good morning everyone i'd like to call the meeting of the municipal like board of friday october thirty two thousand and fifteen to order i'm sammy baghdadi chair of the light board next to me is jim williams who's a member of the light board and jim palmer who is our general manager of belmont like mark polow will be joining us shortly so what i am good will not call their meeting to order unless they have a quorum nevertheless those members that are present here will be welcome to participate in our discussion so let me let me start with  some of the routine items on our agenda approval of minutes dated august twenty eighth two thousand and fifteen you know i made some minor  do we have a general manager's report made on the status of the substation sure construction we get into that so i'll give you a quick update on where we are with the substation project right now the  if you take a ride down frighten st you'll you'll notice that the structure is starting to come out of the ground all of the steel that has been erected the blockwork is starting this week next week monday  construction plan approved mccourt who is the contractors can be doing that work out there on the line and he said his final review stages with keyless and i'll be setting up a force account that work will be kicking off in  the beginning of november and that's next week so five in the next two weeks will kick off well and so that's that's exciting times and we're working closely with the city cambridge in order to find a residence over there as well we have communication plan in place to keep them posted as well as the belmont you know most folks in belmont are you are aware of it but cambridge is not so much so be notifying those folks as well and keep everybody abreast of  the plan moving forward and we we were hoping for a mild winter so because we've got to go you know along the communal rail yet which after last winter nino has helped us all quite a bit we didn't get the hurricanes this year the weather's been very good so the progress on the on the substation has not been infected by that so so far just hoping for good weather but we also have the risk matrix in place for the what ifs as well and so we've asked for you still removal plans and items like that so we've we've gone through all the all of the what if scenarios so that we are covered we know which way to go and if something does go wrong but just to follow if i may please the last time you were here and we discussed the project the the concern with the trenching and the tolerance and yes the trenching how that worked out that's working on very well the sofa the contract the part of the construction plan the mccourt civil contract this doing the work out there is actually come up with has presented to him so we're excited about that as well thank you thank you sam well i drove by the project yesterday and was impressed by the steel frame of what's it's definitely taking for  number two item on the agenda which is m lab charge and purpose and you know i'll ask ralph jones and mark mckay you know to join us for the rest of the meeting you know again and lab does not have a quorum and unless you get a quorum you know no need to call your meeting to order but you can still participate with us as individual members you will see i think we have all received copies of a potential card new chart a new purpose for am lab and just to provide some some beginning of the summer spring actually stated that you know and love should be dissolved because m lab had had no purpose i think you know speaking for my other two colleagues and at least my feeling is you know quite to the contrary i think m lab is a committee of experts in the field we are not experts and i think you can have a very valuable does mark if i may speak with them but but what has become clear is we need to define and redefine of the roles of the light board you know  and the advisory board because it it was sending i think a mixed message to the community and to the governance you know of the light board jim has frequently said to me i don't know who my bosses you know and and and really that's not fair you know a lot belmont lights governance so what you have before you is some proposed suggestions the first is for purposes of clarity that we would change the name of m lab instead call you like board advisory committee you know which is what you are you're a committee over its its policy governance the second was to clarify the purpose you know to make it clear that we're going to call you back a choose me al back advisory committee that al back al backs purpose you know is to advise the light board on policy issues and it says here on demand side management policies plans programs and other advisory duties as requested you know by the life board and the idea is you know to clarify that the the supervision of the operations of belmont light is the responsibility of this like board and that's what the voters elect us to do and you know your purposes of that as an advisory board is to help guide us on those larger policy issues which which you are free i mean i like the change in the name i just don't want to diminish in any way with the advisory board had done for us i mean that from a technical perspective it was very important to me because i'm not an expert on syria and they issues of the you know the substation agreements you know purchase power that of that nature i and i agree with you completely we are the governing body and we should be viewed as such but i also hope that this language and then that's certain it doesn't in any way diminish you know what the advisory board now advisory committee will do for us and i would still expect them to meet with the with jim palmer and to understand some of these time in terms of some of the issues that they see day to day so it's a fine line that needs to be walk clearly but if that's really concerned here i don't want to any way diminish their role because clearly this from my point of view i would say and and i think before you admittedly got