Appropriations & Oversight Committee — 2015-03-09
Attendance
Jaclyn L. Bird ; Robert A. Boisselle ; Donald L. Conn Jr. ; Scott M. Forbes ; Gail Infurna ; Jennifer L. Lemmerman ; Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis ; Monica C. Medeiros ; Peter D. Mortimer ; John N. Tramontozzi ; Francis X. Wright Jr.
Agenda
Minutes
CITY OF MELROSE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE CALENDAR● MARCH 9, 2015 Aldermanic Chamber Committee Meeting 7:00 PM The public should take notice that the Melrose Board of Aldermen may, on certain occasions, have a quorum in attendance due to standing committees of the Board of Aldermen consisting of both voting and non-voting members. Members attending this duly posted meeting are participating and deliberating only in conjunction with the business of the standing committee. Attendee Name Title Status Arrived Peter D. Mortimer Chairman Present Jaclyn L. Bird Vice Chairman Present Gail M. Infurna Ward 5 Alderman Present John N. Tramontozzi Ward 1 Alderman Present Monica C. Medeiros Alderman at Large Present Robert A. Boisselle Ward 4 Alderman Present Francis X. Wright Jr. Ward 3 Alderman Present Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis Alderman at Large Present Jennifer L. Lemmerman Ward 2 Alderman Present Scott M. Forbes Ward 7 Alderman Present Donald L. Conn Jr. President/Ex-officio Member Present In Attendance: Mayor Robert J. Dolan; Energy Efficiency Manager Martha Grover
ORDER-2015-109 Authorization Authorization of Municipal Aggregation Plan for Electric Service Recommend Passage Board of Aldermen
ORDER-2015-110 Agreement Authorization to enter into an Agreement with Siemens to perform an Investment Grade Audit of City-owned Streetlights Recommend Passage Board of Aldermen City of Melrose Page 1 Updated 3/18/2015 4:36 PM
Transcript
▶ 0:00 Peter D. Mortimer: Good evening ladies and gentlemen this is the Appropriations Committee meeting for Monday March 9th it is 7 p.m. in the evening this meeting is being recorded and it is shown on the website of MMTV aside from being shown on television right now on Verizon and Comcast that's also available at access television studio for viewing mmtv would there please be a motion to open the floor for public participation second we have a motion to open the floor for public participation from alderman bird duly seconded by alderman inferna all in favor please say aye aye any opposed hearing none we are open for public participation if there are any members of the public who would like to come forward and make comments on any order before the appropriations committee tonight
▶ 1:01 Peter D. Mortimer: Tyler would you come forward please would you introduce yourself does anyone have a blank sheet of paper handy so our public participants thank you very much Mrs Grover can write would you write the name down there Ms Timmerman you need not you're part of the volunteer but somebody who's Just volunteering. Did you want my address as well? Yes, please, for the record. And before we proceed, I'm just going to, it's pretty clear that we have a quorum, six being required. But this is a committee of the whole, and I will read the attendance before we proceed further. I'm the chairman, Peter Mortimer, the vice chairman is Jacqueline Bird. Galen Ferna, John Tramatozzi, Monica Medeiros, Robert Boycelle.
▶ 2:05 Peter D. Mortimer: Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis, Jennifer Lemmerman, Scott Forbes, and Donald Kahn, the President, are in attendance this evening. And before you proceed, would you just aloud state your name and address for the record, please? Tyler Ballew, 3 Franklin Terrace, Melrose. Thank you very much, sir. And what would your commentary be this evening, please? I'm here with my other colleague. We are co-chairs of the Melrose Energy Commission. This is Lori Timmerman. the last time we spoke before this board on the issue of municipal aggregation i specifically cautioned that melrose residents would continue to be contacted by companies seeking to sign up residents for their own energy procurement plans i know all of you now know that that's true i've
▶ 2:53 been contacted myself no less than 10 times over the phone as well as numerous mail solicitations All of these companies, I can guarantee you, as I said 10 months ago, are offering a product that is in their best interest to sell. I think it's quite important, and we have a chance as a community to take a step to protect all of our residents against unwanted solicitations. Where we can have electricity supply that not only saves us money and increases renewable energy attributes, but that we can know is something that's the best for everybody that's been vetted by people within the industry that have our best interests in mind. Thank you very much, sir. Ms. Timmerman, would you like to add anything to that?
▶ 3:43 Peter D. Mortimer: We jointly came up with that. You'll let his comments stand for both of you? Very good, please remain where you are. There may be some questions or comments, and before we proceed, once again, Please let the record reflect that Alderman Francis Wright is in attendance as well. Anybody from the Board of Aldermen wishing to proffer any questions or comments? I have a point of order, Mr. Chairman. I thought we were in public participation. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. All right, in that regard, are there any other members of the public wishing to come forward? Seeing none, I'll welcome a motion to close public participation, please. So moved. Second. Alderman Ferner has made a motion to close public participation.
▶ 4:30 Peter D. Mortimer: It is duly seconded by Alderman Lemmerman. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, hearing none, public participation is now closed. Thank you, lady and gentleman. The first order we have before us this evening is order 2015-109. is the authorization of municipal aggregation plan for electric service. It's been assigned to this committee for discussion, and it is before us now. May we have a motion to suspend the rules to hear from the Mayor and Mrs. Grover and their coterie of supporters who are here tonight. Alderman Byrd has made a motion to suspend the rules. It is duly seconded by Alderman McAteer-Margolis. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. opposed hearing none the motions are suspended we have Martha Grover our
▶ 5:27 energy guru for the city of Melrose doing a wonderful job over the past few years and we have the Honorable Robert J Dolan mayor of the city of Melrose would you like to make an opening statement yes thank you members of the board and thank you for your work on behalf of the city this tonight is the culmination of over a year of work and the first question is why are we here and why is this important it's not a the normal order sent before the Board of Aldermen well there's a November of reasons we have members of our Energy Commission here the new member that was not able to speak as David Shakespeare is here Patrick Roach from MAPC clean energy is here as well as representatives from from good energy the creation of the Energy Commission by this board as
▶ 6:16 well as the creation of a separate department within the planning office has three roles one is to provide the most up-to-date use of technology and environmental science as well as a good practice to help the city in the schools lower energy costs one of the fixed what are the costs that we have that is must be controlled if we do not control them it will certainly affect direct services for residents the second is information information to the public as well as businesses on how they too can lower their cost the third is to provide support which is developed from this group real practical ways for our houses of worship our business community and our citizens to put those ideas in that information to into action we have seen it in Melrose which is now signed on I
▶ 7:13 think are how many solar 125 individual houses in the city was solar in my own home like many others using the mass save program for dramatically reduced cost for insulation as well as zero percent loans for upgrading of heating systems conversion from oil to gas the use of electric cars in the city and a November of other measures that can actually help people save money in very in very few times a government can actually help people save money this is a important piece of ordinance legislation or at least to allow us to to proceed forward because as you know energy costs particularly electric has skyrocketed over the last year it was petitioned and approved of a 39 37 percent increase in electrical costs that everyone everyone has been feeling
▶ 8:17 now how can we help in May the board granted approval for our green energy coordinated to pursue the concept of municipal aggregation in November with assistance from MAPC which has been an incredible partner Martha and her committee selected a broker good energy good energy has put together a plan for which we seek your approval tonight if you're approved if you approve the plan we will move forward and put out to bid to supply electricity for the city of Melrose we think the city is in a great position with the assistance of an experienced broker to go out to bid you get a good deal for Melrose residents and small businesses. We feel confident that we can save the residents of Melrose somewhere
▶ 8:57 between $100 and $200 a year on their electrical bills. We expect that we will reduce the yearly cost of electricity for Melrose residents and Melrose businesses. Fifteen percent of the electricity provided in this program will be from green sources such as wind power. Five percent of the electricity will be from local sources. This is important for two reasons. it stabilizes the cost of electricity providing budget predictability for individual households in the same way that the city has predictably has predicted its own energy budget and has stabilized those those budgets it supports green energy in our region we have selected a broker with a lot of experience in public outreach they can do an education outreach that we feel is
▶ 9:39 necessary and responsible and protects consumers this is a voluntary program as are all our programs a voluntary program backed by the research of this community as well as others that involve themselves in this process and we can save residents dollars in a cost that is only going to escalate I think it's I think it's the right thing to do we've seen countless examples in the community of Melrose of people taking on good practices even last week we were at the first congregational church was the first house of worship to put in solar these are our measures that will provide some sustainability for our businesses for our local for our local houses of worship as well as our community and I think the good work of this community committee should be recognized and I
▶ 10:28 think it should be supported and I think it will help the residents of the city control electrical costs in a responsible manner in a less pressure situation as many of the people are getting phone calls and letters daily from these people that might not might not have the experience and in some cases might not be doing the right thing that's why I ask for your support Thank You Mayor Dolan Ms. Grover would you like to add a few words I'd just like to say thank you and I'd like to introduce brokers that we've been working with gentlemen would you come up please and we have a short presentation that we'd like to give and then we can answer any questions that anybody has so just just to take you back to may I came to you then and provided some basic
