April 28, 2026 – Energy and Climate Committee – Video & Transcript

April 28, 2026 - Energy and Climate Committee

Autoscroll:

we have more than a quorum so i am going to call the meeting to order so this is the energy and climate committee um ellen shown as chair and i note in it first of all let me thank olivia for taking notes i note in attendance committee members tom siaka vice chair neil gordon bill huss steve garone and our student rep cavia swagger so john harper will be coming late um let me read this thing that's in such small print because i because the way i've done this um let's see about this so i can make it um pursuant to chapter two of the axis 2025 this meeting is conducted via remote access and according with apple law um no in-person attendance by members of the public is permitted um you may watch or participate remotely with the link that's found on the town's website um i will ask for public comment and we always move everyone to a panelist if they join the meeting at any time the recording will be on wacom as soon as practical who's our zoo manager is it you olivia just be robbie hey robbie so obviously if anyone joins you know our protocol just let them jump right in great um so i'm gonna call the meeting daughter is there any public comment i don't see any other members of the public so i'm gonna move on to that but i think i hope that any public comment uh um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um yesterday was Julie Gagan's last day as our assistant facilities manager and sustainability director. A surprise to me. I did talk to Julie yesterday and just talked about the things that were in process. And Olivia and Mike are trying to make a plan about how to pick up the things that were in process. And I expressed to Julie that, at least individually, Ellen Tohn, I was very grateful for all the hard work she put in in Wayland. And the things, although she was with us not a long amount of time, the things that she got across the finish line were terrific for us. And I certainly enjoyed working with her. And I think that's a very good point. Where is she going? She doesn't have any current plans for her next position. Oh, I got some echo there. So this was not All right. If you're not speaking, why don't you mute I don't know what's going on Robbie with the echo. This doesn't set. Let me, let me. Bill, are you on? You're not on. Yeah. on twice bill are you i don't think so robbie any ideas i'm the problem i'll get off and come back okay wait just let me just dig all right can someone else speak to just make sure it's not just bill that's the meeting can you hear me okay all right everybody else is okay it looks like yeah bill let's give him a chance to come back because i think um i think we i'm not sure i want to repeat myself um i uh personally i thought julie was quite an asset to the town um i'm surprised and not happy to hear that she's fun um i i would concur with tom me too i think steve and clove has had less time working with with julie um but it's definitely it's definitely a loss for the energy and climate committee and the sustainability work and has me curious especially given she doesn't she's not going anywhere yeah um um um i will say julie did give me the okay if anyone wants to reach out to her directly i have her like personal cell and email so i can put that in the chat if you guys want to reach out to her and just like chat and thank her for all her hard work and stuff so i'll share that with you guys in the chat i think that'd be great uh thanks olivia that would be great yeah i think uh i certainly um would be supportive of folks reaching out to julie if they uh you want to express their appreciation for what she did hopefully that's a little bit better yeah that's much better julie um olivia is going to put in the chat bill julie's cell phone and personal email if people want to just reach out so do we know the backstory i mean it doesn't if she doesn't have something else to do you know i don't know if it was for personal reasons or for uh the town i don't think it's something that we should probably discuss at a at a committee like this so okay um but i think you certainly can contact julie um and think um and um i did talk to mike i talked to olivia who's sort of left holding a very big to-do list and i talked to mike today um and i think um he's thinking they're gonna they're gonna do a search to find a replacement they're gonna do a search find a replacement i think mike is rethinking the position to make sure it has enough hours to cover more of the facilities projects that are not sustainability projects so um i think it's kind of a i don't think he's reached a conclusion he and i both agree that you know even if things go incredibly incredibly well um you know best case scenario someone's on by the end june right that's sort of best case scenario yeah i mean my concern would be that the town says oh maybe we don't need the position so that's no i don't think that's going to happen because i think um he needs it for facilities i think the question will be it how much of that position is is allocated to um sustainability work because julie was um julie was doing some things that olivia hasn't been doing you know olivia like more on specific engineering of some of the projects more in the technical part of the projects olivia was focused more on outreach so we absolutely need to continue to have that level of expertise and um experience mike felt that their last time they went out to look at um put out a job uh description that um they got a lot of fantastic resumes um um i don't know you know neil and i chatted about whether we wanted to do any you know vote or resolution on this and i i think i just need to i think um the only thing i'm thinking neil sort of off the cuff here is you know do we want to say that we that the committee you know certainly benefited from the level of support and the town did that actually that that the position like that provided and that we um feel that that yeah i mean you know i think i think it would be good for the minutes to reflect that we had this conversation and and numerous committee members you know uh expressed their appreciation of all the work that julie had done and their their concern about uh her absence and you know and a hope for a quick replacement with an emphasis on sustainability uh to replace her i mean it seems like um you know if if it's it's pretty clear in in the conversation yeah and my plan is i've called mike i was going to give it a day i'll reach out to our liaison bill which would be bill whitney um just to talk to him about um that the committee really thinks this level of support is critical for us advancing our climate goals and honestly saving the town a boatload of money on energy so um you know we're well positioned now with the climate leader to apply for the 1.15 million that application is due in august olivia's got a bunch in her place you know she would need some help putting that application together and i made that i made that point to mike i think he understood it um i think he's got a lot of you know things in the air and a lot of balls to catch so just asking him is there any possibility we're saving on our salary is there any possibility that you know we could hire part-time consultants to help write that thing or we could use mapc as we have in the past or power work power options and i think he wasn't quite ready to think about that yeah i think i think my point was i mean it's hopefully low probability but you know the town is going to be a facing a prop two and a half next year and uh you know if that gets voted down they're They're going to be making cuts. And if there's an open position, it probably won't get filled. Yeah. So I think he's going to do this expeditiously. Good. Okay. So I think by July or early August, there'll be somebody on board. Okay. Good. I think he wants to move quite quickly. So that is, I would say, I think maybe we can all agree, bad news. Yeah. Bad news. So please feel free. I have spoken to Julie a couple of times. And I'll let everyone do that. And she can share what, you know, I'll leave that between each of you and Julie. And, you know, feel free to contact me offline on this. I was going to let Kavya go. And then maybe we can, Olivia, go right to homeworks because Rachel's with us. And then let Rachel go. And then, Neil, I just want to make sure you remind me to talk about the book. I want to talk about the climate action plan. Neil and I spoke earlier today about wanting to put that on the agenda. And I kind of don't see it there because mistake on my part. So I just want to add that to our agenda. So Kavya, is there stuff you, great article in the, you weren't with us last month. I want to say great article in the Wayland Post on the slow fashion stuff. Like very nice. I don't know if people saw the article. Did you, you guys all see it in the post a while ago? Nicely written. Good job. Um, make sure you add it to your. Portfolio of cool stuff when you apply to college. Um, and, um, anything you want to update us on, there is one thing I wanted to chat with you about, but handing it over to you. Um, from a green team standpoint right now, we're having earth week because Earth Day was over break. Um, so tomorrow we have walk, ride to walk, ride carpool to school day and Friday. I'm running. A trash pickup around the school and we're, we're redoing the garden beds are going to do a Dolly of sale. Great. You know, Kavya, the post is always looking for material. So I would say if you can snap a few photos, um, then if you want some help, Steve's offered to help on writing articles. Like we could submit it to June. Like if you, you did a really nice job with what you wrote. And again, it's like 300 words. It's like a couple of paragraphs. You could just say, wait. Well, I just want to send this to the committee, or. I'm a student in West Maryland high school celebrating Earth Day. Here's pictures of the ride walk to school list. And if you want to send it to June and copy Steve, you can offer any edits if you want, but happy to do it. Yeah. If you could do it, take 20 minutes or get some of your other green team members to do it, I think it'd be great. Well, that just required photos or would it require me to write it again? Say again, would that just require me to take photos and write a caption, or would that require me to write an article again? I think also the, I think that's the only thing that I'm really interested in doing is. I don't really know if you. Like, if I, if I have that. little article be nice but i think it could be a paragraph literally yeah high school celebrated earth day they did these things pictures around town of that happening even if you just did bullets yeah and i know i can blow it up into an article yeah i think you could whip it off in 20 minutes if that and you could send i think you have steve's email or he can put it in the thing but you could send it to steve and june and steve you could say i'll take a crack at this and i think they're always looking for local stuff it'd be good for people especially um you know parents whose kids are in the middle school to know about the green team because you nudge your your child say oh this green team thing is out there so it's always a good way to get the word out if you if you'd like me to edit it i would not recommend sending it to june because you never know what what what what's going to get published okay you want to send to steve steve you can have a whack and then send to june and copy copy okay great um i had a thing for you coming which is there's like a youth climate summit coming up in a week or two and i wanted to share with the green team i sent it to you but is sarah snow still your advisor she is i don't i actually mean to get in touch with her because right now i've been a really student run but yeah she is okay i sent it to you i don't know if you got it i sent the note pass it on um this is something for for next year i sent it to you guys there was a mass energized has some state resources to run um kind of youth climate teams um to help uh they each take on a project and they get some funding to do that and i would really love wailing to like jump into that like there's i think six high schools doing it um including harvard nearby and uh medfield and newton and and then they get together as um teams to learn from each other and they get some mentoring and support so um i i think i don't even have sarah i tried to email sarah and it kind of bounced back at me so maybe kind of you want to get a moment you can send me sarah's email and be good to think about this um for next year how we can get the green team like if especially if there's something you're already doing or want to be doing you could get a little support for it yeah i can check with her about it yeah