here i arrived i made it clear that you know the former chair had called for a dissolution of the committee and i said we strongly disagree with that result so i do agree i mean i think i think the committee has a strong role that it can play but we need to distinguish between large policy issues that we need advice on future direction  limit the sort of the number of folks involved in my personal feeling is there are currently five members there ok there are five members so we're not eliminating any one ok and two many bakers does not make a good case oh you know as as a former care of a five member board i found it difficult enough you know to get a quorum and to you know engage in in guided discussion are behind us i view those as kind of legacy issues yes things that that i observed as a town meeting member but not was not necessarily directly involved and i think that  the structure is necessary because as you know i'm always concerned about risk and i think the the substation project is is one of our biggest risk and when i first was elected my view was i didn't want to be on the board and be accountable for something that i didn't control and i talked to sammy about that as well i mean there's you're either on the board here and it's the border it's not so i think  you do know you we were able to make some changes that were necessary and you know we have we have the project under control the general manager is in place he's experience and we have well intentioned members of the  committee now which i think also clarified the quite a bit i'm not i've i actually have experience on boards where there are seven and i always prefer seven because of the forty three  preventing them from doing that i mean why can't the committee bring people into their meetings to participate and contribute you know it's not like you can't participate you know they th but thanks thanks ralph mark mcveigh so eight i like the change i think in the spirit of belmont since i've been here fifteen years right it's all about bringing experts from the town to help run the town right and so this committee in my mind is just another extension of that which i've seen many many places right in terms of five versus seven if you know we talked about the debate was about voting and it doesn't sound like that's the charge of this committee anyway right to do any voting that's what i you know what you're changing it you just said advisory committee so seemingly more people is better because you have more bring you know more brainpower right if so if this the charge of the committee is to bring good ideas  to sort of say consider this versus consider this based on my experience in the industry you have seven right because you're not making a decision anyway right but that's my thought  think this is my first year on the committee so i don't have the history that marc or others have of having worked as an emblem for many many years but from my standpoint particularly because i came from the board of selectmen the seems fin it seems to me that the advisory committee is appointed by the white board to serve the light board in any way we could possibly help to provide expertise so it seems fine to me ok ralph any thoughts on whether trade be five seven five to seven we have had in the past and need for a couple of alternative just to make sure we had a quorum all the time the the composition of the board is people who are very active in the electric power industry and therefore sometimes on travel so you know six seven would allow us to probably have a better chance of getting a quorum but that's me i think you know part of the issue we had before was there was a view that potentially that the board was one dimensional right so you have more people you have more input you can have a little heated discussion about what's right or wrong right not always ends up with a better because i think that's good because i think it helps you know people you know not blur the lines of the governance you know i think at the time when and why it was was developed it was out of the energy study group right because these was the energy study group that was put in place to discuss our next topic which is retail choice back in two thousand and three and then they became a lab and the thought of a time with them lab was going to the governing body and then that thinking is changed it was just an advisory committee going forward which is fine but the last two managers under this you know type of structure of an x ray which difficult i can attest to that i've been dealing with and believe me it the contributions have been wonderful to to the community so i think that's great moving forward i mean to do that the far as the number goes i don't really have much to add to that but i guess as long as it's clear that you know that they're reporting directly to a white board ok all right then you know in the spirit of moving on then why don't we  k why don't we we will in a moment take a vote on changing the name of m lab to like ford advisory committee and you know adopting the the new charge but as far  as membership it would be five voting members with two associate or alternate members that would also be appointed and can participate in all the discussion just like full members can but they become voting in the event that there's not a urge you to make any person who is invested in a committee and comes to the meetings and participates to be a voting member of my own observation is that i'm not sure why you would have alternate so i'm not sure what the advantages of having alternate somebody participates and they're involved they should be voting i'd also like to urge you to start to enforce rules about people who mess multiple meanings i think there are actually rules in the by laws about it and i've never seen them in force and there are people who get on committees and then don't go to those committees and i think that if you are participating and you are involved that you should be allowed to they can number of occasions where folks have not been active