▶ 11:25 information about aggregation and how it works the the term that's used is municipal aggregation but we've coined community electricity aggregation which I think better explains what we're doing it's the communities aggregating it so So at the top of that slide is the order that's before you, which is that where we are tonight is we've got a plan, a proposed plan that we would like to submit to the Department of Public Utilities. So as DPU and the Attorney General ask and require that we get approval from the Board of Aldermen in order to submit it, so that's the point that we're at tonight. we'll go over I'll just do a little basic about the part of the electric bill that we're talking about where aggregation is in Massachusetts today
▶ 12:20 the experience of good energy in this field the process as it as it lays out from from today and then specifics of the plan the key elements to it the product offerings that we're proposing the opt-out process which is very important the overall timeline and then again questions so just to draw your attention to an electric bill which is confusing for a lot of people to look at but what we're talking about is in the second page it's the supply services so national grid would still be the deliver the delivery service still provide you know outage services and they would be the person that residents and businesses would call with problems but we're talking about going out to bid in choosing a supplier and that if you can look at it closely that's the rate that
▶ 13:24 It just recently went up to $0.16, which is in comparison to $0.10 last winter. I think what I'll do at this point is pass it on to you guys to talk further. This is Philip Carr and John O'Rourke of Good Energy Air Brokers. Mr. Chairman and elected officials, thank you very much for your time and attention to this very important issue so just to give you some context John and I will both go through this fairly quickly because the questions are often the most important part of this we understand that but just to give you a sense of the context of where we're at with aggregation aggregation really is all about taking control of your own destiny as it relates to energy purchasing okay so what's happening right now is that the way that national grid is flowing
▶ 14:24 power through to you and your citizens in this community is that they purchase twice a year the same time each year regardless of market conditions for a short term period okay with municipal aggregation you can purchase when the market is favorable for as long as you want okay so are you the first community be doing this in the state absolutely not so what you can see on the on the chart there is the Cape Light compact that's been going for about a decade now they've been purchasing their own power we go to the next slide you can see those active municipal aggregations that went out individually to do their own programs the Cape Light compact formed its own group per se so you can see a variety of programs and most of those orange diamonds have come online in the
▶ 15:35 last two years okay next slide please now interestingly also what you're seeing there are municipal lighting plants communities that are not with National Grid or n star ever source but they are in essence apart from the fact that they are in control of their own lines and we can't emphasize enough that with a municipal aggregation program if you have an outage you call National Grid they're gonna fix your lines exactly the same as they always have done we always say you will get the same quality of service okay whatever that quality of service was before you'll get after okay so they'll fix your lines the same you're still gonna get one bill from National Grid but if you look all those municipal light plants they all essentially purchase their own power so
▶ 16:27 the tradition of purchasing power for your community is very strong in the Commonwealth next slide please and then you can see the communities that good Energy has. We buy power for about 2 million residents in this country. We are the industry leader in this. We entered the market in Massachusetts in January last year, and we have won the business of 15 communities, about 150,000 households, and we're growing very fast. So That is an indication, partly our experience, but partly the reason why we came into this market is that many, many communities are doing this right now. And many communities in the Boston metropolitan area are looking at this very closely. So recently Martha hosted a luncheon, a very important luncheon, which also had Patrick
▶ 17:33 Roche from MAPC in attendance, and also the Mass Energy Consumers Alliance, which is the preeminent standard for local renewable energy, possibly in the country, certainly in the Commonwealth. And in attendance, we had leading representatives from Cambridge, Newton, Somerville, Brookline, Dedham, Medford, and Nantucket. Nantucket was an outlier. but we had a very very strong representation so you can get a sense of the momentum so to make you feel like you're not on your own doing this okay there's a lot of other communities that have done this and are in the process of doing this okay next slide please John you want to take it from here sure Thank You Philip again the process that this goes through is a very strict and
▶ 18:28 comprehensive process it goes through a Department of Energy Resources review and consultation and it goes through a an approval process by the Department of Public Utilities to take these steps just individually the review and acceptance of the aggregation documents by the Board of Aldermen is just part of process and basically it says to DOER and DPU that you've looked at the documents you've reviewed them and you want to file them to to go forward with aggregation the aggregation documents are made available for public review and essentially all that means is that you offer your citizens the the opportunity to look over the documents obviously not many of them are going to understand the language of these documents but you give them the opportunity to look and to
▶ 19:30 make comments once that can go in parallel with the the review and consultation process of the Department of Energy Resources they basically go over the plan initially and give technical assistance if there's something in the plan that they don't think will will be to the liking of DPU one of the things that we have done we have met several times with the Department of Energy Resources and the Department of Public Utilities they have encouraged that when we submit a plan we take documents from plans that have already been approved all of the documents in this plan have been taken from approved documents so they want to be able to say okay we've seen this before we know what this is they don't want us to reinvent the real they just
▶ 20:35 want us to give them documents that they have already seen and approved and that's what we've done with with this plan the aggregation documents once they go to the Department of Public Utilities the department has a public hearing they announce the public hearing they bring in anyone who wants to comment on the plan again another public review then they set up a procedural conference that includes the Department of Public Utilities the Department of Energy Energy Resources, the Attorney General, the local utility, and anyone else who has petitioned to intervene in the process. Normally there aren't too many outside interveners aside from those that I mentioned. What happens during those sessions, that procedural session,
▶ 21:34 is that everybody gets to ask questions about the plan, about how it will be coordinated between the municipality, the local utility, and the competitive supplier once that competitive supplier is recognized and their bid is accepted. Once the approval of the plan is done by the Department of Public Utilities, we develop a competitive bid. We go out to the largest and best electricity suppliers in the country for their answers to our bids, and at this point in time, one of the only places that any of these big energy companies can expand because they've already taken up the commercial and industrial markets is the residential market. We have a November of them who have contacted us who are very interested in what we're doing
▶ 22:34 here in Massachusetts. want to bid on our our plans once a competitive bid is accepted by the the mayor or his designee we start an opt-out process and again this process is very detailed we let everybody in the city know who is on the basic service with National Grid that the aggregation plan is in place they have a 30-day period under the law to opt out what we have done we have made we have extended this to the entire term of the contract whether that's one two or three years they can opt out at any time with no penalty if they if they choose to once Once the plan is in place and energy is flowing, good energy monitors the plan, manages the plan through the contract with the competitive supplier.
▶ 23:41 And essentially that's the process. Again, it's a process that's very regulated. We're very experienced at what we do in managing these plans and make sure that what's happening in the city is the best for the residents and the businesses. There are several key elements of the aggregation plan. Again, under the law, there has to be universal access to the plan, basically meaning that anyone who wants to be in the plan can be in the plan. Reliability of service, again, a lot of that is dependent on the local utility and the service they provide on the power side we only deal again with the largest national suppliers who basically have the highest credit ratings and they are all reliable the next item is an equitable treatment within each rate
▶ 24:48 class commercial industrial the different classes of residential everybody has to be treated equitably in those classes one of the most important important parts of this plan, and it can't be overemphasized, is the fact that you need good public outreach and education so that by the time you get to the opt-out period – there's a period before that when we will basically have public meetings, we will meet with community groups, the senior center groups, whoever wants to meet with us to ask about how this works. When the opt-out period comes, we want to make sure that all of your citizens basically know exactly what's going on here so there's no confusion and they understand the plan. They will understand that if for some reason they don't want to be in the plan, they can
▶ 25:43 opt out. They will be notified with a letter that will say what the present rate is from the local utility, which national grid, and they'll be told what the rate is from the competitive supplier. And again, we're very sure that that will be substantially lower than your national grid rate. At that point in time, they can opt out by just signing a postcard and sending it back. And again, at any other time in the program, they can opt out. The last part of this program is the electricity service agreement, which the municipality signs with the competitive supplier that you have chosen to supply your electricity for a period of time, either one, two, three years, and whatever mix of green you want.