i think we've missed we've missed the deadline this year but it'd be for next year um once it comes out so that would that'd be great um because you guys are kind of winding down at this uh this point anything else um and you're what year are you now again so software we still got you for next year you can't you're not going to leave us so it would be good one of the things we're going to do and i know you're going to flip off but neil's going to talk about we're going to update our climate action mobilization plan over the spring summer and fall and it'd be really good copy to think about how we can engage high school students in that process so neil you know when we i'm hoping neil will take a little bit of a lead on this but like let's think about that maybe neil and cover you guys can talk and think about you know what that might look like i think we can certainly meet with the green team but maybe there's maybe i i'd like to sort of more broadly let kids in the school know we're doing it maybe there's some classes we can present to cavia i don't i'm not quite sure um the best way to think about that i don't know if you have any thoughts i think classes would be kind of difficult to arrange just was like it'd be a different schedule and it'd just be a lot of permission from the school so i don't know if they'd be done with that isn't there an environmental isn't there an ap environmental sciences class there is yeah we can think about it sometimes i just go to alice mizuguchi with such things like i just go to the central node and say we're doing this what are your thoughts but it would be i don't think you know we would want to engage the high school kids in the fall so i don't know neil or anybody else have thoughts about this um if you want i could definitely reach out to sarah snow i mean maybe we can do that but i don't know if we can do that but i don't know if we can do that maybe she would allow people to come into at least her classrooms um she did say there's a handful of english teachers that are very focused on sustainability so maybe they would be into the idea okay yeah i mean i would love to think about how we do that so you know olivia if you want to send her a note and copy neil and i just saying we're going to be updating it we'd love to find a process in the fall on how to engage high school students in addition to the green team mm-hmm do you think like a survey would be a good idea caviar do you think people would just ignore the survey um i can definitely send one out i usually get yeah i think a survey would be good people usually respond to those okay so we could think about how to integrate that in the process we're using okay idea olivia sarah snow she's the teacher for the ap environmental science then at the high school okay no no not environmental science she's an english teacher she's an english teacher she's the advisor to the green team clovis okay it has been for many years that i remember yeah and she like really helped launch the composting program at the high school and then she um took a little break during covid and sort of back now we haven't connected with her maybe maybe early in the fall we uh we should think about not we could invite her a meeting but maybe we can just olivia like have a just conversation with her with not just you but a couple of members for the committee and kind of think about or have her come to a meeting it's just the evening so i don't want to take her evenings okay all right um that's not good caviar you're welcome to listen but if you need to blip off for for homework that's fine so let me turn it over to olivia but should we just start with homework so then rachel could leave olivia what do you think yeah um rachel if you want to introduce yourself and share a little bit about what you're doing and what you're doing with the committee a little bit about homeworks and then field some questions i think that sounds good absolutely um thank you guys for having me i'm excited to be here and right off the top i wanted to ask um do i have a time limit here where am i on the agenda you you're on the agenda for 7 45 we're running late i mean i think we'd sort of allocated about um 15 10 or 15 minutes for this these agenda like olivia you have to allow way more time for each of these blocks like we're running for nine so you can't have you you allocated five minutes for this so okay yeah don't um 10 15 minutes yeah perfect no i so i i'm i'm resident of malden and i serve on my sustainability committee so i know i right off the top i like to ask because we have people running over going too short so yes i will introduce myself and then um i can launch and i have the questions olivia was so so helpful to send them over um beforehand so i i can run through those and perhaps open up the floor to any additional questions but i can run through my role and then homeworks a little bit more yeah that's that's right so guys olivia asked for questions i sent her a bunch of questions which are mine and ones that came up from the committee before everybody knows this is our mou with homeworks to promote uh home energy audits we've done this twice before once with nico and once with somebody else before that um so i think the goal is to see if we can do the best possible outreach we can do and make sure we're getting good metrics from homeworks about um you know engagement audits assessments being done and then work being completed we now can access some mass save data through their portal but for the first time in a while but it's just not timely so you know rachel finding a way to when we've done this before we had like every other meeting it's before we had sustainability staff we would just get an update um every two weeks you're doing probably something like that with olivia but maybe there's a way where you could just send olivia could just send i'm sure you're running a spreadsheet olivia could just forward that onto the committee okay over to you yeah that's did you want to pop in olivia oh um i don't know if you saw like speaking of i actually sent out um a spreadsheet rachel sent me today but i can put the link for that in the chat but i'll let rachel take over now i tried to open that as neil added an email and i couldn't so uh you need you need to show that here i think if you want us to and we need to find a link that works in the future rachel yes yeah i apologize if that's on if that's on my end i will resend it um make sure you guys can access it but yes so traditionally i just on the data point really quickly traditionally i would send out at the beginning of the month your monthly totals just everything from upcoming um he's home energy assessments uh performed he is upcoming and then if you guys have any particular statistics you're interested in like if um we we log you know other language speakers we log resident owner tenant you know things like that so if you want any specific statistics i'm happy to include those that's obviously up to you guys as as the committee so if and if monthly isn't enough we can we can absolutely move it to bi-monthly or or bi-weekly i always get those those mixed up anyway um you guys let me know as a committee but yes so i am rachel gunashekharan i am a partnership development manager at homeworks energy so my role is kind of acting i like to say as an account manager for our town and city partners i'm on a team of five and we have over 35 town and city partners in massachusetts and a few more additionally in connecticut we just started working in there as well as of last year and so yeah my role is really to build the marketing and outreach for our partner cities and towns in a few non-profits i will say and just help grow the mass save program and get some more really good energy efficiency works in our towns and cities and um a brief brief overview on homeworks energy we are the largest hpc in the mass save system last year we performed 33 000 home energy assessments and we're going to try to uh outreach that this year as well so lots going on um in the homeworks and mass save world as i'm sure you guys are all all staying uh staying up to date on that um so i will i will launch into the few questions and answers that i or i will launch into the answers i suppose of the questions i received and then i'll like i said i'll leave the floor open to any additional questions yeah rachel i just tried to do this and i think we have a couple of questions ready for you guys in the chat so you can maybe i could just if you would just explain to the audience what is the goal of the program right now and probably go through the list of things of things that you're working on but i think it's going to be a lot more complicated and we're at the very beginning of the year so it's going to be a lot more complicated than it is than it was when we started i think so and then and what i want to say is i think i like that because that's keeping the conversation going i don't think you guys have any questions we're going to move onto the next question and i do think it's going to be to the top so there's that's that's um Thank you. We'll be the IT team. Yes, of course. Okay. So some of the questions that arose when I had, how does the assessment differ from those done five years ago? And is there more advice on decarbonization? This is a yes and no. So yes, the assessments do change. We get usually like an annual update from the program administrators of MassSave on kind of new incorporations. And then all of our home energy assessments, of which we have a team that moves seasonally, but we have about 70 auditors in Massachusetts right now. And then they all get retrained, of course, on the updates as they come annually through MassSave. And so definitely we've seen in the last few years and more emphasis on decarbonization. And of course, emphasis on heat pumps and focusing more on heating and cooling electronics. So that's what I would say what the shift has been. Specifically, of course, I can't say exactly what's going in all the homes, but we definitely like one thing that we updated that the MassSave program updated was allowing time for the auditors to walk through utility bills and review utility bills through the actual home energy assessments and update energy costs and electrifications and what that could look like financially. So that's been a big one that came a couple of years ago. That's been really helpful. So I wouldn't say it's changed significantly. But there's definitely been some, I would say, refocusing on decarbon electrification. And then just a few, like, as the program ebbs and flows, as like we call them the instant saving measures, like the power strips, the light bulbs, things like that. Those have changed over the years as well. But for the most part, it's really. Where the question comes from is we've done this a bunch before. Like the last time we did it with NECO, I think we had 284 people sign up and we know exactly which outreach methods. We've done this a bunch before. And we know exactly what we used and what worked the best. Some people who had an audit done, an assessment done, you know, eight or nine years ago. You know, they sort of say to us, is it the same or has it changed at all? And it's like, that's the question we're trying to respond to in our outreach. So if we're doing, we have a bunch of outreach channels, but one is we have a newsletter from a community based group that goes to like 900 people who tend to care about this stuff. So, you know, you know, Olivia put in. Some generic text, but I'd like to put in something like people ask, is it any different? And we had colleagues in Sudbury who did it just a couple of weeks ago and they said, yeah, not different at all. There was really nothing new for me. You know, the, you know, incentives might change, but the heat pump incentives. So is I, you say it's doing stuff on decarbonization, but I don't think it's really significant or specific because it's the question we're getting. Yeah, so we can, I can work on how we can kind of structure that and market that, that language a lot more with Olivia. One thing I will say that we love to push is to be eligible for, for the incentives and rebates. You have to have a home energy assessments within the last two years. So it's kind of a prereq. It never hurts. So that's usually the language in the way we market it is you, you have to have it to take advantage. So you might as well do it anyway. And who knows what you could find. So I will, I will work if that's kind of the angle we're looking for. I will work with Olivia on how we're going to angle. That okay. I will move on to the second question. If insulation is indicated, how does homework have to do it? Or can the owner get other bids? Yeah. So residents are absolutely not locked into using us. The assessment is obviously no cost, no obligation. That's very much