good evening and welcome to the march twelfth two thousand eight hundred meeting of the belmont municipal light board i'm adam dash chair the light board with me is jim williams member of the light board oh adam jim and craig spinelli are acting general manager in l our assistant for the evening taking notes i assume and so we're going to do is go through some reports here before we go into executive session so starting off first would be general manager search update  so just to go into a little bit of background here that we had a meeting screening committee meeting the first one and we met and we chose a steve klee on ski who's here tonight that the chair of al back as the chair and roger coleman who is also here tonight the chair of the energy committee as the vice chair of the screening committee and we will be interviewing candidates and sending a short list to the light board we hope that the light board will be that process will be done to the light board would be able to interview and possibly vote april past week we had two winter storms and they were fairly significant for us we had quite a bit of damage on march second and third friday into saturday that was primarily a storm for us there was no snow associated with that but caused quite a bit of damage we had nine broken utility poles throw town really which is pretty significant for for our size town were to take a break or  very large tree if if so most of these poles they were just broken from wind blowing them over and these were all vents where trees had come down and landed on the wires causing the poles the to snap yeah so i believe the d p w was saying there was over forty six trees that came down that we get along those is quite a bit of damage out there customer impact wasn't as lot as large as we've had other events which is was good but it was still fairly significant customers did see outages the largest we had was our early on saturday we had one of our larger circuits operate we had a tree come down take a pole down cause a circuit breaker to open and took us a couple hours before we were able  find the damage isolate it and then and the gys the circuit again so that was the first storm on march second and third as i said fast forward about five days later almost a week later actually we had another storm on the seventh significance to what snopes so she did with that one we had four broken poles come as a result of that storm less customer impact as far as number of customers that were storm caused a large outage for about an hour and forty four minutes and we got the customers back so that was a pretty significant situation and actually the the group did a great job it was customers back just as a quick point not to pat myself on the back or the department in the back but i will them they did a great job the operations team we had our customers all restored by approximately three four pm on on thursday friday morning just looking at some of the events around the region what was going on just as a comparison the tunnel lexington has as of friday morning which obviously is past they had about thirteen hundred thirty than us but they still had twelve hundred sixty seven customers out almost twenty percent actually a little over twenty percent of their customer base these are both investor own yes you know we we do not have  stats if you will for the other minutes that are close by they weren't published for us to to look at but again just just those those are towns that are really right within our percent of the in the damage that they would experience would be similar to the damage we've experienced so i think i thought it was a point to show you know what belmont light was able to get accomplished and that that window but the the audience understand what's going to fall like department can do for them  it was about it is a lot more details in the storm one one point worth noting and we've talked with verizon over this but we had a significant amount of calls for wires down we had fifty five calls that we looked at on the march seventh storm they were all verizon telephone wires i made a call you know i was on a walk in  this is before it took place dive but i called eight in on grove street it was loaded with wire b s and he explained but i'm sure the public's interested in the explanation yeah people see wires down and they don't know what those wires are so it's certainly concerning to them we have to look at every single wire that we get called on to to make sure it's a safe situation obviously electricity a little bit one dangerous than a telephone wire or cable t v wire but so we look at every single one it was fifty five calls all telephone related or communication related whether it's arise and all comcast this information's been sent to those utilities so they can tidy up and clean up their you know permanently secured or the come back down so we will do the same thing will respond to every call we get and we'll make sure scituate is a vote there hopefully things will go well tomorrow yeah hopefully it's a license is that every year or every three years every ten so is there something we can do to can we call mark in those people and say that they should get in touch with her eyes or well they're more you know there's wires to the left of me wires to the right and just wires everywhere yeah up and down grove street i mean it made it made no sense you know for that many wires just to be i think if you cut them down they should take them away there's no reason why they should just leave them on used so when they fall down this is probably not a drastic need to get out there and and take care of them right away but i would like i said we should send all the information so we collected all that information documented everything we came across sent that the beginning i think the first storm all those polls were down in watertown remember that it was that because of the polls or was that because of trees  but what happens is once one poll comes down the line then they all just the inertia of one coming down pulling on those wires of a ball that maybe we get the base it'll pull a bunch down so that's probably what happened there but i don't know if the wind or a tree caused that first poll to come down out there and then i think the public they should be aware that we have a tree program and we pay we pay of vendors of one hundred thousand a year fifty thousand a year to go around town and cut the trees down yes you know do we have a we have a vendor that does that so i think from a tree standpoint we're in pretty good shape you know because they do cut you know every trim them you know every year they're cutting down the old ones so absolutely it must have been a pretty powerful stuff it was a as promised we're back in motion to come out of executive session so moved so i got a roll call michael i to millions i had a dash i and we are back in regular session just for the viewing audience who has looking at the agenda we are not going to be taking up  item three which is vote on agreement with former general