▶ 26:43 now there's a special Melrose is leading the way here okay in the product that will be offered in in your plan and I'll turn that over to Martha sounds good so so what's what's unique and interesting is that Melrose has an opportunity here to do something that is relatively pioneering from the point of view that we at Good Energy are the national leaders in municipal aggregation, so we like to aspire to be the steady pair of hands on the tiller. We really know what we're doing. We do not, however, profess to be the best experts on local renewable energy in Massachusetts. So we went out and we found the experts, who is Mass Energy Consumers Alliance, and some people in this room tonight pay extra on their electric bill so that they know that 100 percent
▶ 27:48 of their energy usage is being sourced from local renewable energy certificates. So what's exciting is that we at Good Energy have identified a way whereby residents and businesses in the city can partake in a local renewable energy product that will spur and stimulate demand for the growth of more renewable energy in the Commonwealth, but with a very small incremental increase on the bill. So what we're talking about, the foundation of this program, the foundation is economic savings. Let's be quite clear about that. Economic stability, budgetary stability. The opportunity that creates is that you can, for a very small increment, flow local renewable energy. So whereas the individual resident at the moment can elect to get a product from the
▶ 29:02 Mass Energy Consumers Alliance, what we are proposing, and we've worked very hard to create this product, is instead of 100%, you're going to get 5% for all of your residents as the standard product in this program. And that is the beauty of municipal aggregation, is actually you can spread the cost of stimulating demand for local renewable energy at what is a meaningful level for a very small incremental increase on your bill. Okay, and that's what's exciting and that's what's new. And that is why the likes of Cambridge and other leading municipalities in the boston metropolitan area came here for lunch because they were fascinated by it okay so that's the new and exciting part and that's what we're pioneering here today
▶ 29:50 let's be quite clear though it's all about universal access equitable treatment there will be an option if anybody wants to not to have any additional amount above the 10 mandated by the state uh you know you do not have to have the mass energy five percent you can elect to have i just want to have my as as it should be right as it was before okay um equally if someone wants to actually go look i'm happy to pay a bit more i want my 100 you can have that too those will be the two options all right but the standard product will be five percent okay and that that is a very exciting thing that is in some ways a game changer And what's exciting is it's totally possible and will be very successful, and we know that
▶ 30:38 because we have run and do run the largest programs in the country. Okay? Okay. So, I think we've spoken a little bit about the opt-out process. John, you want to just clarify the details next? I know we're going to take up too much of your time. we mentioned the opt-out process earlier and there's a detailed page here for you to look at I'm not going to go over all the deep details the important part of this is that at any point in time someone can opt out of the program if they choose without penalty without escalations without any additional cost and and that gives that gives your residents a comfort level that is in the law all right I was gone the timeline here so so our goals are to have your
▶ 31:34 your plans approved by September by the DPU we've been working very hard we've we've you know already met with the utilities actually through circumstance met the the the chief executive the big boss of National Grid literally just last week at a British American Chamber of Commerce event. I didn't speak about Murrow specifically, but we have very strong connections and the people at National Grid know that we know the senior people at National Grid, so they're working really hard for us, which is great. So we have been laying the groundwork to make sure that your plans will be approved quickly. We will be issuing the RFP in September. We expect October the winning bidder to be selected. The opt-out period will be going on through September, October, and in November, around
▶ 32:32 the time that the rates will reset behind National Grid, residents and businesses should be enrolled on meet-or-read date. So the actual enrollment period takes about four to six weeks. Here's the thing. You're going to get some calls around the time of the opt-out period. It's going to happen. There's nothing we can do about it. I give up my mobile phone. We do everything we can to make sure that all calls are sent on to us or any emails you get from residents to send it straight on to us. Part of our marketing campaign, which will be very comprehensive in the four to six-week period before that opt-out period hits, will emphasize all the key points, all the information they need to know. but the key thing is we are there to answer questions put it on to us and
▶ 33:22 that's that's basically it in a nutshell if you go the next slide please City of Melrose has a website which has some FAQs on an explanation the key thing to understand is when that opt-out letter goes out there will be an indicator that this is coming from the City of Melrose okay whether that's a seal of the city or it'll say it on the envelope so there's that distinction between the barrage of offers that you're getting right now. Okay? This website isn't live yet. Right. The link is not available. Yeah, we're just fine tuning that. Yeah, we will make it available as a source of information. Yeah, there's a sample notification letter which you can look at and a sample sort of opt out postcard.
▶ 34:07 Robert A. Boisselle: That may be fine tuned on the day but it gives you the essence and the principles of what these kind of things do look like. so this is a very exciting program it's um uh it's it's um it's going to be yeah we're good to go very good thank you very much for the presentation we appreciate it are there any alderman wishing to comment alderman boy cell please in your rate structure you've been talking about how the present utility has industrial commercial and residential within the residential category there are other subcategories where you have a lower rate doing it you have a low rate in the evening and a high rate during the day is that going to be covered also at the by this rating system all right
▶ 35:02 Robert A. Boisselle: now you're offering us a cheaper rate but they're offering us a rate and a cheaper rate so are you gonna have a cheaper rate and a sub cheaper rate for those people who are on that type of system all the rate classes currently enforced by national grid will be covered so you're gonna have two rates then it'll be one it'll be one fixed rate that will not change okay so the term length I probably should have outlined this is is going to be between a two and a three year term length okay so and here's the thing whereas your national grid rate resets every six months this rate will not change it'll one fixed rate which will stay fixed for two months so you're dissolving the lower rate that the individual gets in the evening we're not well are you
▶ 35:53 Robert A. Boisselle: talking about the the National Grid variable rate on that and some of the residential apartment complexes you have a rate for the day between 8 a.m. to 8 8 p.m. and from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. you have a very lower rate all right now on the the apartment complexes those are not individual meters they're there it's one meter isn't it no for all its individual meters yeah okay well we'll look into that that particular situation okay you keep referring to local renewable energy and you're paying more to get more local renewable energy when you mention the term local energy renewable energy I'm looking for a turbine will say on on the Commons or near the pond over here where is your local renewable energy coming from is it coming from the wind farms in the
▶ 36:52 Nantucket area which according to them they're paying the highest rate that's that's going to come from the utilities and so forth. Where's the local renewable energies? The Massachusetts Class 1 RECs, which means they are from, they're located in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Katie, if you want to help out with that, feel, feel, would it be possible to recognize someone tonight who's from? Yes. Sorry. Anybody would like, anybody else from your team where you'd like to come forward? Hi, this is Katie from Mass Energy. There's a microphone, please step forward. Hi, I'm a representative from Mass Energy Consumers Alliance, and we have a local portfolio of renewable energy certificates projects
▶ 37:32 Robert A. Boisselle: that we buy renewable energy certificates from to meet that additional 5% from Elrose. There's about 15 turbines in our portfolio, some of which are two of the three turbines. You're talking wind turbines now, not turbines? Wind turbines, yes, sir. Wind turbines? Yes. Okay, so these wind turbines are producing how much kilowatts each one is a has a different capacity but we signed contracts with the turbines to purchase the renewable energy certificates to meet the needs of the 5% additional aggregation for Melrose okay the other portion is come we'll say the fall of the winter once this is permitted everyone's going to be turned over to this particular program automatically there's no on with third-party supply yes sir everybody who's on the basic
▶ 38:32 Robert A. Boisselle: service of National Grid will be given a turn over for one month right onto the system yes and a little postcard is going to be the way of opting out which hopefully they kept that postcard when they received it to begin with so a lot of these people are just going to receive the package and probably read it or maybe just throw it away well so what happens to these people when they get their first bill indicating well geez who's this from I mean this this is not my carrier yeah so here's the way it works because we because these are 100 accurate concerns okay we've run programs I've personally overseen programs for about a million households okay as in like 500 000 households renewal okay so i i know exactly what
▶ 39:24 happens here so you're absolutely right uh many people will not know what the envelope is in the opt-out letter and i can tell you right now the 200 or 300 page document you have there which yeah was introduced that no one's going to understand isn't going to go very far so so as far as far as the opt-out letter is concerned is is two things to understand one is uh we're going to do a marketing campaign okay and that marketing campaign is going to be very comprehensive we're going to meet with your press okay we're going to do events with any elected officials who would like to get involved with events we will go and meet with community groups now we all know that with the best marketing campaign in the world not everybody's going to
▶ 40:06 get informed okay we will do a mailing to every single household additional to whatever mailing the winnings the opt-out letter is okay that will go out in advance we will do everything we can to ensure that when the opt-out letter arrives a sensible proportion of the population knows where it is okay additional that important to understand the concept that the opt-out period no one's enrolled until after the opt-out period right so the opt-out period lasts for 30 days that is merely a mechanism for buying power that's why you get this buying power is because the data is that between 85 and 95 percent will do nothing either through volition or through inertia right that's fact of life however people can leave this
▶ 41:02 Robert A. Boisselle: program at any time whenever they want so if someone suddenly realizes that they were switched and they hadn't been sensibilized by the marketing campaign they can stick up the hand and go I want out I wasn't informed even though we will done everything we can to inform them and they they can get out of the program whenever they want the key thing about this is no one is ever locked into do something they can't do. Okay? Okay. Moving on to my last question, showing the bill and so forth. On that particular bill, you have a line for the power and what you're paying for that electricity that you're using. Sure. But there are four or five other lines. Is that going to change in any way, or will the utility charge you extra for using the renewable line? Because right now, the
▶ 41:49 Robert A. Boisselle: utilities are in Congress because of the solar energy that they're forced to take in. but no one's repairing the power lines to carry that power back and forth so they're going to be charging the homeowner who has solar units if they're going into the grid they're going to be charged a fee to tap into that grid down the line is going to happen with that question what's going to happen down the line yeah one at a time please sorry well the renewable energy that we're for buying is included in the supply rate. It will be included in that one rate under the one line under supply on the bill, on your national- My only concern is, will the power company, because you're in a renewable rate from the turbines,
▶ 42:41 Robert A. Boisselle: the wind turbines and so forth, will they charge you an extra charge for that because you're using the grid not from their sources Not from their sources, but from a renewable source. The answer is no. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Alderman Boycelle. Point of information, I wonder if Martha could just move up to the mic more. I'm afraid that the people on TV won't be able to really hear anything that she has to say. Great, great idea. Thank you, Alderman Inferna. Next in queue, we have Alderman McAteer-Margolis, please. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you all for coming and thank you for your hard work on this. I know it's been a long and arduous process and it's exciting to see it coming this far back to us.
