Conservation, Energy, & Environment Committee - Regular Meeting

4:31. I would I'm going to call the meeting to order. And we do have a quorum. Um Nancy Bowden, uh Bob Dickinson, Claudia Guardiac, Charlie Nevers, and Paula Jones are present. Okay. Okay. Do we have anyone online? I mean, do we have anyone? Do we have any guests online? Okay, we have Valerie and do we have Lindsay Tomche? Okay. Um, so we are expecting a guest. Hopefully she got um the invitation. Did Did she get a link? Okay, she got a link. So hopefully she will be able to join us. Hi Val. Um thanks for joining. Um so um just in terms of um housekeeping today um we are expecting a guest and we want to accommodate that person kind of first thing under old business. we'll get started with the typical um housekeeping items and um then if she's able to join us we will u move to that. Okay. So uh in terms of approval of agenda I would like to um talk about sun day uh which is the weekend of September 20th. Um, and I'd like to do that under new business in the other category. Um, any objections to placing it there as

opposed to upcoming events, announcements? Everyone good? Okay. So, we'll we'll talk about it there. I did I think forward some materials um that Devita Foy crab treat had provided and um we'll we'll do some screen sharing. Okay. Um so Lynn distributed the June 12th meeting minutes. Can I have a motion to approve? Okay. Claudia move. Can I have a second? Second. Okay. Nancy is seconding. Uh any discussion, corrections, additions. Okay. Um all in favor of approving say I. I. I. Okay. Okay. So, it's unanimous. All right. Moving on to the town planners report. We'll turn it over to Mr. Coleman. Thank you, Madam Chair. And good afternoon everybody. Um we um the recruitment has begun for the environmental planner. It has been posted and it's been advertised and uh hopefully we'll get some good candidates. If you know anyone who's interested, we welcome their application. uh in terms of uh and the uh second sort of most important thing is a week from this evening uh the town plan and zoning commission will hold the formal hearing on the POCD. We have received um some comments in writing which we have we are forwarding on to them and we look forward to the the public's input in person or virtually uh next week and subsequent to

that um I and um and the consultant will spend two to three weeks um finalizing the document for the commission's uh review and and hopefully adoption. And then the last final step we have to do is we have to send it on to the town council for their review. They can like it or not like it. Uh and they can make comments or not make comments. Um and um but the final action is uh totally in the hands of the TPC. Um, in terms of developments, I think the the um the most significant thing going on right now is that you may have, if you've watched the council meeting, uh, the Arbella at Blue Hills, the age restricted housing development on Blue Hills Avenue at the old drive-in cinema site has made um has made a request for a tax agreement uh for 10 years um, in response to the changing financial climate they find them in from when they originally filed their application and received approval from TPZ and wetlands uh with the affordable unit. The council did not act but act and requested um a significant amount of additional information which is being gathered as we speak and um we're hopeful to get it back in time for the uh finance committees meeting um this month. That may be a tight schedule and it may not may not happen until the August meeting. I think the data will be gathered. I think the question will be whether or not finance committee feels they've had enough time to digest it. um uh before they uh they consider it, but we intend to present it to them at least by midweek, which would be prior to

their meeting. Um other than that, um no significant new applications right now. We have um again, if you've seen the paper, we did have a um an informal presentation to the TPZ for a very large data center uh out at um in the northwest at 132 Griffin Road North, which is basically the agricultural field um east of the intersection of 187 and 189. um and um the commission uh listened to them and asked them to come back with further information. So no action has been taken on that uh they will not return um at least until the August meeting of the TPZ. Um, we've had uh we are in um fairly um active preliminary conversations with the First Cathedral for some uh significant uh development for affordable housing on what is now vacant property property south of the south of the sanctuary. Uh we're also having conversations uh with a potential developer for um a residential development at 270 Woodland Avenue, which is on the east side of Woodland Avenue, just a shade north of the existing condominium development, a little south of Peters Road. Um the um residential development at Watkins Road and Sims Road is proceeding. uh Rifield Hodddle is almost completed and seeking their final TCO. We are working with them because we will not issue a final CO to them until we um finalize and have them do the improvements in Lasslet Park which were

