agreement if you don't mind i've got a lot of questions on it as well so and then also in a general way if you want to talk about this what's the status of you said we're a pool transmission facility but we are g i guess from a high level right now what we've been focused on is the the transfer of ownership in the project close out and we have been actively meeting to make sure that we have all include approximately a little less than one mile of transmission cable those two lines that run along the the railway and we're also be transferring of cambridge so from cambridge all the way down to which is you know a little less than a mile is going to be transferred to it's already it's in the g t a agreements already written that way so that we transfer that portion of the ownership of the these men to to ever source for the the book value which was that the total cost of that was one point four million so we're transferring that the cost of that easement to ok to have a source the same pay one point four million dollars for the event that connects us to the jets you can which has next to ourselves correct that's really that's that's how we transfer him and then that goes as well as the the real property rights that they'll have on our property as well for that's also another transaction i'll take place i was happy that agent based on what we paid for them for the property for the site is a real property right where the where the the easement that they were down here inside yeah right exactly so they are going to have a long term it's an easement lease it's in the back of the joint development agreement ok so they'll have access to their quit but they don't own any any of any  that we purchased for you know like the crane in the building things like that different components that were that were a build out of the space that they're going to be using in the building so they're starting to point i mean it breaks down million that's right cost of what we transfer universe that more than well there's eight votes a larger amount because of the cash flow challenge that we had we had to use some of our twenty six one ok to fund a portion of this it keep in mind it was a cash flow challenge that i brought you got one year ago it was over right that that we needed to fund basically for a portion of that money was earmarked for the distribution side of the project which is  necting all the other substations to the main is the new main substation so we do we have an abbreviated plan to connect that ok and we need that money there's money going to go into an appreciation fun twenty six point one million dollars that was a no and taxable government obligation on that at four fifteen we want to borrow shot again twenty six for i'm sorry for fifteen twenty six four and for sixteen years past april not only we roll over twenty six for into another short term but we had of the may of two so currently we have twenty seven point six million dollars of shot term debt in general i've been discussing it probably for the last six to eight months this twenty seven six is taxable sh that and not hoping that will take place by twelve thirty one of this year so what that means is i will go back to town meeting in june and request a d authorization of twenty seven six to get them aspects of it but we've got a building down there and we've got ways that we pulled from fresh pot and the buildings are going to be up and running now in front of it we have all of these otherwise so we've got to either decommission and rate and then all of the upgrades to the system so any additional moneys that ever source is willing to pay us i would think that that that needs to go for these decommission the upgrade of the system and and all of that type of stuff you know as far as the overall cost of the project that's a number that jim probably hasn't like closer to but from a bonding perspective we start on a fifty we rolled into the taxable twenty seven point six right which means it's fifty three point seven right and we're selling in the switching here traditional wind easily for forty five the total cost of the transfer be forty five yes twenty seven point six will be defeated what happens to the balance of those fund because into the depreciation fund ok which which replaces the money that we had somewhere so therefore somewhere there we had more because of the cash flow issue as you is what did we buy for seventy one  right jim as i understand it the seventeen point four million which is the difference between twenty seven point six in the forty five if if we think of it is an overrun it's more on the ever sources plate isn't it that i mean in other words have had don't had no impact on but so my understanding was that they ended up with more expenses than they thought and they used our financing to to pay for it is that how that happened while we were treasury that was will you do it you didn't issue more than fifty three seventy three seven authorized is what we saw it starts right that's what we issued but then we had funding of fifty three point seven in cash plus twenty seven six of the short term borrowing they are going to be paying for that that's a critical piece that comes up about balance sheet from a moody's perspective i thought that was in the forty five no it is it is significant that what episode was going from this standpoint right now i'm i'm sitting with fifty three seven authorize that which we've issued all fifty three seven is twenty six one which is permanent financing this twenty seven six which the shot term if ever saw us was going to write us a check for at least twenty seven six that would fall into our balance sheet but ok so that yes but you know for me for me then the question is not so much worried about you know how that works because we wouldn't have spent the seven hundred four on you know without going back to town meeting if it was a belmont asset that needed that funding but because it was an ever source said the needed the funding