July 21, 2026 – Energy and Climate Committee – Video & Transcript
July 21, 2026 - Energy and Climate Committee
I will call the meeting to order. I will read what I think is the appropriate introduction pursuant to Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2025.
This meeting will be conducted by a remote access in accordance with applicable law. No in-person attendance by members or the public will be permitted.
You may watch or participate by using the link on the town's website. We will be recording the meeting and it will be available to the public on WACAM as soon as possible after the meeting. So hopefully that's the proper introduction. We do have on the call member Tom Sciacca. Of course, I'm member Bill Huss, member Steve Garone, and member Clovis Schaff. We also have Olivia Lizardo from the staff and the meeting as well. It looks like Robbie is our moderator or is our technician. And now we also have joining Paul Dale, who is an associate member. So I guess the first thing, I don't think we have anybody from the public, but if there is somebody on the public, Robbie, let us know and we will go public comment.
So is that a no? That's a no. Okay. All right. So we will move on. I guess the next, we don't seem to have, see, the next thing on my list was Kavya, our student rep, but she does not seem to be on the call. So we can move on and talk about, and of course, the committee chair and vice chair updates, they're not here either, but I think they're going to join us around 4.30. Olivia, do you want to give us your update? We can move ahead to that. Yeah, that sounds like a plan. So first, I'll just say, this is off the agenda, but I was just going to touch on this. Bill, I left you a voicemail. I don't know if you heard it. I just missed you when you gave me the voicemail. Bill wasn't at our last meeting, but Paul Dale re-upped and now has a focus, an area of focus in your position. So we, Neil, moved at the last meeting for Paul's title or area of focus to be to provide support in our outreach to promote outreach and household clean energy action. So that could look like doing home energy audits, upgrading for heat pumps, upgrading to get an electric vehicle. But I'm sorry that wasn't clear in the notes. Do you have any further questions about that, Bill, or anybody else? Yeah, no, that was fine. I had read the minutes as an outsider, and I think people at the meeting could follow better than somebody who hadn't been at the meeting. So I had a few questions for Olivia, which you have now updated the minutes and made it much more clear. So thank you for doing that. Much appreciated. We also made it clear when we talked about it that Paul also contributed in terms of his connections to other environmental organizations and state entities. Yeah, yeah, good point. Okay, Olivia. So moving on from that, so the next thing I was going to talk about was I recently attended, there was a Green Communities, they call it a town hall. It's a meeting once, I think there's one every six months, hosted by our Metro West Green Communities Department of Energy Resources contact, that's Dylan Patel. So he hosted this one at the Melrose Public Library, so I went to that, I believe it was like two weeks ago. He shared that there were a couple new communities in Massachusetts that have now become designated as climate leaders. And everyone's familiar with that, I don't, do we want, have to go into that definition or? No, we talked about it last time. Yeah, okay, perfect. So that, that was a major update. I'm still waiting on hearing about Wayland's Green Community Funding. Um, I was under the impression we were going to hear at the end of July, early August, so it should be any day now, we'll get a response on the funding that we had requested. Um, and then as a reminder for that, I can just say what we had replied for, this was when Julie was still working here. Um, we applied for some LED lighting upgrades in the town building, LED lighting upgrades in the library. Um, and then we applied for a non-emergency response vehicle for the police department, and we also applied for an electric vehicle for the facilities department. Um, one caveat to that is we did have to go ahead and purchase the electric, um, vehicle for the facilities department prior to receiving funds because our maintenance, um, head, head of maintenance, um, his van completely, like, bit the dust and we couldn't wait any longer. Um, so this was a reimbursement grant, so unfortunately we were not going to be able to use that money, you know, pending we receive it for that van, but everything else, um, nothing's been started yet. So we'll be able to use that as long as we get the funds, which is exciting. So is there, is there another van we can buy maybe for some other department instead of? That's a really good point, and I honestly did not think of that, so let me make a note of that, and I can talk to the facilities department tomorrow about that, because that's a really good point. Um, I'm not sure, like, how specific it is, like, if it's said that we're going to use it for one thing, we have to use it for that, but it's definitely worth asking, so I'll make a note of that.
Yeah, I mean, I suppose, I don't know if this would be legit, but just brainstorming, you can buy a new van and sell the old van. So there should be a way of, uh, of, of somehow recouping the funds, if it's approved. Okay, no, that's the, these are good points, because I did not think about that, so I'll, I'll report back, um, once I talk to Mike and the rest of the team tomorrow. Um, so that's kind of all I have on Green Communities, we're just, like, waiting to hear back from them, um, and then, let me just go back to the list here, sorry, were you going to say something, Paul? I don't know, I don't know if you're going to say something. Oh, I, I would like to say something, but when you finish your report, I have a question for you. Yeah, go ahead. Um, Olivia, I, I, in my new capacity, or at least my designated capacity here, I am very interested in what the range of possibilities are for the town to endorse or allow the use of the town seal or something else on communications that we might, as the energy committee, or, or a volunteer group like Energize Wayland, might like to send out to residents or subsets of residents in town. Um, so, for example, um, would it be possible to say something like, the following communication has been reviewed and approved by the sustainability director for Wayland, or that the, the, the town, uh, the town of Wayland seal appears on this as a way of indicating that this is, um, that the facts in this thing are, uh, are not biased by private industry, or, I don't know, I'm, I'm, I'm not trying to wordsmith at the moment. But I'm just looking for, um, if there are guidelines or, or how we would find out what the guidelines are, or how we would apply to use said guidelines, uh, in communications. But I think as a personal statement for me, it would dramatically increase the impact of anything that we did send out if it has the town imprint tour on it in some fashion. I have, I have, I have kind of a related thing, um, I, which I was going to talk about that when you get to the end of, you know, stuff. I don't want to get too distracted. Can we hold that? Are you finished, Olivia, with the rest of your, uh, report? And then we can come back to this? Yeah, let's like, let's put a pin in that and come back. Great point. Um, I'll just finish up and then we can switch over to that before, um, Neil jumps on it. That sounds good. Um, so the next, so as I was just saying, Um, so I attended the green communities forum in the Melrose library, got to meet with a couple other coordinators from the Metro West area, which is nice to hear about other projects, other towns and cities are doing around us. Um, and then they also had, um, invited some speakers from Eversource to come to the town hall. So I was able to hear about, um, rebates and community, just like the timing of communications with Eversource, um, and how savings are calculated. Um, some helpful information that I heard was they need approximately three months before a grant application is due to get, um, rebates and calculations done for projects. Um, this is helpful to know because we are going to be applying for, um, climate leader funding for February. So looking to communicate with Eversource at least three months before would be, you know, sooner rather than later in the winter time. Um, so just something to keep in mind, um, and communicate with the facilities department as we continue to work with Amoresco, um, to figure out what projects we're going to pursue with the climate leader funding, um, for February. Um, um, any questions on that?
No. Okay. Um, and then, um, oh, I'm sorry. Yep. Clovis, you guys, you had a communication, so you can just start talking. Okay. Um, so the communication, the three months lead time, I understood it was with Eversource or grant application. Why is that Eversource specifically then? Because the grant it's for grant application, right? Not specifically with Eversource? Yes. So when, when we're doing like energy efficiency projects, because Wayland uses electric from Eversource, they offer rebates for certain projects and upgrades that we're doing in our buildings. So we can apply to get money back for doing certain upgrades, um, or they offer certain rebates. Um, if you have a certain amount of savings per kilowatt hour. For, um, for example, they used to do lighting upgrades, um, rebates, they no longer do that. But, um, if we were to do something like, say, change a boiler out for a heat pump, we would get rebates back from Eversource. So it's just another way to save some money when we're doing those upgrades. Okay. Um, and that would go for any, any project, um, this is just specifically for the climate leaders DOER, DOER application, but, um, if we were doing any type of energy efficiency upgrade, we would reach out to Eversource and see if there was any way we could have some savings on those projects too. Um, this is just cause it's just cause it's like a timely thing with the grant application that, um, we just have to keep that three month, like wiggle room in mind. Okay. Thank you. Um, and then what else? Um, we're also, I don't know if people are familiar with, there's, um, abatement going on in the middle school. Um, there was some trace of asbestos in the ceiling, so we're getting that, um, cleaned and then abated this summer. Um, it's an ongoing project, but it'll be complete. Um, the area will be completely safe for kids to go back to school. Um, summer's the best time to do that. So that's one project facilities is working on currently. Um, and then just another thing that I'm actively working on. Um, I'm beginning to gather information and data for the client, sorry, for a green community's annual report. Um, that's the report once a year Wayland has to run just to stay in compliance with, um, green community guidelines. Um, it's submitted on a database called, um, Massachusetts Energy Insight or MEI. Um, I ran the report last year, um, by myself. It went well, um, we're still in compliance with those guidelines. It's also a nice reference to have. You can see how much energy each building in the town use. Um, it goes over the fleet, um, gas usage. So you can see, um, how much gas say DPW is using. They tend to drive, you know, more than any other department in the town. Um, we also can compare how much, um, savings we generate with our solar panels. Um, and we also keep track of the fleet, um, purchases, set cars sold, cars no longer in commission. This will be a good way for us as, um, now that we're climate leaders and we have the zero emission vehicle policy, it's a good way to monitor how many electric vehicles we're purchasing and how many electric vehicles are a part of our fleet. Um, so that's just something that's ongoing. Um, so that's what's going to do in November, but it just takes a while to communicate with other departments to get that information. Um, so starting earlier, the better. Okay. So we want to circle back to Paul's comment and then Tom's followup.
Um, oh, give me just one sec. Sorry. And then, um, my, I have just two more points to make really quick. Um, so the mobilization plan that Ellen had sent out, I'm still working with our building department, um, to get some reports for the tasks that she had assigned me. So I don't have any answers to solar or heat pump permits pulled yet, but working on that. And then if anyone is having trouble with their assignments for the camp, um, the camp revamp that Ellen assigned you, just feel free to ask if, you know, you have questions. If there's anything I have access to, I'll definitely do what I can. Um, and then the other thing I was going to say last point, um, still working with homeworks, um, they were tabling at the transfer station. I don't know if any of you guys saw them out there, um, may 23rd, June 11th, June 27th, and then July 9th. Um, and they had some success. Um, they had a total of 15 signups during, during their tabling so far. So not, not a ton, but a decent, decent amount. Um, and then for the month of June, um, there's a running total of 73 so far in the month of June, there were 14, um, home energy audits that took place. Um, and then the end of year goal for homeworks was 225. So right now we're at 73, so we're a little behind, but they are going to be doing some canvassing at the end of the summer. And then there's going to be a mailer that goes out, um, once the kids are back in school and people are likely home from summer vacations. Um, and the month that we sent out mailers last, um, I believe it was in May, was our best month of home energy audits. So hopefully that'll give us the boost to get closer to the goal of 225, um, energy assessments in a year.