heralded in the massive program. So if insulation or weatherization is recommended, which it almost always is, the homeowner could absolutely choose to get other bids. That's not a problem at all. But of course, one of the advantages of going with. The HPC or the person you got the home energy assessment from, as we handle the massive rebate process on their behalf, which can simplify things considerably. And then on the condo, I know there was a question of condos specifically. I did wanted to know, and it sounds like you guys are pretty well informed of that at homeworks. We do one to four unit buildings so we can work with the owner or the tenants or what have you for five or more. We refer residents to the appropriate massive contract already working pretty intensively with rise and Todd over there on the five plus. Perfect. So we're so OK. So you guys know an outreach with all our condo associations to rise. So yes. OK, perfect. Yeah. But yeah, they can. We always emphasize throughout the entire process that they can go to whomever, especially when we move into like the heat pump side. And that's where prices really start to differ between companies and otherwise. So we actually it's a part of our process that we say go out and get more bids than just us to see where we land. So yes, absolutely. Let's see. I will move on to you. What assessment and advice is provided on heat pumps? Does homework install them or refer to others? Yeah. So heat pumps, like I said, now are a much bigger part of the conversation than they used to be, and they're part of every assessment conversation. Yeah. Our specialists are usually looking specifically for signs of a that a heating or cooling system is outdated and efficient, running on fossil fuels, electric resistance, things like that. And they're trained to introduce heat pumps options, whether it's a ductless mini splitter central system. And if the resident is interested, they could schedule, of course, a no cost HVAC consultation right there during the assessment while the specialist is still in the home. And I pulled a I put a statistic for you guys about 40% of our assessments result in HVAC referral, and the majority of those are specifically for heat pumps, interestingly, and we do handle all of our installations in house, which is actually somewhat unusual among massive contractors. So we do we have our own HVAC team. We I would say we very, very, very rarely subcontract out. We only do if if the need requires it. If we have too much demand for our people in house, but when its capacity issue we do, but that means we usually move faster than other organizations as well. So yes, we work internally and we're trained on our all of our people are trained on heat pump education. And the next question is successful outreach efforts and other towns. What do we have planned in Wayland? Yes. So like I mentioned, we are partnered with over thirty five other towns and cities in Massachusetts. So we're very lucky that we are all in the same. And then I just want to ask you one thing. Well, yeah. He does have a plan to replace the HVAC program? that we have some pretty good historical knowledge to build off of, and our most effective partnerships really tend to combine a few things. I like to say the buckets are direct mail that goes out to all eligible residents, real physical presence in the community, field marketing and things like that, and then door-to-door canvassing and targeted neighborhoods. So those are the three buckets we really work out of. I will say social media is always a bucket we could toss in there. It's super, super dependent on the city or town if they have an engaged social media presence. So that's, I like to say, a side bucket. But specifically, we work through mailers is almost always the intro we do for Wayland, which we did earlier this year, which had great results. And then we'll move more into focusing on field marketing, getting into your events. We are going to be regular at the senior center and hopefully the transfer station as well, which we're super excited about. That's always a really, really a place to get great progress for us. And then, yeah, we could discuss canvassing. And if if, you know, the town is interested in that later. So those are kind of our three buckets and proven success metric and all those. Yes. Oh, Ellen, you're muted, I think. Yeah. One of the things that as you when Nico was with us last time, they actually had quite good success canvassing. We had tremendous response to something in the back of the census mailer, which comes out in January because everyone opens it and it's on the back side. So if you're still with us in January, we can think we have to put the text in. Oh, fantastic. But the canvassing was very successful. And one thing we have wanted to do is target neighborhoods that are on not on gas. So they're either getting oil or the electric resistance. So they're prime target for the AC argument. And so we we know where those neighborhoods are. And I think we as a committee have wanted to make sure there's some focus there because it's a, you know, it's a. slightly different set of arguments if there's no gas in the house about how the economics work for heat pumps and certainly new with the new hp1 rate which we're all very familiar with and that's especially an issue now because the uh i'm i'm hearing from others i i have gas but i'm hearing oil latest delivery prices are near six dollars a gallon people are not happy who are on oil right now yes neil um yeah so rachel is do you have does your contract have specific goals and how does that factor into your compensation uh specific goals that we created with wayland yeah actually you know what that is a fantastic question olivia did we ever build out those metrics did you put them in the rfp do you remember off the top of your head um we did and i can find the rfp while you're talking if you want me to perfect yes we did i feel i feel i feel very confident we can exceed or beat the goals definitely because we could push in a various numbers of way like i mentioned previously um as far as compensation goes so we um we don't get paid or pay you whatever for there's no financial transaction here so we just love partnering with towns and cities because it gives us more credibility um with people in your community it's just a much more effective way for us to market and then we dedicate usually there's a whole spreadsheet of formulas that i don't understand but we usually dedicate twenty to thirty thousand dollars on marketing money on our behalf to the town again because it's just money and we don't have to pay for it so we don't have to pay for it and then we dedicate twenty to thirty thousand dollars on marketing money on our behalf to the town again because it's just money and we don't have to pay for it so we don't have to pay for it more effective as a partnership than us just cold outreaching to people in your community so they get paid by mass save neil for each but oh but i don't care who's paying them i mean is there is the compensation based on performance or or not no okay it's based on they did the assessment and then for like insulation they get paid a per unit cost and we're negotiating with mass save but there's no feedback loop about performance i i do maybe to take neil's point maybe it would be it would be i guess we'd be curious to understand how you get feedback like did people have a good experience with you like how how will we you know we'll hear complaints we probably won't hear you know i had a great experience just taking neil's point how do you do you know what do you guys do about that customer satisfaction how do you yes yeah we we have um regular touch points we do surveys after every visit after every phone call things like that and i can probably it won't have the same impact monthly but maybe quarterly i can collect all the surveys that we do receive and send it back to you guys so we track everything we have a head of customer success who's like totally good at this kind of stuff so yeah we track everything and we have a net promoter score of an eight right now for 2026 which is really high for the mass save average that's like you know on a scale of one to ten would you recommend this to a friend and we're very proud of that metric just as an aside um yes and i see another another hand raised i can move on to that question lois yeah uh it's quickly about the major content you mentioned rachel um do you do do you send a postcard to all residents what how do you typically target residents yeah yeah so we have a direct mail manager who's really like on the nose of trends what works in different cities and communities so we almost always start off with like a traditional you know eight and a half by eleven paper veiler which we did like i earlier this year and then we can talk about yeah getting creative with postcards um i have in a couple other my partner towns we i love sending out like a seasonal letter so like spring is here you know think about springing into home energy assessments or something like that so we usually do aim for like a mailer or some sort of direct mail quarterly and that's influenced by my direct mail manager who like i said she just keeps uh herself educated on what the trends are and what really works in different cities and communities did that answer that question yeah and do you filter the homes based on okay they already had an assessment they don't need it anymore so you take the data from my safe and you just filter out people who don't need it uh yes and if they're eligible so if we could tell or as far as if you know they have gas and electric through national grid or ever source so they have to be we don't send obviously mailers to people who aren't eligible for the program because that would be cool yeah and then in terms think about a slightly different of wording for people who don't have gas rachel i don't know if you've done that in any other communities because we have about 16 you know we're 4 800 households we've got 1600 households who are on oil and not on gas so it's um you know there there's a different set of value propositions particularly around heat pumps for them yeah yeah absolutely i can't think of anything off the top of my head that language we've used but i will i'm going to take a note and ask my some of my partner teams yeah and we've worked on some language i mean like paul dale and our committee was here not here tonight was kind of thinking about that and i think had some text and we'd be happy to partner with you on that at a committee level um we got a fair amount of expertise on this committee i love it let me just jump jump in really quick so for the when we partnered with homeworks um late november early december um in the in the letter and i can forward this to everyone um they already homeworks had a presence in whalen reporting that there were 45 home experts who had gas at home and that was the third time i got that energy assessments that year, 2025, and they projected to have 65 in total by the end of 2025. They had 13 weatherization installs in one HVAC project. So with those in mind of what they were already doing in Wayland, while signing on with us, they wrote that given historical data and other municipalities similar to Wayland, they expect to complete 225 home energy assessments in the one-year partnership with Wayland. And granted, we can extend that if we want to. Like Rachel said, it's not a financial agreement, so it's really not binding. It just depends how long we want to work together. And then they also want to yield roughly 26 weatherization installations, 32 moderate income turnkey projects, and then 30 HVAC installations. So I'll definitely work with Rachel on getting those spreadsheets so everyone can see them so we can see how we're actually comparing with the goals. And I'll forward that to you guys as well, the RFP that I have from like November, December. That's great. Thank you. Thank you, Olivia. Perfect. Shall I move on to the next question? Fabulous. Okay. How often do you provide the town updates on numbers engaged, signed up, pursuing weatherizations? Oh, perfect. Okay. So yeah, previously mentioned, I send out monthly reports by a spreadsheet. I will say, I should say this is a very, very potential, a side. We are working internally on a dashboard for our partner. So it can be a live update that connects to our Salesforce that's very much in progress and beta testing with a couple other towns. So if that does end up rolling out on our size and our IT manager manages to figure that out, then I will absolutely let you guys know. That's a service we're providing, but that won't be for a number of months. So for now, I send out a monthly spreadsheet. And like I said, whatever statistics or anything interesting you guys want to know, tell me and I'll include it.