▶ 43:31 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: One of the questions I have is you've mentioned a couple of times about alerting the people who have the basic service with National Grid currently. So does that mean if people are opting in for 100% of renewable energy through National Grid, will they still be notified? that still considered like basic service yes if they're if they're on basic service now and those those are the customers who will be eligible for this program if they've if they're on a competitive supply contract right now with another supplier okay they won't be part of this they're gonna stay with that current contract but what we were referring to is that there you know a few hundred households who have opted for mass energy's green up product right it's what i'm
▶ 44:24 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: talking about they can be they can they will be part of this they will be notified as part of this if you have the extra like like i pay i think i don't have 100 but i think i have 50 right so that is still considered basic service 100 or 50 but the people who have already signed up with a different supplier will not have an opportunity to participate in this initially what happens is all of the notifications go out to those on basic service if someone isn't is on a competitive supplier we're not marketing to them if when their contract ends with that competitive supplier and they want to come into the aggregation they can do so okay thank you and I think you have a good idea in terms of notifying people about the and informing the public and
▶ 45:14 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: I'm sure you're you've done this in many places I I just wonder if you ever do any kind of electronic replies as opposed to mailing back a postcard if we can make use of the city's you know not reverse calling system or any other things like that or if you if you do allow people to respond you know via email or text message or whatever Skype you you know yeah I mean any any sort of any mechanisms you have for communicating with the citizens would be extremely valuable the opt-out letter per se is a bit sort of 20th century I'm afraid it's stuck there at the moment but but certainly anything like that which might help with it dissemination of information and getting people informed would be great so long as it's legally binding or whatever and and
▶ 46:11 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: certainly after that initial period where the postcard is is the opt-out method they can telephone they can email whether it's us the competitive supplier or the local utility if they want to opt out okay and then I'm just going back to the local renewable energy sir the so right now where national grids require to provide at least 10% and what you're going to be offering Melrose residents is basically 15% is that is that accurate it's temper it's 5% more percent is what's called the renewable portfolio standard right that goes up by 1% every year this year it's 10% okay and then we'll be the standard product will include an additional 5% of local renewable and that will be available to to everybody at whatever the rate is
▶ 47:01 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: that we're all gonna pay. Right. Okay. Then if people want to increase to 50% or 100%, that will also be available to them for a higher rate? 100% will be an option. But not 50, okay. So it's either like 15% or 100%. And if it's 100%, is it all local renewable? It is. Yeah. Okay, great. I think that's all that I have for right now and I think you have your work cut out for you with you know marketing this to the public but I think everyone is concerned about not only you know what's in their pocket at the end of the month but how we are you know getting our energy and I think I know with Miss Grover and her team and I'm sure your team that it will be a foremost part of marketing campaign so thank you thank you mr chairman thank you very much alderman mcateer
▶ 47:57 margolis next we have president khan please yeah thank you i have a few questions um rather if you know what what percentage of the rate payers in the city are with competitive suppliers at the present time we have any idea we've requested that information from national grid but we haven't received it yet um rule of thumb is 15 to 20 percent are they compelled to give you that information if you ask them national grid yes you can do it by by a process of deduction knowing how many accounts uh total accounts we we will only get the data for those accounts that are on with the utility so we just need to subtract that from the the total data we can figure it out now in terms of the communities that have
▶ 48:49 relationships with good energy in Massachusetts how do their their rates or costs compare with general national grid customers for current programs per se yes so we don't have any current programs in Massachusetts the reason we entered the market last year in January was we identified a dichotomy in the state whereby there is a shortfall of natural gas resulting in a highly volatile electric wholesale situation. I don't want to get too granular about this but long story short we didn't feel the opportunity was here until January last year we entered the market because we believe that until new it's a controversial issue but until that the electricity supply situation is stabilized that there will be highly volatile
▶ 49:51 electric prices and one thing i really would emphasize here is we talk about big price increases okay i'm just telling you that these prices going to go like that over the next two or three years if you're not on one of these programs so maybe 16 cents now that could go back down to 10 okay but then it might go up to 16 again right thing is you just don't know you're dealing with a highly volatile situation what this product does is it will give you essentially a safe port in a storm because right now Massachusetts has an electricity purchasing a dilemma which is not going to be resolved for several years so we will be able to benchmark prices for you in September as to what our prices will be we have a track
▶ 50:38 record of getting the lowest prices in given markets in the state of Illinois we I don't want to make you cry but they pay 3.8 cents per kilowatt hour needs to say a lot of coal in that state local generations coal and we got we got the lowest ever rate in that state we have a track record of getting the lowest rate And we're going to run the most competitive bid that has ever been run by a consultant in this state. We're talking to the CEOs of the largest power companies in the country who are going to bid on your business. So we're bringing, like, fundamentally massive market forces to bear and then tying that with some real local knowledge on renewable energy. So the communities that you have relationships with right now are not actually online?
▶ 51:27 They haven't gone out to bid yet. So we have about, there'll be about 100,000 households, most of those are National Grid. They'll be going out to bid about the same time as you. You're in a slightly separate group to them. Now what about this Cape Light Communities Consortium? How do their rates compare to general National Grid customers, if you know? I mean, I'd say mixed bag, to be honest. you know they would I wouldn't we don't we would not advocate purchasing in the way that they purchase every consultant has their own way of operating so I think to look at other live programs might be might be misleading and what is the basis of our belief that our citizens are going to save 100 to 200
▶ 52:18 dollars per year where we come up with that right so here's the thing I would estimate your residents are going to save 80 to 150 dollars a year okay this product works best when you go out when you purchase longer the longer you go probably the more money you're going to save quite simply the utility has to purchase on the specific days each year regardless of market conditions and we can purchase whenever we want and if we can't do better than the utility when we can purchase whenever we want we're not doing our job properly it's as simple as that so very important pointer these rates reset every six months that's either a challenge or an opportunity okay in many ways we see that as an opportunity. It shows that the purchasing is easier to beat in a way, because they purchase
▶ 53:16 Peter D. Mortimer: short term. So, John, you got any comments on ... Well, sir, you're ... Ladies and gentlemen, regrettably, under the rules of our Board of Aldermen and under the strictures of the open meeting law of Massachusetts another committee was posted to begin at 725 and so it now being 755 we must recess this committee start the protection license committee which will immediately open for public participation and then be recessed it should take about two minutes and the Finance Committee was set to start at 730 so that must open within 30 minutes its posted time they will open that committee open it for public participation and go right into recess the whole thing should take less than five minutes probably closer to three
▶ 54:15 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: and then we can go right back to this hearing on the appropriations committee so from this committee i would welcome a motion to recess a motion to recess by alderman Boisselle duly seconded by alderman Forbes all in favor please say aye any opposed hearing none the committee on appropriations is now in recess thank you this is the committee on protection and license convening at 8 o'clock five Minutes to eight. I'm Chairman Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis. Same people are here who were here about five minutes, half an hour ago. From the committee, we have Alderman Medeiros, Alderman Inferna, Alderman Lemmerman, and Alderman Boisselle. We have one order this evening. It's order November 2015-112. It's an application of Abderrazorak Ohusanani
▶ 59:24 I think the comments were finished. All right. Sorry, sir, I was just going to finish off, if that's okay. Please do. President Khan has the floor, and he is putting questions to you at this time. So please continue and address your comments to President Khan, please. Yes, sir. And so the fundamental issue here is that the way the utilities purchase in this state, okay, and that the way they purchase is ultimately causing the pain to your pocketbook right now. That's what's going on. So what we're going to do is we are the most experienced at purchasing power in the country for residents. We want to help you become that safe port in the storm until they fix out, fix what's going on with the energy situation in the state of Massachusetts, we're going to get you the best rates possible.
▶ 1:00:13 And that's been your experience as it relates to the populations that you serve in other states? Yes, sir. And have there been occasions where you have miscalculated and your rates have been higher than the general utility companies? to date most of them seem like they're working on a pretty archaic model and that uh yes sir you should be able to undercut them yes sir um miss grover what is what is the cost if anything to the city to the adoption and implementation of this program so far no no cost at all um the cost that that will be incurred through the supply bid and supply contract is to good energy, and that's included. It's an accepted rate for a small mill as part of the supply contract, which is standard.
▶ 1:01:13 And the thing that I'm sure you probably get the most comment and discussion about, and the thing that makes me queasy has nothing to do with your proposal. assuming that this whole opt-out scenario comes from either regulations of the federal government or statute obviously I would much prefer to have a system where people could opt in rather than to have big brother actually little big brother here Melrose Port of Alderman telling people that we're going to change the dynamic and we're going to impose a new system of electric bills on you um makes me uncomfortable i don't like it uh i wish it were not the case um i don't know how many people in the world are going to understand this whole um changeover and process i you know
▶ 1:02:08 i read the 168 odd page packet and uh not that alderman or the gold standard or even the bronze standard or uh the tin standard but i'm not sure i understood all the nuances of this um but that's all for now thank you president khan if if i could elaborate on that uh you may sir please please go ahead the um the reason uh well let me let me go back here this this whole program is is sanctioned and authorized under uh massachusetts general law chapter 164 section 134a This law was written by our present Senate President Stan Rosenberg. When he authored this law back when deregulation took place in the late 90s, the whole idea behind municipal aggregation was that first the best organizing tool
▶ 1:03:07 within any municipality is the governing body. So he said okay we're going to have the governing body of that municipality basically run the system as an aggregator. The second part of this, to get the largest group, the buying group together, the best way to do that, and again, he crafted this law with a November of other senators, the best way to do this was to have an opt-out program so you could get the largest group together in the fastest way. Now, that is the way that the law is written and that's why it's an opt-out program. All the successful programs in the country are essentially opt-out programs. Yeah, I fully understand that. And if I was the Senate president and I was drafting this,
▶ 1:03:55 there's no way I ever would have drafted it in such a way as there was an opt-out provision. Obviously, if you force everybody to be in something, you're going to have a larger pool that's going to stay in because 20 or 30 percent of the people aren't even good we even realize that they're in the pool at all well and I'm not blaming you you didn't draft the statute it's it's something that you're stuck with I don't like it philosophically it's not something that I would ever do I have a problem with that but that has nothing to do with your company trying to save energy here from Elrose well again the rationale behind it was to encourage the the maximum participation in a deregulated competitive program.