Um, any other questions about homeworks? Well, just a note, I had a homeworks audit done on my house last week. So you've got one more for July. What, what'd you think of it, Paul? What? Well, I mean, I've had, I've had these done before, so there wasn't an awful lot to find. So, um, you know, but I'm putting in some heat pumps next week or actually late this week too. So I wanted to get my audit done before I had the heat pumps installed. So I'm, I'm playing by the rules here. Um, that, I was just going to say, so that's it for me. Um, if we want to switch back to the point about the seal being used first, does that make sense? Okay. That sounds good. I know I interrupted Tom. You were going to make a, make a point, I think. Yeah. So, uh, regarding using town resources, seals, whatever, communications, um, Clovis and I are both members of the Heat Smart Alliance. And, you know, we, we advocate heat pumps and, uh, we, we actually have a lot of members in, in Wayland, maybe more than any other town. Um, and, uh, a relatively new, but very active member is, is Tom Cooper, um, fairly recently retired. That's characteristic of a lot of us who are members. Um, and, uh, he's, he lives up on Sherman's Bridge Road. He's married to, to, uh, Susan Kaufman, who was very active in the town. Some of you may, may remember her, um, at, at any rate, he has, um, he, he has issued a, um, uh, public records request, I guess it was, to, to the assessors. Uh, and he got basically the whole database, um, um, of homeowners with, um, with all of the data about house type and, and whatevers. And, um, he is, uh, uh, uh, and Excel jock. And he can manipulate that in lots of ways and, um, significantly for us, he can pick out, uh, house types and heating types and fuels and all kinds of data like that. So, um, um, that would enable somebody to, um, to pick out particular niche targets within town, uh, particularly appropriate for a particular kind of heat pump. And, uh, amenable to, or appropriate for, uh, a very targeted letter, uh, trying to promote them to, you know, join the heat pump crowd. So, um, um, I contacted Ellen and, um, and, and, and Ann Harris and Paul was added, I think, to that, that email chain, uh, thinking that probably Energize Wayland was, um, was the appropriate channel to make use of that kind of, uh, uh, a strategy. But, um, um, maybe this committee could, Ellen was very positive, but then, uh, never ran, you know, Ellen is totally flooded, um, and, uh, never got back to me on it. Um, so, so another possibility that maybe is our committee hit here, or maybe Energize Wayland uses. Our, you know, our, you know, town, uh, uh, uh, imprimatures, um, as for, um, credibility. So, uh, that's, um, uh, a specific example of, um, of where, where, where Paul's question is relevant, I think. Yeah. So, um, yeah, Paul, go ahead. Yeah. Well, so I, I mean, I can add on to this, and since I, I pulled the Assessor's data myself a year or two ago, but never really, nothing really ever happened with it. Um, the, the, the general strategy that I have in my mind is to target people who heat with oil in terms of being customers or potential customers for heat pumps. Because in that context, it's pretty clear that you can establish that they will achieve operating system savings by switching so that their investment can be paid off in some reasonable number of years in terms of energy savings. Uh, but that aside, the, the, the real, I come back to my real question here is, I believe we can find money in Energize Wayland. Um, and I also believe that, um, I had to believe I was told by Ellen that as part of renewing our community choice aggregation contract with the town, that the town, that, um, uh, the name of the company whose name escapes my mind at the moment, the town in Paraguin Energy, um, committed to spending or allowing us to spend a certain number of dollars every year on outreach activities. I, I think the number might've been $2,500, but I don't really know. Um, so there's a, there's a subsequent correlate to my question about use of the town, imprintor there's also the question about the use of town funds to help support a mailing when i looked in previously in terms of the town doing a mailing i got a cost of like 2500 bucks to do it through our standard uh service company that does town mailings they would require a fee in that range so i have these combination of questions here um about how to work with the town on doing this outreach stuff so what i'm what i'm adding uh as a result of cooper's work is yeah you could target oil houses as a class a fairly large class in town or you could target uh i'm i'm a gas customer i i am officially listed as having gas heat but i have chopped my heating bill in half and it has a lot to do with the fact with with the house configuration i have a rare a raised ranch which allows me to use a mini split in an efficient way so i could find maybe a hundred a few 500 some fairly small number of um of houses that are like mine and write a letter that says uh you know we we know you have a raised ranch and whatever heat heat and uh it's possible you could cut your heating oh and and what whether the house has air air conditioning or not again allowing you to customize a message uh very specifically to hundreds of houses rather than thousands well yeah it sounds like just just to summarize you know what what i'm hearing is that olivia we need to be able to coordinate uh with someone at the town for issues like targeted marketing and use of the assessors uh you know getting the town's endorsement and seal to something we send out and to potentially fund uh maybe reimbursable but to fund uh some of the expenses so all of those are topics that would be you know we just need a contact person whether it's you or or all the way up to michael mccall but anyway who is the person that we talk to to iron out those issues yeah um so i think number one i think that's awesome that he has the ability to filter and organize all those addresses and housing types i think it's a really good idea to target certain houses for certain parts pieces of equipment i think sending a mask letter for everyone to get heat pumps might not make the most sense and we might not get a lot of positive feedback but if we target it it makes sense so i totally hear you um i don't have access to the town seal every time i put anything out i have to go to the town manager myself and get approval from that office um sorry what office the town manager's office okay all right like no one can just put the town seal like none of the departments can use it without checking in with them first um so that would be kind of one step second step um we don't have a budget for this department and we're ellen has asked um facilities before to have a revolving fund or access to funding for mailers um and we just don't have the capacity to give this um committee a budget so unfortunately we're not going to be getting funding from the facilities department um but in the agenda we were actually going to talk about so like you were talking about um peregrine the wayland electricity choice there is an october mailer going out um and that's something that um when neil jumps on um we can talk further about that but the mailer was going to go out in october um and then we were going to have to talk about it as a committee and get everyone's approval on that mailer so that was going to be something um we should discuss if we want to meet again in august or if we want to take the month off as we typically would um but something to consider would be maybe adding on a blurb at the bottom of that about wheel and heat pump coaches utilizing um you know the volunteers we have um or maybe we could try to do like a second piece of paper in there um to targeted households that's something the committee can discuss and decide but there is a mailer going out in october so maybe we could piggyback on that i don't know what your thoughts are wait wait can i just give a little more background since this was sorry to join late um yep so you guys remember when we negotiated this the aggregation this time around we got money for mailer and i thought we should do it in the fall to promote heat pumps paul this would be after the september 23rd in person energy affordability heat pump coaching um energy build checkup coaching close you were going to help us with some posters on that one so it kind of um we actually brainstormed a nice name for that event in september have a slice get advice um was what we kind of brainstormed at the last one um and fabiani's made up some stuff um flyers and stuff and julie has secured the coa um this i reached out to marlene and paul to say what's the soonest we could get a mailer they said the soonest we could get a mailer out is october because i said like work back the schedule for me and they worked back the schedule and as olivia said it'd be like mid-october and they gave us a schedule olivia like when we need things done i do not think we should have the whole committee you know group edit a document i think we should just agree on what the content is and pick a few people to write it and then we can send it around in an email and if people have comments kind of the comment of level of like this gives me enormous heartburn you know like let's not all wordsmith something so that that's my thinking it to have a committee meeting to wordsmith the doc not ideal um so my proposal would be that paul be involved in this paul because it's you know we're promoting the reason you're coming in late in the middle of the conversation is i've already opened my mouth okay right and i'm happy to look at it i'd like marlena to look at it too because i think um um she sends a ton of mailers out you know like this is what they do and i think she's just a good editor so let's just agree in what we want the content to be and then we can write a draft as olivia has noted like probably to you guys we need to give the town has to approve it it'll be on town letterhead they need a week for a review process so my thought is we'd write it i'm now back next week maybe we could write it first week in august we could send it out to everybody because of open meeting law you can send comments like either directly to paul or to me and then we could you know put it together how does that sound to people apologies if you've already gone over this no no no no we haven't gotten to that level of detail but there is one what i see that strategic decision that we need to make i don't know who the we is but somebody needs to make and that is if we can have the town return address on the envelope for the mailer we should do a letter just like you were describing if we can't then i think we should do a large postcard because people who get mail in an envelope and they're not sure who it's from toss it in the trash if you send them a postcard they'll at least look at one side or the other before they toss it in the trash so we can reach out to marlena and ask her that question yeah because i mean what the content is going to be and how much content we can include is going to depend very much on is this a piece of paper that's trifolded and comes in an envelope or is this i'm going to try and call marlena as well they don't send it out it's a third party mailer that sends it out that's how it's done yeah i know that a town has a third party mailer yeah no not the town it's not the town it's the it no we're doing it through peregrine and um oh through peregrine doing this okay okay so it's their mailing service that we're using so well and i was raising the uh another issue which is but can i just but let's just let's take them one at a time so i can reach marlena and ask her that do other people agree with paul's thinking that if the return address is not the town then it's it will if they open it it will have the town letterhead but i understand what you're saying paul like paul's question which started the discussion was whether we can use the town seal as a part of this uh you know information campaign yes that yes it can be on the town letterhead that's why the town has to approve it that i'm sure of that's what we've agreed to i can't tell you what the return is on the mailer i can tell you when we do those mailers those third party mailers we see a bump in activity so somebody's opening them can i just jump in quick so the last time they sent out a mailer from peregrine just saying like no need to take action this is the rate you're getting if you want to opt in opt out like this is what you should follow there was a return address because we got some back to the town hall if people had moved or whatever so they did put the town hall's address on the last mailer great terrific thank you olivia great oh terrific okay that i mean this is this is really good if we can have the town return address pound letterhead on the letter then i know what i'm trying to create it's a letter and i'm not so much focused on graphics and how to make eye appeal on a postcard so they're they're different challenges and i i just need to know which one we're we're going i mean let's i know tom has a question but when i when we originally thought of this mailer it was certainly not going to be about cca because there's only one choice we you know we're really going to talk about it i mean we might have a pair of something at the end like if you're not on whaling electricity choice you might be missing out on low rates click you know go here but the main thing was to push heat pumps especially it'll go out in october the new heat pump rate you know hp run is november and we have heat pump coaches or you're worried about your bill being too high we have energy bill checkup coaches who can help you looks like we've actually evolved to another part of the agenda we were on olivia's report uh okay looking at the agenda where we have the uh our chair ellen and uh uh neal and one of those objects one of those items is review the october mailing and the other was the september 23rd heat pump event so if you want to wrap we're so sorry for not going in order but if you want to wrap that up and then i guess also talk about the the camp uh ellen in terms of well i i i raised a a related issue which is that now we have an ability to micro target communications and can we i i contacted ellen about it all already thinking energized whalen would be the right channel but maybe our our committee is so could those letters be not not the same letter for everyone into town because you know i i i know enough about about marketing what marketing 101 the more you target the the more effective a communication is and we could have a dozen letters i i i don't know that that's true tom the answer is i don't know if that's true with the third party mailer paul so the first question is would they first question is do we know which addresses we want to target tom thinks he does paul i know you did a poll for people who are on oil which was like 1600 households so one question we have to ask marlena is if we were to tell them which let's say we had two or three letters would they be willing to do a differential mailing that's right that would be a very useful question to ask i suspect the answer is no but it would be a very useful question to ask okay i'll write the question while we're having this meeting in my phone and send it to her and copy olivia and paul um as if the answer is if the answer is no let's just go with that if the answer is no then do we agree that the main messages are if you don't have a heat pump you're missing out you're particularly missing out if you're an oil customer because the economics are very very good or if you have base bore heat eating economics very very good and you can all benefit from better ac and the economics are pretty good these days for gas in right in the uh in the winter paul right there's a number i don't agree with those messages you don't agree with those messages no tom can you say why uh let's see one of them was uh if you have hydronic heating the no no baseboard electric resistance i'm sorry yes i read your words tom i knew what you was talking about he didn't say it well but the resistance heat okay and what was your your next message well the first message is heat pumps if you're not i don't don't have one you're missing out okay they're good for ac the state's incentivizing it with a winter rate that makes this much more affordable particularly good for people in these buckets oil electric baseboard heat okay and was there a third you had there after i mean i just don't know where we are in natural gas uh and and price competitiveness i i i have natural gas i i am i so do i yes of my old heating that bill with natural gas now i have a some particular elements that that make that possible but now especially with the heat pump rate absolutely you can save money with natural gas we should not write that off i think that's true i think it's just um i haven't run the numbers to be 100 confident of that well again i agree the numbers might not be 100 confident in particular situations might be different slightly different so my message my thought is that in terms of sort of an outline for the letter is kind of consistent with what you were saying at the beginning say look if you haven't thought about heat pumps recently i would add in there particularly if you have an aging heating system of any kind um now's a good time to look at that because a uh summers are getting hotter air conditioning is the number one reason i believe why people contact us tom for heat pump coaching i think that's true yeah i agree with that absolutely my two clients right now are fundamentally interested in air conditioning right so that's got to be the leaf even though i'm coming out coming up it's going to get more i want to push the air conditioning thing right at the beginning then i want to push the fact that you can save not only you get good air conditioning you know not a not a blast on blast off ac motor thing you get the dc stuff put that all a nice fine print or digestible print then talk about money saving on your heating bill no matter what type of heating bill system you have and say if you have oil you're gonna we know for a fact you can save money if you can are on resistance heat you are super stupid if you don't if you're on gas you know if you're on gas you will also save money we believe in almost every situation but you at least owe it to yourself to look at the situation okay i agree is anybody does anybody have a problem with those messages anybody have major heartburn with those messages okay great it does sorry it does actually in a in a in a non-rigorous way support what tom was saying which is you're you're presenting a variety of scenarios in one letter that's right because i can't target that i can't if i can't have distribution lists right so i just sent the email guys while you're talking i just sent the email letters more targeted in in fact but you'd want to you'd want to write a letter to subset different targets right so i just sent the email to marlena while you guys are talking she'll get back to us if we can't target this is what will be i would like to add a message at the bottom which is worried about you know high and also your high energy bill we have