recap planning board received an excellent set of tools we are looking to add one additional tool and that is to the ability to give a developer with a lot of at least eight thousand square feet and ninety use feet of frontage the ability to come to the planning board for a special permit should the developer wish to build two single family homes rather than a two family home it doesn't oblige the developer to do that but it would give the developer the option to propose it and the planning board the option to accept it as i was as i was saying we we've tried in the crafting of this by law to address the concerns that this is not destabilize or be a wholesale rezoning it as drafted it applies to thirty six properties a list of that power of those properties are available on the town website and the map behind me shows with red dots where those properties are as you can see they're distributed throughout the general residence district the final concern and consideration as i would say was that we not end up with very large single family homes on four thousand square foot lots to guard against that possibility we are proposing a set of dimensional and designed guidelines and i'm now member or a committee member i guess the best way to sum up the amendment to the byelaws is that i think the g r zone is screaming for a byelaw that or an amendment to the by a law that will give the planning board the tools to really use land the right way so land use is the biggest issue i think in any zoning district but in particular in the zone in disinfo district from what we have seen so we want to have the ability as a board to site a situation where a large two family wouldn't be desirable and we don't have that seventy foot wide structure rather we'd rather have it in a ninety foot scenario ninety foot front scenario with eight thousand square feet you'd have as liz said earlier a seventy foot wide house under the current scenario that we have in the car by a law in the new and then what we're proposing you get two singles each single would have at least a ten foot sidelined a twenty five foot house and a ten foot side line that would give you forty five feet if you go move across you get another ten feet which would give you a twenty foot wide corridor between the two houses and then you'd have a twenty five foot single again and then you'd have another ten foot side line i think from correct you can see what happens behind me you avoid the large t family which really brought us to town meeting in two thousand and fourteen and i think that we're to be a lot better off with those two singles the other thing is we're going to increase open space which right now is allowed it it's forty percent we're looking for a forty five percent so there's a five percent increase in that we're going to reduce height from thirty three feet which is substantially less and then the c s r c zone but more houses in the geos zone are are higher i would say because they're most of my family dwellings which leads me to another point what's happened here in the zone which brought us all here in two thousand and fourteen was that developers were buying singles on these larger lots and they were they were ripping them down and they were putting back to use so as liz says the whole sale re redevelopment of the g r zone really meant that the g r s on had no singles singles would disappearing at a very very fast rate in favor of the two large town homes so we're trying to bring a little bit more balance back a little bit more back to the g r a zone with with this amendment  again simply put this one point six what is it made well on a house that i was just talking about the twenty five foot wide house if you take that one point six you end up with a footprint that's twenty five by forty giving you about a thousand square feet so if you you do the math times two that would be two thousand square feet if you get a half a story up there if you're lucky enough to do that you're right around twenty three twenty four hundred square feet twenty twenty five townhouse on three eighteenth repeller road and i think you can see that behind me as well ok so you see what the red line is what could be allowed under the current zoning if we allowed just single families to be built under the current by a law if you look at the blue area that's the size home that we're proposing to be built on that lot if you look at the pink area that's the really the view that you'll with the green way between the two homes the open space the benefit of the viable so what we really want to do is we want to control density we want to be consistent with the central objective of the a t m two thousand and fourteen general residence owning byelaw two families and single lots are all over the town and they're kind of high i think if we were to an act this amendment which i am hoping you you see the light here i think we could end up with a much better balanced district much nicer homes that really would compliment the community the neighborhood be much more in scale with like existing homes as the folks in the they hit injure shahr area talked about we're trying to do this as a whole zone we're trying to take the whole  this would be i believe a good step in the right direction and we urge you to support passage of article seven questions at the lab at this point what we eat the planning board i believe has  him an amendment to this article would say it filed in a timely fashion so we'll begin with the amendment and self mr battista you could read the and then i'm going to explain it briefly and we'll have discussion on the amendment michael battista chairman of the planning board time meeting member at large move that article seven be amended in section sixty point seven point one standard for single family dwelling alternative subsection to each dwelling by deleting the lot coverage requirement and remembering the remaining standards as follows standards a single family dwelling alternative each dwelling strike exceed twenty five percent shall i read on what states what remains to be at once you complete the reading there so for the record ok a the open space shall not be less than forty five percent b the length of the dwelling shall not exceed its with multiplied by one point six c the height shall not exceed thirty two feet and d each dwelling shall comply with the performance standards listed in section sixty point four the reason for the amendment further study revealed that in certain circumstances the existing law coverage requirement thirty percent allows for more desirable proportions let me get the votes open up the down me all right we will open up for discussion of the amendment to the main motion so we'll only talk about this change and then once we dispense with that we will go back to discussion of the full motion under article seven and a discussion on the amendment title to the two different lots now it then becomes two separate owners so two separate owners are then required to do open spa you would you like me to answer the question yes only i thought joe did for