the light board advisory committee otherwise known as l back of which we have three members so you gentlemen want to grab an extra chair and come up and hit the mikes and didn't introduce yourselves and we'll discuss this this is a matter just to set it up for people we had discussed and laid back and brought this up about changing its charge for what not not electrical charge but it's actually it's actually it's actual i took an initial shot at drafting up a new charge i think the main idea here behind the new charge was we wanted to i think the feeling was we want to make it clear that al back could provide advice to both the light board and to belmont light so that was the i think the key element here and then we listed some areas where we thought we could help  as it is it says they're clearing without limitation on those areas also recognizing know that whatever we do with the advice and support that we do give is when coronation with you the light board who has the ultimate authority over belmont life so we want to make that that clear as i said i drafted it up and then after that it became a collaborative effort with other members of the of l back we had a meeting  last thursday us think and there were a few little tweaks we put in and this is what we came up with and happy to discuss it hopefully it's something that is worthy of specifically listed no i think i mean is pretty much covers the activities we could find ourselves and gauging in the future so i guess from my standpoint it's just as we engage in each issue i think for scheduling purposes for november and december we are looking at moving they'll back meetings back a week so whatever comes from those meetings could then be incorporated in the white board agenda the only piece that also is in my mind is for meetings that span multiple hash it out it out back and then report it somewhere you know by month or every other month just things like that i guess this is something that could be figured out along the way it's just you know my experience has been the wreck you know some of the issues we brought up last week are you know wrecks strategies power supply strategies it's it's not like us single you know it's not like a power supply contract or it's one item it's an ongoing discussion about what is a reflection of the belmont community and so how do we gauge and both groups and an ongoing basis to collaborate everything  he arrived as has travis frank from the al back i like the idea of moving the ball back meeting to a week before the light board meeting to give time to get in a proper order i think that's that's great and that provides sufficient  exactly right and then i guess the only other thing would be on the composition whether you find that to be you know restrictive i guess is including persons with it's not soley persons with i mean you may find there's someone in the community who doesn't have particularly the background but they're really good and you want him on there and i don't want to make it so that we have a so restricted we can't fill the slots and i should add this is exactly what we have at present that that was a composition like which was unchanged ok we haven't had an issue getting good people make you mr brown you know the head getting on the life board but it's just back i mean but it's just a matter of you know limiting it over time do you have yes i guess the only question i would have is how much strategic planning goes on and i picking apart words a little bit but i guess this is the time to do that it talks about financial planning and viability but does nothing about a strategic planning process do you guys enter into that process and if so is that something you  so actually a great question so we have started engaging in strategic planning webinars to decide how we would begin that process i think you know  attribute to the belmont community a large part of strategic planning we've seen already going on at some of the other communities such as the energy committee and so on so i think certainly i'll back you know as an integral part of that it's just what is our approach to making an official strategic plan so much of what i've seen come from the energy committee was part of what was also developed at the utility level so since it's already in it and then it was kind of through public  forums the community was engaged this is almost the other way words happening simultaneously so i'm not sure that's an answer to question but i guess in terms of the process then is that something that we would specifically want to put in the charge that we would ask this could all be part of the strategic planning process i certainly think they'd be involved in that whether it's in here or not to be honest i mean but that's great and i think i'd like to push the board did have more of a strategic you know kind of focus on where you guys are going which i know you have and i think it would be a great group to weigh in on that so it's nice just to get a reinforced even last time i think we met i was ready mike how can i go back to resource for for the general manager i think this time and also just reiterate you know if there's strategic thinking that you want all back to consider of course talking to the general manager is a good way to do that but if there's also something we can do as a white board advisory committee if that's good i just want to mention too quickly to other matters just to follow up first when we were talking about the power supply plan last time there was a little confusion about the language is near and we met thing and we did come to an agreement within el back of the changes that we could make to resolve that in a few other of little tweaks that i thought were put them in place but i just want to report that that had gotten out of the well back and we're waiting for the energy committee to work on that from good this moving forward we could maybe think take it up in october meeting hopefully and again it depends on know if we could if you could if our backs passed and if you passed it if you got some more back and forth and you know it has to be it has to be we want to get a right so the only other thing is to mention that we do have a joint custody service study meeting on the t interests that i think this can be distributed and that's going to be a big meeting seven pm on september th which is a another joint meeting with i'll back in the light board to have the consult present the results of the cost of service study which is going to be a step forward in finding out the trying to see where our rates are coming from and see what we can do about lowering them if possible or at least you know have strategic planning and such so that's this can be a big meeting back and we're moving on to the next item on our agenda discussion on light board chairmanship this is a continuation of the discussion that we've had back in april i think where this is now my one year anniversary of chairing the you know last year jim williams by for kate at the chairmanship of the light board in the chairmanship of the board of selectmen but it happened midyear it happened september which actually kind of worked out pretty well because we have this policy now where the the nd year your share the select you kind of but when you st get elected you don't have a lot of experience in running it so having able