Um, just one thing would be interesting. We don't have that much language diversity here, but it would be interesting. Um, the percentage homes that are, that are seniors, um, and you're doing a lot of dedicated outreach through COA. So I think that might be interesting for us because we've the committee and some people aligned with the committee have been doing something at the COA and just be, that's one thing I think that might be interesting. Yeah, absolutely. I could include that. Perfect. Okay. I will move on to, it looks like the last, the last question. How can we integrate your energized wheel and heat pump and solar coaches into the process? Yeah, I, I am happy to include whomever, however, engage, however you guys want. Uh, this is something we've done successfully in other communities as well. And it's, it's one of my favorite parts of honestly a strong municipal partnership. Um, like for, for example, in Arlington, we set up, um, an automated follow-up email that goes out to every resident who completes an assessment with us and mentions their version of, uh, their electrify Arlington program. So, so we could build something similar with that. Um, in Malden, we're actually helping them build out their clean energy coaches program. So that's another, we connect with them. They have a direct pipeline to me. So we're building out kind of like a, almost a collaborative approach on that as well. And we're happy to include information about, you know, solar coaching resources or what, what have you and assessment materials on your landing page. However, so we are more than happy to promote and collaborate. Great. I mean, I'm happy to work with you on that. If you go to energized Wayland.org, homepage, there are four buttons under the pictures and it's like, sign up for a solar coach, sign up for a heat pump coach. And that takes you right to a Google form to sign up. And we have what time about four or five heat pump coaches, and we have two solar coaches. So we have plenty capacity on the coaching. Um, and we've probably coached over 120 people over the years, uh, in just, and we've coached hundreds in the solar. Um, so, you know, I think it's helpful. Someone might get, Hey, you sort of think, are they just trying to upsell me a heat pump? We can refer them to heat pump coach. And that, that person, Tom Clovis, and we have many others can really talk through with them system and get multiple quotes. So we can get people across the finish line. We just had a heat pump webinar with four or five other towns through plugin Metro west. And there's a good recording to that. So that could also be in your thing. Like if you want to listen to a Wayland sponsored, so maybe I'll get your email and we can communicate about that. But that would be great. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Um, no, we're happy to participate. We've done like in Newton, we partnered with them on their heat pump pizza party. So we did like a presentation on heat pumps and then they had like another specialist there. So yeah, we love this stuff. Happy to happy to collaborate. Great. Perfect. Well, I that's the end of the questions I was sent, but I'm happy to answer anymore. The only other thing that might be helpful. We do send up the energized newsletter, like once a month testimonials. That's been helpful. So if you have a client that's gone through and you think, oh, this is a really good one, would they be willing to have like a paragraph in their picture? I do think people respond to seeing their neighbors having done things. We have a way to get that out. You know, Olivia, I don't know how comfortable the town would be putting that in the newsletter, but I think it'd be a great one, but the energized Wayland newsletter, we've done that tons. And we also, you know, um, can post that in, uh, our most active Facebook pages within community forum, which has about 4,000 people on it. Um, you know, as I say, there's 4,800 households, so that's pretty good, um, pretty good, um, participation. And that, that is just a good way of continuing to do that, Tom. Um, yeah, Rachel Clovis and I are members of the heat smart Alliance. Uh, we're volunteer coaches. Um, I don't recall hearing about your organization at meetings of the smart Alliance. Have you got, um, interaction with us at some level? That is a great question. I don't believe so. I've heard about it personally through my work with Malden, but I don't know if we've engaged them through homework. All right. Well, we are, um, again, we're a volunteer heat pump coaching organization. Most of us are retired engineers, so we're pretty, um, savvy technically. And, um, we are always speaking for, uh, people who are interested in our services. So, um, fantastic. Yeah. We, we ought to have a, have a link there. Um, we would love that's something absolutely we would love to promote. Yeah. If I can get your, your email, um, I'll make a connection. Yeah. I mean, for Wayland, I'd like them to go to the energized Wayland page to request the coaching, because then we can track them. But in the other communities you're working with, you know, the heat, smart, reliance is a great resource of people. Um, that's annoying in the chat is do you guys have trouble? I try to copy it and I can't copy something from the chat into strange. I think I just got my, uh, I'm hesitant to put, I just got an alias made as well that I believe should be active by now because of you guys seem to do that in the chat. Can you guys copy it? You never seem to copy it from the chat. Um, didn't work. For me either. Well, um, can you, um, just Olivia, send it in a follow-up email. I think that'd be easier for people then for making a typo. Yes. Not my, not my lengthy last name. Yeah. You'll be there for a couple hours. Oh, but Olivia, if you could do that, that'd be helpful. Yep. Definitely. I will do that. Great. Thanks. Other questions for Rachel. Like we're thrilled. I think we have a monthly meeting. So I think looking at the spreadsheet monthly would be great. And also not just the spreadsheet, but maybe a little write-up from you and like, here's what we did for outreach. This is what we found productive. Um, and, um, we can, um, also make you aware of other, uh, places and other, um, strategies that have worked before I sent the PowerPoint deck from the last one we did with Nico. So she has that on what we did and what worked. So, and take a look at that. Um, Clovis. Yeah. Um, so you got me thinking, you know, what, as, as you said, people want to install heat pumps. Well, if they want to benefit from the massive rebate, if they're eligible, they have to do the, um, assessment and then improvement when it's more than a thousand dollars. Um, so that's kind of a, I think it's perceived as an extra cost, but then honestly, I've done it myself in 2019 and I could see maybe 20% reduction in my gas bill. So there is a, there is a benefit that comes in quickly. Um, so I'm, I'm thinking, um, to present that as a, you know, um, you know, to, you know, turnover time or return on investment. Um, and also I'm, I'm curious more generally as to people asking for an assessment, what's their trigger is that because they need to have an HVAP upgrade or they are just curious. And yeah, I'm curious, you know, what type of people, uh, ask for an assessment and what's their primary reason outside of a need to, uh, an interest to install a heat pump potentially. That is such an excellent question. And I'm, I'm, I'm not sure that we capture that specifically. I'm just thinking like, as they sign up for a home energy assessment, we don't ask specifically what your interest was, but I bet if you're curious about that, I, I feel very confident that our, we have brand ambassadors and they're the ones who, you know, are tabling at our regular events, they're out in the communities. And I bet they would have anecdotal evidence of why people are coming to them. So if that's something you guys are curious, I could definitely send a message out to my field marketing team and say like, what do you think is the most common reason? Cause they're the ones who interact directly most with customers. You know, I'm, I'm a little broader, but yeah, that would be a really curious question. And as far as I should say, this is also a semi answer to your previous point. We have, um, like a bank of statistics we build off of in all of our marketing, you know, we track, um, like one of, one of the ones I love to pop in RFPs is like, uh, the percentage increase of partnering with an HVAP. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, we had an HPC, like with us as like a year before, when you weren't partnering with an H, HPC, like in Arlington in particular, we had a 400% increase in HEAs. So we have like a whole bank of things like that that we can include in marketing as well. I hope that answered your question. One of the things we have is we have the local newspaper called the Wayland post. They only write articles if it really has a Wayland slant. So I think it would, might be helpful to think about an article for the Wayland post and, um, you know, know steve and i in good touch with june the editor there it has to have a so we we could talk about the um partnership and the the services and then it'd be good to include a testimonial in that like a picture of someone who's gone through and so you know we lose we lose sort of readability in the summer so maybe that's a september article we want to run um but maybe you could be on the lookout for a i don't think they'll publish it if you write it but you know steve if we write it bill or if we write it um the committee writes it then and we can uh talk about this and maybe we can include some interesting statistics at that point this is how many been done this is a growing wave senior like what you know something that's sort of interesting yes average carbon reduction i love to toss that one in yeah and we we've heard in the past when we talked to kit at with the laminar collaborative i don't know if this is true for you guys but heapum installation prices tend to be higher in the summer and lower the falls are really good time for installation um when we look at average prices across lots of um hvac and solar so spring is really the best time like right now yeah they're not going to get absolutely the best time of year yeah not going to happen if you haven't started yet you're not going to get it all right this has been very helpful rachel i think it's terrific and maybe we could we don't need to torment you every month but like maybe every other month you could join us for 10 minutes and give us a flavor on what's going on do you do you got do you all think that would be helpful other committee members can i get some thumbs up thumbs down i don't care sense of it not a voting member but i'm yeah i want to plan on every other month to have you give us a little we'll look at the spreadsheet every month but we could have you join us every other month that sounds great i'd love to great thank you so much perfect all right i i enjoyed meeting you all thank you for the great questions yeah really looking forward to some great energy efficiency work thank you