me i'm sorry so so yes to individual owners and they would have to comply with a b c and d of the of the amendment any further discussion on the and what can i ask you to sit in the front row i violating my own principle here if i could just add to my last yes please if it takes me a theoretically they could be a single owner that owns both lot but they would be individually requesting special permit yes sir john robotham precinct two mr moderate i'm just trying to understand what these more desirable proportions would be and you know i just don't know it's kind of a reason for doing this and i'm just curious if someone could give us a slightly better understanding of why thirty percent is more desirable than twenty five percent in terms of the amendment word mr robot  thousand square foot lot divided into equal lots of four thousand feet with forty five linear feet of frontage for each and when we did that and we applied the rule the one point six rule where the with multiply times one point six would derive the dep it actually equaled twenty five percent like coverage and as we further looked at lots up to one thousand nine hundred ninety nine square feet of you know approaching one hundred feet of frontage we realized that twenty five percent necessarily limited the lot coverage when you when you use twenty five percent like coverage in other words the one point six is applied and it establishes the footprint but then the twenty five percent would be applied on top of that and it would actually shrink the footage the footprint of the home and we felt that the proportions would be better by eliminating the twenty five percent to go back to the underlying zoning that is in fact thirty percent and leave it at that because the one point six rule although it can exceed thirty percent in some extreme circumstances it typically doesn't get to the thirty percent when you just leave it simply at the one point six rule and we discussion of the main motion under article seven this man and man precinct four i don't see anything wrong with it but i'm just curious what inspired it was that developers that were reaching out to the planning board the planning board come up with this on their own or was it homeowners mr just seven up just to stefano plan a board member also a real estate developer if you look around  and you and you see what's being developed there larger two family houses we got here in two thousand and fourteen and sitting on the planning board and looking what a developer can do by right by a law you take a look and you say geez it's a shame we couldn't have two singles because it would actually work better you could accomplish a lot more that way so we just started thinking as a board jase and especially at three eighteen because they were short by you know i want to say less than one hundred feet so there was the thinking for it and then we said to thinking well seven thousand square feet and seventy feet of frontage that's really where you get the two family n so you still have that in my mind that you can still get a larger two fan but it's fifty feet if you go with a ten and ten the minute you get up to ninety is really when you start pushing like massive you know so i think that that's where the thinking came and in this some some lots a wow it's a shame we could've done you know we could've done this because i'll give you another example down on merrill avenue hamilton road where there were two five thousand square foot lot that once upon a time before two thousand and fourteen arguably could have been to two families those end up being singles which you saw on a previous slide they came out really great the neighborhoods really happy i think the developers are really happy i think the town's going to be really happy also because i think sixty seven one the wording a lot coverage will not exceed twenty five percent i have a question for someone on the planning board in sixty seven three it has the same wording into three it's as prohibiting more than twenty five percent i'm missing something here should that be in six d seven three that wording  read a correctly should be removed oh no i'm sorry that is not correct sorry i'm going to change my own answer it says the board may impose so it doesn't have to be they don't have to go with that twenty five percent markup which it may impose conditions that do this that can prohibit luckovich a greater than twenty five percent can i get that follow up as time ok in the first paragraph of sixty seven three it says in addition to the conditions that the board may impose cumbers as the planning board shall impose additional conditions and safeguards that it determines to be appropriate to assure compliance with the standards that forth in section sixty seven one including but not limited to the conditions and number three says prohibiting law coverage for more than twenty five percent i must be missing something george town council a law for a legal opinion and then you may hear twenty or thirty others but of the way i read this section it says provided that the playing board shall impose additional conditions and safeguards that it determines to be appropriate to assure compliance with the standards set forth in the preceding section so these are representative conditions that the playing board might impose to  assure that in its judgment the preceding sentence are met so i don't view this last section as being a blanket tory conditions their representative conditions of the type that the planning board could impose to assure compliance with the section thank you on my right william messenger precinct for mr moderator do i understand correctly that if the developer chose not to seek these two single family dwellings this is just an option they could choose not to this option they would be able to build a larger two family or larger single family instead is and i say that correct mr michael pietsch the chair of the planning board yes certain conditions have to be present for to family to even seek a special permit when those conditions are present an alternative to the two families could be two singles and it isn't always the developers urging it could be the planning board urging we may feel that for the particular neighborhood that is made up of maybe mostly single family homes in this particular g r zone that two singles might work better to keep the you know the neighborhood more intact the further question is do you think it's going to be economically advantageous for developer to have two smaller singles i mean there would be more internal square footage in a a large two family than there would be in two single families for the very reasons that we the two single families with you don't yield all this open space and you know we'd like it better but with the we look at we we took two cuts out it first we we built a smile model that allowed us to look in a statistical fashion at the square foot differential between single family and two family homes that gave us one answer and then based on his experience as a developer and independently mr just