energy bill checkup coaches who can talk to you about your energy bills and we have coaches who can talk to you about solar for your home right and just send them to energize wayland the last part of the letter which could be a lot we have to decide although we don't have choices in wayland electricity choice if they're not on the aggregation rate they may be paying too much so it might be nice at the very end to say you know if you check your bill if you're not on wayland electricity choice you may be missing out on lower electricity rates negotiated by the town i'd be careful with that one right now because uh number one our aggregation rate is not very far from the default uh ever source rate number two uh i just uh dealt with a client who uh actually actually found a much cheaper third party rate um so uh you know it's it's only good for four months but she says oh i just look at it every four months and i'll change again next time so i'd be careful with that part of the message right now and i think it says um um but it says you may like if you're on a third party rate that's really too high that's a problem right yeah so just i'm tom i understand what you're saying but i also want you to know that a major provision of both the house and the senate omnibus bills which now have to be resolved in conference committee is putting eliminating or putting strong restrictions on all these third party providers i know about that because a lot of users of it are not really smart people like to look at their range so i mean alan's point is well taken particularly if you are on one of these third party rates guys well also let me just going to our aggregation rate tom our rate is 14.776 right basic service is 15.629 we're almost one cent cheaper so it's not insignificant i'm just saying it's not nothing so i think we just want to say check it out check out this price you you if you're not on it it might you know if you're not on it check it out i just wouldn't make it a very strong part of the message it's the last thing it's a sentence yeah okay so that's the letter so everyone reasonably comfortable comfortable enough for the messages any clovis yeah i want to move to the targeting because how many letters do we think we would be sending i just check quickly oil it's about 1600 houses electric baseboards 200 and then the rest gas essentially without ac 700 so we we are going towards 2500 is that too many or cost wise i'm just no no they they said there are 4800 households in wayland so they they've agreed to send a letter to every household that okay that's pre-negotiated i just emailed them to say would you be willing to do three different letters so if they say no we've agreed on the text for one if they say yes do we want it it's clear we want to do an oil letter it's clear we want to do a natural gas letter do we want to do an electric baseboard letter or just make the oil and electric baseboard the same letter you could make the well i don't know we'll see what or do we want to do something different i i mean the other the other way of you know slicing the onion here would be if we could determine people who have um baseboard heat or you know people who have central air conditioning or no air conditioning you know you know there's there'd be different ways to to cut i'm just nervous about whether the underlying data is actually good well now that's a question we wanted to ask it's not perfect it's not perfect and i and and it's i mean this has been a separate issue ellen you probably are aware of it that there's all these documented reports where the assessor's database doesn't match reality in any in any way and um when i asked about this a couple years ago the excuse i got was my excuse probably was reality is that during the pandemic they got way way behind in getting stuff that come over from the building department incorporated in updates to the assessor's database now we've even more years have passed since the pandemic i don't know whether they've made any effort so here's that here's the question do you trust then that the data for sending different letters is accurate that's what i'm asking yeah exactly right so if it's not accurate then you want the most generic letter the long one to go to everybody and you go if you've got oil if you've got baseboard if you've got cath as opposed to i get a letter that says if you've got oil and i go i took my oil furnace out 10 years ago you know like what and throw the letter away i don't read the rest of it yeah that's a good point i i mean i've been assuming but i have on no basis of fact that while the assessor's database is out of date it's a small percentage uh of people who for whom without it but maybe it's much greater i don't know um so and my assumption is what my gut is it's probably 80 or 90 percent good good and i think that's enough to make yeah i i got a i got a hybrid idea i don't know that the data is perfect and i agree with neil if i got a letter saying you have oil and you don't have oil i'd toss it you would just change the order of what you see in the letter right for the people we think we have oil it's like he bumps are here and they're good for everyone you know particularly you have oil and then boom boom for the electric people you sort the letter you could just you just start a little differently but at least you cover the you cover the error cases yeah yeah that's all right well let's see if we're just getting to now let's let's say if we can i think i suspect we can't but move on move on all right neo i'm i'm good actually sending a generic one because i think we're going to do bold for these three options i think it'd be fine so i'm i'm fine on generic personally okay okay ready for discussing the camp and the progress on camp uh did you want to do the september 23rd event if we're not going to meet in august whatever order you'd like to do it in is fine let's do it because i feel like it relates to this so energize well and said we want to have this event around to make people who have heat pump coaches and energy checkup coaches concurrently paul sent out a provocative email to a bunch of people saying i want to have a forum on energy affordability and also talk about the heat pump rate so we kind of mushed all together and we now have september 23rd on the council on aging um and the idea would be some kind of speaker briefly about energy affordability paul we got to think about that i do think um i carry from gecko is pretty good um um but you could do it um i don't want to do it i could i could do it and i might want to sign myself up to do it um because i mean it's kind of what i do with my sierra club head on you know and um and i really i mean i don't want to downplay it too too much because i think it's really important particularly in an election year for more of our for the population to understand how electric and gas rates are really set and how they where these high prices come from because the amount of misinformation from the utilities which they put in and little flyers and your bill and things like that are greenwashing through the max um eversource god bless them they want an 11 rate increase it's completely untenable but people don't get it and so i really think that we we have an immediate thing here of people saving money initially right away now by financing a heat pump on a zero percent loan and blah blah blah blah blah but there's a we should think longer term here i mean if i was thinking not 27 2027 or 2028 but even if i was thinking 2030 or 2035 or 2040 or 2050 we fundamentally have to change the way we deal with pricing and buying energy and it requires the population being much better informed than they are now it's wonky stuff so the challenge is to be able to present it in a compelling way in a short talk but but i think that's i mean looking beyond the end of the calendar year i think that's an important role that we can play as an energy and climate committee um for the town or as an energized whale and volunteer group or whatever you know aegis you want to put it on i'm fine with that if you can in 10 minutes like a 10 15 like 10 minutes 10 or 15 minutes you know i want to lay it out for them so they have some sense of how this actually then i want i want our heat pump coaches to be there and then i would like so clovis you said you went to the natick event and you thought the posters were very effective showing some heat pump pre-post kind of things and you i think raised your hand or i raised it for you both could be true that you would be willing to work with some of the heat pump coaches and just come up with some stories that could be in posters around the room is that true or am i making it up and uh so it's no tom and paul it was um i think in line with what we discussed during the um the in-person um heat pump gathering heat pump code gathering with uh mark ralston um so it's about fine tuning you know the type of houses we want to target and something i forgot to do after our reunion was to send the pictures i had from their booth so that's what i i need to do okay great so i think the other thing we then need to so one other then we then need to recruit some people to become energy bill coaches there is an asynchronous online training um that you can take through mass energize which has pulled some i'll send around the link they put together some videos that um sierra at the ag's office did because she does a ton of this coaching and from all in energy so i would love paul and clovis and tom to make sure all of our heat pump coaches can actually talk to somebody about their bill tom i'm sure you can but you know it's got some arcane crap in it um and be nice to have some other volunteers i'm going to try and recruit from energize wayland other people to be energy bill checkup coaches um because it's easier than becoming a heat pump coach right you don't have to understand manual jay um even as a heat pump coach you don't have to do that um anyway uh by the way the bills are changing i have a time of use meter now a tmi meter and my bill is really different in appearance from the previous bill so by september i don't know how much of the town will be on time of use meters but this how to read a bill could take on new importance because the bills are so different okay i'm gonna ask i'm gonna ask sierra and all in energy to record like a new video on how to look at your time of use um bill that's a great point um so does anybody i think what ann and i were thinking is that people would could look at the website it's got a bunch of faqs it's got little videos where it says oh you want to you want to understand how to explain this part of the distribution charge go to eight minute eight minute and ten and just watch the next four minutes of the video like you don't have to sit through an hour video so is there anybody from the energy committee that would also be willing to volunteer to be the that you would you would look at this website sort of get some training and then um we were going to get uh sierra to do a uh zoom call um just to answer questions people had which i think paul be good for you to be on too like she's great yeah yeah yeah no uh anything to do with bills i'd be happy to sign me you can sign me up for because it fits into my my mantra here of we need utility rate and business model reform so steve are you looking for a volunteer i am yeah i'm looking for volunteers oh i'll raise my hand okay great so i'll do it i do want all the heat pump coaches and then steve and i i think ann will do it so i think we'll have enough my goal guys is also to train maura at the council on aging she's awesome and she's the person who deals when somebody wants fuel assistance like that's who people the coa talk to she's great she's very smart so i think we can get her up to speed also um great so the last thing i want to say is sudberry um would like to co-sponsor this with us and i since originally this was an energized wayland idea i said sure and they're like great they basically have less like their council on aging they can't use the building at night i have all kinds of problems so they said we'd love to send people the wayland to your event and uh we'll also train some energy bill checkup coaches um so any objections questions for including sudberry in this great idea great idea you know more the more the merrier as far as i'm concerned you know if we could reach multiple downs but no no problem okay i don't see any problem as long as we have c capacity i'm sure that's not an issue um we're we're good to go i would and i think energized wayland will pay for the pizza um and been in touch with julie we just used a wayland based business because they've been cleared by the health department so ann will take care of that um and it's the leslie love from sudberry came up with this idea you know have a slice get advice seem cute and we'll we'll have the coa advertise it and we'll do it through energized wayland olivia hopefully we'll do this olivia hopefully you're still there we'll do it through the town newsletter and get it on the town calendar um that's actually due on the 28th so that's next week so i'm assuming by then we'll have like the time set and everything but if you want to just send me a blurb i can like write up for yeah reach out um reach out to fabiani and ann so it's due oh next week because that's the august newsletter is what you're saying right i see oh the lead time's oh he's so early yeah so um just send an email to me and ann and fabiani um because fabiani sent around a blurb already okay and i think you should have been on that email but check i'll i'll make sure i have the correct stuff i'll reach out and i think i can't remember i think we were thinking like i actually don't remember the time paul you're on that email with ann do you remember what the time was no and i'm going to search my email from ann i can't remember honestly um it's a peep pump party and i found the email uh julie has confirmed september 23rd i mean i don't know we could do it at five like we could do it i mean i think if people want to come after work maybe we should just do it at 6 30. as for pizza 6 30 uh uh maybe fix would be better i don't know i don't know how to set the time i don't either anybody else have an opinion well if you have pizza that means people will think they can have dinner so you won't have to be in the way of dinner right so i just want people who are working to have a chance to get home so natick had it set between 6 and 8 p.m it was more of a drop-in thing so maybe we could do ours at like 6 30 to 8 yeah yeah 6 30 what what kind of sounds about right it was it was six to eight but was it was less of a talk right clovis the one i'm the one i i attended was uh a solid 30 minute talk so it was mark presenting heat smart alliance there was kit uh from laminar laminaria collective then i can't remember it there was a there must have been a third presentation from um the gil the natick sustainability director as well yeah to introduce julian yeah the to introduce then the the various booths uh i think so it was 30 minutes to 45 maybe not a full hour before people got around um and the pizza eating wise was done while the presenters were uh doing the talks i think 6 30 is okay 6 30 i vote for 6 30 here i do too 6 30 to 8 so we'll give a talk we'll start the talk probably five or 10 minutes after 6 30 paul you have 10 or 15 minutes it would then be good um i'll see if i can maybe have and introduce our heat pump coaches i'm not sure we want to have a talk about how heat pumps work or like i don't know no we don't want to do that we don't want to do that we don't want to do that we don't want to do that we just want to talk about air conditioning and saving money okay that's this right so paul you could just do that you could go from your affordability thing to why heat pumps make sense yeah that's it then we're not switching but then and can introduce hopefully cloves can make it tom can make it you can make it and can make it any of the other heat pump coaches and then we'll introduce our energy bill are there any sudbury heat pump coaches no typically we do the coaching within a heat smart alliance we receive a bunch from sudbury okay they don't have anybody so yeah i just have to make that point that the wayland heat pump coaches can also serve as you in sudbury if we have sudbury attendees now at least we might i could mention i'm not going to be there i'll be out of town on that day okay okay um and then i will introduce tap who's our solar coach too okay sound good so olivia you'll do it through the town olivia i think it'd be also we can get fabiani to get print up some flyer for us to put in the a frames in in front of the coa and the town building could you take that if fabiani prints them up for you yes i'll reach out to her tomorrow fantastic great great great um and then the letter paul could also say in case you missed our heat pump coaches also here are the resources yeah you can still get them right yeah yeah yeah okay question for you is there going to be av stuff set up or do i need to arrange to somebody need to arrange to bring that um i don't know why don't you reach out to julie i can speak to that she has a setup um it's very easy to use but it's a microphone and it's already like plugged in and it connects there's a tv too if you want to have like some slides yeah i want to i want to have some presentation stuff so um i need i need to be able to project a powerpoint basically you know that kind of thing yep so you can reach out to julie and she actually offers like a walkthrough if people want so if you wanted to go there like a couple days before she could help you troubleshoot all right it's really not yeah great terrific all right done good stuff guys good all right bill what's next you're in charge the uh camp update on camp yeah so i sent around a google sheet did anyone look at it well thank you neil um all right neil um can i i'm not in a good position to share my screen um neil did you do you have the link handy at all not even vaguely oh shit olivia do you yep i can do it give me one second fantastic so what i did i mean we're a little shorthanded but honestly we wrote the camp the first time around we didn't have a consultant oh olivia good job or any staff so as a first step we said let's just see how we're doing and if you can make it smaller so we can see all the columns olivia can you guys hear me yeah yes okay yep yep all right so what i did was the gray lines are the headers of the sections so like i wrote the section on homes and buildings and i took each of the actions you remember in our camp there was residential actions and municipal actions right and i just took what each action was and i shortened it to be the rows four five six blah blah blah and then on status i made it olivia if you can show it it's a drop down can you just go to column like b4 no one more it should show as a drop down click on it should be a drop down no no in the cell no olivia in the cell b4 yep clicking it yep huh you're in view only mode that's why i requested access but i think you have to grant i thought i grant all right we know what a drop down is move on we know okay every so the drop downs were completed in progress not started um and then i made