we were able to do it because we knew we were going to get paid back for the distribution side of the project which was connecting these substations there was about five million in there in the fifty three seven in the fifty three seventy ok it was in the twenty six one and what you may or may not remember is i came back to you guys probably about a year ago and said that the bid that came in for that transmission line was about five million higher than we had estimated you know i do remember that and so we weren't happy and we were trying to figure out how we're going to do this project because it just ate all of our contingency so at that point we had to come up with you know a strategy to not have to go back to  town meeting and get more money from tom meeting authorization and borrow more so what we did was we abbreviated our distribution plan and said we're going to fund this out of our depreciation funds ok and we will then use that money as i continue to see money for the transmission side you know that's when you know that's when it started going above the twenty seven six point but then but then you know you're say i understand that point no i understand their point but jim makes a good point is that we are coming authorized to move forward with this project do we can we use seventeen point four do you show money and we got reimbursed i don't think so but i think it's a fair question here isn't that money that came from one pocket that has to go back to that pocket because we kind of borrowed that due to cost over so we're not going to have a full seventeen point one million to decommission i think that's what i'm trying was no money it was going to the appreciation from who's going to be used for that purpose from the community yes i think that if you if you think back and so you crack me up on this if you you know mind they're rooted in the beginning of time if you will when we went along for the twenty six one we thought that the split between belmont light assets and ever source assets sources went up and i was went down further we got along in the project we had twenty six one on the books that's fine but there was probably about i think we dropped the roughly about eight million dollars that we were we were going to be up at the end of the day and at that time floyd knight discussed you know all of this this is going to be used for the decommissioning of the other substations which is still a capital project which these funds are borrowed for so we can use it as long as we use it for a capital do you know i think it is it's just that it was forever sources account not ours so what happened as jim was saying you know the belmont side went down in the every store side went up and we used our funds to fund the construction but now they have to pay us back right so they're paying back forty revival to know what the total project cost at seventy one point one we just need to know that we need to communicate that to the town and say we pay for that interest we're paid forty five  number so twenty six point one and then you're right we need to see it right yeah exactly but my my second point is that it's my understanding that town meeting and i don't know this for sure but my understanding that town meeting understood that the fifty three seven point if if if it includes the you know funding the distribution system then then there shouldn't be no issue but i don't know if you know what i'm getting in there and i can't recall if you know we can find other next town's paving contractor to get the paving complete as of right now this week yes it's worked out well and that's that's kind of what i figured would work efficiently so we're doing that and then as far as the there's landscaping maybe landscaping but we're actually talking with mike santorum right now and we're looking to use public works manhole this week says two runs of the doing will be the people they're expected to complete that work by the end of this week and paving which will begin in the just in the parking lot area of the inside the fence  bit of a change i was just wondering jim what the projected in service state is now projected in service state steve right now what i'm being told from and star ever source is that it would be by the end of november because station so it's it's still deal that work is getting done before this gets energized so it pushed our data a little bit so we're getting fed through alternate lines and right now you know we're getting fed the way we've always been fed but the substation is not going to be up and running until probably was scheduled for october feel like it's going to be the end of november and the cutover you're talking about is talk i'm talking about the outage anyway on right now of all the components yet ing the splicing completely on the on the cable and energizing a line or through its final accept a process that we're going to really have to have all the close up packages because when it gets energized we have to transfer ownership but we've been working diligently on getting our close up packages together in the right format that to live for that closing and we're also looking at making sure that we don't have any outstanding claims that would delay that picture all the invoicing is paid you know i guess pretty much pretty much it you know and then we're also supporting you know therefore there's a process that you go through which is a transmission cost allocation process the project is review it much like it's reviewed in here tonight much like it's reviewed at tom meeting and  with the you know bonding agent seasons and such and they just look at the project justification is it regional or is it is it just a belmont this is clearly a regional benefit  from all of the meetings that we've had to pull ameri meetings that we've had presentations that we've given to the reliability committee everybody seems to understand that this is well needed to have one gentleman come up to me and said this is this is