stefano made his own estimate of the different the per square foot differential and the answer is the the market for two fit for single family homes in belmont within the dollar range we are talking about is so strong that we believe that there will be some single family homes built there's a twenty to twenty five percent per square foot differential right now and it's growing thank you yes sir mr moderator mark wagner town meeting member precinct five i'm assuming that these lots in question cannot be subdivided by right and my question  is has an have the scenarios where someone may apply for a special permit get permission to subdivide the lot and then declare bankruptcy or do something which will allow them to now i have two lots instead of the one to do that a subdivision of the lot and yet not adhere to the other conditions of this by while i have these  of the plenty board it's hard to predict the future in any of those cases but the guidelines have to be met for it to be eligible for a special permit in the first place as a two family so all of those criteria as an existing lot have to have to be present right now if that if that person chose to subdivided into two lots no less than four thousand square foot each and no less than forty five feet of frontage  each and they went bankrupt i don't i don't know how to answer that other than looking to mr hall for a question but they would you know it still once a special permit is issued i would imagine it has to be done prior to that i would imagine it reverts back to george howell town council this by allies in force at the point of the building permit so we have a five thousand square foot minimum lot size for a single family house when if a special permit issues the only way to build  n that special permit is in compliance with the terms of the special so i'm not sure what the poll is created or or miyuki if you divide a piece of land into four thousand square foot lots you divided into two equal parts and the and the building does not take place under the terms of this part of the zoning bylaws that those will be on buildable lots if the special permit stated to be thirty two feet is that maximum height as the midpoint of the roof line or is that maximum height and i only ask because it was brought up on the other article as being a met total maximum height at the homes that are built would would both be front facing where the entrance would face the street are we talking about houses that face each other on the side of the house face sixty which which was inactive last year which says you're going to have two front doors we were not going to go back that the method that will be used to measure the height of the roof we can no longer assume that every time a roof height is mentioned it will be done in the same way i have another question about the relationship between area and frontage it seems that if you have considerably more than ninety feet minimum frontage you could potentially build a quite wide building so for example if we take the square root of four thousand that's sixty two and a half feet so there's actually six about sixty three and a half feet so weight of sixty three and a half foot square a lot and we had ten foot  setbacks on the two sides that would allow for two houses each of which would be forty three and a half feet wide i mean that would be an unusual situation because that is envisioning one hundred twenty seven feet the question is did the planning board consider the possibilities that widely varying frontage associated with eight thousand square feet could the possibility that could create different types of how's that different shapes and sizes mr distaff and i'll then we did and that's why this is a special permit type process it's a case by case scenario so in most instances what you're going to find is the wider lockets the deeper cats and then you're going to end up looking at five thousand square foot lots which is the minimum single family house size and the cio zone i know what you're saying to answer your question the best  it's a special permit type process so we did look at almost every single scenario that's how we ended up going to the thirty percent lock coverage because as the the lots get wider what ends up happening is you're right  the the homes get wider and then if you go with the one point six you end up at a place where it doesn't make sense to have twenty five percent lock coverage so you almost get to one point six almost is the golden rule so to speak it the one point six kind takes care of itself i hope i answered the question thank you on my right mr moderator adrianople pristine one move the question is the emotion is made move the question is there a second surrey choir is a two thirds vote for new town meeting members as means we will end debate if it's passed by two thirds let me take a voice vote first all those in favor is ready ok voting is open so it yes if you want to terminate debate press that's one or yes two or no if you don't want to terminate debate four times hard oh ok sorry are you going to start again like is that mean that two people ok tell me when you're ready ok now start again so vote again as if you had not it's not right play ok so vote again yes if you want to terminate debate no if you do not seven seconds hundred twenty and what are the absolute numbers kle one ninety five to fifty so the motion is carried by more than two thirds debate is terminated that means we turn to the vote also requires two thirds of under the the main motion adopted but let's do the electronic it's a two thirds vote i think it's important because this has to this kind of definitiveness is important with the attorney general as it requires a two  so please when we are ready are we ready glen open bowling so just stop if you support the motion as amended press yes oppose no glenn do you want to display the and the final vote itself and tell you what i intend to do we've got on wednesday night there are a couple of reports under article one and then we will have the special town meeting in which there are two items two fiscal items related to snow and ice and school department and then the remaining items are articles eight and nine for the ngo town meetings so we'll try to dispense as quickly as possible with the two special town meeting articles i then intend to turn to article eight the c p a its community preservation act and there are six motions under that article that will take us a bit of time so we can adjourn now and then do article nine after article  on wednesday night but that may go along the other possibility i don't want to go too long tonight the other possibility would be to begin article nine  tonight and let say spend about an hour on it and then adjourn if we have not completed action on article nine resume it after article eight on wednesday evening is that same suitable to town meeting fine so men will proceed accordingly so under article nine this will be presented to citizens but dish petition it's a non binding raised article nine citizens petition non binding resolution