a column for okay is there any data or are you just guessing and then um comment and in this case i was pulling data from state data so i should have put it in column c so i did this if olivia can scroll down and i will make the sheet so you don't need access anybody can use it because i'm not really worried about people getting in here so if you scroll down i did buildings and move to clean energy which is section john wrote scroll down then um i i stopped because i thought you guys would get the gist of it so the other sections are transportation and then tom has a couple of natural world sections and i thought we could try to do this in august people could do their sections and i think i suggested some assignments just to be provocative like i think olivia i suggested and had written in the ev set the transportation section and i was hoping you could do that section yeah definitely um i did reach out to the building department for them to run a report for um permits pulled for solar and permits pulled for um heat pumps but the electric vehicles for town i can definitely do that yeah and we have that data i've already put it in column d oh good okay i pulled it from the climate tracker sheet which is the state most recent state data and that's you can see what the assessor compare i already have state data on heat pumps and solar which is probably an undercount for heat pumps but it's the only thing i have so the question is do we like this format this was just to give us an idea of where we're at and can people do their sections like my section is mostly done i did john's but he has to look at it if olivia does transportation then um you could probably stop sharing olivia um i think there are three two other sections and bill you had a different idea yeah i mean my only feedback was that the in process category means that you're in somewhere between one percent done and 99 percent done uh that doesn't tell me a whole lot so even splitting it to hey are you 25 50 or 75 percent done but some sort of gradations of in process so it's not covering the range of one percent to 99 percent that's reasonable what are people i mean i could change the drop downs to be not yet started sort of zero to 25 percent done 25 to 75 percent done or more than 70 more than 75 something like that i mean just so it's not the full range of one to 99 because if we ask people to do a percentage i think right i agree i don't think you have to do 37 and a half percent i i think the range is okay are people i think it's a good suggestion are people comfortable with that i can change the sheet i don't uh okay where i'm at i number one i only really started looking at this yesterday i have to say but um uh what i have a number of actions here like commit to grass fields um we have been moving in that direction for the last last several years but um we we put moratoriums on turf fields but nothing's permanent so i i don't know how to simply answer whether we have achieved the committing to to grass fields so i think tom for the person who owns the section you make your best judgment then we're going to have an in-person meeting in september we'll all get to look at this and we'll see if we kind of agree paul i'm sure has a view about that my guess is that's not zero percent it's not maybe uh it's maybe somewhere it's somewhere in one of these percentage bands and then there's a there's a column for comment you write what you think this was good but it's not permanent it's kind of a so far so good okay so i think you just write but for people who don't know enough about that let's say clovis doesn't know anything about that which is not true but let's say clovis didn't then you're educating everybody else in the committee the reason we're doing this is we're asking ourselves this is what we wrote years ago we want to update the plan so for things that are completely done we should take them off we did it we've done it right no no we should leave it on we should always say we completed it we always want to celebrate success you don't want to take it off i'm just saying but it falls in a different category yeah in the plan these are the things we've accomplished these are the things we are yet to accomplish right but and i think it's a chance for us to evaluate to some of these things still make sense where we have not completed them and are there new things paul we would think about given regulatory issues so this was just to baseline us because not everybody on this committee was here when we wrote this all right and it's good for olivia to be able to baseline so she understands olivia you're with us right yep i'm right here i don't know if you can see me oh it's funny the way the camera is it we only see your profile so you're looking at the screen and i see uh you guys right now that's what i was confused that that's helpful to understand thank you that's helpful and then good for olivia to see we're at so i think so if olivia does transportation tom you just have to dig your best shot at it you know more about those actions than anyone else on the committee i can explain the progress you know in like a half hour worth of talking but trying to explain it in in a one line with you in the comment section you can expand it and make it bigger we have to do something that people can read in advance of the meeting okay the other thing is kavia reached out and said she'd love a summer project and i thought about this as a potential summer project if somebody needed help with this some parts of their sections like she could input the the succinct recommendations so tom has less inputting what the recommend you know what the action item was i don't know all right so you guys were lukewarm on that are could we say that by the end of august people can have their sections done yeah that that's to me that would be fine um can i can i add something i think having kavia work on this and collaborate is a great idea and there is a section of the camp that mentions um the green team so maybe you could assign that to kavia okay and there's a section also on um paul i'm gonna assign you the section there's a section on like resident engagement and advocacy like this is the last section i think okay just look at it and i'm happy to give you backstory of that okay yeah i could take it on i i haven't i haven't looked at it but yeah we should look at it see if it yeah cat cat and i wrote it all those years ago and i i don't know if it still makes sense okay by the end of august let's just say everyone's gonna make their best shot at this and then before we meet in person we'll send it around any objections okay fantastic bill you're in charge what's next that's uh that's pretty much everything and we're up to sort of the minutes you're proving the minutes and talking about the next meeting well if we're if we're really done well one one camp comment if i might or potential camp comment if i might before we move on to other things um i have an interesting thought and i i don't want to pursue this now but an interesting thought for an additional kind of section or thing that we could report on in a future edition of camp and that is the extent to which the town and its residents are using distributed energy resources and thereby saving the peak so that would be a way of us as a town claiming how we are helping everyone else in the commonwealth by our collective actions you mean like through connected solutions and things like like through the use of connected solutions um through the use just just generally plain solar you know shaves the peak on those days where everybody's got their air conditioners on right so the the number of kilowatt hours of solar that we've produced um you know on those hot days every time we shave the peak and keep one peaker plant from not having to turn on we're saving all rate payers a ton of money i mean hundreds of millions of dollars in a couple of days that's across the commonwealth so it occurs to me that as a town if we wanted to take pride in something and we could somehow figure out how to document our virtual power plant or distributed energy resource contribution to a more efficient grid we could just put another feather in our cap um that's just a thought well actually last meeting uh i what i raised the piss at the last meeting yes i propose a whole new new new section uh that i called grid support yeah we've already mentioned batteries actually in my section uh in the last one but um uh batteries are increasingly important and um we we need to talk more about them but also uh educating townsfolk about uh how to charge their their evs or off peak uh and use other other electric loads off off peak um i i don't know if i e-mailed this committee but i've been looking at my uh my electric usage since i got my my time of use meter and my my ev charging is just enormously higher than any other use i have in in my house so that that that move alone moving that to optimum times would would make a huge difference um so it's um it's it's a whole suite of actions it needs a whole a whole new section oh no no it's a whole you're absolutely right it's a whole bunch of actions that fall generally under the category of distributed energy resource usage that command that includes demand response which is what off hours charging is um that includes uh back to solutions it includes just plain old solar kilowatt hours generated here's what i'm going to suggest paul to me i think there'd be a lot of receptivity to this as you're thinking about it would you just create a new tab in the google sheet called um new sections and then you can copy my my general format and just start to put some ideas in there paul yeah okay and tom can look at that too and add some ideas tom too yeah yeah yeah so it's in a google sheet it's easier for us to yeah i have a thought that's a great idea yeah on that one so good and we we can do minutes and then bill i want to think about our next meeting because i want to think about september maybe being in person to kind of do the camp yeah in person would be good so yeah um minutes anybody have or does everybody have a chance to look over the revised minutes that would be i think sent out yesterday or recently i i think i told olivia a couple of misspellings one of which is my name okay you get that yeah you get that and there was another misspelling as well i noticed that i i told you about i'll make sure i got that but i did see your email and make those edits so all good sorry about the name tom do we have any other uh edits um and you know we could take a motion that to accept with edits um bill did you have a chance to look at i've been on vacation so i have not look at the minutes yeah you sent an email saying i think our minutes and olivia revised them and sent them back out i think yesterday or sometime recently so she addressed my concerns and so i'm fine with them okay based on bill being happy i move we approve the minutes okay uh bill you're chairing so keep going is there a second second second all right oh and it's i think it's with the uh the spelling and corrections that tom mentioned any further discussion on the minutes okay i guess since we're remote we have to do the person by person so ellen i uh i i'm i tom i steve i clovis i and neil certainly i okay all right so the motion passes the minutes have been accepted with the uh edits from tom bill thanks for offering the uh feedback to olivia sure yeah i'm getting just as an aside i'm getting in the habit now when you go to the finance committee they spend about i don't know 20 minutes going through line by line their minutes so i don't like that extreme but i figured well at least this time i would read them because sometimes i don't even do that so i'm trying to get a compromise from nothing to incredibly detailed all right so you want ellen what about the next meeting so olivia when would our next meeting normally let's take august off and paul and i will work on this letter paul we can send it around to the committee in early august and they can give feedback only to paul you can't give it to paul and me and then paul you you can see and what i again i would encourage you to not overly wordsmith but typos or you think we've really missed the mark and the tone please that level of feedback um and then olivia i'm not looking at the schedule for marlena um if we wanted to go out in october i think we can get it by the end of august to the town for review don't you think paul what oh yes yeah yeah okay well i think for for meetings i don't know if i'm changing the subject but didn't we aren't we at the third tuesday of the month olivia believe that that is the case so we'll cancel august okay i have us for september 15th tuesday the 15th at four i think that's perfect because it's before the thing on the 23rd right you have us on the 15th i don't have an invite for that oh i don't know why yeah i don't either but uh i don't either i don't have one but it is already on my calendar so yeah you all are sent it um it's sent to your whaling email i'll send it again if you want um but everyone should have that reoccurring all the time on their calendar okay is this going to be in person and where it's um oh yeah that's true so right now i have yeah let's do it in let's do it in person guys what do you think and talk about the camp yes i like in person me too and i i'm going to be around that day in boston so that works great for me we'll do four o'clock olivia can get us a room yeah um do we want to do the coa i don't care yeah that would be fine they always do it they have air conditioning all right i would propose that we do like four to six sorry to say that but if we're gonna talk about the camp maybe um bill you want to help me think about how we could actually run that meeting to be effective sure i can think i got two months to figure it out so yeah right i mean i think we'll come in with a baseline of where we're at but why don't you and i talk offline and we can get some feedback from neil too and let's i don't want it to just be like a free-for-all discussion all over the place my goal at the end of the meeting would be to say yes these are things are done let's celebrate them the next these are stuff still in progress that we still think makes sense here's some new ones and here's like data here are things we don't understand well enough okay yep something like that but bill why don't you think about yeah i mean we we can certainly send things out ahead of time to get some feedback and then each chapter maybe a five minute presentation with questions and then prove it yeah is the ultimate goal a new plan that the town will adopt and by by when does that need to happen there's no it's our own deadline i doubt we i doubt in one meeting we cannot do this but i think in one meeting we can see where we were some i and then i we should think about how we want to engage other people in this process okay all right so like maybe we have something done by the end of the year maybe middle of the winter i don't know let's talk about that i don't know great and when we see approved by the town what does that mean well what that meant the last time is we we wrote it we had we had a bunch of public meetings too not particularly well attended um and then we voted that we were recommending it to the select board so that we then made a presentation to the select board and the select board voted to accept it and endorse it and that's what it was and then it became a plan of the town not a document from the ecc right and it really is our commitments and at that time which now feels like a long time ago to me the select board also was doing some strategic planning and they had like five goals and one of the five was around climate i think it's worth worth mentioning that michael mccall pointed to the camp as one of the major reasons why he wanted to come to wayland because he found it so attractive bill was on the selection process for michael so i defer to bill on things like that but i you know we we need to think about not just what we want to do but we need to think about how to communicate a whole bunch of stuff so maybe steve like that's your bailiwick on communication so maybe you can be thinking about that the wayland post is always looking for content they sure are yeah so let's well i don't know if there's any connection that we can make but you know one of the topics that will be coming up probably this year if not next year is a prop two and a half and to the extent that we can contribute to lowering costs and and you know potentially avoiding that again there may be a complete you know no connection but but that certainly would be a theme that would get us some attention okay let's think about it we always i always used to say we saved the town about a quarter million bucks a year um from the solar i mean olivia could add up what we're saving with the solar installations and bill you knew the street lights saved us between 40 and 60k depending on how we did the math you know and then we um we had a couple of other bigger items uh through our weatherization work through the esco so like it was always about a quarter million um but we should think about updating it the other thing i do want to put in there which is not really relevant to the camp but i want to put it in there is like all the money we brought into the town through grants and incentives and and potentially going forward i mean i think it's great to say what we've done in the past but if we have any sort of say and hey in the future we see that is coming that would help yep yep i agree all right all right do we have a motion to adjourn i should uh i should uh pass on a uh a piece of major news breaking news here i told the selectmen last night uh last night the the bill ricka historic district commission voted uh under threat of individual contempt of court proceedings uh against individual members which would not be uh defended by the town to allow the removal of of the bill ricka dam uh which uh relates to the major climate related threat this town has which is flooding of the river and uh that's we're we're near the end of a 300 plus year fight with bill ricka to get the dam removed and and mitigate the flooding of the river so that's hot news i'm gonna have to run alan um so are we ending or you know as soon as we get a motion to adjourn i'll count that as a second as well any discussion no all right let's do your sections we'll see you september 15th in person olivia will send out stuff all right sounds good all right everybody all right thank you take care you you you you
You may watch or participate by using the link on the town's website. We will be recording the meeting and it will be available to the public on WACAM as soon as possible after the meeting. So hopefully that's the proper introduction. We do have on the call member Tom Sciacca. Of course, I'm member Bill Huss, member Steve Garone, and member Clovis Schaff. We also have Olivia Lizardo from the staff and the meeting as well. It looks like Robbie is our moderator or is our technician. And now we also have joining Paul Dale, who is an associate member. So I guess the first thing, I don't think we have anybody from the public, but if there is somebody on the public, Robbie, let us know and we will go public comment.
