves pros and cons. Yep. Yep. Yep. I mean, there would be a cost to the town if we pass something and it's not consistent, which it looks like it is not consistent at first look, but we got to see the final guidance. Right. So, so anyway, as soon as you hear back from the select board, you know, even if it's just a schedule, let me know, because we're kind of under the gun to get this resolved. Yeah, I will. I'll confirm with Michael McCall. Last time I looked, it was mid-March that the select board was planning to vote on this section of the town meeting warrant. Then we should have plan B because I have to be done by mid-March. So I'm going to have to write pros and cons on this beforehand. And I think Julie can help you with that. Yeah, yeah. I'm happy to support that. I think it's important for us to be really organized and just also demonstrate that we are investing the time and energy to do, you know, to productively discuss this. We're not against a bylaw as long as it's consistent with the state regulations. All right. Yeah. Okay. All right. Sounds good. All right. So that's where we are. Can we get a vote to approve the December 9th meeting minutes? Did you circulate those, Olivia? Did someone circulate those? I did, but I do recognize that there were a lot of emails from me because there was back and forth. So I can send them again if people don't have them. Are people comfortable voting this? Oh, are we talking about the December minutes or the January minutes? January minutes. Oh, that says December 9th. My mistake. It's maybe the agenda. I'm reading the wrong agenda. No. No. Mistake in the agenda. So the January 9th minutes says December 9th. Thank you, Neil. Are people okay to vote this or do you want to look at them? I'm sure I looked at them when she sent them and I don't remember having any reaction. Okay. So I need a motion. I move we approve the January 9th minutes. I need a second. Second. Steve, thank you. Neil, how do you vote? Yeah, aye. Tom? Aye. Steve? Aye. Bill? Aye. Ellen, aye. Thank you. Um, we are clear and then just tell, we'll get emails out with calendar invites for the next meeting and the next one just for Bill's, um, March 17th. March 17th. April 28th. So everyone can just have a green beer with them at their Zoom. Right. Sounds good. All right. Thank you, Bill, for joining at the end. John, for joining. Yeah, I apologize for being late. I know how hard it is to schedule these things, so. Yeah. But we're going to do our best, and I'm grateful that Neil's the vice chair, so if I'm not there, you're running the meetings, Neil. Yeah, good luck with that. Yeah, yeah. I would like you to overachieve so I can retire. All right. Bye. All right. Also, rest assured, we already have the Zooms in scheduled, because that's been another hiccup with our meeting. So we already have a March and April are locked in. We're getting ready, guys. I get back for my spring training baseball trip about three or four o'clock that afternoon. So I will be tanned, relaxed, and talking about the Red Sox. I love it. Tanned, rested, and ready. Can't ask for more. I'll put it in, Bill. All right. Thanks, guys. Have a good evening. All right. See you later. Bye. Bye. Bye.