solar policy moved that the town vote to adopt the nine binding resolution to read as follows shall bellman state representative and state senator to be instructed to vote in favor of legislation requiring the municipal electric utility bill not light one to adopt the same net metering rates and policies that are applicable to investor owned electric utilities in the state and two to adopt rates and policies that do not discriminate against or impose other financial or technical impediments upon customers who seek to generate their own electricity with solar from solar power does the board of selectmen have a vote on this motion mr yes and the board of selectmen voted to recommend unfavorable action by a vote of two to one the warrant committee does not have a thank you  let me explain the procedure we will follow mr rubel will make a presentation on behalf of the citizens petition in support of it of course and then there will be a presentation in opposition to this motion and then there is a an amendment to the main motion which mr robel i think will explain in his presentation or and we will then read that amendment and take a vote on that i mean not excuse me the boards will vote on that at that point i will recognize mr jones who will make a motion to indefinitely postpone consideration of this article and he will explain the context for that so that's the sequencing so first we will hear a presentation from mr rubel go ahead please thank you moderator for we start roger ruble ten meeting in the crease and five thank you i'm very happy to have article nine on the warrant this evening a small group of belmont citizens have for more than a year been debating the future of solar  belmont with belmont light and the belmont light work without reservation this is an opportunity to bring this important and complicated issue to a larger audience of belmont's elected representatives personally i'm very interested in getting your  input the first thing i'll say is that the same thing i said at the league of women voters this is a non binding resolution and it's directing the state representative and the state center there to vote in favor of a piece of legislation that doesn't exist so what my recommendation is don't get bogged down in the details of the language of the article it's really an opportunity for us to express  sense of how people feel about this as representatives of the larger community and i'll stop there so let me just talk about the article as i said it's a non binding article it's directing the state representative and senator to vote for a piece of legislation were to become before the house and the senate and it's asking them to do two things one is to have the municipal  to have belmont light the amendment is going to change belmont lie to municipal utilities so this is just directed at belmont light if you adopt the amendment it'll be on legislation that is directed at all municipal utilities but all of the light because that's what we have before us it directs belmont light to adopt the same policies for net metering and i will explain what net metering is in a few moments that discriminating against so lauren is but let me explain what we mean by that we do not want belmont lite treating solar owners different than other rate payers for instance if if solar owners are reducing their use of electricity that they pay purchase from belmont light and other rate payers are reducing their use of electricity by other methods like installing energy efficient light bulbs or going to florida for the winter and not using as much elect ok massachusetts has successfully supported and encourage solar development through a set of specific objectives and then providing financial incentives the investor owned utilities those are things like national grid and  which ever source are required to offer net metering to their customers and to either to either and the utilities are required to either generate their own a renewable energy up to a certain level or to buy renewable energy credits from generators of clean energy such as the citizens of belmont who are generating their own electricity with rooftop solar massachusetts solar program has been wildly successful the initial goal was four hundred megawatts that was reach two years early the the end then the goal has been increased to sixteen hundred megawatts with the goal of the year two thousand and twenty it's expected that they'll reach six  year early for that program i'd like to note that belmont light has no goal for adoption of solar and that all of the municipal utilities are not required to meet the state's renewable portfolio standards to and from the customer typically through a single bi directional meter when a customer's generation exceeds the customer's use electric electricity from the customer flows back onto the grid offsetting electricity consumed by the customer during the same billing cycle in effect the customer uses excess generation to offset electricity that the customer otherwise would have to purchase at the utilities full retail r metering is required by law in most us states but the specific policies vary widely ok now i'm going to do something you never do in a presentation in as go to a slide which is not the next one so hang on ok here we go this light shit shows net metering across the united states it's practiced in forty four states and required in forty four states and actually ninety five of the massachusetts municipal utilities have retail net metering so what evidence do we have that net metering is important to the success of the adoption of solar coincident to this meeting last week the net metering task force which is a task force that was established by the state legislature to advise them about net metering issued their report and in that report there was a study done by their consultants and what they said was states that do not offer net metering have had highly limited solar market development compared to massachusetts additionally state level targets and incentives have been a major driver of solar market development to date the analysis also shows that states without robust solar incentives and targets but adequate solar potential have seen limited market growth compared to similar states with solar incentives and binding targets this suggests that for the time being state level solar policies are critical to the future solar market in the united states ok so this slide describes the differences between the minister polite departments called affectionately the muni's and the investor owned utilities called the i o u s so the municipal light departments are subject to much lower levels of regulation compared to the ious for instance communities are exempt from laws covering ious including as i stated before offering retail net metering and meeting the state's renewable energy standards ok so what's happening in belmont bellman has made a commitment to lower its carbon emissions it has been designated a green community rich requires reductions in carbon emissions and town meeting several years ago adopted