▶ 1:04:35 Monica C. Medeiros: I understand that, but I would like to maximize the choice that people had in terms of their utility bills. That's all. Thank you, President Kahn. Next in line, we have Alderman Medeiros, please. Thank you. Yes, and just since we're kind of on that topic, I mean, there is sort of, with this opt out only provision, of what I'm hearing through this whole presentation and one of the biggest concerns about this is there's certainly an aspect of you know we know better than you consumer and I think I heard that out there and you know as elected officials sometimes we do and sometimes we don't but that's not kind of a philosophy in government that generally I like to adhere to with that being said
▶ 1:05:25 Monica C. Medeiros: I we can come back to that a little bit later I wanted to go back to you know we met way back in May so this is of last year so this is now nine eight nine months later and and I thought at that time that I recalled that we were just talking about residential use only but I do see and I've heard some mention about about businesses and commercial industrial can you talk with that are we talking about that right now and were we before yes it applies to anyone in the city who's not with a competitive supplier and a competitive supplier is you know I guess I want to put this into some some English a competitive supplier is somebody we're talking about renewables competitive supplier and renewable energy no no I don't know suppliers anyone is where you're getting
▶ 1:06:21 your your electricity supply from anybody but but the utility so so anybody but National Grid right anybody but National Grid and we have we think that this is about how many how many households if everybody if no one opted out you'd probably get about 9 000 households about 9 000 and in that um i'm sorry that's 9 000 households and how many how many business does that include businesses as well so we it's hard for us to know the business figure until we get the data from national grid i think they're about three or four hundred business accounts and you know we talk about it since we're entitled municipal aggregation but what does this mean for the city of melrose can melrose join any of this and i know we have many locked in contracts already um our supply contract expires
▶ 1:07:17 at the end of 2016 so this would be something we could we could consider at that point okay uh i know there was some other uh discussion about you know if we're going and all of a sudden we're pooling you know our municipality and all our residents and businesses and perhaps they are going to be some other communities coming online at the same time and to a large degree our renewable energy sources and our local renewable energy sources in Massachusetts you know they talk about wanting to grow them and that kind of gives me the idea that they're a little bit fledgling we're going to have enough to meet the demand yeah yeah yes yes is the answer that absolutely yeah of us plus cambridge plus whoever yeah definitely because the way we've structured this is is that
▶ 1:08:11 that they'll there will be enough yes yes ma'am um now in terms of this opt-out provision you know i i i strongly think that there will be quite a lot of inertia that comes along with it and i know we have a you know there's pretty good outline of public outreach here but certainly you know we all know we have lots of meetings here and i would love to thank all the people in the room with us this evening we're here because they're interested in this and aware of this but they're really here for other orders on our agenda tonight and even though this is is something that will affect you know almost every household in Melrose still there's a lot of a lot of work to do on the office I know in the list of things
▶ 1:09:05 that we said we would do one of them is advertising and included in the local newspapers is this the advertising like a legal notice in the back of the newspaper that nobody reads or is this going to be a real advertisement I wish with all my heart that this was an opt-in but it's not it's not and make my life from my office easier and make this implementation easier from a standpoint of getting out there but it's not we have to deal with it so why do we go forward we go forward because this this board has continuously been proactive in terms of two things competition in choices give you three examples we're the first administration and this is the first board of all them to allow cable competition cable internet competition to the enormous and we have all seen
▶ 1:10:09 dramatic choice and savings in that regard it wasn't an opt-in I get that But it's an example. More locally, the group insurance commission, the GIC, is creating choice. We have Blue Cross Blue Shield. We were enslaved by one carrier who could set their rate at whatever they want with no retribution from us toward them to lower that rate. By joining the GIC, you're creating competition and choice by the consumer, the employees of the city, to choose if we're getting a better price. I believe whatever challenge we may see over the next 12 months to get to that point I believe the people of Melrose are so knowledgeable about the electric rates I I get stopped quite a bit regarding the increase in in electricity
▶ 1:10:58 rates I don't hear that necessarily in Wakefield I don't hear it in reading because they have their own power company we can't do that so how can we pre-proactive to provide for the citizens of Melrose some competition and choice. I believe that this is the best avenue and really the only avenue that we can take to provide our residents that competition that currently we do not have. National Grid lays down 37% and just educating myself and the great experts I have around me, both volunteer and paid, this situation isn't gonna go away. perhaps in the next 10 years or longer. That's what's happening in Washington and at the state and the environmental issues. This might not be solved in our lifetime.
▶ 1:11:48 So how can we provide the residents of Melrose with some competition and choice, therefore lowering their costs? I believe that that aggravation, let's call it an aggravation or a campaign, that will take a short period of time, maybe six to 12 months. I trust and know that people in Melrose are smart enough to get through that process, educate themselves and do what they need to do there'll be some bumps yes but I believe again we have to focus on competition and choice having the consumer reap the benefit of that don't you wish we could do that with water we can't we can do with energy and so that's part of it too so we can we can opt out going forward but and I was reading the contract in fact the law
▶ 1:12:31 requires the municipality to mail a notice to the residents four times a year and to say that they can in fact opt out and I see that we are actually asking to have that wave so we don't have to notify our residents and I mean that that notice is about that the mix it's not about opting interrupting out that's a required notice that you actually get on your national grid bill now so I think we're just asking that that that requirement requirement be waived to inform people of their energy mix which is standard in aggregations that's a standard standard ask so it's a standard ask but yet it's part of the laws to be there right it is in the law but every active aggregation has requested that waiver and has gotten it because essentially that notice doesn't
▶ 1:13:32 necessarily have to be mailed out but it could it could be put on the town website the city website so that they can gain access to that information in other ways than doing a quarterly mailing and is our so is our mix going to be fixed at you know whatever the customer chooses is that an accurate statement that if a customer chooses to have a hundred percent me you know renewable energy local renewable energy as their clinics will change as the renewable portfolio standard requirement changes year to year from this year it's 10% next year 11 etc be going to we're not going to do any notice to our residents about about this this mix part of the the the campaign the outreach that we're going to but I mean as things change going forward if we're in a one
▶ 1:14:34 year or two year or three year that will be available publicly on website or maybe in an annual annual mailing there's concern that when we actually go from having you know right now individual homeowners can choose although most go with out of inertia probably more than anything else with national grid but there's a concern that when we all come together and we're going to make this decision for all those 9,000 plus residences and businesses for this community that in essence we're actually taking some of the choice and competition out of it and out of the mix and when I hear these are the concerns about something like this when we're making this decision for people and taking the free market aspect out of it you know and we've talked heard very
▶ 1:15:36 much that you know you're talking with some of the biggest producers in the country right which in some ways is great but in other ways it sort of takes some of the competition out of it those are the kinds of things that then lead me to have concerns you know that being said I know you know we started from the beginning in this and in saying that the you know mr. car you said you know that that really stability is the the big thing in this are we talking about a fixed rate yes ma'am only because I know we talked a lot about that back in May but I haven't heard that so much tonight we're talking about a fixed rate so at least one thing that I do think that people in residence here and no one's
▶ 1:16:27 want you know they're frustrated they know well there's some stability in that probably their taxes and their water rates are going up but and you know everything goes up but it's that inability to budget and be able to manage their budget and you know I don't know that this I have reservations about this but I believe that you know I'm willing to give this a shot there is continually going to be an opt-out provision for residents so they can always opt out and you know hopefully this will allow us to really you know hopefully all the good things that we heard here tonight being on the forefront being able to help spur that you know local renewable energy market and in fact to save our residents the money and give them some stability so
▶ 1:17:18 Jaclyn L. Bird: that they know kind of how much their electric bill is going to be depending on what how many units they use but I just you know I hope we do keep this in mind and try to maximize the education about this as much as I think that's the key component to this plan thank you thank you alderman Medeiros next we have alderman bird please Thank You mr. chairman and thanks to all of you for being here tonight you know I was a little hesitant I had some of the same or similar reservations about this as we got closer and closer to talking about this tonight but the more that I hear about it the more excited I am that we're going forward with this and the mayor just talked about this a little bit when he alluded to water and how we wish we had competition with water I
▶ 1:18:06 Jaclyn L. Bird: I think that you know this board we're used to hearing we used to playing defense and I think this gives us a chance to play offense for residents when it comes to their rates so I think the way that I look at it as the only thing that we're sort of forcing on them is actual competition right now they don't have that unless they go with one of these groups that's kind of targeting that we don't know much about that isn't necessarily you know a reputation that we feel that we should stand behind so I think the benefits for the residents as far as choice are fairly obvious to me and certainly you know their cost savings Alderman Medeiros mentions the benefits to the city and and miss Grover I think mentioned that we would be able to join in as far as our municipal
▶ 1:18:54 Jaclyn L. Bird: energy savings in 2016 is that right and so we can join in even if the contract has already started and we're two years in or something we can join in at that that point we can opt in is that right we quit out we would opt in we would opt in it at at the market rate at that time right okay because we're we're a big customer okay exactly I would be one of the large commercial customers great and so to me I think it's exciting I think that you know I'm interested to hear a little bit more about when we talk about the details of the contract which I know know is further down the road I understand the idea that you know we're using the bulk purchasing power and that we want to make sure that we're in it
▶ 1:19:35 Jaclyn L. Bird: long enough to see a real benefit in that trend I think of some of the residents that I talked to Martha and I both happen to be parents up at the Hoover School we have some families up there that still have electric heat and I know have been particularly hard hit this winter with you know freezing temps and horrible weather so when I think of those families and I think that that they will actually have a choice to go out and to become part of this competitive bidding process. I'm excited for them to see lower bills, hopefully, in that capacity since there's little in our control on some of the other bills that they face. So more of a comment than anything, but thank you all for the hard work, I appreciate it.