agreed to in principle and we're now have resurrected and we'll be working with DEP to seek their approval and then have the improvements put in place. Um, let's see. Popeye's is coming out of the ground. Uh, the sidewalk uh on the uh west side of Tungstus Avenue is uh is probably 3/4 in. There will be a slight delay in finalizing that so that we can coordinate with the work that's done at the Popeye site on the crossing of the street. uh work is proceeding very well on the uh complete streets program on Blue Hills Avenue. Um and um that's sort of the major things going on right now. Um we're crazy busy, but it's a lot of stuff. Yeah. And if there's no objections, I'd prefer to hold your questions for John simply because our guest um from Essex has joined us. And um hello Lindsay. Uh welcome and thank you um for coming along. And I also want to acknowledge that Brenda Watson has joined us. Um hello. And um what I'd like to do if if it's okay. Absolutely. Okay. um is just give Lindsay an opportunity to give us a short overview of Solariz the the Solarized Essex and Friends program. This is something that Bob Dickinson read about um reached out to Lindsay because we periodically have conversations about solar initiatives in Bloomfield and um we thought it would be helpful to get a little bit of a sense of uh that program. So, welcome Lindsay and thank you for joining us and taking

time. And you're muted and we still can't hear you. Can you hear me now? Yes, we can. Oh, boy. I am I am in the midst of switching from I've been a PC person my whole life and I got a Mac this week. So that's why I'm late. That's why I can't figure out just about anything on my computer. So I am really sorry for being late. Um you're you're here and that's what matters. So thank you for joining us. All right. Great. Yeah. So I would be happy to um give an overview of the Solarized Essics and Friends campaign which um originally was planned to go from Earth Day which was April 22nd I believe or 26th until June 30th. But we've had so much success with the campaign that we just announced um an extension. We're running the campaign now through July 31st. Um and so we're still we're still in it. It's still happening right now. And I thought that I would kind of um walk you through as a group sort of, you know, how it came about, what we had to do to convince um our town's first selectmen and board of selectmen to allow us to move forward with a campaign like this. And then just kind of show you some of the nuts and bolts of, you know, once we were out of the planning stages and we actually were executing the campaign, what we did. And um does that sound good? Does that sound like a good plan? Yeah, perfect. Okay, great. So, yeah, the the first step and I'll share my screen here. I I do have some uh materials to kind of show you. Let's see.

Oh boy, another Mac problem. It's wanting me to do something in system settings. Give me two seconds. Is that okay? I'm sorry. It's fine. Okay. My problem the other way. I went Yeah, I still have a Mac. Open system settings, privacy and security. If it would be easier for you, Lindsay, you can email it to Lynn. Okay. Maybe maybe that would be easier. Yeah. Okay. Let's see. Well, okay. I'm just going to email everything very quickly. Um, and maybe I can talk and do that at the same time. We'll see. We'll find out right now. Um, okay. So, yeah, the the first step for us was convincing our first selectman. When I first approached him and told him I was wanting to do a um a solarized campaign in our town, there was a little bit of hesitancy, I think his biggest concern was, you know, what if we pick a company that ends up going out of business. Um because that has happened actually. There were a lot of solarized campaigns in the United States in like 2013, 2014. And you know by now some of the companies that were selected for those campaigns have gone out of business and

maybe it created a lot of disruption back then. Um but sort of what I what I told him and um just to introduce myself a little further. I do have a lot of expertise in the solar industry. I work for a solar company. Um and so I'm speaking to you today with my volunteer hat on. I volunteer for a group called Sustainable Essics. It's a town committee. Um but but my my job is working for a solar company that is not located in Connecticut. It only works in um Virginia, the southwest corner of Virginia. And um so what I kind of told our first selectman is you know that there is always a risk that the company that we choose could go out of business but what's good you know now compared to 2014 is that the industry has matured so much in the last 11 years that it's not as if the people who go solar through the campaign are going to be totally stranded. you know, um there are other service um solar companies that can kind of pick up the slack should there be a a need for any service. Um there's warranty considerations. You know, if the company goes out of business, well, the craftsmanship part of the the warranty is now sort of null and void. If if there was something wrong with the solar and another company needed to come in to fix it, they're going to charge for labor. But the good news is that the equipment is still under warranty in most cases. Um, solar has two big pieces of equipment. A lot of you probably know it's the panels themselves which have a 25 year warranty. That's sort of the standard in the industry. And then there's the solar inverter or micro inverters. And that that warranty is between 10 and 25 years. So I I basically I think I was able to talk him out of that fear of like what if we picked the wrong company by explaining that you know the industry has matured.