a climate action plan which commits all of us to an eighty percent reduction in carbon emissions by two thousand and fifteen belmont is not going to meet that goal unless there is a lot of locally produced solar in december of two thousand and fourteen the belmont light board voted to end retail metering substituting paying a much smaller payment for generation put on to the grid they also approved a monthly fee to be paid by solar host for the energy they generate and consume on site i happy to report that that policy has been postponed it's not been put into effect and the light board has said that they are going to revisit that at a date pretty soon the goes of this non binding resolution and to ensure that belmont like treat their solar customers the same as solar customers treated throughout the state so this slide shows the there are forty municipal light departments in massachusetts and they provide electricity to forty nine towns so some of the departments have more than one town that they're providing energy for this shards this slide shows the municipal utilities that have net metering that continue to have retail net metering in the retail price for excess generation and the red bar is are the towns that have no net metering now some of the people who are critical of my presentation will tell you that they do offer net metering but basically what they're paying isn't a tiny fee compared to the retail price and they may consider that net metering i don't in fact we were challenged on  this data this data was collected by me and two in turns in july two thousand and fourteen we contacted or scoured the websites of all of the forty municipal utilities and came up with th haven't really wanted to go back and do that again so at the last league of women voters presentation i was asked is this information accurate and i we have gone back and checked every municipal like department and i would like to update this metering i don't want to discuss this any more because i only have ten minutes and if somebody was like need to ask me a question about it i'll explain it in excruciating li boring detail why the numbers of change this slide looks at the number of residential solar arrays in belmont and neighboring towns so belmont is all the way on the right in fact belmont as far as i can tell has twenty total solar arrays now in the last in two thousand and fourteen there were two additional arrays so there are a total of twenty and two came on line and in two thousand and fourteen as you can see lexington wal fam and watertown all have higher numbers the blue bars are two thousand and fourteen the red bars are total solar array is even watertown which has sort of about the same amount as belmont has added fifteen solar arrays in two thousand and fourteen compared to bill months too so the effect of the policy is that the light board has been discussing and eventually pass have really had a chilling effect on people being willing to take on solar in belmont then almost done finally this you can read that but i'm actually going to say something else i'd like to address the subject of cross subsidies and i'm sure that that subject is going to come up and ralph jones presentation in a few minutes i can assure you that belmont residents who own or will own solar arrays are very willing to pay their fair share of the costs to maintain our electric grid but we don't want to be penalized for generating clean energy one of the state's net metering taskforce members for next next step living had this to say about the value of solar and cross subsidies solar delivers clear significant well documented net benefits to the commonwealth overall multiple in depth studies in maine new york connecticut for amman minnesota mississippi and recently by the acadia center in massachusetts show that solar provide significant net benefits to the electric system and to the community overall any claims that solar in massachusetts is using grid services while being subsidized by other rate payers are unsubstantiated i thank you for your attention and i look forward to the mr moderator ralph jones precinct three i have the privilege of introducing patricia diorio who is a member of our town's municipal light advisory board and she and others on the advisory board were concerned about certain aspects of net metering and made their views known to the light board which actually makes policy i want to be upsized that it's the white board that makes the policy and the white board this evening at its meeting at five thirty an ounced that it was in favor of solar and in favor of doing more solar so i think you can be sure that you're going to be well served in the future but let me without an introduction further introduce patty effectively says we shouldn't decide for ourselves whether or not we have certain policies surrounding solar or any other type of green energy one of the beauties of having a municipal light plant is the fact that we  make our own choices and that we get to spend money for the benefit of all the ratepayers and not see it go into a broader pool so i would put that forward first it is a complicated issue i give you that and what i'm really going to try to do in the next ten minutes or so is help you to understand that actually although mr rubel suggests that there are no subsidies there actually are belmont is not actually alone in questioning the wisdom of retelling that metering we're actually in very good company and you know him personally i just would like to see the discussion on this topic be constructive there have been a lot of personal attacks and worse in the citizen herald and i personally would like to see that come to an end and let's just get on with a policy that works so with that what i'm going to do is i'm going to try to help you understand a little bit about electric rates where the cross subsidy comes from what's happening with net metering and then i'll try to help you to understand the economics of solar as it is today and it's actually a good story and how that works out for both solar and non solar customers ok a little basics on the electric bill there are a lot of lion items but effectively you've got three main buckets you've got generation costs which are about forty percent of the bill that's belmont like going out and signing contracts with wholesalers to buy electric commodity for the town there are transmission costs about twelve percent of the bill and that's the cost of moving that power from the power plants to belmont light system and then the balance of the or the distribution cost so the cost of belmont light system itself and all the administrative costs of actually maintaining and delivering this on the system interesting thing about the way we bill for electricity about ninety percent of your bill on average is based on what we call it's a volume volumetric charge it's a charge per unit of electricity you consume or a kilowatt hour in belmont the rate is today about eighteen and a half cents per kilowatt hour so if you look at your bill about ninety percent of it is calculated