we replaced them so we will and forth we will continue with force i'd like to reinforce what mark said about voting i cannot think right now of the situation where six i look at the charge and i look at the the makeup of the the committee but i don't see anyone there who has any direct experience with noble energy and and after all that we've been through in the last year with with them lab this is a way to to get that kind of of an input into it in divisoria i'm on the committee you're talking about appointments well there's so little people apply think that you know if we agree to do this which i think everyone has five permanent members has appointed to open it to be determined that the committee can expand or contr ability yet i mean what i mean we don't get lost yet ok i mean you could we could add it to some of the following areas of expertise is that what you're suggesting jim yeah the areas of expertise are probably where i would suggest putting it because your your last sentence in there covers it buys on other advanced management covers the renewa it all right so you know what i would you know what i would suggest let's include it in the qualifications that we're looking for ok is that some of it may come as a good ok i mean i agree i think that phrase should be there to show our commitment ok last comment ok tony precinct member precinct three it could be that the thread of this discussion has covered what i was concerned with ok but let me at least bring up something that i think is important in the election that was held in the town in two thousand member two thousand and eight the question was asked should the representatives be instructed  to reduce greenhouse emissions by eighty percent by two thousand and twenty ok in belmont seventy percent of the electorate voted yes fifteen percent voted no fifteen percent would not vote it strikes me that in the town of belmont what we know is that twenty nine percent of kobrin emissions come from electricity over seventy percent of the elect has voted yes to reduce carbon emissions by twenty twenty it just strikes me that that vote of concern should be reflected not only by the light board and what you think is important but also should be reflected termed just as we have goals of achieving long term financial stability and viability as utility we should also have in there a goal of thirty five businesses and institutions in town and this is over half of the major institutions they all supported that survey because they were concerned and this is back in two thousand and seven they were concerned about carbon in the time ok that survey results was made available to the selectmen in two thousand and eight it's also been made available to the belmont energy committee and what that shows is a huge amount of extra city that this part of the town produces and they're concerned about reducing carbon for that part and that's as much as i have to say thank you thank you s come up with some goals which would include witness and he's meeting that here's the charge is the mission and come back to this light board within thirty days let's say with lots of out of the all of the mission that sort of we've outlined here are the hear that george will get it in the record to get him to advise the municipal light board excuse me to to advise the munis well first of all the name of the committee would be light board advisory committee purpose to advise the municipal light board on fair an equitable demand side management policies plans and programs that are consistent with customer needs legal mandates public policy operational requirements and the long term financial stability and viability of the electric utility that al back shall perform other advisory duties as requested by the light board which would certainly and compass what we just talked about composition the committee should be comprised of voting members and to associate two non voting associate members appointed by the light board including persons with expertise in at least some of the following areas legal and regulate and regulatory matters related to set of or and and sustainable and renewable energy initiative pricing and policy a power purchase agreements for purposes of our audience of power purchase agreement is a contract between if at least in our context would be a contract between a third party private electrical private electricity generator and a consumer purchasing power what what makes all winning our meeting belmont owning its own utility valuable is the fact the utility has a monopoly in town ok residents and businesses can only buy their electricity through belmont light i've heard i'm going to outline the concerns on on both sides the concern with those who want to open the ability of private individuals residents in town to contract directly with other electricity providers the justification for that is that that could open up the town to renewable energy projects that would not otherwise be viable without purchase power agreements and the cases in point i've heard our solar panels on the wellington school and the possibility of a solar farm at the incinerator  site and that certainly is a concern to me i don't want to limit our options the other side of the coin that i've heard is well if we allow third party private outside providers to come in and start selling electricity to our residents well you undermine the like department and number one they lose revenue and we have a multi you know tens of millions of dollar new substation project you know so you you you take away from the revenues of the like department that justify such a project and then secondly if you lose market share it puts you at a competitive disadvantage with the electricity that you don't purchase you have to pay a higher price which could translate to higher prices to other residents that don't purchase from  outside third party providers so i mean i think it's a very legitimate policy discussion that we need to engage and i am concerned i don't want to limit our abilities you know to to allow