I also told him that what we would do in this campaign is even though we were going to work with one particular company, we would recommend to everybody that we um are speaking to to get three quotes, you know, and so this is something that would I took very seriously. We had a recommended installer. They were the ones who were offering the group discount, you know, and they're the ones who we were partnering with. They were in our press releases. They were in our marketing materials. But I was also recommending to everyone, you know, to just be a good consumer. Do your homework, get three quotes. This is a big investment. And um that seemed to also make our first selectman feel better about the campaign and eventually give it sort of his stamp of approval. And of course, you know, I did a lot of vetting of the solar company that we ended up choosing. Um, and you know, how I did that was, of course, I like anyone else, I went to Google reviews first. I think there's some good information to be found there. Um, but beyond that, I was looking at Better Business Bureau complaints, specifically, you know, how many complaints have been resolved. Um, I always do a quick Google search. You know, there are a lot of bad players in the industry. Unfortunately, there's some like really aggressive, high-pressured sales solar people out there. We've all met them before. They've all knocked on our door. Um, and so one way to weed out the worst companies is to take the name of the solar company and Google it with the word lawsuit. So, that is kind of a quick and easy way to eliminate quite a few companies, unfortunately. Um, so that's kind of how I I talked our first selectman into um allowing us to

proceed with this campaign. A big part of the campaign, a a very important part of the campaign for me was getting not only the town's approval, but also their support. I actually convinced our first selectman to send a letter to every single person in the town of Essex um announcing the campaign and announcing the public presentation that we were going to be doing at town hall. Um we did that back in May. And so I really attribute a lot of the success from our campaign to that letter. everybody in town got a letter from somebody that they know and trust or you know I think most people probably trust probably some people don't trust all you know not everybody trusts the politicians but anyhow um I think that was a really big part of our success and then we had a public presentation that was hosted by sustainable ethsics and then our partner solar company was there as well and there the name of that company was earthlight technologies and So, um, we had a really great turnout. I was, you know, I was going to be happy if 10 or 15 people showed up that night to that presentation, but we had almost 70 people, um, come, which was really great. And so, that that letter from our first selectman was the big was the first really big kind of push and just call it like press release that happened. Um after that we developed flyers just in Canva, you know. Um and we put those around town announcing that meeting. It was just another way for people to be reminded that the campaign was happening and that the public presentation was also happening. Um and outside of that, we built a website. So

Sustainable Essics has its own website. It's done through WordPress. and I actually kind of take care of it and um work on it. I'm a I have a marketing background and so I built a separate page for the campaign and it just had some information about the campaign. It of course was promoting the meeting in May and um it had a link where people could actually schedule a consultation with our contractor partner. So, I am happy to share I'm going to share the link to Sustainable Essics's website with this group. I'll share it in the chat or it maybe I'll also email it to you, Lynn. Does that sound good? That would be great. Yeah, there I don't think there is a chat. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So I will um definitely um share that website and I'll also share the presentation slides from the I keep talking about this presentation that happened in May. Um I'll share the slides um from that with you so you could kind of see I'd say 90% of that presentation was the solar installer. I I gave an introduction at the beginning and that's not in the slides. So you'll be seeing the presentation that she gave to the room. Um and then additionally when we decided to extend the campaign, we had a lot of people in the community asking us to do a second workshop or presentation. And so we did that. We did it just a couple nights ago and it was and I should have told you about it. I'm now realizing it would have been good for you to have attended, but fortunately we recorded it. And so I can send the recording to that um to this group so that you can kind of see what that was about. And I think one more thing I'd like to just touch on and I probably