that way even though we're calculating if that way the truth of the matter is that most of the costs of the electric system are fixed it's the wires it's the maintenance of those wires these are the things that don't go away when when the usage goes down but yet we build them as though that is the case right now the beginning of the slide basically tells you what i just you but the middle of the slide is really important to understand we actually aren't discriminating against solar customers they actually are very much like everybody else on the system with net metering roger explained year as much as you're consuming because we're crediting you at retail you're affectively paying nothing for the maintenance of the grid and recall what i said about fixed costs there are costs on the grid and actually a solar customer is using the grid all the time either to draw power from the grid when the sun isn't shining or at night or to send power back onto the grid when they're generating more than they're using which is actually a lot of the time because solar generation is pretty lumpy and it happens in a very focused period during the day so they're using the grid and that basically leaves the non solar customers picking up the tab so that's what we mean about across about a cross of city ok a little quick history on net metering before i walk you through this chart it was originally put in place in massachusetts in the early one nine hundred eighty s and that was when solar panels were really expensive and quite frankly not that common that's changing the industry is maturing and the trend that you see here with the average installation costs across the country kind of speaks for itself the cost of installing solar is about half of what half today of what it was four or five years ago it's a good story actually the dio we renew a national renewable energy lab also just released a study last fall that pointed out that the cost of installing solar and other parts of the world is actually a lot cheaper than it is here and because the equipment is the same one of the things that they concluded is that our policies may very well be enabling installers to charge too much and not pass on the cut the cost savings that you see here to consumers ok very quickly there are a lot of states around the country that metering and there are a lot of states around the country that are now reviewing net metering so we're not alone this data comes from the north carolina clean energy center which is funded by the dia we and basically there have and there is a lot of gory detail behind this but there are a lot of states that are reviewing in various ways how they do met net metering and whether or not it's a policy to continue do they change the fix cost there are a bunch of different things that are under review too much detail to actually describe here but rest assured we're not alone and massachusetts is a vacuum so one of those states the net metering task force as mr rubel mentioned just released their report and their recommendations not all the participants in the study agree with the report but this is a quote from the recommendations and it's it essentially says what i just said that people on the grid using the grid should be paying their fair share this is a consensus agreement it is not a point of dispute so all the participants in that study agreed with this ok this is where we get a little bit complicated i'm going to try to just walk you through this this is kind of the the cross subsidy so what we're looking at here on the left hand side is the situation with net metering and on the right hand side that's the policy that the selectmen voted on last fall and has since been tabled so what we're showing is the annual electricity bill on average for a person in town and what it would cost without solar the next line shows the avoided electricity bill in each one of these cases and then what's left of the  bill and then as calculated by belmont light staff these are the subsidies on each policy and you can see that you know if a solar system and it does last about twenty years it would cost under net metering it would cost everybody else about thousand dollars over that time for each one it is about a seven year payback that we calculate conservatively even without net metering this is a good story the cost to come down it really is a maturing technology another but another thing that i'd like to point out about eight hundred dollars and i've talked about this before is that it's about twice as much as we subsidize low income i've mentioned that before in a public with the policy that was voted on last fall so you know just round numbers if you paid about one thousand dollars for your system you would get nearly six thousand dollars in tax credit from the federal government there are s rex in massachusetts that last ten years that give you a ballpark twelve thousand dollars and that really that gets you pretty close to whole and then the bill savings kariya the rest of the way and then some and the and then some without net metering is about twelve thousand dollars with net metering it's more than twenty five thousand dollars so take that for what it is just going to close up by saying that the letter that was sent to all of you requesting a yes vote on this article made it sound like belmont was belmont light was no longer compensating solar customers at all that's not true and i just showed you that but in closing we are asking you to vote no on this article and you can vote no one and know that you're not in a tie so are i've gotten comfortable with that myself essentially why would we want to give up our local control why would we want to endorse a policy that's neither market based nor cost based thank you thank you i'm now recognize mr robel who will present the amendment that was filed by the proponents i'll take a vote on that and then i will recognize mr jones as i indicated s learn to read the entire amendment and to briefly explain that was the amendment yes right ok so move that the town vote to amend i'm sorry roger rubel town meeting member precinct five move that to town vote to amend an adopt a non binding resolution to read as follows shall belmont state representative and state senator be instructed to vote in favor of legislation requiring the electric municipal utilities to one adopt the same net metering rates and policies that are applicable to invest your own electric utilities in the state and two to adopt rates and policies that do not discriminate against or impose other financial or technical impediments upon customers who seek to generate their own electricity from solar power and the board of selectmen do you have a vote on this amendment mr baghdadi the bulk of the board of selectmen voted to recommend unfavorable action on this amendment by a vote of two to one at this point i will recognize as i indicated mr jones a little bit of context here as he will explain over the last couple of days he's spent many hours saying if it was possible to achieve some kind of compromise between the