So is that a no? That's a no. Okay. All right. So we will move on. I guess the next, we don't seem to have, see, the next thing on my list was Kavya, our student rep, but she does not seem to be on the call. So we can move on and talk about, and of course, the committee chair and vice chair updates, they're not here either, but I think they're going to join us around 4.30. Olivia, do you want to give us your update? We can move ahead to that. Yeah, that sounds like a plan. So first, I'll just say, this is off the agenda, but I was just going to touch on this. Bill, I left you a voicemail. I don't know if you heard it. I just missed you when you gave me the voicemail. Bill wasn't at our last meeting, but Paul Dale re-upped and now has a focus, an area of focus in your position. So we, Neil, moved at the last meeting for Paul's title or area of focus to be to provide support in our outreach to promote outreach and household clean energy action. So that could look like doing home energy audits, upgrading for heat pumps, upgrading to get an electric vehicle. But I'm sorry that wasn't clear in the notes. Do you have any further questions about that, Bill, or anybody else? Yeah, no, that was fine. I had read the minutes as an outsider, and I think people at the meeting could follow better than somebody who hadn't been at the meeting. So I had a few questions for Olivia, which you have now updated the minutes and made it much more clear. So thank you for doing that. Much appreciated. We also made it clear when we talked about it that Paul also contributed in terms of his connections to other environmental organizations and state entities. Yeah, yeah, good point. Okay, Olivia. So moving on from that, so the next thing I was going to talk about was I recently attended, there was a Green Communities, they call it a town hall. It's a meeting once, I think there's one every six months, hosted by our Metro West Green Communities Department of Energy Resources contact, that's Dylan Patel. So he hosted this one at the Melrose Public Library, so I went to that, I believe it was like two weeks ago. He shared that there were a couple new communities in Massachusetts that have now become designated as climate leaders. And everyone's familiar with that, I don't, do we want, have to go into that definition or? No, we talked about it last time. Yeah, okay, perfect. So that, that was a major update. I'm still waiting on hearing about Wayland's Green Community Funding. Um, I was under the impression we were going to hear at the end of July, early August, so it should be any day now, we'll get a response on the funding that we had requested. Um, and then as a reminder for that, I can just say what we had replied for, this was when Julie was still working here. Um, we applied for some LED lighting upgrades in the town building, LED lighting upgrades in the library. Um, and then we applied for a non-emergency response vehicle for the police department, and we also applied for an electric vehicle for the facilities department. Um, one caveat to that is we did have to go ahead and purchase the electric, um, vehicle for the facilities department prior to receiving funds because our maintenance, um, head, head of maintenance, um, his van completely, like, bit the dust and we couldn't wait any longer. Um, so this was a reimbursement grant, so unfortunately we were not going to be able to use that money, you know, pending we receive it for that van, but everything else, um, nothing's been started yet. So we'll be able to use that as long as we get the funds, which is exciting. So is there, is there another van we can buy maybe for some other department instead of? That's a really good point, and I honestly did not think of that, so let me make a note of that, and I can talk to the facilities department tomorrow about that, because that's a really good point. Um, I'm not sure, like, how specific it is, like, if it's said that we're going to use it for one thing, we have to use it for that, but it's definitely worth asking, so I'll make a note of that.
Yeah, I mean, I suppose, I don't know if this would be legit, but just brainstorming, you can buy a new van and sell the old van. So there should be a way of, uh, of, of somehow recouping the funds, if it's approved. Okay, no, that's the, these are good points, because I did not think about that, so I'll, I'll report back, um, once I talk to Mike and the rest of the team tomorrow. Um, so that's kind of all I have on Green Communities, we're just, like, waiting to hear back from them, um, and then, let me just go back to the list here, sorry, were you going to say something, Paul? I don't know, I don't know if you're going to say something. Oh, I, I would like to say something, but when you finish your report, I have a question for you. Yeah, go ahead. Um, Olivia, I, I, in my new capacity, or at least my designated capacity here, I am very interested in what the range of possibilities are for the town to endorse or allow the use of the town seal or something else on communications that we might, as the energy committee, or, or a volunteer group like Energize Wayland, might like to send out to residents or subsets of residents in town. Um, so, for example, um, would it be possible to say something like, the following communication has been reviewed and approved by the sustainability director for Wayland, or that the, the, the town, uh, the town of Wayland seal appears on this as a way of indicating that this is, um, that the facts in this thing are, uh, are not biased by private industry, or, I don't know, I'm, I'm, I'm not trying to wordsmith at the moment. But I'm just looking for, um, if there are guidelines or, or how we would find out what the guidelines are, or how we would apply to use said guidelines, uh, in communications. But I think as a personal statement for me, it would dramatically increase the impact of anything that we did send out if it has the town imprint tour on it in some fashion. I have, I have, I have kind of a related thing, um, I, which I was going to talk about that when you get to the end of, you know, stuff. I don't want to get too distracted. Can we hold that? Are you finished, Olivia, with the rest of your, uh, report? And then we can come back to this? Yeah, let's like, let's put a pin in that and come back. Great point. Um, I'll just finish up and then we can switch over to that before, um, Neil jumps on it. That sounds good. Um, so the next, so as I was just saying, Um, so I attended the green communities forum in the Melrose library, got to meet with a couple other coordinators from the Metro West area, which is nice to hear about other projects, other towns and cities are doing around us. Um, and then they also had, um, invited some speakers from Eversource to come to the town hall. So I was able to hear about, um, rebates and community, just like the timing of communications with Eversource, um, and how savings are calculated. Um, some helpful information that I heard was they need approximately three months before a grant application is due to get, um, rebates and calculations done for projects. Um, this is helpful to know because we are going to be applying for, um, climate leader funding for February. So looking to communicate with Eversource at least three months before would be, you know, sooner rather than later in the winter time. Um, so just something to keep in mind, um, and communicate with the facilities department as we continue to work with Amoresco, um, to figure out what projects we're going to pursue with the climate leader funding, um, for February. Um, um, any questions on that?
No. Okay. Um, and then, um, oh, I'm sorry. Yep. Clovis, you guys, you had a communication, so you can just start talking. Okay. Um, so the communication, the three months lead time, I understood it was with Eversource or grant application. Why is that Eversource specifically then? Because the grant it's for grant application, right? Not specifically with Eversource? Yes. So when, when we're doing like energy efficiency projects, because Wayland uses electric from Eversource, they offer rebates for certain projects and upgrades that we're doing in our buildings. So we can apply to get money back for doing certain upgrades, um, or they offer certain rebates. Um, if you have a certain amount of savings per kilowatt hour. For, um, for example, they used to do lighting upgrades, um, rebates, they no longer do that. But, um, if we were to do something like, say, change a boiler out for a heat pump, we would get rebates back from Eversource. So it's just another way to save some money when we're doing those upgrades. Okay. Um, and that would go for any, any project, um, this is just specifically for the climate leaders DOER, DOER application, but, um, if we were doing any type of energy efficiency upgrade, we would reach out to Eversource and see if there was any way we could have some savings on those projects too. Um, this is just cause it's just cause it's like a timely thing with the grant application that, um, we just have to keep that three month, like wiggle room in mind. Okay. Thank you. Um, and then what else? Um, we're also, I don't know if people are familiar with, there's, um, abatement going on in the middle school. Um, there was some trace of asbestos in the ceiling, so we're getting that, um, cleaned and then abated this summer. Um, it's an ongoing project, but it'll be complete. Um, the area will be completely safe for kids to go back to school. Um, summer's the best time to do that. So that's one project facilities is working on currently. Um, and then just another thing that I'm actively working on. Um, I'm beginning to gather information and data for the client, sorry, for a green community's annual report. Um, that's the report once a year Wayland has to run just to stay in compliance with, um, green community guidelines. Um, it's submitted on a database called, um, Massachusetts Energy Insight or MEI. Um, I ran the report last year, um, by myself. It went well, um, we're still in compliance with those guidelines. It's also a nice reference to have. You can see how much energy each building in the town use. Um, it goes over the fleet, um, gas usage. So you can see, um, how much gas say DPW is using. They tend to drive, you know, more than any other department in the town. Um, we also can compare how much, um, savings we generate with our solar panels. Um, and we also keep track of the fleet, um, purchases, set cars sold, cars no longer in commission. This will be a good way for us as, um, now that we're climate leaders and we have the zero emission vehicle policy, it's a good way to monitor how many electric vehicles we're purchasing and how many electric vehicles are a part of our fleet. Um, so that's just something that's ongoing. Um, so that's what's going to do in November, but it just takes a while to communicate with other departments to get that information. Um, so starting earlier, the better. Okay. So we want to circle back to Paul's comment and then Tom's followup.
Um, oh, give me just one sec. Sorry. And then, um, my, I have just two more points to make really quick. Um, so the mobilization plan that Ellen had sent out, I'm still working with our building department, um, to get some reports for the tasks that she had assigned me. So I don't have any answers to solar or heat pump permits pulled yet, but working on that. And then if anyone is having trouble with their assignments for the camp, um, the camp revamp that Ellen assigned you, just feel free to ask if, you know, you have questions. If there's anything I have access to, I'll definitely do what I can. Um, and then the other thing I was going to say last point, um, still working with homeworks, um, they were tabling at the transfer station. I don't know if any of you guys saw them out there, um, may 23rd, June 11th, June 27th, and then July 9th. Um, and they had some success. Um, they had a total of 15 signups during, during their tabling so far. So not, not a ton, but a decent, decent amount. Um, and then for the month of June, um, there's a running total of 73 so far in the month of June, there were 14, um, home energy audits that took place. Um, and then the end of year goal for homeworks was 225. So right now we're at 73, so we're a little behind, but they are going to be doing some canvassing at the end of the summer. And then there's going to be a mailer that goes out, um, once the kids are back in school and people are likely home from summer vacations. Um, and the month that we sent out mailers last, um, I believe it was in May, was our best month of home energy audits. So hopefully that'll give us the boost to get closer to the goal of 225, um, energy assessments in a year.