manager tonight next would be i guess craig if you want to do the purchase power update and then go into the discussion on power politics  on under that contract equals about for a little over forty three thousand so why did it happen again so it was a contract that is as phil unique a couple of years ago they were putting  was specifically for the periods of december fourteenth of february two thousand and fifteen and also december two thousand and fifteen through february two thousand and sixteen so we had to have a contract with this particular  provider through those months and it had to be a two part contract one of the main part was the heat rate contract and you had to take part in what was what's called a m and this allowed this vendor to sculpt that deal for us around our pekin and valleys as opposed to just the block set number so those two pieces of it and through those  months is how this was all did you have to ask them for the rebate or do they do it actually they did it automatically this rebate is not even contractual so this is this was more the germans agreement when they created this contract call up roger colton steve because we get to the discussion of vote of purchase power policy just for a little background of steve's obviously the chair of al back in roger the chair of the energy committee you may recall at a prior meeting a number of months ago the life board task d back to come back with us and advise us on drafting a new purchase power policy to dictate the terms under which light would buy power and they brought in the energy committee wisely to have some meeting and to discuss it and i can say that there was a it was a great process back to the energy committee working with craig and working with myself and they were porting back now with this policy which you have in front of you i can tell you we went through at the meeting went through this language paragraph by paragraph almost line by line going through it and debated each section and got to this final version which i would hope that the light board would pass tonight but turned over to steve just turn your mike on there's introduce yourself and  is in front of you and i think we're roger and i here to answer craig probably here to answer any questions you may have i think there there's five main points and i can mention what they are at least to me in this document if we want to take a minute for it so i think it's important that this is updated document recognizes belmont's climate supply climate action  plan and commits and belmont let it commits itself to strive to meet the goals as it applies to belmont light of the climate action plan second consistent with the first point belmont late is committing to meet green energy attribute purchases at the level currently set by the department of environmental protection for investor owned utilities even though that and this is a little bit separate but it is part of it is about malaysia stated that is going to make power supply documents publicly available to the extent that  commitment for transparency going forward so those are the i mean this other elements in here and i don't think anyone speaking perhaps for roger myself think this is the be all and end all that it's going to this is the document that's going to be in place for years and years and years there's a lot of changes going on with energy supply with green sources of power and i think we're committing to review the document going forward in a least an annual basis but we think this is a solid start to the process but having said all that i probably should not ship it over to roger to talk for you to for him to tell you what i've misstated from the perspective of the energy to introduce yourself roger colton and i chair the the energy committee from the perspective of the energy committee i agree with everything that steve just said  seems there are both substantive and process issues that were addressed and resolved in this document that the substantive issue is the commitment to meet the clean energy role in that in the recent past i think one thing the energy committee appreciates is or has appreciated in this process is that the process has further defined the relationship between the energy committee and back as well the energy committee is the committee that is charged with implementing the climate action plan an l back is the advisory committee for light and while those two committees will have interests that correspond on occasion there are distinctly different roles and then finally one of the big step forwards in this policy was the declaration or the recognition of the equivalence see between what are called megawatts in kilowatts the fact that saving energy is one of the best ways to ensure a reduction  emissions and that policy has been written in or that policy decision is written into this power supply policy so i and other members of the energy committee just couldn't be more delighted with  i think this is tremendous also to keep in mind that we were looking to see what the power policy was going into this process craig found one from two thousand and eight but there was no record of any late board minutes from then showing it was ever adopted so it was some sort of informal in a drawer and signed document and now we're going to actually have a policy that's written that it was on official document yes ago that to drive that to help with the general manager going forward as to how to go about buying power i know that's a sort of broad question but you know we're we somewhat aligned with what we're trying to sort of accomplish with this new policy or are misaligned well i'd say from my perspective when since craig has taken over as interim german or acting general manager i think he has tried more or less to do a number of the things in here but even so they haven't really been specified verbalise door being be made specific in writing so i think this just does clarify may clarify some of things were already doing now but i think it puts it in a more official base of provide sort of guidance a road map in terms of how will accomplish it and so just for my purposes so would we do this in new orleans say this is how we're going to purchase power there's is this an iterative thing where you constantly looking at this in a monthly basis as we purchase power or as we enter agreements we i was at work steve and roger i our policy now we need to align what we do from you know from a purchase perspective with it right so we have to look at all of that i think just in one perspective like how far how gross if we get in how much sure you want to be understanding of that so that's one thing that and that changes going forward we don't know what the cost will be right now so that's one reason one important reason to revisit this is going to be a living breathing document is going to have to be right but the determination has been made that meeting the clean energy standards today as a very very very small impact on rates what going forward we don't know what the costs will be and that's