of removing this are not great for the solar movement in town doesn't it's not going to interrupt anything with the go solar belmont program that's going on right now we have the it when it comes to the wellington school or one or the incinerator site those agreements we can work with but no one if it was the incinerate aside from a light was going to buy the i'll put the town was going to lease the land to a in that's that's the biggest concern you know the under the electric utility restructuring act of one thousand nine hundred seven the investor owns had to sell off all the generation they had to allow competitive choice right that's a little bit of background history were all of this legislation came from and then there was a study group formed by the town of belmont back in two thousand and three the electric study group remember that market all it was actually was the beginning of  was the same folks that were actually working on them lab studied this back then and they said no we don't want to open up our borders to competitive choice so at that point all of the other municipals the other thirty the lab then became ill and they became from the energy study group they became web that's for the history of how this all began how we got to where we are today so i guess the this this decision  s a wise decision to remove that from this it does not affect what the goal is the goal is to help grow solar in the town of belmont and were there were you know very proactive when this was in in two thousand and eleven it was discussed back at that time this was geared towards one is to lation in town and that was the belmont hill school and roger colton was leading that effort much like he did with the wellingto school and you know they i argued with with the with them members of the time back and forth about you know yes you can do this and at the time we also are in turmoil if you remember back two thousand and eleven we didn't  have a chapter one sixty four law firm on the books we had an individual from town it's all very of the time and so we didn't have the expertise of one sixty four for municipals and how it applies and so that was this was allowed for one purpose and one purpose only and that was the card soul let me ask the pointed question if we don't allow power purchase agreements private power purchase agreements yet does that eliminate the viability of the wellington school project or a smaller farm at the incinerator site no it does not does not see does not have any impact on on those large scale installations of weekly us  there it was allowed if it was allowed under the old tariff two thousand and eleven it shouldn't have been is my point what it is then they have allow me to go and buy a contract with another electricity this matter i'm not an attorney so i guess i'm just looking at the statute but chapter one sixty four says that retail choice would involve transmission and distribution facilities owned by a transmission company or a distribution company to transmitter or distribute electricity from a generation company a supplier or an aggregator i don't think the wellington school meets requirements of being a generation company supplier aggregators so i'm not sure that it would you know be a threat to retail choice other thing that concerns me is there's a very blanket statement at one sixty lighting plant which is the definition of are like companies and unions and in massachusetts shall be exempt from the requirements to allow a competitive choice unless and until such lighting plant is dissolved for so into existing statutory procedures and certainly we're not intending to dissolve i mean i think that that paragraph is sort of an absolute barrier to competitive choice and and they recommend that you remove that language and like i said what is the goal what is the goal the goal is to encourage people to put solar on the roofs of their of their buildings right so the the main push right now is to get rooftop solar installed on the twenty k w that seems to be the main focus if we go into some commercial we'll work with these people and we'll help them but you know enter into a purchase power agreement because you're going to bid jeopardize the you're going to jeopardize the franchise and you will go out of business ok you will go out of business and if it's not studied if you don't if you don't have a study it would be reckless well my concern is why are we building a substation you know i mean that's a major commitment right financial commitment to the town and we don't want to undermine that project so that i mean see we see retail choice in a lot of places throughout the u s the key issue there is that the household would buy power from somewhere else but it still has to go through the wires that jim maintains and if jim is not collecting the money for maintaining those wires that's the key issue that and we as a community have to face that we want to do we want to have a light department that keeps our lights on better than everybody else right and part of that is maintaining those wires right so that but to jim's point i've seen many places jim has the ability based on what you guys ask we want to be able to buy power from this installed plan on the on the land well that's jim's ability your ability to make that happen right it's not that's the beauty of having i mean just like we're sure we can do our own thing right sure but allowing anyone within a town to go buy from whomever they want and then jim having to deal with when the power goes down do i restore people who are our customers or you know how do i do that i mean it becomes a nightmare right if you if it's yes d i believe that the previous tariff the two thousand and eleven tariff did not prevent that is that correct correct it was actually drafted around around allowing that but that was y all right so in fact we have a p p a in existence now the second thing that happened is that when roy abstains committee made the recommendation to when when jim came back to us with the tariff that had been reworked by