perfect talk soon olivia let's go back to olivia update on the south asian compost event um that was so i held that on april 12th um i had received the um community education grant through mass save so half was funded by eversource half was funded by national grid um and the purpose of the grant was to work with a certain sector of the community and then also work across age groups so i hosted an event for whalen south asian community because besides whalen's white population that's the next largest um group of people so um i opened it up through um yamini she hosts the whalen uh women of whalen podcast excuse me um she's great she has a ton of connects connections so she was extremely helpful um there's a desi community facebook group so she posted through um she posted on her um women of whalen instagram ellen posted the event as well um i posted on um the town newsletter um but so basically at the new council on aging building on april 12th um it was a pretty decent turnout there were about like 20 to 30 people um families with young kids um so we did a compost powerpoint the importance of composting how easy it is to compost out home benefits of doing it um there's a lot of people that were there that already are composting at home which was nice it also gave me another platform to talk about homework so i gave out some flyers to people encouraged them to do some home energy assessments um there julie had gotten a coupon for people to work with black earth for at-home um pickup so people took some coupons which was good um we did um for the south asian community and marigolds are a culturally significant flower so while i was presenting we were painting flower pots and then we planted seeds just to engage the kids while we were talking and stuff um and then the other half of the event yamini's husband is a yoga instructor so he did um some breath work and yoga for like sustainable health practices to kind of correlate with sustainability in the home um and then there was also some food at the end of the event too so we covered a lot of things but i would say it was a success and they were all very excited to be there it seemed um i got some positive feedback and definitely um hoping to do more events like that because it was really nice to meet those residents and see some younger faces some older faces and just have like families come
questions for livia on that okay livia why don't we just go to the next one that you can talk about which is the green communities grant application which what if you guys recall we now qualify as a climate leader but we still haven't hit our cap as a green community so we had a chance to apply for another final slug of money before we hit the cap at a million bucks um so olivia can tell us what we applied for um so that was something julie was leading but um to touch briefly on that we are working on getting new more efficient lighting in the library town building and then in the middle school so we did have a surveyor go through and identify which pictures we should upgrade so in the process of getting the survey results back and then also like purchasing new fixtures and that's that's pretty much it um wait i'm confused julie when i spoke to her yesterday said the green communities grant included three things two evs and then some lighting at the town building that's what she put in for like 125 000 is that okay no i guess i didn't realize that we were using the green community application for the evs as well i thought we were just doing the evip for those so i guess we're we're doing both okay that's right she told me it would be good julie libya if you get to have a copy of what was submitted i'm sure it's somewhere in the drive for the town it would be good for you to have that yeah um definitely still like getting my bearings because like you said this all went down on monday but yeah definitely a good idea um so to speak to that we are getting a new fully electric um van from one of our facilities guys so um we're gonna do half funding from the massachusetts evit grant and then half the funding from the green communities leftover money and then um we are looking to install um two charging stations at the police station they're blank chargers um around town you'll notice most of them are charge point um we had spoke with charge point and blink and julie and i had found that blink was a little more efficient um faster charging capacity so we decided to go with blink and try out a different provider um so we're going to be installing two at the police station um they're not going to be open to the public but they're just for supervisor vehicles so they're not emergency response cars but more like traveling cars for the policemen um and they are going to be purchasing two electric vehicles um but that's going to be paid for through the evit grant and then their own funding i believe so i just want to say it's great guys the current police chief is all in on ev stuff figuring out a way to use evs when it's not the you know pursuit vehicles or what the ones that have all the computers on the inside so that is really uh really great um that we're moving ahead on our limited fleet yeah um and i think that's that's all i really had to say about that but um going to offer as much support as i can to mark kebert the stand-in chief and it seems like he's got a good handle on things but um he's going to be applying for those two vehicles so it's exciting like you said any questions for olivia on that i think it'd be nice olivia maybe we could again i'm all in on the wayland post here maybe we could write an article like steve just thinking about the the you know what i think it'd be nice to hear for this like with olivia like you know our town fleets becoming more electrified and just what are the cars that are all electric and olivia be nice to say like right now with the price of gas like what we're saving as a town because we have these evs so i just wonder i know you got a lot going on but steve maybe there's a way you could work with olivia and just you know we we have the block four we have the two original leafs and now we have these like it'd be nice to you know showcase some of that what others think about that yeah olivia i put my email in the in the chat um if you have like all the all the metrics and and info that uh ellen just talked about if you have that and you just want to send it to me in bullets i can certainly write up an article i think we have some pictures like of the elite charging and a picture of like the mock we have the mock ear whatever it's called charging and then um that'd be great if you you know olivia could send some stuff and steve can turn it in steve's relationship with june at the post okay yeah that sounds good thank you steve if we if we want to write about savings uh from evs i think it's very important to include maintenance savings uh as you know the owner of one and a half electric vehicles um the um maintenance level on an electric car is nil compared to gas cars so um so you need to capture that steve you can pull that data right from the green energy consumers alliance web page on their drive green site and it gives you a stat you can pull that has a good source for it what was the name of that again green green energy consumer alliance and when you go on that you you click on drive green i think the estimate is you save at least 300 bucks a year on maintenance costs on average hey tom do you find that um people ask you silly questions about your electric vehicle like well so how often do you have to change spark plugs that kind of thing i've had a couple of those questions and you know it's like what spark plugs well since uh um one of my my vehicles is the half it's a prius prime yeah me too there actually are spark plugs yes there are but um i also like to talk about how i only change the oil on that car about every 30 000 miles or so because so much of the usage is on electric so you know if the engine isn't running you really don't have to change its oil yes especially since uh if you if you bring it to the dealer they specify uh synthetic oil which yes extends it even more anyway off track but okay so so steve you got two article assignments but i think you know we've been chastised appropriately that we don't do a good job of getting the word out so like if you write something like that we can also like steve posted in whaling community forum like check out our fleets getting electrified so let's think about that as well yep okay all right olivia is that your stuff is that kind of where we ended up i think so um yep over to you yep so i'm taking over some of julie's stuff and my stuff so you all probably got if i assume everyone here signed up for the town newsletter do people not get it who doesn't if you don't get it olivia can you tell them how they sign up for it um does anyone not receive the newsletter i think john doesn't get it do you get i'm not sure i do yeah i'm not sure i mean i i assume you don't mean the whaling post i do get that no no um i can put i'll put a link um in the chat because you on the links in the chat you can't copy them so it's it's not that helpful okay um tomorrow i have a ton of emails website it's right on the front front page last i saw of what website the town of website whaling.us someone look at it so i would encourage it um it's a good way so if you if you get that newsletter as i do um we are rolling out the new version of the aggregation plan i'm not going to review what we picked because we discussed that at the last meeting so by the end of may we're on the new plan so that went on in the newsletter and there's a letter that will be arriving in people's mailboxes shortly it's already come i already got it you already got it um and um there will be um it'll be in the pack it's posted we by legally we have to do a whole bunch of outreach and we're doing it and there's a dedicated outreach at also the coa and i've asked marlena who is kind of the best person for us at peregrine i want to connect her with mora who runs who does all the fuel assistance outreach at coa so she's like a um neil i know and you know used to be in that right more is great and talks to a lot of people and i want to make sure she really understands this the website's great has q a has all the questions i'm sure olivia with that said you're still going to get questions so if you're not totally comfortable answering send the website but also practice with marlena like role play with marlena so i mean i'd like our town staff to to be able to answer some questions and not just pawn them off when we send them the website you should feel like you can answer the question why we are in one program instead of three um so be great marlene is terrific so that is rolling out um and that will i'm sure we'll get questions and that's happening um by the way let me let me interject here uh the price the new price number one i first saw that this morning in the in the patch um rather than in the official email i got later on but um when i uh when when my my third party rate expired last december and i went shopping around for new uh third party rates the best available was about 14 and a half i mean