Um, any other questions about homeworks? Well, just a note, I had a homeworks audit done on my house last week. So you've got one more for July. What, what'd you think of it, Paul? What? Well, I mean, I've had, I've had these done before, so there wasn't an awful lot to find. So, um, you know, but I'm putting in some heat pumps next week or actually late this week too. So I wanted to get my audit done before I had the heat pumps installed. So I'm, I'm playing by the rules here. Um, that, I was just going to say, so that's it for me. Um, if we want to switch back to the point about the seal being used first, does that make sense? Okay. That sounds good. I know I interrupted Tom. You were going to make a, make a point, I think. Yeah. So, uh, regarding using town resources, seals, whatever, communications, um, Clovis and I are both members of the Heat Smart Alliance. And, you know, we, we advocate heat pumps and, uh, we, we actually have a lot of members in, in Wayland, maybe more than any other town. Um, and, uh, a relatively new, but very active member is, is Tom Cooper, um, fairly recently retired. That's characteristic of a lot of us who are members. Um, and, uh, he's, he lives up on Sherman's Bridge Road. He's married to, to, uh, Susan Kaufman, who was very active in the town. Some of you may, may remember her, um, at, at any rate, he has, um, he, he has issued a, um, uh, public records request, I guess it was, to, to the assessors. Uh, and he got basically the whole database, um, um, of homeowners with, um, with all of the data about house type and, and whatevers. And, um, he is, uh, uh, uh, and Excel jock. And he can manipulate that in lots of ways and, um, significantly for us, he can pick out, uh, house types and heating types and fuels and all kinds of data like that. So, um, um, that would enable somebody to, um, to pick out particular niche targets within town, uh, particularly appropriate for a particular kind of heat pump. And, uh, amenable to, or appropriate for, uh, a very targeted letter, uh, trying to promote them to, you know, join the heat pump crowd. So, um, um, I contacted Ellen and, um, and, and, and Ann Harris and Paul was added, I think, to that, that email chain, uh, thinking that probably Energize Wayland was, um, was the appropriate channel to make use of that kind of, uh, uh, a strategy. But, um, um, maybe this committee could, Ellen was very positive, but then, uh, never ran, you know, Ellen is totally flooded, um, and, uh, never got back to me on it. Um, so, so another possibility that maybe is our committee hit here, or maybe Energize Wayland uses. Our, you know, our, you know, town, uh, uh, uh, imprimatures, um, as for, um, credibility. So, uh, that's, um, uh, a specific example of, um, of where, where, where Paul's question is relevant, I think. Yeah. So, um, yeah, Paul, go ahead. Yeah. Well, so I, I mean, I can add on to this, and since I, I pulled the Assessor's data myself a year or two ago, but never really, nothing really ever happened with it. Um, the, the, the general strategy that I have in my mind is to target people who heat with oil in terms of being customers or potential customers for heat pumps. Because in that context, it's pretty clear that you can establish that they will achieve operating system savings by switching so that their investment can be paid off in some reasonable number of years in terms of energy savings. Uh, but that aside, the, the, the real, I come back to my real question here is, I believe we can find money in Energize Wayland. Um, and I also believe that, um, I had to believe I was told by Ellen that as part of renewing our community choice aggregation contract with the town, that the town, that, um, uh, the name of the company whose name escapes my mind at the moment, the town in Paraguin Energy, um, committed to spending or allowing us to spend a certain number of dollars every year on outreach activities. I, I think the number might've been $2,500, but I don't really know. Um, so there's a, there's a subsequent correlate to my question about use of the town, imprintor there's also the question about the use of town funds to help support a mailing when i looked in previously in terms of the town doing a mailing i got a cost of like 2500 bucks to do it through our standard uh service company that does town mailings they would require a fee in that range so i have these combination of questions here um about how to work with the town on doing this outreach stuff so what i'm what i'm adding uh as a result of cooper's work is yeah you could target oil houses as a class a fairly large class in town or you could target uh i'm i'm a gas customer i i am officially listed as having gas heat but i have chopped my heating bill in half and it has a lot to do with the fact with with the house configuration i have a rare a raised ranch which allows me to use a mini split in an efficient way so i could find maybe a hundred a few 500 some fairly small number of um of houses that are like mine and write a letter that says uh you know we we know you have a raised ranch and whatever heat heat and uh it's possible you could cut your heating oh and and what whether the house has air air conditioning or not again allowing you to customize a message uh very specifically to hundreds of houses rather than thousands well yeah it sounds like just just to summarize you know what what i'm hearing is that olivia we need to be able to coordinate uh with someone at the town for issues like targeted marketing and use of the assessors uh you know getting the town's endorsement and seal to something we send out and to potentially fund uh maybe reimbursable but to fund uh some of the expenses so all of those are topics that would be you know we just need a contact person whether it's you or or all the way up to michael mccall but anyway who is the person that we talk to to iron out those issues yeah um so i think number one i think that's awesome that he has the ability to filter and organize all those addresses and housing types i think it's a really good idea to target certain houses for certain parts pieces of equipment i think sending a mask letter for everyone to get heat pumps might not make the most sense and we might not get a lot of positive feedback but if we target it it makes sense so i totally hear you um i don't have access to the town seal every time i put anything out i have to go to the town manager myself and get approval from that office um sorry what office the town manager's office okay all right like no one can just put the town seal like none of the departments can use it without checking in with them first um so that would be kind of one step second step um we don't have a budget for this department and we're ellen has asked um facilities before to have a revolving fund or access to funding for mailers um and we just don't have the capacity to give this um committee a budget so unfortunately we're not going to be getting funding from the facilities department um but in the agenda we were actually going to talk about so like you were talking about um peregrine the wayland electricity choice there is an october mailer going out um and that's something that um when neil jumps on um we can talk further about that but the mailer was going to go out in october um and then we were going to have to talk about it as a committee and get everyone's approval on that mailer so that was going to be something um we should discuss if we want to meet again in august or if we want to take the month off as we typically would um but something to consider would be maybe adding on a blurb at the bottom of that about wheel and heat pump coaches utilizing um you know the volunteers we have um or maybe we could try to do like a second piece of paper in there um to targeted households that's something the committee can discuss and decide but there is a mailer going out in october so maybe we could piggyback on that i don't know what your thoughts are wait wait can i just give a little more background since this was sorry to join late um yep so you guys remember when we negotiated this the aggregation this time around we got money for mailer and i thought we should do it in the fall to promote heat pumps paul this would be after the september 23rd in person energy affordability heat pump coaching um energy build checkup coaching close you were going to help us with some posters on that one so it kind of um we actually brainstormed a nice name for that event in september have a slice get advice um was what we kind of brainstormed at the last one um and fabiani's made up some stuff um flyers and stuff and julie has secured the coa um this i reached out to marlene and paul to say what's the soonest we could get a mailer they said the soonest we could get a mailer out is october because i said like work back the schedule for me and they worked back the schedule and as olivia said it'd be like mid-october and they gave us a schedule olivia like when we need things done i do not think we should have the whole committee you know group edit a document i think we should just agree on what the content is and pick a few people to write it and then we can send it around in an email and if people have comments kind of the comment of level of like this gives me enormous heartburn you know like let's not all wordsmith something so that that's my thinking it to have a committee meeting to wordsmith the doc not ideal um so my proposal would be that paul be involved in this paul because it's you know we're promoting the reason you're coming in late in the middle of the conversation is i've already opened my mouth okay right and i'm happy to look at it i'd like marlena to look at it too because i think um um she sends a ton of mailers out you know like this is what they do and i think she's just a good editor so let's just agree in what we want the content to be and then we can write a draft as olivia has noted like probably to you guys we need to give the town has to approve it it'll be on town letterhead they need a week for a review process so my thought is we'd write it i'm now back next week maybe we could write it first week in august we could send it out to everybody because of open meeting law you can send comments like either directly to paul or to me and then we could you know put it together how does that sound to people apologies if you've already gone over this no no no no we haven't gotten to that level of detail but there is one what i see that strategic decision that we need to make i don't know who the we is but somebody needs to make and that is if we can have the town return address on the envelope for the mailer we should do a letter just like you were describing if we can't then i think we should do a large postcard because people who get mail in an envelope and they're not sure who it's from toss it in the trash if you send them a postcard they'll at least look at one side or the other before they toss it in the trash so we can reach out to marlena and ask her that question yeah because i mean what the content is going to be and how much content we can include is going to depend very much on is this a piece of paper that's trifolded and comes in an envelope or is this i'm going to try and call marlena as well they don't send it out it's a third party mailer that sends it out that's how it's done yeah i know that a town has a third party mailer yeah no not the town it's not the town it's the it no we're doing it through peregrine and um oh through peregrine doing this okay okay so it's their mailing service that we're using so well and i was raising the uh another issue which is but can i just but let's just let's take them one at a time so i can reach marlena and ask her that do other people agree with paul's thinking that if the return address is not the town then it's it will if they open it it will have the town letterhead but i understand what you're saying paul like paul's question which started the discussion was whether we can use the town seal as a part of this uh you know information campaign yes that yes it can be on the town letterhead that's why the town has to approve it that i'm sure of that's what we've agreed to i can't tell you what the return is on the mailer i can tell you when we do those mailers those third party mailers we see a bump in activity so somebody's opening them can i just jump in quick so the last time they sent out a mailer from peregrine just saying like no need to take action this is the rate you're getting if you want to opt in opt out like this is what you should follow there was a return address because we got some back to the town hall if people had moved or whatever so they did put the town hall's address on the last mailer great terrific thank you olivia great oh terrific okay that i mean this is this is really good if we can have the town return address pound letterhead on the letter then i know what i'm trying to create it's a letter and i'm not so much focused on graphics and how to make eye appeal on a postcard so they're they're different challenges and i i just need to know which one we're we're going i mean let's i know tom has a question but when i when we originally thought of this mailer it was certainly not going to be about cca because there's only one choice we you know we're really going to talk about it i mean we might have a pair of something at the end like if you're not on whaling electricity choice you might be missing out on low rates click you know go here but the main thing was to push heat pumps especially it'll go out in october the new heat pump rate you know hp run is november and we have heat pump coaches or you're worried about your bill being too high we have energy bill checkup coaches who can help you looks like we've actually evolved to another part of the agenda we were on olivia's report uh okay looking at the agenda where we have the uh our chair ellen and uh uh neal and one of those objects one of those items is review the october mailing and the other was the september 23rd heat pump event so if you want to wrap we're so sorry for not going in order but if you want to wrap that up and then i guess also talk about the the camp uh ellen in terms of well i i i raised a a related issue which is that now we have an ability to micro target communications and can we i i contacted ellen about it all already thinking energized whalen would be the right channel but maybe our our committee is so could those letters be not not the same letter for everyone into town because you know i i i know enough about about marketing what marketing 101 the more you target the the more effective a communication is and we could have a dozen letters i i i don't know that that's true tom the answer is i don't know if that's true with the third party mailer paul so the first question is would they first question is do we know which addresses we want to target tom thinks he does paul i know you did a poll for people who are on oil which was like 1600 households so one question we have to ask marlena is if we were to tell them which let's say we had two or three letters would they be willing to do a differential mailing that's right that would be a very useful question to ask i suspect the answer is no but it would be a very useful question to ask okay i'll write the question while we're having this meeting in my phone and send it to her and copy olivia and paul um as if the answer is if the answer is no let's just go with that if the answer is no then do we agree that the main messages are if you don't have a heat pump you're missing out you're particularly missing out if you're an oil customer because the economics are very very good or if you have base bore heat eating economics very very good and you can all benefit from better ac and the economics are pretty good these days for gas in right in the uh in the winter paul right there's a number i don't agree with those messages you don't agree with those messages no tom can you say why uh let's see one of them was uh if you have hydronic heating the no no baseboard electric resistance i'm sorry yes i read your words tom i knew what you was talking about he didn't say it well but the resistance heat okay and what was your your next message well the first message is heat pumps if you're not i don't don't have one you're missing out okay they're good for ac the state's incentivizing it with a winter rate that makes this much more affordable particularly good for people in these buckets oil electric baseboard heat okay and was there a third you had there after i mean i just don't know where we are in natural gas uh and and price competitiveness i i i have natural gas i i am i so do i yes of my old heating that bill with natural gas now i have a some particular elements that that make that possible but now especially with the heat pump rate absolutely you can save money with natural gas we should not write that off i think that's true i think it's just um i haven't run the numbers to be 100 confident of that well again i agree the numbers might not be 100 confident in particular situations might be different slightly different so my message my thought is that in terms of sort of an outline for the letter is kind of consistent with what you were saying at the beginning say look if you haven't thought about heat pumps recently i would add in there particularly if you have an aging heating system of any kind um now's a good time to look at that because a uh summers are getting hotter air conditioning is the number one reason i believe why people contact us tom for heat pump coaching i think that's true yeah i agree with that absolutely my two clients right now are fundamentally interested in air conditioning right so that's got to be the leaf even though i'm coming out coming up it's going to get more i want to push the air conditioning thing right at the beginning then i want to push the fact that you can save not only you get good air conditioning you know not a not a blast on blast off ac motor thing you get the dc stuff put that all a nice fine print or digestible print then talk about money saving on your heating bill no matter what type of heating bill system you have and say if you have oil you're gonna we know for a fact you can save money if you can are on resistance heat you are super stupid if you don't if you're on gas you know if you're on gas you will also save money we believe in almost every situation but you at least owe it to yourself to look at the situation okay i agree is anybody does anybody have a problem with those messages anybody have major heartburn with those messages okay great it does sorry it does actually in a in a in a non-rigorous way support what tom was saying which is you're you're presenting a variety of scenarios in one letter that's right because i can't target that i can't if i can't have distribution lists right so i just sent the email guys while you're talking i just sent the email letters more targeted in in fact but you'd want to you'd want to write a letter to subset different targets right so i