should have been done you know ten years ago so there's been a lot of support for this project and we go to expect to have a decision as to you know what the percentage will be that will receive we're looking out which are usually one hundred percent struggling with with getting this to you in a timely fashion but the yeah it goes without saying you need to be but i want to make sure they got it done right so for future evaluations right it's like this you know it's going to this is the for me it's kind of like a law and order episode you know where i think what we have in front of us and what we've had in front of us before is kind of beyond a reasonable doubt that we should allow these this three and a half million that sitting on the balance sheet to go into a segregated belmont light which one to it yeah ok so this is entitled the might light open you know give  copy of this and it starts out where we are we have the video we have the minutes thank you bob we have the approval of the minutes thanks allan the cost is in the current rate trust fund which we can do now under thirty two b is that right jim you know and then we fund the belmont light open with the reserved cash on the balance sheet and i say reserved in quotes because it's not really revokable trust fund which is the charge that floyd is making and somehow we should adjust that because i don't i don't know if it's possible to take money out of what fun fact i don't think it is out of the towns fund and put it into them like companies fun so we can just you know do that by memo in then put the belmont light open fund under third party management such as prim or i put m l d m c c which i don't think is the acronym but could you tell us what the there we vote tonight to establish a belmont every vocal open and we transfer the three and a half million reserved operating cash to that fund once it's established we continue to fund that fund as prescribe gaspy forty five and we invest the proceeds of investments back into the fund now the question is why would we do this open cost isn't the loughborough and measurable cost that that's a fact so whether we agree with it or not is not right i guess to be forty five requires estimated funding annually or it goes on the balance sheet if you don't fund liability if it's not funded when do a liability is created in accounted for on the balance sheet as i just said and if not funded when do and i think this is the key point belmont lights customers there are eleven thousand italy and they bought their house lived there for three years and moved to north carolina because he had a different offer as and so what they paid through the rate base  even though opec is in the rate base we're not applying it to open funds so what happened is a liability is created and that liability goes into the towns fund and then it looks as the the amount that of florida's calculating is based on the percentage of free cash flow it's a policy that we have established yet with but it's it's not it's not linked to the open liability and the problem with that is that the town in two thousand and eleven  contributed forty one percent of the annual required contribution in two thousand and eleven in two thousand and twelve we contributed forty two percent in two thousand and thirteen we contributed twenty four percent in two thousand and fourteen we contributed twenty six percent and then in two thousand and fifteen we contributed twenty nine percent so what's happening is that because that number is the link to free cash flow which has nothing to do with the opeth liability the contribution is going down we have gas to be forty five we have an actuarial report from our actuary which is current projected the actual well so i think it's agreed that it's a liability it's a one term liability and if we have a plan in place to do that and the money to remit with you then we should separate out i think where one town a situation where actually where he has estimated the expense of each department every department in the town is under the towns of the brother with the exception of water and sewage of the like company we're talking about the li company now it's in the rate base the cash is on the balance sheet and we have a liability i i don't see any good reason not to make a problem smaller by making sure that like company customers who outnumber our real estate tax payers by almost three thousand customers to make sure that they're paying for this liability because it's a full cost liability and it should be it should be paid fo the rate payers and the same is true of water and sewage of i don't want to talk about water and sewage now we have this opportunity in front of us to make the problem smaller ok what her proposal was and what i asked was do you want to be covered in terms of your retiree health insurance by the town or by the light partment currently are covered by the time every year you pay a portion as allocated by the actuaries report into the town stabilization fund and that sound is saying it will pick up the cost for all retiree health i don't think we can say you can have both i mean for i don't think employees and the belmont like can be covered by both so all they have to be covered by something and i guess the question is worth is that ok then the question i would have for the town officials would be does that mean that these fund and then over time since it is a long term obligation to once we hopefully fully fund our punch of the we are going here for the return report i think that you actually need to invite them at some point later in an actuarial calculation it's not like i've got an invoice for the slope of amount it's calculated every year goes up and down and i think we can do more for him to try to control the future and for the life liability by through health care reform  if i may way and having listened to both sides yes point counterpoint ok you know i i am in agreement with your position mr chair jim you know i think