to sort of get the feel of it and maybe take over the chairmanship of the light board in september till the following september that way there's a half of the year where that out there obviously no one wants to do it then that's a whole different story but i mean it would be this is the time if we were going to turn it over would be a good time to turn it over yeah it doesn't have to be now but it's six months from april so i so i'm vice chair time now becomes the light board chair correct and then when so it's september and then in april he becomes the chair of the board based on the policy adopted and of the board selecting chair takes on both responsibilities or he or she doesn't need to take it well i guess i obviously have been doing in this work in fun but i don't i'm not there was something to be said last year in particular with all going on the late department to have just think it's just seems confusing to me that someone who's just newly elected becomes a chair within six months of the light board i did i know you did but no you had we had we just in six months that's why i'm suggesting i mean we don't have to do it i'm putting it on the agenda as we said we knew pro we said we'd revisit this in september i don't want to chair of the time to be chair so it's not like i'm looking to be the chair of the light board and i am having to understand what policy we have so now it's when you're newly elected and in the for six months then you take on january take on the chair of the board for for a year for a year but then when it within that year you step down as the chair of the law or care but the vice chair like yourself could stay on the entire time so there's some continuity there for anything when you know someone resigned or something happened that they're released because i'm not looking to make it harder than it has i think it's a good model but i mean i think jim williams did a last year and i thought it actually worked pretty well because i was able to give a lot of time to the l apart permanently to say it goes to labor and starting in april the chairmanship of the selectmen goes on a totally different cycle from the chairmanship of the late department and they never cross over that's another model i was looking good right but you lose the discussed trying to get a short term hedge on our power supply portfolio and you had authorized the g m at the time to secure roughly twenty percent for two thousand and nineteen and ten percent for tw below a price the national of forty eight dollars so this is a quick snippet into we did that because it's not executive session i'm afraid in from saying the actual price but the price was quite competitive very pleased the follow up step from that perhaps i'm told i'll consult with me on that but october november timeframe i would look to come back and do the same thing to birth to for the remaining portfolio terms over time so and long run this is helping us transition so as contracts expire we replace them on a predictable basis but that isn't in place right now so we have to take the short term outages recently in the last couple of months so we've been looking at that and so you may or may not be familiar with the fact that we have an i see as an enterprise resource management system it's a very very powerful system i'm a huge advocate around the nation so it's a very large system that in terms of land mass serves something like seventy five or eighty percent of the geographic area of the country so there's a lot of features built in and also unique is th see were a member owner so it's not like you're most of your counting software where it's just a private company that they do their thing were a member owner it's because i was born in the co op world it's a membership model and so thing needs that we see in our day to day operations we can bring that to the membership meeting which was last week we didn't send anyone this year we didn't have a need but we can get features implemented work but just if you see any further outages that's a record of it known point to look at and it's an on you know discussion we're having in the short term so that's a that's a big one  also i believe she's time's flying last month i don't know if we formally mention this but we met with steve lawrence from the facilities group about the green communities status so we offered to you know given the fact they were immersed in energy issues every minute of the day pretty much were we would certainly be willing to take over coordination of the green community fully leverage the grant funding available and the operational lose not as exciting as that one station three we had that if you recall the large but it's just not worthy in case there are people it was large enough the neighbors noticed and and so we have some ongoing maintenance now expanded to that transformer  and it's just something that you know we've kept in mind as we proceed to project c there's some sense of urgency that is undergoing the today's test results were encouraging so i don't think there's any immediate emergency  but i just want to point out in case you might hear something about it that we are fortunate this time that it was and out switched off for maintenance but projects to create redundancy want it's online for that type of situation  on washington street i guess they do the congestion of the existing infrastructure on the road they had to switch to handing which is going to slow things down so unfortunately we did  get out before school started but will be with the handy thing in the consideration they'll be out of washington by the end of the month so the metal plates will be gone by the plates paving i'd have to double some kind of temporary considerations but a lot of times they punch paving for the end because it does it say you know it saves money to bring the machines in once and so that i'm not quite sure i'm guessing that's how this contract also in the parts that are complete we started pulling cable so the idea is to you know pull cable as conduits complete that way project b which is somewhat critical for redundancy purposes will be done by the end of the year level a summary projects see again so there are a few things that had to happen for we're projects he can really go ahead full force one of which was working on some of the old infrastructure by belmont savings bank so we've met with the bank and upgrading to some of the switch gears been upgraded to the new voltage and so with that the kind of unlocks the door to do the rest so without concord junction with a couple other m l p's that was a big success i also bring attention to that because i don't know if it's something we're doing or just in general or maybe recent news events but i mean even mentioned earlier that a lot of the questions that came about were generally speaking saying how can we get delmon like to serve us you know we're tired of the neighboring use and so there's an opportunity you know so i just know where the people are noticing the successes that we're having in  last time when there was a disaster thanks so we did ask for interested parties we had several folks interested so we had two trucks reserved favor i mention when i write this are approved it looks like then we've got our next meeting on september the twenty six which is that which is our cost of service study presentation