just sent the email to marlena while you guys are talking she'll get back to us if we can't target this is what will be i would like to add a message at the bottom which is worried about you know high and also your high energy bill we have energy bill checkup coaches who can talk to you about your energy bills and we have coaches who can talk to you about solar for your home right and just send them to energize wayland the last part of the letter which could be a lot we have to decide although we don't have choices in wayland electricity choice if they're not on the aggregation rate they may be paying too much so it might be nice at the very end to say you know if you check your bill if you're not on wayland electricity choice you may be missing out on lower electricity rates negotiated by the town i'd be careful with that one right now because uh number one our aggregation rate is not very far from the default uh ever source rate number two uh i just uh dealt with a client who uh actually actually found a much cheaper third party rate um so uh you know it's it's only good for four months but she says oh i just look at it every four months and i'll change again next time so i'd be careful with that part of the message right now and i think it says um um but it says you may like if you're on a third party rate that's really too high that's a problem right yeah so just i'm tom i understand what you're saying but i also want you to know that a major provision of both the house and the senate omnibus bills which now have to be resolved in conference committee is putting eliminating or putting strong restrictions on all these third party providers i know about that because a lot of users of it are not really smart people like to look at their range so i mean alan's point is well taken particularly if you are on one of these third party rates guys well also let me just going to our aggregation rate tom our rate is 14.776 right basic service is 15.629 we're almost one cent cheaper so it's not insignificant i'm just saying it's not nothing so i think we just want to say check it out check out this price you you if you're not on it it might you know if you're not on it check it out i just wouldn't make it a very strong part of the message it's the last thing it's a sentence yeah okay so that's the letter so everyone reasonably comfortable comfortable enough for the messages any clovis yeah i want to move to the targeting because how many letters do we think we would be sending i just check quickly oil it's about 1600 houses electric baseboards 200 and then the rest gas essentially without ac 700 so we we are going towards 2500 is that too many or cost wise i'm just no no they they said there are 4800 households in wayland so they they've agreed to send a letter to every household that okay that's pre-negotiated i just emailed them to say would you be willing to do three different letters so if they say no we've agreed on the text for one if they say yes do we want it it's clear we want to do an oil letter it's clear we want to do a natural gas letter do we want to do an electric baseboard letter or just make the oil and electric baseboard the same letter you could make the well i don't know we'll see what or do we want to do something different i i mean the other the other way of you know slicing the onion here would be if we could determine people who have um baseboard heat or you know people who have central air conditioning or no air conditioning you know you know there's there'd be different ways to to cut i'm just nervous about whether the underlying data is actually good well now that's a question we wanted to ask it's not perfect it's not perfect and i and and it's i mean this has been a separate issue ellen you probably are aware of it that there's all these documented reports where the assessor's database doesn't match reality in any in any way and um when i asked about this a couple years ago the excuse i got was my excuse probably was reality is that during the pandemic they got way way behind in getting stuff that come over from the building department incorporated in updates to the assessor's database now we've even more years have passed since the pandemic i don't know whether they've made any effort so here's that here's the question do you trust then that the data for sending different letters is accurate that's what i'm asking yeah exactly right so if it's not accurate then you want the most generic letter the long one to go to everybody and you go if you've got oil if you've got baseboard if you've got cath as opposed to i get a letter that says if you've got oil and i go i took my oil furnace out 10 years ago you know like what and throw the letter away i don't read the rest of it yeah that's a good point i i mean i've been assuming but i have on no basis of fact that while the assessor's database is out of date it's a small percentage uh of people who for whom without it but maybe it's much greater i don't know um so and my assumption is what my gut is it's probably 80 or 90 percent good good and i think that's enough to make yeah i i got a i got a hybrid idea i don't know that the data is perfect and i agree with neil if i got a letter saying you have oil and you don't have oil i'd toss it you would just change the order of what you see in the letter right for the people we think we have oil it's like he bumps are here and they're good for everyone you know particularly you have oil and then boom boom for the electric people you sort the letter you could just you just start a little differently but at least you cover the you cover the error cases yeah yeah that's all right well let's see if we're just getting to now let's let's say if we can i think i suspect we can't but move on move on all right neo i'm i'm good actually sending a generic one because i think we're going to do bold for these three options i think it'd be fine so i'm i'm fine on generic personally okay okay ready for discussing the camp and the progress on camp uh did you want to do the september 23rd event if we're not going to meet in august whatever order you'd like to do it in is fine let's do it because i feel like it relates to this so energize well and said we want to have this event around to make people who have heat pump coaches and energy checkup coaches concurrently paul sent out a provocative email to a bunch of people saying i want to have a forum on energy affordability and also talk about the heat pump rate so we kind of mushed all together and we now have september 23rd on the council on aging um and the idea would be some kind of speaker briefly about energy affordability paul we got to think about that i do think um i carry from gecko is pretty good um um but you could do it um i don't want to do it i could i could do it and i might want to sign myself up to do it um because i mean it's kind of what i do with my sierra club head on you know and um and i really i mean i don't want to downplay it too too much because i think it's really important particularly in an election year for more of our for the population to understand how electric and gas rates are really set and how they where these high prices come from because the amount of misinformation from the utilities which they put in and little flyers and your bill and things like that are greenwashing through the max um eversource god bless them they want an 11 rate increase it's completely untenable but people don't get it and so i really think that we we have an immediate thing here of people saving money initially right away now by financing a heat pump on a zero percent loan and blah blah blah blah blah but there's a we should think longer term here i mean if i was thinking not 27 2027 or 2028 but even if i was thinking 2030 or 2035 or 2040 or 2050 we fundamentally have to change the way we deal with pricing and buying energy and it requires the population being much better informed than they are now it's wonky stuff so the challenge is to be able to present it in a compelling way in a short talk but but i think that's i mean looking beyond the end of the calendar year i think that's an important role that we can play as an energy and climate committee um for the town or as an energized whale and volunteer group or whatever you know aegis you want to put it on i'm fine with that if you can in 10 minutes like a 10 15 like 10 minutes 10 or 15 minutes you know i want to lay it out for them so they have some sense of how this actually then i want i want our heat pump coaches to be there and then i would like so clovis you said you went to the natick event and you thought the posters were very effective showing some heat pump pre-post kind of things and you i think raised your hand or i raised it for you both could be true that you would be willing to work with some of the heat pump coaches and just come up with some stories that could be in posters around the room is that true or am i making it up and uh so it's no tom and paul it was um i think in line with what we discussed during the um the in-person um heat pump gathering heat pump code gathering with uh mark ralston um so it's about fine tuning you know the type of houses we want to target and something i forgot to do after our reunion was to send the pictures i had from their booth so that's what i i need to do okay great so i think the other thing we then need to so one other then we then need to recruit some people to become energy bill coaches there is an asynchronous online training um that you can take through mass energize which has pulled some i'll send around the link they put together some videos that um sierra at the ag's office did because she does a ton of this coaching and from all in energy so i would love paul and clovis and tom to make sure all of our heat pump coaches can actually talk to somebody about their bill tom i'm sure you can but you know it's got some arcane crap in it um and be nice to have some other volunteers i'm going to try and recruit from energize wayland other people to be energy bill checkup coaches um because it's easier than becoming a heat pump coach right you don't have to understand manual jay um even as a heat pump coach you don't have to do that um anyway uh by the way the bills are changing i have a time of use meter now a tmi meter and my bill is really different in appearance from the previous bill so by september i don't know how much of the town will be on time of use meters but this how to read a bill could take on new importance because the bills are so different okay i'm gonna ask i'm gonna ask sierra and all in energy to record like a new video on how to look at your time of use um bill that's a great point um so does anybody i think what ann and i were thinking is that people would could look at the website it's got a bunch of faqs it's got little videos where it says oh you want to you want to understand how to explain this part of the distribution charge go to eight minute eight minute and ten and just watch the next four minutes of the video like you don't have to sit through an hour video so is there anybody from the energy committee that would also be willing to volunteer to be the that you would you would look at this website sort of get some training and then um we were going to get uh sierra to do a uh zoom call um just to answer questions people had which i think paul be good for you to be on too like she's great yeah yeah yeah no uh anything to do with bills i'd be happy to sign me you can sign me up for because it fits into my my mantra here of we need utility rate and business model reform so steve are you looking for a volunteer i am yeah i'm looking for volunteers oh i'll raise my hand okay great so i'll do it i do want all the heat pump coaches and then steve and i i think ann will do it so i think we'll have enough my goal guys is also to train maura at the council on aging she's awesome and she's the person who deals when somebody wants fuel assistance like that's who people the coa talk to she's great she's very smart so i think we can get her up to speed also um great so the last thing i want to say is sudberry um would like to co-sponsor this with us and i since originally this was an energized wayland idea i said sure and they're like great they basically have less like their council on aging they can't use the building at night i have all kinds of problems so they said we'd love to send people the wayland to your event and uh we'll also train some energy bill checkup coaches um so any objections questions for including sudberry in this great idea great idea you know more the more the merrier as far as i'm concerned you know if we could reach multiple downs but no no problem okay i don't see any problem as long as we have c capacity i'm sure that's not an issue um we're we're good to go i would and i think energized wayland will pay for the pizza um and been in touch with julie we just used a wayland based business because they've been cleared by the health department so ann will take care of that um and it's the leslie love from sudberry came up with this idea you know have a slice get advice seem cute and we'll we'll have the coa advertise it and we'll do it through energized wayland olivia hopefully we'll do this olivia hopefully you're still there we'll do it through the town newsletter and get it on the town calendar um that's actually due on the 28th so that's next week so i'm assuming by then we'll have like the time set and everything but if you want to just send me a blurb i can like write up for yeah reach out um reach out to fabiani and ann so it's due oh next week because that's the august newsletter is what you're saying right i see oh the lead time's oh he's so early yeah so um just send an email to me and ann and fabiani um because fabiani sent around a blurb already okay and i think you should have been on that email but check i'll i'll make sure i have the correct stuff i'll reach out and i think i can't remember i think we were thinking like i actually don't remember the time paul you're on that email with ann do you remember what the time was no and i'm going to search my email from ann i can't remember honestly um it's a peep pump party and i found the email uh julie has confirmed september 23rd i mean i don't know we could do it at five like we could do it i mean i think if people want to come after work maybe we should just do it at 6 30. as for pizza 6 30 uh uh maybe fix would be better i don't know i don't know how to set the time i don't either anybody else have an opinion well if you have pizza that means people will think they can have dinner so you won't have to be in the way of dinner right so i just want people who are working to have a chance to get home so natick had it set between 6 and 8 p.m it was more of a drop-in thing so maybe we could do ours at like 6 30 to 8 yeah yeah 6 30 what what kind of sounds about right it was it was six to eight but was it was less of a talk right clovis the one i'm the one i i attended was uh a solid 30 minute talk so it was mark presenting heat smart alliance there was kit uh from laminar laminaria collective then i can't remember it there was a there must have been a third presentation from um the gil the natick sustainability director as well yeah to introduce julian yeah the to introduce then the the various booths uh i think so it was 30 minutes to 45 maybe not a full hour before people got around um and the pizza eating wise was done while the presenters were uh doing the talks i think 6 30 is okay 6 30 i vote for 6 30 here i do too 6 30 to 8 so we'll give a talk we'll start the talk probably five or 10 minutes after 6 30 paul you have 10 or 15 minutes it would then be good um i'll see if i can maybe have and introduce our heat pump coaches i'm not sure we want to have a talk about how heat pumps work or like i don't know no we don't want to do that we don't want to do that we don't want to do that we don't want to do that we just want to talk about air conditioning and saving money okay that's this right so paul you could just do that you could go from your affordability thing to why heat pumps make sense yeah that's it then we're not switching but then and can introduce hopefully cloves can make it tom can make it you can make it and can make it any of the other heat pump coaches and then we'll introduce our energy bill are there any sudbury heat pump coaches no typically we do the coaching within a heat smart alliance we receive a bunch from sudbury okay they don't have anybody so yeah i just have to make that point that the wayland heat pump coaches can also serve as you in sudbury if we have sudbury attendees now at least we might i could mention i'm not going to be there i'll be out of town on that day okay okay um and then i will introduce tap who's our solar coach too okay sound good so olivia you'll do it through the town olivia i think it'd be also we can get fabiani to get print up some flyer for us to put in the a frames in in front of the coa and the town building could you take that if fabiani prints them up for you yes i'll reach out to her tomorrow fantastic great great great um and then the letter paul could also say in case you missed our heat pump coaches also here are the resources yeah you can still get them right yeah yeah yeah okay question for you is there going to be av stuff set up or do i need to arrange to somebody need to arrange to bring that um i don't know why don't you reach out to julie i can speak to that she has a setup um it's very easy to use but it's a microphone and it's already like plugged in and it connects there's a tv too if you want to have like some slides yeah i want to i want to have some presentation stuff so um i need i need to be able to project a powerpoint basically you know that kind of thing yep so you can reach out to julie and she actually offers like a walkthrough if people want so if you wanted to go there like a couple days before she could help you troubleshoot all right it's really not yeah great terrific all right done good stuff guys good all right bill what's next you're in charge the uh camp update on camp yeah so i sent around a google sheet did anyone look at it well thank you neil um all right neil um can i i'm not in a good position to share my screen um neil did you do you have the link handy at all not even vaguely oh shit olivia do you yep i can do it give me one second fantastic so what i did i mean we're a little shorthanded but honestly we wrote the camp the first time around we didn't have a consultant oh olivia good job or any staff so as a first step we said let's just see how we're doing and if you can make it smaller so we can see all the columns olivia can you guys hear me yeah yes okay yep yep all right so what i did was the gray lines are the headers of the sections so like i wrote the section on homes and buildings and i took each of the actions you remember in our camp there was residential actions and municipal actions right and i just took what each action was and i shortened it to be the rows four five six blah blah blah and then on