the light department's legal department this prohibition showed up and there are people in town who object to it because they i think and the reason they object to it is that they see that the possibility that the lack of a p p a agreement or permission would prevent the kind of development that they that they think would be preferable so you know we seem to be at this point where we didn't look at the idea of bringing a prohibition p into the tariff when the new terror in the them to droids committee and but what jim what jim is representing which i think is true and i also would like to add that the like department belongs to the community you know it's not like it's a separate company and we're we're trying to help it out to help you know it's ours it belongs so it's depends on what we want to do so if we look at it from the perspective that we own the like company which we do we just need to decide if we want to have on it's going to it's going to be grandfathered so the real question is what could happen going forward so then there's also a discussion about using another example mclean  yes yes and there are large commercial customers yes can you can you tell the board the difference between having a p p a or doing it the way you're suggesting if mclean decides that they want to have a different supplier or will you i know you can do so asking you see if you see the question if they wanted to put in a lot scale solar i don't know if any do what p p a as we discussed there are  independent suppliers that are already marketing in del mar yes they are large commercial customers right and the reason our like department needs to have large commercial cousin customers as part of our monopoly is to maintain our our our purchasing power that's correct and that has to do with the i s o and you know so if we go below a certain level then we become a lot more expensive so we want to maintain that monopoly and we want to have  our large commercial plants coming through the utility car utilities are part of it so to make the argument clear and i don't see arguments as a problem because i think you know there's there's a point to discuss and then there's evidence on one side and evidence on the other you know so i think a way to make it clear is what is an example of what people are concerned about so one big concern for me and i i think for the be reporting what they did was they did what they put solar panels on the building right right if they're putting solar panels on their building we would enter into a tri party greenman no i'm talking about it took a day if we allowed p p a's it would open up competition then they would take the rest of the load and they would aggregate the rest of the load with other buildings that they have and they would go out and they would they would buy power ok then it would impact our billing system ok we would spend probably bought another i don't know five hundred thousand dollars maybe or close to a million to revamp our billing system so that we could accept the third party billing that's involved with that and we would be much like an iou and that's what i'm saying is that you know this this this we're being had been solicited by energy so solar right the energy we all know is the law generating company right but they're being solicited your customers to buy renewable power ok which is competitive choice right so we're that they don't own that they don't own right and they they buy that they buy the power that's produced by that right from another from a third party correct and then you're saying that they aggregate their other power needs and by that powers well no  they could use one i'm saying they don't know they don't and then when the solar system on the roof is not is not operating because there's a storm in town they they buy the rest of the electricity from us the our department ok and but that's under power purchase agreement don't like it was under our purchase for their solar installation yeah yeah ok so what people are concerned about is that if we don't allow keep the case such as that that wellington in the incinerator site would would would not would not be favorably treated so how how us right that's correct under the be the right ok so under this arrangement that you're proposing by banning p b s how would that work how would that work yes you will buy your conquered did right they what they came up with was they come up with a three party agreement where where the the municipal was involved with the transaction that protects the franchise from being infiltrated by other suppliers from you know natural gas you know plants or coal or oil you know you can have any other power supplier come in and say you know jim we want to sell you power we can do it cheaper than belmont lite no i got it right it doesn't have to be renewable you open the border up what jim is asking is if we don't allow p p a's how does it make wellington school a high of a project be perhaps i'd like to understand the benefits of p p a further and i don't know how we move forward on this issue at least for me at least i can't move forward on this issue until it's perhaps explored a little bit further and we have we hear from our new committee here in any way to diminish the opportunity for the well at the school to entertain you know putting i think there would building in town school building in town that seems to be the only viable building in town we could put solar panels on so we don't diminish that opportunity as well i'm not sure i'm prepared to make an informed decision about this issue today without further exploring the benefits and the issues related with having people yes like if i could get news followed with mark what's happened here is that the t to the chase because i'm really getting frustrated and i'm really getting frustrated ok this is a non issue not an issue with jim not everybody agrees well listen you know i pretty much had about enough you know we've been do we spent almost one hundred thousand dollars this year alone on this issue ok the two thousand