right right in the range that we we just got so that's you know what the market is right at the moment so we we have a reasonable deal i think yeah and we have it for 25 months you know and then you know it's not going to escalate it's really locked in you're not going to get screwed over by a third party provider that you didn't read the fine print on um you read the fine print but a lot of people don't tom um yeah i think it's a good deal so we'll we'll you know marlene is great and we'll have her maybe in a two months give us an update on kind of questions they're getting or there aren't choices people are making so we can see what happens with enrollment um before julie left um she and i were working on we got a request from carol martin the select board to revise the charge for the committee if you remember we were set up as the energy committee many of you have been here for a while remember we changed the energy and climate committee and then there's some text about like what we're doing and who we do it with and carol thinks it needs updating so neil and i are going to take a shot at that um one of the things and we'll um give it to olivia and mike to make sure they're okay with it i think we'll make it true to what we're doing guys and it's got some stuff in there that says it's going to take a little bit longer but we're going to take a little bit longer but we're going to take a little bit longer but we're going to if we're doing any project we have to go to the select board for approval to like investigate anything and that feels overly constraining to me um so i would like to loosen that up a little bit um you know obviously we don't spend money without checking with somebody but we investigate lots of things um so the one thing that we do need to clean up are the terms the terms are that need to be cleaned up relate to our associate members so john that's you so i will work with you offline if you might remember we don't on the on the website we don't see when when your term started we have john and paul as associate members now right olivia nobody else right so we're going to keep those john you're muted sorry kavia is also listed as an associate right but that's our student rep so i understand yeah so the two adults she has to be associated because she's not old enough to vote but for these two carol suggested that we not write them as like a position for soul or a position for connections with state policy that we just make it general so we don't have to update it but um i think we do need terms for these um so i will be in touch john with you and with paul um so unless others want to get involved i think neil and i are comfortable doing this is that okay with we'll have it reflect what we're going to do and try to give us as much flexibility but stay you know we're advisory to the select board and we understand that okay hi i was hand raised sorry uh alan did i see a number of people's terms are expiring here in in two months yep julie's been in touch with us and tom is happy to re-up and i'm going to re-up i think those are the two terms expiring and also paul she was in touch with everybody i haven't heard what paul said
glad you're here this is a reminder that you're all supposed to do this ethics thing in a powerpoint which i'm a little delinquent on um i don't know olivia if you have the link on doing that to do the um powerpoint deck that we have to do around conflict of interest do you have that you probably you probably have reminders in your email yeah but i'm uh you know i get 500 emails a day um i i do have it i didn't is yours the same as the staff i can i can look into that i don't know i or we can just email trudy i'll just email trudy right now for the link um okay i i don't mind asking tomorrow it's not a big deal all right i'll do it right now that's okay i'll just ask her to send the link and then you can resend it to everybody would be but maybe i'll just uh copy the whole commit committee and the i'm going to bcc so you can't mess up on the um ellen i just found it when i forwarded to you uh why don't you just send it to everybody john don't send it to me okay you have thank you john just send it to everybody if you haven't done it then you do need to do this powerpoint and take the little questions and get up to date on your conflict of interest stuff clovis yeah it's just a silly question because today was voting day or a bunch of boards and so then i'm confused is that because it's a committee not a board that it goes from designation from the member of select boards okay it's not an elected position this is an appointed position sort of like conservation commission so some boards like planning are elected and some boards are appointed and why is that i don't know i'm we're advisor i don't know i don't really know i don't really know why okay but i i guess it's the same across all the towns i don't really know why but i guess it's the same across all the towns other towns i i can't answer that for other towns okay most energy committees are not elected i don't i'm unaware of any that are elected i think some by state i'm guessing by state legislation but i'm guessing have to be elected and not appointed but i don't know the answer to the question i think that's correct the ones that are elected are are set up to be that way by state law it's like school committee planning but the other ones can be appointed by the select board
so that's interesting or or another board potentially right i mean an an elected board can establish an appointed committee on um but uh to be elected i think it has to be established by the legislature that sounds right but i don't know for a fact sounds right well i was it's not as it's not as permanent let's say having your an energy and climate committee or sustainability committee as having a school department i guess right right the select board just choose to disband this committee whenever they feel like it okay um solar bylaw we had a long discussion about this at a previous meeting this is basically at hold i think to put together a meeting of julie and me and the town planner and the chair of the planning board i think mike fea was going to join and julie's now not here i talked to mike about it there was a date scheduled and i never heard about a meeting so um we're not in a rush we're waiting for the state as john has advised us and we've all read to come up with model bylaw language so we're not interested in working on a bylaw until we see the state guidance on this and just be a waste of time so it feels like a fall you know it's a fall activity and to decide if we want to do it and if we want to do it we need to follow the state guidance bill you look like you want to say something yeah i was just going to say make sure we've coordinated what you just said with the planning uh committee because otherwise they might think we're not interested and they may come up with another article like they did last time yeah i've been on emails with the chair of the planning board and the planner perfect expressing my views and i've copied michael mccall and julie was on it and mike julie's not here now so i don't know how we're going to staff this at the staff level whether that's olivia i think it's it's just too many things are falling onto olivia's lap is kind of the challenge here but i don't i think we'll have someone on board by the time we have to do that bill in the fall okay yep just want to make sure we stay in touch with what they're doing because i don't you know 100 you know sure that we won't go without it if we're not careful yeah yep i hear you um the last thing on plug-in updates we had a webinar on the it was a couple weeks ago tom on um where bob zogg who's great from the heat smart alliance and kit whoo from laminar spoke and then someone from abode spoke and we had tom was a all the testimonials he'd say it was a six town effort but three of the testimonials all from wayland we had tom and his duckless mini split and talking about her system and and then a guy had put in a geothermal system. So big Wayland representation. I think there were about 45, 50 people signed up and maybe there were like 30 on the call. I counted, I just sent a follow-up email to everyone who went. And I think I counted like 14 from Wayland. That included our testimonial speakers. But we're still getting some decent attendance. The next plugin event will be, I think a webinar on EVs. Seems sort of timely with gas prices being so high to do one on EVs to kind of review what the models are like. And I think people are asking, well, if the tax credits are gone, are these still a reasonable deal? And actually a lot of cars coming off leases soon. So there are some interesting deals to be had. So I think we're going to try and do one in early June on this with these six towns for plugin. And we'll have someone from the Green Energy Consumers Line stock probably, Anna Vanderspring, and she's great. So... So that's plugin. The other part of plugin, you might recall that we committed to doing outreach to condo boards. And I got to say, it's been great. Like people really responded. I think I've gotten three condo associations to sign up for energy audits. We have about seven in town, three to sign up with energy audits with Rise, who's the mass save vendor doing the multifamily work bill. And we have a good contact there, Todd. And he's like, look, if you don't think we can, we can help you. Like, just let us come out. Let us make that call. You don't make the call. Let us go on site. We can also advise you on EV incentives. If you have a more centralized parking situation. There are a couple of condos that honestly have done so much, they don't need it. They're like, they're way ahead. So people have been great. Which ones are those? Which ones are the ones that are way ahead? I got to pull, I'll have to send a follow-up email. I have to pull up the Google sheet, Tom. But Dan Schimmel is the guy I've been talking to. But they've done a lot of work on lighting and they've done insulation and they've done, most of those places don't have centralized heating system. Each unit has their own. So it's usually insulation, air sealing and lighting. That's really what they've been able to do. But they'd already done a bunch of stuff. So, you know, in talking it through, it seemed like there was less available. We've had really no luck. Anne Harris was working on this, but I think she's had a hard time. Following up, we tried to reach all the senior living places in town. And if they were built before 2015, Todd's fairly certain there's savings to be had there. But we thought those were going to be easier because you kind of centralized person. Somebody answers the phone. You could get to the facility, you know, the property manager. But often there's a different owner and the property manager pretty focused on fixing broken stuff. So Anne definitely needs to make some more calls. I don't know if... Anybody else in the committee would be interested in making calls. I found this task, I was sort of dreading it and actually it was quite delightful. So does anybody else have any bandwidth or interest in making a couple of calls for us?