the proof the proof in the pudding is that the rating agencies are are happy that we are aware of the obligation we are addressing it we do have a policy and it's a town white policy and it just something that we are taking seriously i think it would be a mistake to fragment the town you know and you know  we we call like obligations for one department but not for another department in my eyes we are all one town like jim said they are all town employees and i think it's important that we have one comprehensive policy that addresses all the pounds pounds needs so so i think it would be ever had a call change to start fragmenting different departments in town whether it be water so we're because it's an enterprise fund or belmont light and you know and and you know quite frankly if i don't work for example for belmont life i don't know how i'd feel as an through all the records that we could find at belmont light and we could not find any documents to support the amount this three point five million dollars that's in our operating for that purpose so i my my thought on this and it's my my opinion is that based on everything that we've looked at you know somebody made an assumption at some point that well you've  liability on your books of three point five million and you've got cash in in your operating that must be for those funds you know that must be offset that liability isn't in the right place and all of our expenses are revenue should be able to make the point go ahead please ok then we found the minutes in the minutes say that it was authorized ok then there was a question about whether the minutes were legitimate or not not that bob would create them out of whole cloth it was just that they weren't submitted to the bryan became town clerk however allen did a diligent search and she found that those minutes that were came out of personal files were in fact approved by that same board and  five we axed we asked the actuary to do it by department we have an accountant that has created a three and a half million dollar liability net of what wages demanding for the town and we're collecting the money and it's sitting there so what happens to of floyd in the town in this is to this old question about gee you know the light company employees will be covered no one else will what it does it just makes the town's obligations smaller because we can charge these eleven thousand five hundred clients for the full cost of providing electricity to them and if we don't do that the real estate tax payers are going to have to do it why would why would we make them do that we only have eighty five million dollars in real estate income and we have two hundred seventy one million dollars one or that will be on our books in opeth liability that's that's not a winning strategy you know wh if ralph can reduce the to seventy five we can get this three and a half million in two and a proper open line and start reducing this number so that the real estate tax payers are not facing this overwhelming de what is this money going to do with the team we just give it to the town as it basically proton employs an answer seemed to be yes it was not well defined motion as to what was going to happen with that i mean it was simply a statement about what the jim and i think we have a cogent policy i think we've established a working group you pushed that i appreciate that now we're looking at it more closely i think we need to continue to look at that that we need to continue look at our pension obligation i think we have a solid prudent financial plan to deal with our long term obligations and it sammy indicated the radiates he's agree so i'm not willing to agree to your recommendations but i am willing to consider jim good ways motion here immediate need ok then i move to transfer the three and a half million dollars from belmont like department unrestricted net position to belmont light depreciation fund capital improvement example i think it's an example of jury nullification i don't i don't think the current open have a strategy is valid in the longer i'm not complaining about it in the past and i think tonight we have an going to come up with oh pip accounting guidance that was for private industry private concerns with those companies to go bankrupt in a heartbeat and we needed and they needed to make sure that we had sufficient reserve set aside for pension and felt this is the municipality we're not going bankrupt we're going to be here one hundred years from now belmont is not going to go away as long as we're able to pay our annual obligations for health care the rating agencies a fine it seems to me to go out and try to create and pay down a liability over a ten fifteen year period type pick a number out what you're doing is you're put knepper and on the current tax payers as opposed to stretching this out over many many many years so by paying our annual  financing so i have to respond to that i have great respect for ford but all of us sitting at the table if you know anything about the town's financials you know that we're paying around three million so the pension fund the way that was managed was in exactly the same situation that oprah is now where you know they decided that they needed to have the cash in the bank to make sure that the money was there to be paid  pensions needed to be paid so there's real cash out the door it's ten percent of our real estate tax tax and some of that whereas if you fund these obligations we're committing these obligations to our employees every year in every year they earn they earn they earn the benefit and what we're all we're doing is deciding not to pay for it now that's all we're doing we're for we're paying for it as a long term obligation jim you would definitely i want to check if that means it's a twenty five thirty year forty year o implementation so the they they provide us with you know like very wide integrative solutions for the let's say utility billing and thing for everyone you have to