one reason to have an e and annual review the one question that you ask about whether we do it we whether the light board does it contract  contract this policy does provide that staff should be allowed to be staff and they do their day to day negotiations they if they consult with the light like in terms of peer review the only i would say is and that's fine i don't whether we want to sign responsibility here rather than we're going to a periodic review you know perhaps we could have by the light board in consultation with the energy committee and like there we could certainly add that just to be clear i just think that you know sort of being explicit about who's going to review this no less frequently i think it says and then once each year so i think that if you added to the end of number because that's probably what we would be doing anyway but for future boards to have it there so they know what the process is under craig to do anything they haven't you know i don't want to be too repetitive but i would really echo steve and rogers comments i thought the process as well as your comm process went very smoothly i think everyone got what they needed out of this you know it the flexibility is there for management of like department to really do the day to day work to purchase the power  of direction because asli the road map to where we want to be going and leaves a lot of conversation with the life or health back and energy committee to craft a more specific jim farmer was the general manager and he was managing the portfolio on his own i think that actually was the chairman jim was the general manager of the  board was like ford but i believe this came up in a couple of meetings that we had with jim and i was concerned about it because as i've said before people bring experiences from their previous work with them and we have a track we had a treasury function that was funding the bank and you could almost imagine you know that it's equivalent to buying electricity if you will and we had a risk management system that told us how much risk the treasury was taking on a daily basis and i'm not saying that that's necessary here but i'm asking that question because that was something that was discussed that not only do you have the contracts but you can't can you measure risk in this space so that you know if it on the actuarial reports we say well you know if the discount rate goes up by one percent this is what happens at the discount rate goes down by one percent this is what happened in is that the kind of management information that the board could get out of the content because as i'm sitting here i have no idea what the contracts are and how long they are i mean i haven't seen any of it now doesn't mean that we don't do something with the policy because i think something is better than nothing but i'm i'm asking about data and what can be reported to the board i can address address it from one perspective and then let you do it from more of an operational perspective from a green perspective we talked about engaging in two different inquiries and they're simply the flip sides of the same inquiry one and this sort of goes to what you were saying that mark are asking  impact on rates how much how many green attributes or how much green power could be purchased so and do you see that the distinction is so that if we go to twenty or twenty two percent or twenty five percent what's the impact on rates or flip the flipside is if we want the impact on rates to be less than two percent or less than x percent what can we do for that so we can actually measure in that way so yes and yes and that will change year to year be we can do that now i think we can beat mike my concern was that one person was buying the electricity as far as i knew and in this for that i could get an answer that was three years ago and we said we would try to make them more transparent i don't think it shows up in the audit report there's no footnote there isn't there isn't anything about power purchase in the accounting reports at all and yet i think it's a huge risk in a certainly less risky now than it was before not because of the individuals did but just because we have a process more of a process around it now but is there you know to your point if you have a green target can you measure where we are going towards it and can that be really reported i mean do you know what that is now as we're sitting here we know what the target is and we know what the price of wrecks are  and one reason that we put in here that we want to review how to meet the clean energy standards on a year by year basis is because the price will vary on a year by year basis and they are going up right in and then you have so have the solar impact which impacts the peaking and in august when they measure the price right now is that is that what happens is i understand that there's a set prices in august based on certain a certain period that they're measuring our capacity visa possible when there are peak which is why this sort of campaign is useful because when it's really hot cranking it right so i'm just wondering is there a way to report out on that is there m i a s that we can see  that's no i i don't i don't know that that's an operational decisions i don't know either and it gets a little more complicated because the so the peak may not correspond to when the solar panels are producing or very producing very high mean there are a lot  certain legal counsel as well and in the chapter one sixty four the general manager has the authority to enter into purchase power agreements but we as a board from a policy point of view determine risk issues radius use policy on purchasing power so somehow that has to be aligned with the point you may roger and looked at we're not an expert as i'm not an expert clearly but  how we look at simply is we can decide we want to do in the upcoming year in terms of the clean energy stevenson the record reports all of that stuff right and we can go to here we go to hear and understand going here with what that really impact might be versus this knowing that advance rates are a policy point of view absolutely no with the risk issues contract that we're in to not get in the middle of what the general manager has to do under chapman what's good for the would be important you know i'm not really coming at it from the standpoint that you know the board would be interested in telling you or you or the general manager what to do but coming at it from the standpoint that the board should know what is being done and  any who craig works very closely with are the people who really looking at the these contracts and the potential contracts not just with us but with many other mina supposin the state i think also that light has operated in the past is in this section eight where the light board commits to making it all information that is not considered confidential all the information for freedom of information act public but it hasn't necessarily been the perception that that's happened before so this sets a policy i think