Okay, I'm going to put it back in Anne's lap. So that continues to chug along pretty well. I think we are going to... I had a conversation with the moderator of Wayland Community Forum because we always post events on Facebook, like in the moms group, Wayland Community Forum. And we use our outreach channels like Women of Wayland, the podcast and a bunch of other stuff. And I was... I'd like to post more stuff about not just events, but like, have you considered a heat pump or here's some neighbors doing it, not just an event, just reminding people, you know, people need to hear about it a bunch of times. And I was worried about overstaying our welcome and like getting booted off because I was over posting. And she said, no, do it. So, you know, it might be interesting Clovis and Tom to think about if there's someone that was recently coached that had a good experience that we could, you know, highlight them in a social media post if they were willing. Cause I think when neighbors see neighbors talking about, had a good experience with coaching, it's more likely that someone will sign up for coaching. So, you know, as two of the heat pump coaches, maybe you and Clovis can talk to Anne and then, you know, Paul, Dale, like just think about the last six or eight months, someone's gotten coached that we could highlight in a post and we could also highlight them in Energize Wayland.
Just to add, I mentioned once people have their setup installed, it's hard to get them to provide feedback. They no longer need help, I think. So they are less engaged and then they are gonna, there is gonna be word of mouth. If they are happy with the service delivered, that's for sure. But then posting to social media, that would be a stretch in terms of asking. I think we would have to post that we help this person. We can't, you're right, they're never gonna post. But the question is maybe in the process of coaching, it's like, hey, if we have having a good experience, would you mind if I shared your name in a post to Wayland Community Forum to say that you benefited, you know, I just coached this person and they started, they, you know, weren't sure what to do, but we ended up getting a couple of good quotes for many splits and they're moving ahead and another satisfied customer or something. I agree with you, it's gonna be hard to get them to post, but we got a way to socialize this more, guys. I'll try. But my experience when I try to send, you know, the survey feedback at the end to wrap up and close the coaching engagement, majority of the time, it's a couple of times before you actually get the feedback. And it's gonna be the same, you know, asking, oh, could we use your name for a post? You're gonna really need to be resilient, I'll say, in getting a consent. I don't know, Tom, what's your experience? Yeah, I'm, in fact, I have been hoping to make a couple of presentations to the HeatSmart Alliance, the coaching group, with results of projects that I've worked on, you know, a year or two later, how did this actually work out? And I haven't yet gotten enough feedback to do that. So, yeah, people, I think once they have a system installed
and everything is just jumping along, they aren't as interested in it anymore at some level. It's a done deal. So, but. But yeah, we really ought to, I mean, you know, as an engineer, closing a loop is a wonderful thing to do. So I'm still trying. Okay. Well, Tom, like we could also, you know, you and Anne both gave testimonials, maybe we could work on just writing those up a little and, you know, I could post them, you know, from Energize Wayland to say, you know, this is someone who did a heat pump and then, you know, you have a couple of good little stats on yours, how much you saved and, you know, the comfort, like, you know, for a social media post, Tom's got to be short, you know, three sentences, but, so maybe we could work on that. And I forget Clovis, do you have a heat pump or are you just coaching? I forget. Yeah, I migrated last year and now I'm coaching. And did you get coaching for that? I forget Clovis. Yeah, and I gave a feedback on the Energize Wayland website. Okay, but maybe we should try, I can follow up with you guys to maybe see if we could post in social media about that. You know, these are two people who got heat pumps and saw the benefits and are now coaching. Like we could do some profiles on our local coaches because you guys, I could get your permission to share your information. So let's think about it. Okay, we're at nine, we're trying to end by nine. So Olivia, when we make these agendas, we always really, really take an hour and a half. So just not reasonable that you gave yourself five minutes to update us on two different things and that included a speaker. So as you prepare the agenda, just try to be a little more realistic about timing based on how these always go. That would be great. Are there, I know we need to vote minutes, but before we do that, any other things that were not anticipated? Obviously sharing the Julie information was not anticipated. That took some time. So Olivia will share her contact details, John. Yeah, just to note that I think we all received a note from Shirtiktha that on tomorrow at one o'clock, they're having the official dedication of their solar array in the parking lot. So that's a nice thing. If you didn't get it, let me know. I'll forward it around. Why don't you just forward it to everyone to be on the safe side, John? Yeah, I got that a while ago, I think. Yeah, it came in on the 14th. At least that's when I got it. Yeah, why don't you resend it to everyone, John? And I asked them if they would write an article for the Whelan Post. I'm all about the get the word out thing, but I have to follow up. John, are you in touch with them? No, I have not been. All right, anything else?
Olivia, again, appreciate Olivia taking minutes. I would like to, oh, Neil, we forgot the climate plan. The original idea was that Julie and Olivia and the committee were going to work on updating the climate action mobilization plan. Neil and I kind of talked about approach. Daniil, do you want to lay that out? Yeah, I mean, the question really is, there are different sections of the plan, apparently. I'm not sure that I actually have a good image of it in my head, is whether if we develop kind of an outline that parsed out responsibility for providing updates in the various sections to members of the committee, whether everybody would be comfortable taking on a section to sort of provide a status of, here are the goals, here's how we're doing. So for John, Bill, I was thinking that some combination of you and Neil could work on this. Like, if you remember the report, it had things the town could do and things residents could do under buildings, solar, transportation. Like Tom, you wrote the sort of, I don't know, natural world, two sections. John wrote the solar, I wrote buildings. I think Anne wrote EVs. Bill, you kind of looked at the whole thing and did some editing. But I was thinking we could take each of those action items and then just maybe build a table, which you would put in the action item. You say, is it done? Is it in progress? Has it not been started? And is this something we should- Well, isn't it- Isn't that largely, I mean, most of that information would come from Olivia or somebody at the town. I mean, we would all be interviewing her to get that information. I think John knows the solar stuff. I think he might know it more than Olivia, actually. Well, in terms of total, I don't know. Who knows, but yeah, I would- I would think maybe we could take a shot. I guess my hesitation is that maybe we should wait for Julie's replacement. So I do have Mass Energy Insight. That's the annual reporting we do for green communities. And I did that last year. So I do have access to all that information. And that's emissions by building, emissions by department for a vehicle fleet. I don't have any access for like residential stuff. I don't know how- I have that. We all have that. We have it there. Right, right. But I have, by building, pretty much gas usage, electric, because we pay the bills through facilities. So we should be able to get all that. Right, but that's- Okay. I don't think that lines up with the actions though. The actions were more, if you remember them, they were more like, when we do a renovation, make sure we do this. So my thought, Bill, was that we could do our- for people who wrote the sections, they could do their best shot at it. If you need information from Olivia, then we can go to Olivia for it. But I think like John, you know, which so- that we did solar installations on certain buildings, because you helped negotiate the final deals. Yeah, I'm just calling it out so you can see it's like these things at the bottom, town actions. Right, like buy more green power. We haven't done it at all. You know, so- Why is it say in prog- I mean, those are updates from somewhere, who wrote? Those are in progress as of the time of the report in June, 2022. Okay. I mean, these, no, this is, that is true from our, that is in progress. So I was thinking it was the buying of power, municipal power. So that's still in progress. So I think these, this would be like the level we, but I was thinking we could maybe do it, John, and others who had their sections, like just a table, so we could visually see, you know, in progress, not yet started. Because if there's stuff that like hasn't been started, we need to ask ourselves, is this something where, like what's preventing this from happening? Is this still a good idea? So that when the new person, Bill, comes aboard, we could give them an update on where we are on this plan. I mean, last time, you know, last time, you know, last time, Abigail, you know, did the update for us. So that's, I guess, what I was thinking. I think Olivia's got way too much on her, like right now we need her. Right, my thought was that if Julie's replacement's on board in three months, we might as well wait three months, unless you feel this is urgent. I mean, it's fine if people are comfortable with it. I guess maybe I'm speaking more for myself. I wouldn't be able to do any of this on my own. So John, do you feel like you could take a shot at the solar section? I think we can frame up the questions, how quickly we get the data. It may take longer, but the, you know, going back, looking at their sections, looking at the action items and saying, okay, where's the data? And beginning that process is stuff that is pretty straightforward. Okay, so maybe- Ultimately the goal's a new plan though, right? Yeah, but I think you should start with the old plan where, you know, if there's, yes, ultimately the goal's a new plan and we should absolutely wait for the new person to do that. It'd just be nice to give the new person, here was our old plan, here's our status on the old plan. And then we need to think about the process by which we would revise the plan, I think, you know, right? Yeah, I wouldn't think it's a brand new plan. I mean, the kind of stuff that we laid out is the kind of stuff we care about. Yeah, I mean, there may be new things, some technology things that are, you know, who knows? That's the discussion, but I think it would be good to think about how to make this also engaging with people in town and, you know, we'd want new select board endorsements. So what does