proponents and opponents of this article  he was not successful but  let me let me finish because i'm going to give you a chance mr robles to reply to the presentation of mr jones and then we'll open it up  to continue he indicated though mr jones that although it was not successful heat felt that he was going to come forward with a motion to postpone this article indefinitely as he will explain why the question was when and this debate would be the best time for him to make that motion i made the judgment that this would be the most appropriate time i'm old enough to know that or moved that discussion of article nine be postponed indefinitely now continue thank you last saturday night i received a call paulson a precinct one who said that he felt that this issue become divisive and he asked me and mr williams the new member of the selectmen and john told them to come together on sunday and see if we could find a solution and we talked for two hours and we didn't find a solution at the end of that i suggested that one solution might be to postpone this for a while and let tempers cool down and accordingly proved recommended that to the moderator and he referred to the town council and apparently one cannot recommend that this be postponed to a definite time and there are legal arguments which town council can offer that will explain that the only option is to move that we postpone indefinitely and i think there's still great merit in doing that on april second we elected a new light board and last wednesday that light board including the new member mr williams withdrew a solar tariff policy that had been proposed back in two thousand and fourteen and would have amended retail net metering therefore all of the members of the light ward said last week that they want to decide on a new policy going forward and i spent some time with mr williams on sunday listening to ideas they had that i thought were very reasonable that take into consideration all of these aspects in a very complex way and also allow this board to read the report of the net metering commission and task force at the state level article nine in a nonbinding sort of way instructs our legislators to vote in favor of legislation that does not exist as mr rubel explained it also asks us town meeting members to vote for legislation that you cannot read that's fairly rare most times we want to read it and see maps before you vote i can assure you that the legislation and regulations associated with it will be very complex and if i am ask questions i can explain the level of complexity it will entail but since article nine's legislation whatever that might be is unlikely to be introduced as a voter to pawn until the next latest senate session it seems prudent to me to allow our light board to act they've been elected to govern that's what public ownership is all about local officials adopting local policies to meet local needs i think that this white board can adopt a policy on net meeting that everybody in belmont likes it could happen really co and if it happened it would be terrible to see that policy preempted by the state in two thousand and seventeen finally i'm motivated deceiving to defend this article because i know that both sides on this issue really want to fight tonight a fight to the death or as dread pirate robert might say a fight to the but it wouldn't be our pain so much the real pain would be suffered by those employees who get up at one o'clock in the morning to fix your wires and it's on their behalf all the employees of the town that i speak to mine as roger cotton advised in an article about a month ago fighting over this issue is not helping our efforts to reduce carbon emissions it's just getting in our way so i propose that we put down our mr baghdadi third board of selectmen unanimously recommends favorable action on mr jones's motion i certainly i would agree with rob jones's statement my effort was to try to reach a combination between the two sides partly the reason is that i have neighbors next to me and neighbors across the street from me that have taken these opposing sides and what i would like to emphasize is that it's a real asset to the town of belmont to have them in a school like department and from a financial standpoint and operating standpoint it is critical that we have a strong local department the other thing that's been missing i think at the board of select role in the past has been that they are the policy makers for the like department and up until maybe i'm not completely accurate about this but  recently with a new member and a new chair they have now taken that role being the policy director of the like department and i'm sure that once that policy is indicated that the like the proppant will work on spelling out the details but will follow that policy decision by the board of selectmen it obviously is a very complicated subject and my feeling is that with this new state task force report which deals with this issue of net metering and that that report is available for study by the select that shortly a policy can be written and that he'd like to pop in and then carry out that policy i for one favor metering and i think if it was just a simple situation where we were going to vote up and down a non binding resolution indefinitely this man thanks and man precinct for i do not want to postpone this we are paying seven hundred fifty thousand additional dollars out of reserve for the snow removal  have buyers that are our neighbor to get solar we can't get solar to come to meet belmont anymore this is a non binding resolution all we have to do is try to encourage language to go back and forth faster than it is  has been legs in cement for so long it's just going to inspire more conversation please don't let this drop tonight guys we do have a carbon footprint we do have to address that and belmont can't get solar to come any more please and here's the other that eleven cents a household a year is what all the people think i have solar right now it's eleven cents a household to each of you is that really going to kill you if it is call me i'll pay the bill for you mr calder meant ways you know this past year and a half or so has been a bit of a distraction from that so i'm very much in favor of just plain mr roberts paul roberts town meeting member precinct  aide i am standing up to neither support nor feud mr jones and then man what i would say is that i think one of the issues that has been brought to light in this entire debate is that we need electric company that really represents the values and the priorities of this town i think this is an issue that was forced upon this town by some ideological leadership on the municipal light advisory board and now it's kind of a bet and why are that we are stuck with and trying to find some way to resolve our way around i think there are some excellent professionals very qualified professionals in this town who are coming from a position of supporting renewable energy and green initiatives their voice is simply not present  i don't mean i am i in the sand you