register to have access to it and the registration is opes something different the registration this bridge is simple you have to know your new account number and that's the thing which i biggest besides just seeing your bills online like making payments on line and seeing all your billing history there is another pretty good functionality and i'll come to this first of all you can do a different but also that's the bill history and trying to be pretty quick but also you can go so you know our you search and you search will do a different type of comparisons you can see your four electric accounts you can see your hourly usage so they recently added like certain notification where you don't have to be registered but you just have to have email on file to be notified on certain things and that's something we can do it before it took a lot of time and effort for different you know life of eden and customer service team now it will be done by just like generating certain jobs in the system so it is a very very you know interesting system and i would i hope it will be how we talked about them last time i talked about one of them last time and that is you know what would really be great is if we had this hourly filling and you could manage your electric used to the lower cost time frame  dynamic pricing is a challenge because of the billing system it's very complex those that do mostly are there are very few systems i don't think there's any system out there that does dynamic pricing so the only models that you see are the traditional  we're going to be able to do it now now we've got this new system to have the functionality we can we can we can roll out a time of use that will probably happen sometime next year as we're going through the cost of service study and then the other the other one was critical peak pricing i think it's more complicated than might imagine i think there's going to be winners and losers in time of used rates and i don't know how many maybe roger does roger colton's here how many utilities really have mandatory time of use rates there are some voluntary time of use rates i'm familiar with but as you might imagine if you have time of use rates those people who can shift their usage to off peak periods are going to win those people like for instance our school system they can't shift their usage very easily to other periods so i think there's going to be winners and losers i'm not saying we shouldn't go to time of use rates i think it is something that would be very very something that we have worked on and i'm not saying the jim is is incorrect or any what is wrong and aiming toward that i just wanted to put in a cautionary word that's all ok if you my second question was who's project was this was support from the town team on with this regard so everybody's happy on the town side well i don't know if you want to hear that i mean why would anyone ever have we like we like i'll be working together eighty percent have you work together and implemented the system yes oh yeah and i second background because it was just about a year year ago right about now and early october that the light board asked the energy committee to follow up on the recommendation of the working group to pursue a community solarization campaign and at so starting in october the energy committee got together  with the so there is a group of dedicated solar advocates in the town of belmont we began working with them we issued an r f p by the end of november  seeking to select a single solar vendor with whom to work and we got four beds on our feet we decided out of those four beds direct energy solar was the vendor that we wished to to work with we thought that they provided the quality of equipment that we wanted the customer service we wanted and importantly but perhaps not most importantly they agreed to provide a twenty percent discount off of their normal rates or their normal prices so we went in to go solar campaign we started on the first to expect i have to admit at this point that i think that there were any number of us that if we would have walked away with fifty sales at the end of six months or at the end of th month period we would have been more than delighted so we let me just give you the numbers the headline upfront enough background the headline upfront there's nothing but good to say about this nothing four through direct energy solar what we don't know we know that there exist but i don't know how many a number of people who decided to purchase and install solar units other than through direct solar so the two hundred fifty four actually understates the the impact in sales we had because there's probably not a lot but another ten or twelve folks who decided to purchase their systems through either other than direct energy solar so two hundred fifty four let me put that in context direct energy solar is the experienced ever anywhere it is the most they've ever it is the most successful community solarization campaign in the commonwealth of massachusetts it it places concord in second place so we were not there's a competition there but but we were very happy it is the most successful  solarization campaign we ended up selling one point four megawatts of solar power so you might remember that there was a discussion in the middle of the campaign about whether to expand the cap and that was a good decision we needed we needed to do that and one decision that remains before you is whether to adjust the capital gang because you might remember you just suspended  so you will need to revisit that and i'm going to talk about that in another couple of minutes the other thing that occurred in belmont was there was what we call  through the direct energy web site two hundred fifty four of that four hundred ninety three of those four hundred ninety three households actually purchased systems the typical conversion rate in a community s program is between twenty five and thirty percent so our conversion rate was more i know well i