status i made it olivia if you can show it it's a drop down can you just go to column like b4 no one more it should show as a drop down click on it should be a drop down no no in the cell no olivia in the cell b4 yep clicking it yep huh you're in view only mode that's why i requested access but i think you have to grant i thought i grant all right we know what a drop down is move on we know okay every so the drop downs were completed in progress not started um and then i made a column for okay is there any data or are you just guessing and then um comment and in this case i was pulling data from state data so i should have put it in column c so i did this if olivia can scroll down and i will make the sheet so you don't need access anybody can use it because i'm not really worried about people getting in here so if you scroll down i did buildings and move to clean energy which is section john wrote scroll down then um i i stopped because i thought you guys would get the gist of it so the other sections are transportation and then tom has a couple of natural world sections and i thought we could try to do this in august people could do their sections and i think i suggested some assignments just to be provocative like i think olivia i suggested and had written in the ev set the transportation section and i was hoping you could do that section yeah definitely um i did reach out to the building department for them to run a report for um permits pulled for solar and permits pulled for um heat pumps but the electric vehicles for town i can definitely do that yeah and we have that data i've already put it in column d oh good okay i pulled it from the climate tracker sheet which is the state most recent state data and that's you can see what the assessor compare i already have state data on heat pumps and solar which is probably an undercount for heat pumps but it's the only thing i have so the question is do we like this format this was just to give us an idea of where we're at and can people do their sections like my section is mostly done i did john's but he has to look at it if olivia does transportation then um you could probably stop sharing olivia um i think there are three two other sections and bill you had a different idea yeah i mean my only feedback was that the in process category means that you're in somewhere between one percent done and 99 percent done uh that doesn't tell me a whole lot so even splitting it to hey are you 25 50 or 75 percent done but some sort of gradations of in process so it's not covering the range of one percent to 99 percent that's reasonable what are people i mean i could change the drop downs to be not yet started sort of zero to 25 percent done 25 to 75 percent done or more than 70 more than 75 something like that i mean just so it's not the full range of one to 99 because if we ask people to do a percentage i think right i agree i don't think you have to do 37 and a half percent i i think the range is okay are people i think it's a good suggestion are people comfortable with that i can change the sheet i don't uh okay where i'm at i number one i only really started looking at this yesterday i have to say but um uh what i have a number of actions here like commit to grass fields um we have been moving in that direction for the last last several years but um we we put moratoriums on turf fields but nothing's permanent so i i don't know how to simply answer whether we have achieved the committing to to grass fields so i think tom for the person who owns the section you make your best judgment then we're going to have an in-person meeting in september we'll all get to look at this and we'll see if we kind of agree paul i'm sure has a view about that my guess is that's not zero percent it's not maybe uh it's maybe somewhere it's somewhere in one of these percentage bands and then there's a there's a column for comment you write what you think this was good but it's not permanent it's kind of a so far so good okay so i think you just write but for people who don't know enough about that let's say clovis doesn't know anything about that which is not true but let's say clovis didn't then you're educating everybody else in the committee the reason we're doing this is we're asking ourselves this is what we wrote years ago we want to update the plan so for things that are completely done we should take them off we did it we've done it right no no we should leave it on we should always say we completed it we always want to celebrate success you don't want to take it off i'm just saying but it falls in a different category yeah in the plan these are the things we've accomplished these are the things we are yet to accomplish right but and i think it's a chance for us to evaluate to some of these things still make sense where we have not completed them and are there new things paul we would think about given regulatory issues so this was just to baseline us because not everybody on this committee was here when we wrote this all right and it's good for olivia to be able to baseline so she understands olivia you're with us right yep i'm right here i don't know if you can see me oh it's funny the way the camera is it we only see your profile so you're looking at the screen and i see uh you guys right now that's what i was confused that that's helpful to understand thank you that's helpful and then good for olivia to see we're at so i think so if olivia does transportation tom you just have to dig your best shot at it you know more about those actions than anyone else on the committee i can explain the progress you know in like a half hour worth of talking but trying to explain it in in a one line with you in the comment section you can expand it and make it bigger we have to do something that people can read in advance of the meeting okay the other thing is kavia reached out and said she'd love a summer project and i thought about this as a potential summer project if somebody needed help with this some parts of their sections like she could input the the succinct recommendations so tom has less inputting what the recommend you know what the action item was i don't know all right so you guys were lukewarm on that are could we say that by the end of august people can have their sections done yeah that that's to me that would be fine um can i can i add something i think having kavia work on this and collaborate is a great idea and there is a section of the camp that mentions um the green team so maybe you could assign that to kavia okay and there's a section also on um paul i'm gonna assign you the section there's a section on like resident engagement and advocacy like this is the last section i think okay just look at it and i'm happy to give you backstory of that okay yeah i could take it on i i haven't i haven't looked at it but yeah we should look at it see if it yeah cat cat and i wrote it all those years ago and i i don't know if it still makes sense okay by the end of august let's just say everyone's gonna make their best shot at this and then before we meet in person we'll send it around any objections okay fantastic bill you're in charge what's next that's uh that's pretty much everything and we're up to sort of the minutes you're proving the minutes and talking about the next meeting well if we're if we're really done well one one camp comment if i might or potential camp comment if i might before we move on to other things um i have an interesting thought and i i don't want to pursue this now but an interesting thought for an additional kind of section or thing that we could report on in a future edition of camp and that is the extent to which the town and its residents are using distributed energy resources and thereby saving the peak so that would be a way of us as a town claiming how we are helping everyone else in the commonwealth by our collective actions you mean like through connected solutions and things like like through the use of connected solutions um through the use just just generally plain solar you know shaves the peak on those days where everybody's got their air conditioners on right so the the number of kilowatt hours of solar that we've produced um you know on those hot days every time we shave the peak and keep one peaker plant from not having to turn on we're saving all rate payers a ton of money i mean hundreds of millions of dollars in a couple of days that's across the commonwealth so it occurs to me that as a town if we wanted to take pride in something and we could somehow figure out how to document our virtual power plant or distributed energy resource contribution to a more efficient grid we could just put another feather in our cap um that's just a thought well actually last meeting uh i what i raised the piss at the last meeting yes i propose a whole new new new section uh that i called grid support yeah we've already mentioned batteries actually in my section uh in the last one but um uh batteries are increasingly important and um we we need to talk more about them but also uh educating townsfolk about uh how to charge their their evs or off peak uh and use other other electric loads off off peak um i i don't know if i e-mailed this committee but i've been looking at my uh my electric usage since i got my my time of use meter and my my ev charging is just enormously higher than any other use i have in in my house so that that that move alone moving that to optimum times would would make a huge difference um so it's um it's it's a whole suite of actions it needs a whole a whole new section oh no no it's a whole you're absolutely right it's a whole bunch of actions that fall generally under the category of distributed energy resource usage that command that includes demand response which is what off hours charging is um that includes uh back to solutions it includes just plain old solar kilowatt hours generated here's what i'm going to suggest paul to me i think there'd be a lot of receptivity to this as you're thinking about it would you just create a new tab in the google sheet called um new sections and then you can copy my my general format and just start to put some ideas in there paul yeah okay and tom can look at that too and add some ideas tom too yeah yeah yeah so it's in a google sheet it's easier for us to yeah i have a thought that's a great idea yeah on that one so good and we we can do minutes and then bill i want to think about our next meeting because i want to think about september maybe being in person to kind of do the camp yeah in person would be good so yeah um minutes anybody have or does everybody have a chance to look over the revised minutes that would be i think sent out yesterday or recently i i think i told olivia a couple of misspellings one of which is my name okay you get that yeah you get that and there was another misspelling as well i noticed that i i told you about i'll make sure i got that but i did see your email and make those edits so all good sorry about the name tom do we have any other uh edits um and you know we could take a motion that to accept with edits um bill did you have a chance to look at i've been on vacation so i have not look at the minutes yeah you sent an email saying i think our minutes and olivia revised them and sent them back out i think yesterday or sometime recently so she addressed my concerns and so i'm fine with them okay based on bill being happy i move we approve the minutes okay uh bill you're chairing so keep going is there a second second second all right oh and it's i think it's with the uh the spelling and corrections that tom mentioned any further discussion on the minutes okay i guess since we're remote we have to do the person by person so ellen i uh i i'm i tom i steve i clovis i and neil certainly i okay all right so the motion passes the minutes have been accepted with the uh edits from tom bill thanks for offering the uh feedback to olivia sure yeah i'm getting just as an aside i'm getting in the habit now when you go to the finance committee they spend about i don't know 20 minutes going through line by line their minutes so i don't like that extreme but i figured well at least this time i would read them because sometimes i don't even do that so i'm trying to get a compromise from nothing to incredibly detailed all right so you want ellen what about the next meeting so olivia when would our next meeting normally let's take august off and paul and i will work on this letter paul we can send it around to the committee in early august and they can give feedback only to paul you can't give it to paul and me and then paul you you can see and what i again i would encourage you to not overly wordsmith but typos or you think we've really missed the mark and the tone please that level of feedback um and then olivia i'm not looking at the schedule for marlena um if we wanted to go out in october i think we can get it by the end of august to the town for review don't you think paul what oh yes yeah yeah okay well i think for for meetings i don't know if i'm changing the subject but didn't we aren't we at the third tuesday of the month olivia believe that that is the case so we'll cancel august okay i have us for september 15th tuesday the 15th at four i think that's perfect because it's before the thing on the 23rd right you have us on the 15th i don't have an invite for that oh i don't know why yeah i don't either but uh i don't either i don't have one but it is already on my calendar so yeah you all are sent it um it's sent to your whaling email i'll send it again if you want um but everyone should have that reoccurring all the time on their calendar okay is this going to be in person and where it's um oh yeah that's true so right now i have yeah let's do it in let's do it in person guys what do you think and talk about the camp yes i like in person me too and i i'm going to be around that day in boston so that works great for me we'll do four o'clock olivia can get us a room yeah um do we want to do the coa i don't care yeah that would be fine they always do it they have air conditioning all right i would propose that we do like four to six sorry to say that but if we're gonna talk about the camp maybe um bill you want to help me think about how we could actually run that meeting to be effective sure i can think i got two months to figure it out so yeah right i mean i think we'll come in with a baseline of where we're at but why don't you and i talk offline and we can get some feedback from neil too and let's i don't want it to just be like a free-for-all discussion all over the place my goal at the end of the meeting would be to say yes these are things are done let's celebrate them the next these are stuff still in progress that we still think makes sense here's some new ones and here's like data here are things we don't understand well enough okay yep something like that but bill why don't you think about yeah i mean we we can certainly send things out ahead of time to get some feedback and then each chapter maybe a five minute presentation with questions and then prove it yeah is the ultimate goal a new plan that the town will adopt and by by when does that need to happen there's no it's our own deadline i doubt we i doubt in one meeting we cannot do this but i think in one meeting we can see where we were some i and then i we should think about how we want to engage other people in this process okay all right so like maybe we have something done by the end of the year maybe middle of the winter i don't know let's talk about that i don't know great and when we see approved by the town what does that mean well what that meant the last time is we we wrote it we had we had a bunch of public meetings too not particularly well attended um and then we voted that we were recommending it to the select board so that we then made a presentation to the select board and the select board voted to accept it and endorse it and that's what it was and then it became a plan of the town not a document from the ecc right and it really is our commitments and at that time which now feels like a long time ago to me the select board also was doing some strategic planning and they had like five goals and one of the five was around climate i think it's worth worth mentioning that michael mccall pointed to the camp as one of the major reasons why he wanted to come to wayland because he found it so attractive bill was on the selection process for michael so i defer to bill on things like that but i you know we we need to think about not just what we want to do but we need to think about how to communicate a whole bunch of stuff so maybe steve like that's your bailiwick on communication so maybe you can be thinking about that the wayland post is always looking for content they sure are yeah so let's well i don't know if there's any connection that we can make but you know one of the topics that will be coming up probably this year if not next year is a prop two and a half and to the extent that we can contribute to lowering costs and and you know potentially avoiding that again there may be a complete you know no connection but but that certainly would be a theme that would get us some attention okay let's think about it we always i always used to say we saved the town about a quarter million bucks a year um from the solar i mean olivia could add up what we're saving with the solar installations and bill you knew the street lights saved us between 40 and 60k depending on how we did the math you know and then we um we had a couple of other bigger items uh through our weatherization work through the esco so like it was always about a quarter million um but we should think about updating it the other thing i do want to put in there which is not really relevant to the camp but i want to put it in there is like all the money we brought into the town through grants and incentives and and potentially going forward i mean i think it's great to say what we've done in the past but if we have any sort of say and hey in the future we see that is coming that would help yep yep i agree all right all right do we have a motion to adjourn i should uh i should uh pass on a uh a piece of major news breaking news here i told the selectmen last night uh last night the the bill ricka historic district commission voted uh under threat of individual contempt of court proceedings uh against individual members which would not be uh defended by the town to allow the removal of of the bill ricka dam uh which uh relates to the major climate related threat this town has which is flooding of the river and uh that's we're we're near the end of a 300 plus year fight with bill ricka to get the dam removed and and mitigate the flooding of the river so that's hot news i'm gonna have to run alan um so are we ending or you know as soon as we get a motion to adjourn i'll count that as a second as well any discussion no all right let's do your sections we'll see you september 15th in person olivia will send out stuff all right sounds good all right everybody all right thank you take care you you you you