and eleven tariff that all of these folks that came here this morning right complained about all right there was a lot of flaws in that ok this is one of them and i'm telling you right now you can not in good conscious i'm supposed to tell you about risks i'm telling you right now you've got a big risk on your hands right here if you want to have it study we'll spend money on it we'll have committees look at it whatever you want to do but you cannot allow this well it seems to me that what's happened is that we've been put in you know because when we i mean because i think we need to we can't just ignore it i think we need to look at it in some way you know we have different points of view with this issue and if there's no deadline to do that and we can be coupled with well the is there anything in the tariff in the new tariff that wasn't in the old tear and the answer was yes and that's how we got into you know this discussion so i appreciate your frustration i understand but you also have to see we also have to see where we're way it worked and i'm fully understand it to be over this but my recommendation is that we let the tariff go the way it is we still have to talk about the reimbursement good and that's another thing that's another discussion that needs to take place in there could be a change that we might want to make on that or maybe not but i think we should let the tariff go the way it is so that we can achieve the eleven cents reimbursement we can to help the solar providers or the solar companies come back in the belmont when they should have been here before defense of process ok i agree the way this was implemented was not the right way what should have happened is this board should have had a discussion before that language was inserted in the town o it becomes do we do it by opening up our market or do we do it under the control under our luxury of our light you know department and we can internally allocate resources it's our decision we can allocate resources we can subsidize the s word we can give grants or we can we have the luxury of diverting our resources right now to favor saul arc to favor sustainable favor renewable and i think gems concern is if you take us out of that decision making process who knows what impact that can have it if it needs to be it needs to be studied in great detail before you make that decision is my point but at the same time will have the ability to allocate real so absolutely absolutely but i'm saying on this whole you know allowing the not allowing the p p a that the prudent thing to do is what what we've done ok what was recommended to to the board and what's been adopted to date is obvious that is the minimum it mitigates any at the risks associated with working clock at this met or the advisory committee let me make a suggestion ok i agree with what jim said keep the policy as in place you were supposed to or not you know our consultants and attorney was supposed to provide us with materials for this meeting so that we can make a more informed choice i would suggest that they provide us with the materials one week at least before the meeting where we elaborate on this further you know and i'm particularly intrigued by the language of ralph rat you know from the statute about you know whether there's a bad on such purchased power agreement sort of look at this matter advise this board on this issue taken into consideration input from the community have got a lot of e mails on this i've heard from members of the engine committee the favorite and so i'm not sure where i come down on it because i don't completely understand the pros and cons that with all due respect everybody that's involved here if i want to talk to the attorney and i want to talk to the consultant and i want them in the meeting with us yes so i can see their face and talk to them and i want the materials in this is definitely a hard deadline for the tariff the policy you can cheat you can take a week to to modify that but if we don't get the changes in by this afternoon that then that means it's going to take another month for it to be effective which means it's another month of uncertainty and so i emailed the changes to and you see it's very simple at minimum we've got to fix a typographical error on the m b to you rate number gotta change that and at the same time what i recommend is is inserting this one sentence to get it back to the status quo which has been in place and which the belmont hill schools operating under which which the wellington  eleven are p was based on so that at least it gives the time of the light board to more carefully deliberate on on whether to allow p p s or not let's get get it back to the status quo recommend that would be the prudent thing to do for the light board to vote on these very small changes to the tariff so that it can be so that belmont lie can email them to the g p u this afternoon and then that that gives the month light luxury i think i was i was coming in with a sense of what people meant to me and to me one thing that's different is people so the sorry the outcomes i look at as wellington and purchasing on residential houses and leasing on residential houses and one can vision a lease as a type of p p a so that's one of the things that i think would be important to understand is allowing leasing a solar panels on a home and the thing that is also a little bit possibly tricky in the language me if p p a is are out that would prevent the welting school and so i guess there's a nuance between whether it's a three party agreement belmont hill a third party and you know that kind of purchasing power in or it's three mark three or purchasing power agreement whereas lights wellington school and something to me they were one in the same yes and so that's why i was upset and worried about it but it p p a what jim was describing is a p financial security from a ten or twenty year contract for ever wants to supply financing for a large project on a school or whatever it is that they will get some money back and so so if you have