that, backing that out, what does that look like? And frankly, it's stuff that didn't exist before, whether technology like battery technology was just nascent. Oh, so four years ago is one example. But also, as you say, Ellen, the presentation materials, how we tell the story is different than a Word document. We did this as a PDF and maybe we don't do, we do words, we do graphics and we just try and figure out who's our audience and how do we approach them? Cause that's one thing that we're always wanting to do is figure out, get more engagement, next gen engagement, et cetera. Well, one thing I noticed, I don't know why, but somewhere, I don't know why I was looking at this, but some other town, their town meeting agenda included a 10 minute update from their energy and climate committee. On the status of where they were in their climate plan. And it was like, maybe that's something we should think about for next year's town meeting. Like a one page handout. This was our plan. Here's what we've accomplished. Here's where we're going. Two slides at town meeting. Yeah, that'd be great. I mean, we don't get huge attendance, but we could do it in a, you know, we could think about forums. I mean, John, you're talking about how we get engagement from lots of people in town. Olivia thought survey that I think that's, but like, I think our audience for sure is the select board. We need them to endorse it, but we also have gone to every committee in the past and that's part of getting their buy-in. And then I think, you know, working with high school and middle school students just to, you know, engage them in this. So council on aging, we, you know, Margie and Tony have been doing that class. Like there's some climate discussions going on in CUA. We could have some meetings there. So we just need to think about a whole process that should wait for the new person. Bill, I'm just thinking, what can we do amongst ourselves? Because when they arrive, they're going to be- How long ago was it that Abby did this summary? I remember her presenting it to us. She had put together a visual that was, how are we doing against the plan? I don't know, probably over a year, but I don't remember. I mean, that would be a starting point then. Right. Does someone, John, is that the document you have? The most up-to-date one? You're muted, John. John, you're muted. Sorry. What I showed was the approved plan. I can look around and find the update. I don't have that offhand. Yeah, it was a sort of graphical presentation. It was color coded. Yeah, yeah, it was nice. Yeah, exactly. I think it was good. So maybe John, you could send that around. And the people who wrote their sections, like Tom, you know your section. I know my section. John know his section. I thought on the EVs, it might be nice if like, I don't know, Neil and Clovis took a look at it or something. And just, we need somebody in the committee, you guys can decide, who could be the person who sort of tracks what we're doing on EVs. Maybe it's Steve. I don't know. But just someone who's willing. It is going to be talking to Olivia a little, but it's probably just an email. I'm updating this. I just want to understand it. But then, you know, people just, if we can get that graphic thing, John, maybe we can figure out a way to, you can help us figure out a way to create a format. We can all, you know, put any updates. And that we could get done, you know, do your best. You spend an hour or so thinking about it, do your best. And it is what it is, Bill. You know, and where we have holes, Olivia can fill in. But I don't think some of this, I think it's some of the stuff Olivia may not know. And then we have to figure it out. Who knows it. Hey, we'll notice that. And you're looking through files. We did do handouts at the town meeting. So I'll send an email with those things. Just kind of interesting to see what we're, how we did that presentation back in the day. Okay. So it sounds like John. I've been looking around for the plan. And what I found was one from June, 2022. Is that the latest? That's it. That's the plan. Okay. Yep. That's it. So I don't know. And what if I'm not seeing any other questions? What's the next step? I'm not looking for any other questions. I'm just looking to see what we have. I'm looking to see what we have in the EV section. You know, Neil Clovis, Steve, does one of you want to look at that section? Cause. I'll take a look at it. Okay, great. So look at it and then see where we think we are. You have the, you can send a. A question to Olivia. To update it. If you're not sure. And it's also a good way for people in the committee to get. john let's take a shot at our things and you know maybe by the next meeting if you should not spend more than an hour on this like just see what you know okay and then bill i think we could think about and neil how do we put it all together to make some sense of it because there may be some stuff that's on there that i think we no longer think is doable oh right like john we were going to buy you know we buy municipal power we were buying through power options and we thought we could do that with green power but with the rec market sort of collapsing like i'm not sure that's a reasonable thing to be trying to do for the next couple of years right so we might put that on hold or something and so there's probably some new things that we will have thought of me i i don't think four years ago we were thinking municipal aggregation so i'm thinking maybe that wasn't even in the plan so it's probably you know just new things that are happening but john is was was right the on technological standpoint batteries are a hugely significant innovation we could think about installing a bunch of battery installations right right in town here to uh you know reduce our peak usage so it's a whole nother area we could be thinking i mean we we had a really good plan for loco with the battery we're going to make like so much money with the payments from utilities but it didn't work out because of some other issues so yeah i think i think these will be the interesting and fruitful discussions and honestly we could think about if there are things that we're interested and we want to learn more we can invite some speakers to come to our committee meeting to talk to us about some of these things and again the reaching out to other committees will be useful for instance the school committee had a presentation last month or maybe earlier this month about the rebuilding the three elementary schools and what the timelines are and how much money would cost so i mean that sort of stuff's going to be percolating over the next three or four years and it would be good for us to make sure that they think about how do you make these things energy efficient etc and make the roof something we can stick panels on top of and stuff like that so there may be stuff that's not they won't get state i mean to build in our town you have to meet the specialized opt-in code we passed that so that requires that of all buildings that they're fossil fuel free and they're solar ready so we have agreed at the same time the presentation didn't mention word one about making these buildings um more sustainable more resilient more energy efficient so maybe it's down deep in the buried in the bowels of their analysis but as we've seen it it's easy for them to say oh yeah forgot about that until it's too late well they won't get the permit here so this one they can't dodge good um all right any other all right so john will send something around and maybe john can think about the the framework we'll look at how abby color coded and try and stay with something like that and then we'll just start some discussions and we want to purchase all right i would love a oh we need to vote these minutes that i keep forgetting so um i need a motion from somebody to approve the march 17th minutes well i have uh i have a question about them um i i was in mexico wait wait wait first of all we need a motion and then we can i move we approve the latest minutes i need a second second thank you bill now discussion time okay question about the minutes which i just read this morning um it talks about dudley pond being in framingham which it is not correct so i don't know what that's about again i wasn't here i was in mexico but
i can personally tell you dudley pond is not in framingham yes i can i can assure you of that as well i know a lot about the hydrology of that part of wayland um olivia do you have the minute can you just share your screen and pull those up so we can just take a look at those please olivia yeah give me one second please is there just a simple correction we can make uh i just don't have it in front of me so yeah i've got i can just pull them up either dudley ponder we were talking about lake attitudate so oh and no we let's just look at the minutes because i i just don't have them in front of me so i can't do this
yeah so tom you saw it somewhere in the minutes yeah is there a search i can oh here we go julia shared that because deb is out of it i i'm we're looking you're all we see is your i see your screen of all your files that i don't know my apologies let me i'm sharing the wrong screen let me try again sorry about that uh two good okay and sorry pulling up the dock in a second there we go okay tom was it julie shared that because deadly pond is also in framingham and it's not correct olivia but but what's the context of the well they were working they were working on stormwater and for for dudley pond is what she was talking about and she said they're they're working on getting support for it and then they were and she said that because dudley pond is also in framingham they're trying to get a letter of support from framingham presumably the city of framingham so that makes no no sense no sense i think we should just take out those last two sentences yeah this is very detailed so we could probably just do fewer words i think i will definitely in the future be less detailed and i'll be sure to get rid of that because i honestly don't remember the context of this conversation so i will delete that last part before i submit it to the clerk yep yeah just skip yeah i delete that any other all right thanks for pointing that out i i skimmed it and i did not catch that thing i didn't catch you either wow um thank you tom all right can i take a vote then um vote in favor steve uh everybody in favor so i see ellen steve neil bill tom all right so that's five zero all right our next meeting i think is scheduled for when olivia do you remember um it is may 13th i think let's take a look at that make sure everyone has that on their calendar oh it's a wednesday it's the 12th i think it's the 12th then because it's tuesdays that we're doing yeah i don't you know i can't make that one i have i have made i have a uh slot on tuesday may 19th on my calendar let's look okay then i do i do as well okay it's the 19th yep okay everybody has the 19th okay great we will adjourn and um olivia you will send up rachel's email julie's contact information john you'll recirculate the updated plan and make remind people of the sections they they had steve will take evs yeah great and by next month let's just see what we can do off the top of our heads without making ourselves crazy okay all right motion adjourn any objections
thank you guys all right yeah good night