▶ 1:20:13 Francis X. Wright Jr.: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you very much, Alderman Bird. Next in queue is Alderman Wright, please. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you all for being here. I appreciate it, the members of the Energy Commission as well, all their time and effort on this. I know that there will be an opportunity to opt out at any point in time, and I'm wondering if you've given any thought to at least posting on the website what your rates are compared to national grids are on a regular basis, so quarterly, semi-annually, annually, whatever the appropriate time is when national grids rates may change. an easy resource for people to say okay now I want to opt out or yeah I'm confirming I want to stay in but I think that that would be important for people
▶ 1:21:05 Francis X. Wright Jr.: to know because I think the competition aspect of this is great but I think people we've all seen that anecdotally at least where people have been brought into some of these alternative not alternative energy but options for their energy supplier without really being educated as to what they were buying into and I think if people feel like they're fully informed this is transparent that it'll be a lot easier to sell for the mayor and for us to to tell people that you know yes you have to opt out but we're gonna give you all the information it's not only are we gonna mail it to you but it'll be available to you was in the schools that farmers market city-wide night out all those things we could have tables and people available and to learn how does
▶ 1:22:00 Francis X. Wright Jr.: it differ from what we have here in Melrose where we're kind of locked into national grid as our electricity source compared to Linfield Redding Wakefield with the municipal power company do they contract out and buy from a supplier do they have a broker such as yourself, and how do their rates compare to our rates with National Grid? I don't have a list of all the rates, but they have amazing optionality on how they purchase. I mean, they can lay and purchase 10 years out. I was speaking to the procurement manager of Sterling the other day, and just the freedom of movement he has to procure for his residents gives him a phenomenal advantage and this really is about the progression of competition. So our neighbors
▶ 1:22:55 a couple of miles to the north and northwest of here have better opportunity to save because their towns have their own municipal power companies. If they procure and make a favorable decision. they make a and here's a nice optionality that sir is that is that you can go all the way down this process okay and if if you're not comfortable you know close to the time you know the mayor is designee if he's not comfortable or she's not comfortable on day of the bid you know you can decide not to move forward it's as simple as that you can go a long way down this road and to give you an idea of our level of confidence we have a 100 percent renewal rating with our communities. We've saved our communities about $100 million.
▶ 1:23:42 Scott M. Forbes: We want to expect that to increase to $150 million this year. We'd like to add at least a million dollars out of this community annually into that pile. And yeah, just want to help you guys save some money. Great, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Alderman Wright. Next in line, we have Alderman Forbes, please. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for being here answering all of our questions tonight. One of the questions I have is if the City of Melrose did decide to join up the Good Energy Program, what is the term of the contract that we would have? Would it be for one year, two years? Is there also a choice to opt out of the program? Right. So you can't opt out at the municipal level.
▶ 1:24:30 You can't opt out the whole municipality. You can only opt out at the individual level, the business or resident. contract will be two or three years generally people have gone for two years every time they went for two they always wish they'd gone for three okay so a hard fact of life if you could lock in the price of gas for your car today would you do it probably right for three years I know I would you don't think about that for like natural gas right now is at the bottom of the market it couldn't be lower if I could lock you in for five years and you said yes you guys would save so much money it's ridiculous okay so the longer you go the better we won't get people give us prices I don't think more than four years out and the
▶ 1:25:08 Scott M. Forbes: sweet spot is probably three years but it's up to the mayor or his designee to decide when to purchase on the day of the bid we will give you options you can choose two years three years we can get a four-year price we'll give you that option you will decide what you want so you've never had you've never had a community where this model did not work in their favor and they decided after that initial contract that they decided not to have a hundred percent when you're ready I heard that 100% renewable 100% okay so everybody has come back they've loved it and they're coming back for more and that's right and that's everything about I mean just for a few sales perspective you know we're working on
▶ 1:25:42 Scott M. Forbes: this we don't get paid unless you all move forward right and you can leave this program at any stage up until the day that you sign right you know we're extremely confident that this is a good product and looking all those slides on the bills your your rate is going to be on that bill every every month is that great the winning supplier will be it will be on the bill right as well as the national grid bill so there's an accountability issue here as well absolutely every month the consumer which we're all talking about this is a consumer driven market people want to see choice and people want to see the savings so every month they get to see how you're doing and they get to see how you're doing a job so you know in a consumer driven market when I open up my
▶ 1:26:22 Scott M. Forbes: bill I get to look at my bill and say you know I actually like this and if I don't like it I get the option of opting out now six months down the road if that becomes inverted can I opt back in do I have that option of opting back in just as a consumer if it you know if I opt out and then all of a sudden it changes do I have the choice of coming back into the program or do I have to wait a certain term or a certain time frame does the customer are we going to give that information to the customer oh definitely we'll give you all the information the customer all the time that's our job okay that's what we're paid to do so definitely absolutely an accountability is 100% for customers to flip in and out of the program it's not it's not something that is really sure
▶ 1:27:12 understandable yeah but but from a from an informational standpoint you're absolutely right it's critical it's our job to make sure that everybody knows what the price to compare is one thing I would say is just the rates are very volatile right and and the point about budgeting is a very good and important one. If you're on fixed income, you're a senior citizen, it's the Wild West out there right now, right? You've got the state purchasing, you've got crazy volatility, you've got people barraging you with offers, and what you're doing is going, hey, everybody, I've got a plan. We can all get together, get a consultant who's the expert in the country, and get you the best price in the market. If you don't like it, you can opt out. And this is really
▶ 1:27:50 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: what this is all about. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Alderman Forbes. Next, we have Alderman Lemmerman, please. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just have one question. You just mentioned that the city enters into the contract, cannot opt out of the program, but the individuals can if they choose to. Is there a minimum November or percentage of consumers within the city that need to participate in the program in order for it to be sustainable and viable for the city? That's a very good question, and the answer to that is no, which is hugely to your advantage. It's very rare, for example, if only 20, for some reason, like everybody decided to opt out, you'd be able to move forward if only 20% of your residents decided to go for it.
▶ 1:28:30 Peter D. Mortimer: Okay. So that's usually to your advantage, and it's something that's not been picked up on by the winning suppliers yet. Okay, thank you. That's a thank you. Thank you, Alderman Lemmerman. Regrettably, once again, we had another committee that was posted for 8 o'clock. And the half hour that's required by law, and by the orders of this committee, require us to, once again, take a recess to briefly open the committee. Have public participation, and probably at the will of the chair of that committee, Alderman Wright, send it right into recess. So I would welcome a motion to recess once again. Motion to recess. Second. a motion to recess by alderman boy cell duly seconded by alderman Byrd all in
▶ 1:29:18 John N. Tramontozzi: favor please say aye aye thank you we are in recess I'm not right I'm I'm all them in trim it tells you the chairman of the legal legislative committee he was last year you're right this is the legal and legislative committee of the Board of Aldermen of the city of Melrose I will entertain a motion to open for floor for public participation so moved so we have a motion by Alderman Byrd who's on the committee and seconded by Alderman Mortimer who's on the committee all in favor aye any opposed seeing none just for the record this meeting is being tape recorded and videotaped for future viewing and pursuant to the Massachusetts open meeting law so this is the opportunity for anybody members of the public who wish to come forward to speak on any matters on the legal
▶ 1:33:15 Peter D. Mortimer: Thank you once again for coming. Thank you for coming. Thank you. Thank you. The next order we have before the Appropriations Committee is order 2015-110. It is authorization to enter into an agreement with Siemens to perform an investment grade audit of city owned street lights. We are under suspension, so I would ask the Mayor, Ms. Grover, Ms. Timmerman, and any other interested parties on the city team to come forward and address the board, please. Hi, again, Martha Grover, Energy Efficiency Manager for the City of Melrose, thank you very much. This is act two, we'll go through this hopefully as quickly as possible. tonight what we have before you is a request to authorize mayor to enter into
▶ 1:34:25 an agreement with Siemens for an audit of our streetlights we're going to quickly go through what this is about we've been talking about it for quite a while streetlights as you know represent 8% of our energy usage as a green community an opportunity to reduce that by up to 66 70 percent is a fantastic opportunity November of communities around the state have already done this store Winchester Chelsea Boston will provide a list and we we hadn't yet done this because the tariff structure with National Grid did not make it financially feasible but this is as soon as that tariff changed we immediately started working with mapc participated in a group procurement with nine communities representing 18 000 plus
▶ 1:35:20 street lights this is the third round of procurement for led street lights with mapc it but this is the first national grid project procurement we got lots of interest from a lot of vendors and through a fantastic once again selection process selected Siemens I have with me Clint Shuckle our account business account manager with Siemens this is a project that is chapter 25 a just like the ESCO project, so it's the same concept where we first do an audit and then we'll go back and we'll come back to you with the scope of work for the energy services agreement. The other piece of this is that the project pays for itself. We would borrow the money or get a tax exempt lease and make those payments from the guaranteed
▶ 1:36:19 savings from this project. a list of the participating communities I was on the selection committee along with some others my counterparts from other communities Melrose is as you can see one of the larger communities in terms of our inventory and good evening everyone thank you for the opportunity to speak with you tonight my name is Clint chuckle I'm Siemens account manager for the mobility division in New england and our core business is maintaining and installing traffic signals and street lights so this is exactly what we do i will try to be very brief to leave time for your questions the previous slide which you don't have to go back to my team members who do a lot of the heavy lifting on this project the audit which i'll speak of briefly in a couple slides the design piece