do want to point me in with the entire committee  just needs to feel good because they not only got people interested in solar but once people were interested in solar people followed through and purchased solar systems at a far greater rate than  else has ever done so there are a couple of folks that in particular given that you folks sit as the the boss of the town there are some of his department as well is glen clancy because with two hundred fifty four sales that means that all of those installations had to be inspected along with  e electric inspectors and glands staff just did a remarkable job at taking this influx of two hundred fifty four jobs if you will and  potentially suitable for for solar instant installations school superintendent john failing was very very helpful on a number of occasions on reaching out to the school community belmont savings bank and i was was a tremendous partner in helping us not only  van in their belmont savings lobby on a saturday morning but in reaching out to the contacts they have within the community and they have a lot of  people appreciate being appreciated and glad glen and his crew back and her crew the savings bank there are a number of folks who really were helpful a couple of people that went out of their way to to be of help so i'm trying to impress upon you that it wasn't the energy committee it wasn't even the bell might go solar team if you really want it really is contact with with folks and he just did stuff that he didn't have to do it was it was very helpful so let me end up with  just a couple of things number one is that even though there is a big but after all this even though we were tremendously successful the energy committe released its greenhouse gas emissions inventory this past spring you may remember that jan cruz spoke to town meeting about it and while we have reversed before the town about enacted or approved the climate action plan and convene the energy committee greenhouse gas emissions were going up now the in belmont they're going down however so we've reversed the  the trend up however they are not going down in as fast as is needed to achieve the town meeting approved goal of an eighty percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by  thousand by twenty fifty one thing that that greenhouse gas emissions inventory showed was that the big sector of greenhouse gas emissions in belmont in the one that's going up is in transportation and automobiles and belmont are becoming more efficient more and more efficient just due to the turnover but there are more and more automobiles that in belmont so the electric vehicle campaign that starts next week is the first step in this in addressing that there is method behind the madness there because transportation is the biggest sector of emissions and it is so is it's it's the biggest and it's the one that's going up even cars don't think a second campaign will would be as effective as the first campaign but we are working on another program to to bring back to the light board and the board  selectmen but i just to point out where belmont has been you know i'm proud of my local community sometimes proud of my local community a lot but the better homes belmont program was a program that we operated a few years ago to get people to weatherize their homes and you might remember that we had the highest penetration of weatherized homes through a community whether ization program of anybody in the commonwealth and the town spending about fifteen hundred dollars out of pocket to insulate our home and to air seal our home we save about six hundred dollars a year so to make a fifteen hundred enthusiasm and energy you know it was incredible a lot of education i think a lot of people got educated of course more than exceeded expectations and you know i congratulate the energy committee and of course all the other players in town who contributed to that boy if if we approached the belmont drives electric with the same vigor ok that would be another notch in belmont  names are claw specter of those they are in roger rule played an important role in in this campaign and so i wanted to mention their names you know well and in this context the other thing i wanted to ask you roger just for the public when you think about we have eight thousand five hundred homes in belmont and it's my understanding that about two thousand of them face the right way is that your understanding as well that sounds yes yeah that sounds like the n heard so if you think about and if your final number was to fifty four is that right so it's over ten percent of those two thousand houses so if you think about you know pent up demand came from you know past issues that the light board in the municipal light advisory board because people there you know weren't quite as enthusiastic about this opportunity is as we have been in the past year and a half but what would be the expectation for pena tracing of the two thousand homes you know you have two fifty four now would you see it or do you know of it going to fifty percent or twenty five percent what is the kind of the national i should look to california to homeowners so if you slice off forty percent of those as being renters then you've got three fifty thank whatever the this is why people don't let me work with numbers  may be oriented to the right way but there are there are trees there are the ways homes are built but you know dormers and so just because a home is oriented the right in then i understand one of the arguments that we had when you know when people were considering being more favorable towards residential solar once we got the the rates worked out was that having this many houses installed would help the peak demand what do you think about that now that you know that's actually wrong ok and  made this an urgent issue to us which got us to move faster and encourage you to work on the campaign itself and their net metering recommendation was right but i don't know by experience