should have touched on this in the very beginning is, you know, I think what what made this campaign so successful and what I really liked about it is, you know, a solarized campaign is basically a group of people um, you know, coming together and being able to purchase solar at a discounted rate And um but there's another aspect to a solarized campaign that I think is really important that is kind of where your group would come in and where where my group came in which is it's also about having an education element and it's about having that education come from people in the community who are impartial and sort of tr like trusted. And so I think that if you do start to plan a solarized campaign, I think keeping those two things in mind, the the work of selecting an installer, you know, and doing interviews and maybe you do an RFP, our our first selectman initially wanted us to do that. I didn't actually go through that really formal process of, you know, requesting proposals. Instead, I had some just conversations with some solar companies and um that's kind of how I decided who we would would partner with. But so there's the the contractor, that's a very important part of it, but don't forget about the education piece, too. I would even try and decide um which of the people on your community or on on your committee might be the most knowledgeable about solar and and then designate a solar ambassador. That's what we've been kind of referring um I've been referred to as the solar ambassador throughout this campaign. And so I think that's been a really nice part of it. I've had so many conversations with so many people in the

community who are interested in solar, but they're wanting to speak to somebody like me before they get a consultation or maybe they've had their consultation and maybe they have three quotes in front of them and they want me to help them review and compare the quotes. So, I've done quite a bit of that. It's been quite a bit of work. Um, but it's work that I really enjoy. I really like talking about this stuff and it feels really good to be talking about it in a volunteer capacity versus just my my job. Um, so I think I'll stop there and see if you anybody has any questions. Okay, I'm I'm going to start in the room and see if anybody um in the room has a question and then once we go online, Brenda Wat Watson has her hand raised. So, we'll go to Brenda. Any questions here? Do you have one? Okay. Yeah. Claudia. Hi. Um, maybe you said this and I didn't hear it, so advance apology, but how many projects are going forward from your initial outreach? Yeah, that's a great question. I did not say that. So, we right now are at 16 projects and the goal was so the way that we set up the discount with our installer partner was automatically people who went solar through the campaign got a discount from whatever this company normally charges. They were discounting at 15 cents per watt, which is commonly how solar is priced. And so, the campaign was starting at $3 per watt. And the goal was if we get 10 or more people to sign up, then there was a deeper discount. It dropped to to $2.90 a watt. And so that's where we're at.

It's not going to go any deeper than that. Some solarized campaigns, you know, the first 10 people or after 10 people, it drops by this much. 10 more, it drops again. We just decided two tiers. Tier one is automatic for anyone who signs up. Tier two is if 10 or more people sign up. So, we've blown past that 10 target, which I was so happy about. Um, we've got 16 contracts, 208 kilowatts of solar, and 206 kilowatts of batteries, which is huge. Um, both of those numbers I'm so happy with. I can't even tell you how happy I am. 208 kilowatts of solar, that's that's a pretty big deal um for a small community like this. So, do you want to Okay, before I go to the screen? Okay. Um, so Brenda, you're up. Thank you, um, Paula, and thank you, Lindsay, for that presentation. I have two questions. Um the first is would you be willing or able to share the selectman's letter with us so that we can see what type of language um he used to promote it and were you accused of perhaps taking kickbacks from you know being the solar ambassador and you know there's a lot of mistrust in our town unfortunately so I wonder if you've had to overcome any of those mistrust issues. Yeah. So, um, first question. Absolutely. I will share and I I was not able to talk and email at the same time. So, I haven't sent anything yet, but I'm going to share all of the things that I was planning on presenting to this group, which is the letter from the first selectman. I'll share copies of the flyers that we created. I'm going to