don't think you are but you are yes mr thayer better i'm in the precinct five and first i'd like to just come every body's perceptions of how these conversations have been it's actually been very polite i'm not sure where all this intensity i think it has but the what we're seeing is that across the country utilities are fighting because they've had a hundred years on awfully and this is what we what transpires here what you just saw the presentation of the financials across subsidy is simply not true something like nineteen out of twenty one studies sterile academic studies have said that the people who have solar panels and have net metering subsidize the neighbors and not the other way around i don't believe that as i think you're moving beyond the scope here we're trying to focus on this very narrow question please allow the conversation that we have been elected to have to proceed thank you but let me be clear here there are a lot of issues around obviously global warming and solar and put broad policies the discussion we're focusing on now is on a nonbinding resolution supporting legislation that doesn't exist and that is fine that's the right of town meeting but we are considering a motion for indefinite postponement and it is incumbent upon us to stick to our business and not move beyond the scope of the article in two broad claims of one sort or another about it be a logical policy or global warming and so i we need to stick to the scope here turn to my right i did know and tell me to member precinct two i understand what you said about actually i don't understand why this postponement is indefinite but i guess i don't have to buy question is can we get an idea from the light board the board of selectmen about when you would be addressing the us that's fair let me answer the first question though and that is one cannot have an postpone t beyond a given town meeting so if this were just to be postponed until wednesday for example that would be permissible but one can postpone something to a date certain of a new town meeting so of the light board and what i can say to you is we have in addition indefinitely postponed that tariff that they're opposed to right now we have pure net metering in belmont and until we reach a resolution it's going to remain that way thank you on my left devon brown precinct five town meeting member and our question for you mr jones or  mysterio just to explain a part for for not asking you to say why you didn't reveal it but if there is a conflict at least please acknowledge it or percy of conflict mr i agree and if there were to be anything that came before the music municipal light advisory board that pertained to national grid i would abstain from voting i do not perceive there to be a conflict of interest and in fact the work that was done on this was done before i was an employee of a national grid and i'm not speaking for national grid tonight ok thank you in this town now i think i know i think that was sufficiently answer for the time being let's go to the right here yes yes man oh right well yeah so i'm not quite sure of the procedure  i presented mr jones presented are we to walk up to the microphone and speak whenever we want to or no of course not and i can offer you a chance to respond and you declined that and that i'm not saying that that but you know argument having different positions it's sort of like let's not talk about this let's keep it under the table let's not the reason that we brought this is because in meetings in meetings that we you know put the point of order he has somebody had a point of order of course it's on the topic you're talking about postponing it or not postponing let me finish and yeah the point of order was what i understand i mean i understand i made an exception here because he did decline but because he was the original proponent i let him proceed with his his rebuttal though we declined  i believe the people of belmont support solar do not support these policies and want more solar and i was told by one of the selectmen that that's not what they perceive that they get calls from people who have the opposite opinion another one of  select men told the group that was there you don't matter because mr robot know you're now moving it this is this is inappropriate mr robel this kind of accusation i'm not going to put up with it this is absolutely inappropriate so please sit down on my right julie crockett ten remember precinct five i feel that we have an opportunity here tonight to find out how to meeting feels about solar and if we postpone this indefinitely we will not get to know the vote of this body we will in the future get to find out what the belmont lightweight wants to do but we will never know how town meeting feels about s so i asked that we please do not postpone this and that we take a vote find out how town meeting and feels and thinks about the the article to know how what the sentiment is toward toward solar so it's a non binding resolution and i don't understand what they're scared about thank you  moderator bob mclaughlin precinct two and i support the motion to postpone it indefinitely primarily because i don't know what will voting on this is just too squishy for me we've seen how complex is is and we were supposed to instruct our state representative in the senate as it's been pointed out to vote on something that doesn't exist i came i read my warrant and this applied to belmont only i read the motion to amend and suddenly you know parties to forty tons i mean this has to come into a lot more the judgment on that latter point when the amendment was filed and it was duly filed in the time period required i checked with town council and we made the determination i made the final determination but with his guidance that it did not go beyond the scope so we did consider that and now i think mr mercier and then on my life move the course i move the question let's take a voice vote first all those in favor of terminating debate on this amendment please say aye odd that was opposed no one will have the roll call vote this will just to terminate debate requires a two thirds majority ok the polls are open so right the polls are closed planned you want to display the result so the motion is carried to the actual vote when one sixty six to sixty seven more than two thirds so debate is terminated so we will now vote on the motion by mr jones for indefinite postponement that clear if this prevails and that ends discussion an article nine if it fails then we will resume discussion on the main motion under article nine but we will do that on wednesday so please go ahead and vote on mr jones's motion for indefinite postponement and this requires a simple majority the motion the motion is carried and the it will be indefinite postponement we will now have the motion to adjourn the meeting until wednesday mr baghdadi do you have that preliminaries with two articles on the special town meeting and then the c p a article eight and that will definitely be able to complete our business on wednesday you know somebody did leave their