a lease that's why p p is an important for larger projects as for typically large projects and of that way and so so i would strongly suggest to allow p p a is for these large projects but restricts them to a purely renewable energy generations and maybe restricted for that party that puts up energy insulation has to buybacks that power for its own use i don't know something like that you know like but kind of limited that way and  of other parties coming in thinking thank you last comment i mean as william randolph resident of belmont and i actually also work for solar companies so kind of hearing about a lot of these discussions discussions of the risks are kind of managed by the cap of solar and how much you can actually have i don't think that if there's a cap whether it's people purchasing the system or going through a lease that they're going to go out of business because that cap helps limit those types of things i think the p p a really just kind of gives the residents of belmont the flexibility to make scholer affordable i think that purchasing with new technology that's going to come out in the upcoming years giving them the flexibility of not owning a system is important so that you know they have the options later on when stuff does come out and why do you work for solar company as a resident of belmont a lot of what i do is trying to figure out how i protect my customers and i will say that you know in the next  after the next year when they do look at the tax incentives what type of companies are going to want to come in and help provide this for your residents are you going to want to small company who's going to be able to sell it for a few dollars cheaper you may have a lease but more than likely it's going to have some significant problems when those tax exceptions go down are you going to want to show a company that's going to be here for the long run or is going to be bought out and really leaves a lot o think you know certainly some members of the board don't feel like they are prepared to make a decision today certainly we need more information from our attorney and consultant and we'd like them to be here and it's a discussion that would welcome the advisory committee to participate and with us so so that said jim i like your motion why don't we keep things as they are for now  to get more information and the chairman just a question terms of process so there's i think about this the right some additional materials the language was removed from the care of the working group that really look at the issue but it was removed because we were if it makes sense to leave the terror of it as it is what's the process to reconsider it in a sort of a timely way i mean i you know i'm frustrated today because we have especially with me as a board we have a we seem to continue to be put in positions where we have to make decisions immediately taffy's refiled we haven't really debated this matter and i'm frustrated by that frankly i can't make decisions on the fly as important as this and so how can we put ourselves in a recommendation and we didn't even i can i remember the scene of the working group reacting to why wasn't why was that excluded and i agree the process was not proper yeah ok so what we are going to do is again we're going to get some written materials there's there's issues that that were raised on the wording of the statute and particularly would be interested in knowing what other towns how other towns with  possible to have a disagreement and then you don't have an argument which i don't view negatively and until you introduce evidence on both sides so jim has as informed opinion and the  citizens group have their informed opinion the three of us are in our in limbo because it wasn't considered it was put in it was a process mistake people make mistakes it's not the end of the world it's not the light department's not going to collapse downs not going to collapse it's in there in it and it's our choice this morning to decide whether to leave the tariff alone or to change it now i greatly respect  is we should hear from all sides on green k you know whether it's accurate and accurate ok i think we should hear from our legal advisers our energy consultant i think we should hear from residents that have a can of concern together ok we make a policy policy decision you know which direction from ation is god which information is is it's not so reliable and then we make a decision now the issue is timeliness ok so we want to do this in a timely manner but they make just another point plays the other issue is whether let's let's say we decide to put people back in yet the other issue is can we do that it's my understanding that if we if we want to do it  we can do it if we worked ok now people are saying well it's embarrassing because you know that means belmont doesn't know what it's doing i think it's ok it's not that we don't know what we're doing we have what we have a light department we have a big project underway we've agreed on  meet hearing from the engine committee hearing from our advisory committee hearing from other folks as an interim step before we make a decision this important as well so how do we do that we get flooded that day and then make it the tsunami i was going to suggest that those who want to make comments a but them by november twelfth you know that gives us a week that includes our consultants our attorneys i hope the energy committee can weigh in by then and we take the information we have and we decide at that point your ramming it through ok yes they're at odds but i think it's important for this committee and the board of selectmen any committee not to let things go on for months and months and months and months because that's not productive so at some point we have to make decisions and i am saying we are going to shoot for november nineteenth because that is that everyone seems to that's on everyone's calendar ok so and i would encourage those watching on v and energy committee please if you can submit your comments to us by november