▶ 1:37:14 which is working with your city staff to determine what's the appropriate level of lighting on various streets obviously looking to strike that balance between public safety and energy savings and the last piece on the previous slide is our construction phase those people that will manage the actual swap out of the streetlights our firm has been fortunate enough to have several major projects under our belt now here in in Massachusetts we about two years ago did a project through MAPC their first procurement which involved four communities in massachusetts arlington chelsea natick and woburn that project involved about 8 000 streetlights we've also worked for the cape light compact the same organization that you
▶ 1:38:02 talked about in your previous item they are also the energy efficiency organization for cape cod they funded a streetlight retrofit so if you're fortunate enough to go out on the cape or martha's vineyard sometime soon you'll get to enjoy all those lovely led street lights because the entire cape has been converted we've also recently completed a project in the city of new bedford included about 10 000 fixtures in total we are as you might expect been a little bit hampered by the snow but we're about to finish up that project the next couple of months next please as Martha mentioned this is a performance contract or procured through Mass General Law 25a so the process that that procurement sets up is the audit which is before you tonight which allows
▶ 1:38:52 for the city to carefully examine the opportunity for energy savings the cost and then to weigh those two so we will with the city's input try to find every single light some of which you may pay for and don't exist so we will be doing a reconciling of your billing and trying to find every single light that you might want to consider for this project we are utilizing a GIS application and making everything web-based so that the status of the project can be made available at whatever level you decide so that residents or city staff can see the progress of the project as points appearing on a map the design piece as i mentioned before is a collaborative process with the city because certain parts of the city certain types of streets you may decide need a little more light
▶ 1:39:43 than others the the next phase under our step under November three will be the the financing piece of the project and the ems or the energy management service that's the actual installation phase once you've taken in this audit information and decided that this is a wise investment for the city the construction phase is is managed by two folks in our office both by the name of david so it says dave and dave after construction there is a warranty phase of this project and this we're focusing on the audit tonight but i'm just kind of walking you through all the steps and happy to take your questions on any of these the there is a guarantee that siemens is making to the city as part of this project that you will save a certain November of kilowatt hours per year and that's
▶ 1:40:32 measured in units of energy so it's not a function of what energy costs you it it's a guarantee that you will save so much energy by doing this project so the measurement and verification piece of that is an annual process for us to document that those guaranteed savings were met and it's as simple as reviewing your utility bill on an annual basis the the maintenance is an option for the city to decide at a later date all of our work will have a one-year workmanship warranty so about a year post completion probably late summer of 2016 the the city will need to make a decision as to how you want to maintain the streetlights long term next please this is a some rough dates obviously that first date is probably pretty optimistic but i think in the this is a very
▶ 1:41:26 doable uh six month schedule for the project upon uh signing of this audit agreement we'll need about 30 days to go street by street to the city and and map in gis each one of your streetlight poles about two weeks later we will submit a design report to the city and there will be some back and forth as i mentioned in terms of determining what the appropriate lighting level is at various city streets and areas about mid-may we would order the fixtures there's about a six week lead time for those and we believe with four to six crews good weather that will be in our favor based on the timing that we would complete the project in about 60 days the next phase is to submit the billing adjustments to national grid because these are not by and large metered lights
▶ 1:42:20 so we have to give national grid the new information about the light that's been changed and that finally the city would receive those savings on your electric bills right about october 1st included in that process is us siemens applying for a national grid incentive on behalf of the city and then taking that amount to offset the cost of the project our audit process is web-based as i mentioned we have audit crews going around the city collecting all the polls we then use that as part of our installation so that initially if if you have access to the web you can see the dots appearing on the map and then when we do the conversion you see the dots changing color so it's very easy to track which
▶ 1:43:06 neighborhoods are done and which ones are coming ultimately this becomes a management tool for the city to manage outages and complaints we give National Grid the GIS point location of all your polls to help reconcile if there's ever any question about which poll is which or where it is sometimes now in the spreadsheet the street is spelled wrong or the street is actually wrong so this will help hopefully over time reconcile that probably your largest electric bill in the city next I'll go quickly through these are our audit tool that the auditors are using on the street is an iPad basically and it's it's pushing information to the cloud and we provide access to Martha to DPW to a public site
▶ 1:43:53 however you'd like to share that information next we also create what we call an operations dashboard and this is an example from our new Bedford project it showed in the yellow the total November of streetlights the green was at this point in time there were 1551 converted and then we found 26 issues as we went through and you may have experienced this as an elected official with a resident that can't get the light back on because it doesn't have a power connection either underground or overhead so we do find those types of items as we go around the city we through the audit often locate tree trimming locations double poles those types of things we can collect if the city finds those metrics useful next and then lastly as i mentioned the there is a web map
▶ 1:44:44 that these this is a screenshot of city of new bedford and and all of their street lights are shown there in the the yellow dots next our design philosophy as i mentioned is to we're obviously trying to maximize your energy savings but also acknowledge the public safety and and level of security that street lights provide to your constituents it's not going to be a successful project if your phone rings off the hook after this because everybody thinks their street is too bright or too dark so we will attempt to again strike that balance between putting the appropriate light in the appropriate places we through mapc have provided three different fixture options and the pricing for each so the the city has some choices to make as to which vendor is best fit
▶ 1:45:33 we have proposed to include a photo cell that would allow you to do some wireless controls at some point in the future if if the city determines the price is right we try to take advantage of the ability of white light to help you see better because you can see true colors at night so if you walk out as i was noticing just outside city hall the color of the the street will be markedly different, and I think you'll all find that it really is more aesthetically pleasing than the sodium lights that you have now. And as I mentioned, we do try to make lighting level consistent from street to street, area to area, because your eye and my eye can't adapt quickly as we drive at night. So we're better off, we're helping the driver regardless of their age by giving them a consistent
▶ 1:46:24 level of light that your eyes can adapt to and try to stay at that light. Next. As Martha mentioned, I think we've got about 17 communities on this list. These are not all our customers. These are projects that have the largest ones that have happened so far. I would guess there's nine more communities to be added to this list as part of this project and probably at least another dozen that are at the stage that you are that are looking at the project. The three in green are the National Grid communities. As Martha mentioned, this National Grid has kind of been slow to get to the table and make things accessible for communities to convert. So this is by far the largest, you're part of the largest conversion to happen so far
▶ 1:47:10 in NGrid territory. Every one of those other communities is in the territory now referred to as Eversource. Most of those jobs have gone quicker. That concludes my presentation. I just wanted to say one point, the cost for the audit is $14.60 per street light. We would only incur that cost if we don't move ahead with the actual LED upgrade, just like with the ESCO project, the audit is included in the project cost. I'd just like to add, just to give a brief history, in 2005 we analyzed whether or not we should be purchasing our street lights that were owned by National Grid. estimated a savings of $100,000 during a very difficult time in the finances of the city we did reach that consistently more so 2006 we purchased the street
▶ 1:48:02 lights by vote of this Board of Aldermen over from 2011 to 2012 after a study of whether or not we should go to LED and have Victorian lights throughout the city we completed that project to much success so in 2015 we will conduct the audit if it's allowed by this board make a decision installation and 15 and then hopefully aggregation savings in 60 so there's a plan here to to to control our own destiny and be proactive over costs that are that are going up thank you lady and gentlemen first in queue we have Alderman Medeiros please are we talking replacing the poles the structures just the how much are we replacing here not sure if I had a picture in my presentation but every light has a metal bracket arm they're usually about six feet long coming off
▶ 1:48:59 the pole whether it's a wood pole or a dedicated streetlight pole we're only changing the light that's on the fixture that's on the end of that pole or on the end of that bracket arm the pole itself stays just as is okay there's there's a picture on the screen now just so just that fixture you can see the bracket arm in the lower right so just what's on the end of that metal arm I'm gonna talk a little bit about streetlights that are out it's probably one of my biggest pet peeves as we go along and and right now I think we have quite a few street and I'm wondering you score from your perspective and in the Energy Commission are we losing more money when the streetlight is out is energy is is
▶ 1:49:49 energy still going into that no and I know I've heard lots of talk over the years about LED lighting lasting longer is that's true yes that was one of the specifications that the MAPC came up with and one that we typically limit in terms of which vendors we're willing to install is a 10-year product warranty. So any failures from year one to 10 will be covered by the manufacturer. But typically how long do those bulbs last before they go out? We're seeing a very low percentage rate of failures. As shown on the screen, pretty much every project we've done is in the last two years. we don't there isn't you know a lot of data to go along with that but we've had failure rates of under one percent in all of our projects that's just the
▶ 1:50:47 Monica C. Medeiros: first couple years but and right now in the city from you know talking with mr. Shana about this if there's no effort by our DPW or anybody to go out and you know kind of take an assessment of what street lights are on and what street lights are off it's they're working during the day and they're not seeing the lighting out and so it's up to community members to report these so i guess kind of what i'm getting at is that you know they're not getting fixed on a regular basis uh and you know aside from the energy savings that we can see from this if we can you know have more of our street lights staying on and working it would probably be a benefit to us in the city my only hesitation with this is unfortunately Siemens had been our contractor to service our lights and they were