share the press release that went into the Valley Courier, which is like the little shoreline newspaper that everybody gets down here. Um, and I'll share the the website link and the presentation slides. So, absolutely. I'm going to share a whole bunch of stuff. I'll send it to um Lynn and Paula and then they can share it with everyone. We'll distribute it to all. Yep. Good. Um, and then to answer your second question, no, fortunately, nobody nobody throughout the campaign accused me of that. Nobody even asked the question. I did preempt it. You know, in especially at the the big presentation with 70 people in the room when I introduced myself, I explained to people that I do work for the solar industry or in the solar industry, but that my company is located in Virginia and only operates in the southwest corner of Virginia and is not in any way affiliated with any of the companies in Connecticut. And I went even further to say, you know, when I'm I'm suggesting to you that you get three quotes. I think one of them should absolutely be from Earthlight Technologies, but if you ask me to sit down and review and compare quotes with you, I am not going to automatically, you know, push you towards Earthlight. They're they're certainly not, you know, I'm not getting anything out of this except for some feel-good volunteer stuff. Um, so I tried to preempt that a lot um in the in the presentations and in the conversations that I was having with people. Um, my little joke that I made all the time was like, I'm totally impartial, except that maybe not totally because I do want you to go solar if you have a good home for it and and it's a good fit for your family. So, I am going to try and encourage you to go solar if it's a good fit, but I don't care who you go solar with. And I actually did a couple of times in reviewing proposals, I did recommend a company besides Earth Light Technologies um to a few people. So,

Thank you. Okay, Val. Hi. Yeah, thanks. Hi, Lindsay. A couple questions. Um, actually, our town did some work with Earthlight quite a few years ago and they came and looked through the schools for suggestions. But two things, one is given the current uh tax bill that's passed and the limitations on how soon the uh incentives for solar are going to be phased out. I I don't recall in my mind reading exactly how soon the projects have to be either completed or started and how is that affecting what's going on. The second is as far as the choice of contractor. I remember when we did a first round of a solarized campaign in Bloomfield. The green bank like had multiple contractors come and give presentations to multiple towns. And I think subsequent to that, they had a lot to do with um kind of putting their backbone behind uh the contractors and is are they involved at all with with what's going on with your town or are they doing any more um statewide solarized initiatives? No, the Green Bank is no longer involved in any solarized initiatives in the state of Connecticut. That was the first place that I went. Um I was hoping that there would be a lot of support there, but there wasn't. Um so that's a very simple answer to that question. I wish I could remember a lot of the details. You know, I had a pretty in-depth conversation with somebody from the Green Bank. I can't remember a lot of the details now because that was over a year ago that I spoke with someone but

at that time I knew that the green bank had within the last few years gotten out of the solar eyes you know they that was something that they were um I think that they were providing resources like they were helping people um with their marketing campaigns I think they were paying for things like the letter from the first selectman that was a big cost by the I didn't mention that, but um that was a significant cost for us. But yeah, so we're not working with the green bank at all. Um except that I did want to choose a contractor that you know had had a lot of green bank stamps of approval and had won awards. So I can say that about the green bank. Yeah, they they they did come actually at a certain point they were putting they were they were reviewing all the town buildings and putting together like a multi-building package of solar for and finding and they were they were hooking up the financing on their own but it didn't transpire in Bloomfield. I was just con I was just curious as to whether they were still doing any of that. Yeah. So they are still doing um technical assistance. So you could call the green bank um and they'll help do like a solar review basically. So they they are still doing some things to support municipalities and um businesses and certainly homeowners. You know, I think that the green bank it from the residential side, I think that they have someone or a group of people there who basically are doing what I'm doing and kind of like solar ambassadors helping homeowners kind of navigate proposals and understand things. Um, but yeah, as far as like they were very specifically giving a lot of support to groups that were doing solarized campaigns years ago and they're not doing that anymore.

Thanks. Um and then for your other question about the incentives. So yeah, so the mega bill um it is ending the the residential federal tax credit on December 31st. And what's interesting is that some of the language changed. It used to be that to qualify for the federal tax credit, you had to have a system installed and energized in the tax year that you were hoping to claim the credit for. They changed the language so that it now says that the expenditures have to happen by December 31st, 2025. So my company and a million other companies are trying to really make sense of this and feel confident that I mean it seems straightforward enough. You know it's a big difference telling someone you can get the tax credit as long as you pay me for the solar this year. It doesn't matter when we actually you know do the construction and turn your system on. It seems like we can be booking jobs into 2026 as long as the money is received this year. But just like so many other things these days, I don't have a ton of confidence that that's true. And I don't have a ton of confidence that there may just be an executive order that comes out, you know, and and changes that language. So, this is all to say this bill is so new and something is definitely the federal tax credit is definitely ending. Um, but whether that means, you know, for systems that are installed this year or just systems that are paid for this year, I'm not entirely sure yet. We're all still trying to make sense of that. But I don't know if you are aware, but the net metering is also changing in the