twelfth which is a week before that meeting that will allow you know baca and jim staff to assemble it and distributed we also asking the working group advised as to how those should be treated the working group said recommended a a reimbursement ok a grant of up to three thousand dollars  for those who installed their solar systems before november twenty eight two thousand and eleven which is the date when the previous net metering policy phase one  two was announced the reason why they're recommending that is because what we ultimately adopted is better than what was what was adopted at that time you know so so everyone everyone is in effect better off one member of the of the working group the vote was two to one one member said well just grandfather all currently existing  to be grandfathered forever ok so that you know that that's the that's the spectrum that we're working on her again i mean i ask do you feel like you're in a position i am  the installation costs were eleven thousand fourteen thousand up to sixty five thousand and the way i look at this is i respect the committee's recommendations but i think the you know the in on one hand people would say well you know that was in the interest of the school year to let people know that we were going to do this and on the other hand what it did was it prevented solar from coming in the belmont for until until recently so i think that the tariff cut from one thousand point eight cents let's call it twenty i'm a banker so i round stuff up so i can think out well to eleven that's that's nine cents on twenty that's that's that's over a forty percent cut in in compensation for power sold and although i respect the committee we don't have the same charge because because we're we're like ford and we're here for the common good and i think if there were two hundred people who were in this position you know we would never we would never consider cutting their compensation by forty percent so i think it needs to be you know it needs to come back from there now jim and i have talked about this and there are two ways of doing it one is to grandfather this group at twenty cents for you know for a period of time when i tried to work out when i knew a lot less than i know now but i'm still learning obviously a deal between the former lab and the solar group we we agreed to ten we're going to eleven cents it's it's more than a forty percent cut these people are in for this amount of money and i think that we need to  be more to give more consideration to the the imbalance that was introduced by the language that was in the tariff because they chose to go ahead and do it now what jim and i have discussed is that a capital pay down is a policy adopted in november of two thousand and eleven was they would get reimbursed belmont lights wholesale right and this working group met and bumped that rate up to eleven cents which is close to in the middle it's a compromise why do we turn around now and on t v tell all the other private customers that you have to further subsidize these additional twenty people well then that and mr hyde twenty and you're part of the solution ok you you fit recommendation of all of us and just leave it at twenty cents and then work with jim and his group to have the solar group or the light bulb put up solar panels all over the place and have the white boy be totally responsible for th i mean i who are with you that it should be essentially a command up of the intel but the light board has to be very proactive in pushing solar panels on everybody's houses and every public institution as this issue forever i mean there's always going to be different points of view might we ask them to do a certain thing that it was an independent group that we appointed they came back with recommendations we adopted levinson's i think we should follow with the adoption of the majority recommendation and rec different that occurred which go with what the working day did spent dozens of hours on this matter had fifteen plus meetings perhaps more got input from the community from the residence they came back to this board and made a recommendation i'm willing to go forward with their recommendations and i'm michel michel i'm a resident and elmont least spent quite a bit of money putting insulation out of the conservation land instead of having a another company come in and then it's no argument no p p s no nothing we're not disagreeing i agree with you on a yeah but i you know i right now i'm in the hole for over nine thousand dollars and if you cut that back to eleven my pay i will not never basically recover no but you can get a three thousand dollars rebate  panels three reasons one to be it's the right thing to do number two what is your money earning in the bank half a percent this pays back a little more than that ok and  get a return you're getting a better return don't get it now you are going to one he now why do i want to live for your helping mother earth which is the bigger objective i'm doing that to all but he also had invested a lot of money and like got just five minutes i recommend that we table the discussion about compensating existing customers and tell that the november nineteenth meeting ok because because the turn tariff as as far as published and  doesn't have any of the other to do with the working group recommendations or but i do agree with actually agree with that one very brief comment i'd just like to comment on ralph jones observation that voting on advisory committees doesn't make any difference  f the working group did not agree there was a majority there was a minority and there were two people who are often that source so c it's who didn't get to vote so we don't really know what they thought even though they sat through all the testimony that i don't like to make decisions you know like and i think if we could be more informed and discuss this issue i'm glad to go with the working groups recommendation but i'm happy just to consider you know alternative points of view but i'm going to go from the very beginning