what happened in another department recently is that one of our citizens who is active wanted a certain body of information and asked for the freedom of information but then when they were able to the meet with the hartman head you know the work that was required to do that which the requester has to pay for it became clear that it was unnecessary so they withdrew the requests so i'm not i'm not really talking about when i'm talking about is is there a report on this specific activity that the board is going to get on a regular basis not to manage what's being done but to know what's being done i think i'll just section five hundred basically  make a motion yes i need a vote so prove that i am one of the right before you say that ok i'm you know i'm thrilled to have this in place and congratulations to you all you're doing able to put it together for your efforts  but i would like to have i'd like to know i'd like to know the number of contracts and i want to know how much they're for and i want to know it's duration it's all in that we can and that was something that was presented they explaining how it all works i came out of there thinking i kind of understood this because he was really good and he did break it all down for us it was a really good lesson if you're interested in getting all the details we can you send it to me and  quiet as far as discussions around the one fifteen project like palm and i don't have taken so we were gearing up to present something in april but we were asked to do a little bit sooner so this is really just a recap of where over maybe a year ago in this room you'll see that there are a few figures that are missing as we look as we look ahead and the department will need some this seems like about ten years ago and the town meeting in two thousand and twelve approved the borrowing for what we're going to call projects a b and we called them that a year ago when we presented this the in a year later the joint development agreement with never source structured the way the deal was done so the status as of right now at the end of two thousand and sixteen the substation was completed placed in service that's correct come directly to the substation but we needed instead to complete the reconfiguration near correct yes this is the piece that's still a bit ongoing so  we put a significant amount of infrastructure in up and around the blip on the area around the high school area and your street and we were able to refit the three existing substations conquered out  ey behind the general school there and hit your street from the new station however there was some infrastructure that still need to be placed in for the permanent configuration so we what we did was we used some of the existing cables that were already in the ground and you know made a cut over his work to to get off the ever so a system that much sooner there was a significant cost savings to the light about it to do so and this was the this is stop we have stepped down transformers in the substations so previously the transmission system as well as that black box that says thirty eight k v opposite cambridge there that was all contained within ever sources substation so within their substation yard they took their transmission voltage they started down to thirteen eight which is typically a distribution voltage and they use that to serve a town so as far as of a source was concerned we were nothing but a big wal mart basically source is thirteen thousand volt system and we take service directly from the transmission system at one hundred fifteen thousand volts to our blip on substation at thirteen thousand the the numbers are the same thirteen point eight k football substations but there is one major distinction here the ever saw substation was a voltage that was not effectively grounded kind of a delta system was would it be known as that has some positives but it also has a lot of negatives for residential base consumer and a blip on station is what we call grounded why system and that's certainly a much more stable reliable  reliable is not the right term but stable voltage for consumers to use and then how do you get it back up to four sixteen goes to the four point one six so the existing three stations yes that will be a substantial improvement absolutely absolutely yes the four thousand volt system was is a system it's no longer being built it's presented this a year ago and showed what the disposition of the ever source payment was under the the joint development agreement and as of that time we had remaining work to be done on the substation there are still some you know right configuration that's going on the numbers punch much smaller than that and then there was a balance which at the time was three point three million dollars estimated that could be used on the projects which which we just went through ok we use it we're using the seven hundred for these components here yes yes so that's that's what it's intended show is project be complete it project b is not completed to a project be in season the remaining funds around ten grand to do that yes we have ten we have seventeen thousand in the bank or something a little bit more than have a study done that resulted in a but it will be important to understand what project c is because we assume it's going to be ripping up st roads and other parts of town so when we have that completed project c but the plan for projects so the plans underway it will still be some time before the plan is one hundred percent cemented if you will i was we were preparing a presentation that as well as underground but a lot of the infrastructure will already be in place to pull it up in the fight now the main uncertainty here and this again this slide aside from that right hand column here was presented year ago the main uncertainty used the timetable and the staging of particular decommissioning is substations one hundred percent correct so it's a project because of the timeline associated with this ten years it's typically the work that we're we're going to be doing as part of project c is really just our day to day work it's maintain the system replacing old cable putting a lot of new cables and fascinating stuff  the depends on the schedule so we have what the slide is showing is there are some funds that were carried over from the forty five million that we were paid by ever source proximately seven and a half million for  project b and then there's another three point three million or so that we expect to carry over to project seat project b if that comes in less than that obviously the more money carried over projects see if it costs more w if it was cost more they'd be lost money come from coming over project c as time is going on and what we're also doing a light department is we're putting money aside from our operating cash into our capital depreciation account to account for this construction so we will have over the course of the ten years the funds to build out this system based off the estimates we have presently what bob is referring to is we've