▶ 1:51:41 all supposed to be fixed within seven days of reporting them and I could tell you as an alderman that didn't happen quite so often within the seven days so I'm a little bit reluctant to to support this a little bit because of Siemens but I think this is a wise you know use that we could that you can address that but I'll also address that that was those are some of the questions that we actually had of Siemens during the selection process and based on my conversations with New Bedford and the Cape and some of the other communities is that they've really they've hired this crack project management team and they've really revamped their entire maintenance crew and team so a lot of the people that they had inherited through a merger or
▶ 1:52:37 acquisition of another company there's been a lot of turnover and I think that they've really responded very well by responding to those concerns and we haven't had we don't contract with Siemens Republic it's with now we have a different company now yes yeah just briefly thank you Martha for I think highlighting that that we have made some improvements and some of the folks that I think were directly responsible for some of our past failures are no longer with the company so we have had to make some personnel changes to I think perform better to our customers expectations I think the fact that we are providing a one-year workmanship warranty really gives us the opportunity to show and earn the trust of the city otherwise I can't imagine why you would
▶ 1:53:28 Monica C. Medeiros: go any beyond that one year so I think it is it is an audition for us to hopefully reestablish your trust and if so have the opportunity to to be your maintenance contractor for a longer period but I think you have that leverage for sure that we have no chance of anything beyond a year if we can't show you we can respond to a simple outage is there anything in terms of you know potentially putting a chipper as an option to be able to tell when a light goes out so that you know because we don't have DPW staff that's working at night to check this stuff out so if there's something that can report back and report that there's an outage to us you know that would help us and I don't know what the cost of that is obviously but it certainly will as it stands I
▶ 1:54:16 believe you're specifying what's called control ready fixtures which means that if at any point you wanted to incorporate a wireless system in into street lights that these products exist today it would just be a matter of changing the the hockey puck device on top of it which is its photo cell tells the light to turn on and off when when the sun comes up and down so you will have that capability without having to change the fixtures someday to remote control them if you include a dimmable what's called a dimmable driver you can then decide as some cities are talking about to dim certain hours um that's again a very much a personal and and uh financial yeah financial decision that that you can consider but the those
▶ 1:55:03 systems do give you that those kinds of options and and i think that's the intent of the city is to have a control ready fixture and they can send back a message that there's something wrong with the yeah our idea is that we we would make it right now that that technology is too expensive so we're going to i think we're going to have the control ready components the receptacles and then when the prices come down that would be something we look into it's switching it up yep thank you very much thank you alderman medeiros next we'll hear from president khan please yeah um mr chairman what we're voting on here tonight is to whether to go forward with the audit yep i can't imagine why anybody would not vote to go forward with the audit it's a good order it's a
▶ 1:55:42 Peter D. Mortimer: good idea uh i'm hoping that uh if this order passes uh that the audit will lead us to energy savings down the line and i am moving to recommend this order to the full board mr chairman okay we have a motion which is in order um to recommend this order to the full board i did have a second over here who was the trump uh second by alderman inferna um and we do have some further discussion so the motion is on the floor at this point but the discussion will continue the colloquy will next be will next be prosecuted by Alderman McAteer my goal is gee I hope it's not that bad I have two quick questions I heard you say something about when you were doing the audit you could identify like lights that maybe we were paying for but we didn't really have or lights that were
▶ 1:56:41 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: properly connected and something about double poles which used to be like like the bane of our existence in this city I don't really know where we're at with that we've kind of let that go lately that's that's a different night but we last week we spent a full day and have made very substantial progress with double poles although you there it's still an issue that is a piece of data we can collect we can get so that's what I wanted can it be an inventory of double pole during the audit yes okay that's all I want to have that is I I don't need to know anymore that we can get that information and we can maybe leverage it in some positive way. Just one caveat. You probably have lights on about half of your poles.
▶ 1:57:24 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: We're typically only auditing just the poles with lights. So if we come up with 200 double poles, could be there are many more because we've only really surveyed about half the poles, only those with lights on them. if there's a pole with a light on it and another pole next with it doesn't have the light on it you're not gonna count that other pole we have more counted you have more counted okay fine okay and my other question is um we have a state road the Linfels Parkway that goes through Melrose is are the lights on that included the lights on the Fellsway or not I believe those are owned by the DCR so those would not be part of the project would not be included because those are big offenders in my mind in terms of what's frequently out and not
▶ 1:58:10 Robert A. Boisselle: addressed so thank you Thank You alderman McAteer my goal is next we'll hear from alderman Boyce L please thank you for coming this evening question concerning you talked about the brightness of the light and so forth is the new lights considered light pollution or a second question would be does the emergency services find the yellow lights or the white lights better for them in their activities what's your experience in other communities with that especially with the light pollution and the emergency groups and so forth pretty much industry standard now is is what's called a full cutoff fixture so it means there's no light above the horizontal if you do a horizontal line from 20 feet in the air where the fixture is everything goes down and with the led type fixture
▶ 1:59:06 the light is actually a lot more focused on the street and the sidewalk and some of our projects we have had complaints from residents who used to enjoy the benefit if you want to call it that of the street light lighting their private property and you're going to see a lot more focus on the street and the sidewalk because of the the optics of the fixture allow a lot more control as to where the light goes very good in terms of public safety we've we've had a in our experience a very positive reaction from police and fire because of the ability to see true colors so if there is a suspicious suspicious vehicle of some sort can tell if the vehicle is black or blue the standard color of the lights these days is, to use the technical term, is 4,000 Kelvin.
▶ 2:00:03 Moonlight is about 4,100, so they're very similar in terms of the whiteness to moonlight. If you went to Home Depot and were looking for an LED for your kitchen, you'd probably want something a lot warmer, and I think those are about 2,700 Kelvin, the bulbs on the aisle there. So we've had, I think, very positive feedback, and in a couple of the communities, we are doing some pilot installations so that we make sure we have buy-in from interested parties. We could do that here, if you like. Okay, good. You talked about the control cells on top of the light and so forth. So they're basically sort of a plug that you can take out and put a new plug that will be more electronic sensitive and so forth?
▶ 2:00:48 Robert A. Boisselle: Correct. Yeah. in the future we could have these electronic sensors that would sort of a Wi-Fi or whatever hookup that you want that if there's no signal or no light that comes on you'll send this red dot to the map that you have that you're showing here that this light is out in the neighborhood and DPW would response to respond to that or who would respond if it's in the first year post installation will be us after that time that'll be a city decision if you want to have an in-house crew do that or to outsource outsourcing okay and the any fixtures that you find that have a problem and you replace them that's charged back to the city is that correct not in the first year so there's there's
▶ 2:01:37 a no when you go out to do the audit and you find that there's two or three of these that are out of service period right would they replace would you guys replace that we would do that as part of the systematic install so we would go street to street one thing to note we're not going to identify outages in the audit because that is done during the day so the crews are walking either on foot or in a personal car so they have no idea if the light is functioning at that stage we do know if the light works when the electrician goes up in the bucket truck to install it because there is a there's a very quick test that's done when the light goes in when the photo cell is twisted on the light turns
▶ 2:02:24 on for about 10 seconds or so so they verify that there is power from the the end grid line out to the street light pole when we find ones that don't have power national grid has given us some leeway to make those repairs as we find them if it's a repair that's somewhere underground or there's a conduit broken somewhere you know those are not going to be a fix it as we go but anything that's overhead which is probably most of your street lights we are going to address those as we go through the project and part of our audit tool the intent is to map and track the locations that don't have power or have some issue with us getting the light back on so we will provide that in map format so that the city can track
▶ 2:03:17 Robert A. Boisselle: where needed and grid's response now within the past years i know especially in ward 4 and in ward 2 new power lines have been coming through have been upgrading the city's power system and the utilities have come in and put in bigger poles almost 15 feet taller above the standard poles is that going to cause a problem in the audits no typically if if the utility company puts in a new pole the the city now that you own your street lights for about the last nine years you have the responsibility of having that street light moved from the old pole to the new one but usually it stays at its height if it's 20 24 feet off the ground it just moves over horizontally but that's currently something the city is responsible for and something you would continue to be
▶ 2:04:10 Robert A. Boisselle: responsible for regardless of what type of light you have well i mean i got comments from some of the residents that it seems to cover more light because it's raised it went up higher on the pole in comparison to the previous light and it just sheds more light it almost covers two poles areas and so forth instead of just that one area so just wondering that's something different that's going to occur we anticipate a few calls there will be some too dark or too bright all of the fixtures that we've priced have a shield option so if the city determines that the light on someone's house or property is really excessive we can put a shield on it to block the light that's going off the right-of-way okay if it's determined to be too dark have some options to either change
▶ 2:05:03 Peter D. Mortimer: out the fixture again these will be city decisions we can advise but ultimately it's your electric bill and and your determination as to what what the if if a resident has a legitimate issue or if really the light is as it should be thank you very much thank you mr chairman thank you Thank you, Alderman Boycelle. We have a motion on the floor that has been duly seconded. All in favor of a motion to recommend this order for passage at our next full board meeting, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, this order will be recommended for passage at our next full board meeting. Thank you all for coming, and I would welcome a motion to adjourn the appropriations committee. Alderman Lavender Byrd has made a motion to adjourn the appropriations committee, duly seconded by Alderman Forbes.