state of Connecticut at the end of this year. Um, Connecticut has had a a great onetoone net metering rate for a very long time. That was reduced by there's now like an unavoidable charge of 0.005 cents. So I think a a half of a penny is unavoidable. Um, and that was increased to three and a half cents in the passing of a bill this this session, which is pretty significant. So the incentives, the federal incentives are changing drastically and even the state level which is the net metering incentive is getting ready to be not quite as good as it's been in years past. Could you just explain that a little because that's when you say it's unavoidable. What could you just clarify what what you mean? Sure. So net metering is um the idea of net metering is basically your solar is most likely going to produce more energy than your home needs certain times of the year, certain times of the day. So when that excess energy gets exported to the grid, it goes through your meter and you get a credit for it. And it used to be that for every kilowatt hour that you sent out to the grid, it was the same value as the kilowatt hours that you're importing from the grid. And so they just offset each other. Well, with the new rules, I think a year or two ago, they they made it so that it's not exactly the same value. the credit. Every time you import a credit from the grid, which is at night, of course, and then on the cloudiest, you know, wintryest days of the year, you are paying a half of a penny for every single kilowatt hour that you import into your home. It doesn't matter how many kilowatt hours you've exported, you're paying a half a penny. Well, now you're actually paying

3 1/2 cents, which doesn't sound like a lot, but it's a drastic increase from a half a penny. What is that like 6 or 700% or something? And it and it will affect the economics of solar. Now, if you have batteries, it's a different story, but batteries are quite expensive. Connecticut has some really great battery incentives, though, I should say that. Um but yeah, so so basically there's like this joke in the solar industry. Everybody always says there's never been a better time to go solar. We've been saying that for years, but like we really mean it now. There's no there has this is the last best time to go solar, especially in a state like Connecticut where not only is the federal tax credit going away, but the net metering is being reduced. Thank you. Do you have a question? Because this is last last question. Yes. Uh unless I got one. Okay. Two more questions. Okay. Uh actually, go ahead, John. Um well, first on the on the on the green bank that Bloomfield is working with the green bank uh in terms of the solar installation on at 330 Park Avenue and the uh Proer Library as a patchy package deal. Um two questions I have. One um what is the distribution between rooftop and ground installations and um have you had any push back on removal of trees? So are you asking what is the distribution between roof versus ground in our campaign? Uh no in the projects in the 16 projects. Yeah. Uh, so I don't know that actually. I'm not sure if there's a single ground mounted system, but it is a different cost of course. Um, and we've been

pretty upfront with people about that. So, I can get I can get back to you on that. And then as for trees, that's something that when you say push back, do you mean like homeowners once they learn, well, you've got too much shade and you need to do this? Do you mean push back from the homeowners or more from the neighbors from the the abuters? You know, all why are all those trees going and sort of what is the balance here between retaining trees as an environmental positive and doing solar which is also an environmental positive? You know what's the offset? I don't know technically what the offset is, but I can tell you that I almost was the crazy lady who chained herself to a tree the other day in my neighborhood. I didn't know that my neighbors were cutting it down for solar purposes, but that would not have changed anything in my opinion. It was a probably 150year-old gorgeous silver totally healthy silver maple tree and it just it like tore my heart out. I was I thought it was a town tree. I was calling the tree warden. I was calling the the tree committee. You know, I was like the crazy person who was just like ringing all the alarm bells. So, that's just a little bit of my personal opinion about cutting trees down for the sake of solar. Um, but you know, it depends on who you ask. If you ask somebody who really loves trees like me and doesn't have all of the scientific evidence, I would say it's probably, you know, maybe it's a wash. And so don't cut down a bunch of trees for the sake of solar. But I think if you asked a solar person, well, a solar person besides me, they might say that, you know, what what the solar is contributing and the the amount of carbon emissions that they're

reducing is more substantial than the amount of carbon that the tree can sequester in in the rest of its life. So, I think solar outweighs trees, but it's still a very hard thing for me to understand because trees are the original carbon sequesters, you know. Yeah. So, yeah. Actually, cheer's prerogative here. I'm just going to make a comment. Um, actually, I don't know if you can see my t-shirt, Trice for Bloomfield. Oh, great. Yeah. Yeah. Um we've had a 4year campaign in terms of um just the the you know the the urban canopy. Um we just got designated as a Tree City USA by the Arbor Day Foundation and unfortunately we are seeing where we are seeing solar installations on residential we are seeing some you know 150 year old maple trees come down and um you know I think a lot of the I I personally I think a lot of the time people aren't really kind of getting a true picture of kind of the you know the costbenefit analysis of solar versus trees. So, so one thing I think is, you know, I think in any kind of campaign that's important is the notion that when you talk about um whether your home is right for solar, that includes looking at the other natural resources and the values they offer. Um, so I I thank John for the question. Um, thank you very much. And I will get off my soap box and let Bob ask a question. I'll comment quickly on that. I I've read that one solar panel equals seven trees, but that's not considering the benefit of sitting in the shade under

that tree. Right. So, we really need to push for houses that don't have a tree problem. Yeah. Y the other is as the subsidies are reduced or go away. I believe over the years that's been partially compensated by the higher efficiency of the panels. That is the the dollars per kilowatt coming out of panels has has the cost has gone down because a panel itself may actually be more expensive. But if it's putting out twice as much power, the the cost goes down. Yeah, that that is absolutely true. Um, you know, I don't think anybody in the solar industry ever expected, especially the f federal tax credit to be around in perpetuity, the way that subsidies for the fossil fuel industry are around in perpetuity. But that's a whole another soapbox um for another day. Um, but you're absolutely right, Bob. the cost of solar since since the federal tax credit was rolled out which was 17 18 years ago the cost of solar has decreased by like 92% like the material equipment costs and it's gotten so much more efficient so still affordable without it I I think if you look at the 25 year life of the panels uh the panels are cost effective without without without subsidy oh yeah absolutely Without the federal tax credit, without net metering, it's a different it's a different scenario. If net metering went away entirely in the state of Connecticut like it did in California and Arizona and quite a few other states, it's a it's a whole different the economics are very different and um but you're right, absolutely right, that most of the companies will survive without the

federal tax credit. All right, this this has been a very um good overview. We really appreciate it, Lindsay, and thank you for sharing the materials. Um, I want to move on just because we have other things to talk about today, but um I, you know, I suspect that the group will want to follow up with this and we do have some folks um that are um solar ambassadors on our committee, past members who are solar ambassadors and are familiar with the program. So, um, we will we will write again in terms of this topic sooner rather than later. So, that's great. I will follow up. I will send all of those things that I said I was going to send. And if you decide that you'd like to me to speak again or join one of your meetings, just let me know, please. I'd be happy to. Wonderful. Thank you so much for taking the time. We appreciate it. And good luck with your your Mac. Thank you. All right. Thanks, everybody. We can all relate. Thank you. Bye. Thank you. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Great. Okay. So, yeah. Um, so I want to turn back to the town managers or town managers. John's report. I basically gave you what, you know, sort of the topline stuff. Do people have questions or comments? And I realize it's 30 minutes later which makes it difficult but um I do want to make one yeah I I do want to make one comment. Um I attended what did I attend the governance committee meeting um on Monday night and um I just want to applaud John's presentation and the manager uh complimented him which is so appropriate just in terms of the the good work he's

been doing. So, um, thank you for that. Thank you for the audits and the and the support. That's what I'm paid to do as I said that, you know, I I felt rather embarrassed. Yeah. Well, you have to be embarrassed once in a while. So, yeah. Nancy, do do you want to say anything? I saw this. Okay. Um, let's see. Oh. Um so the next topic on the agenda is sustainable CT reertification. Um just a very brief update there and I can it there's actually a brief update on a report that's been circulated. Um I don't know I don't remember if it was emailed out to everyone. Probably not. Okay. So yesterday um was the public health safety and environment subcommittee um monthly meeting and CC um reports out on kind of our activities. So I'm just going to read from that because it covers the covers the update. Um we got uh we were we were approached by sustainable CT fellow Amelia Kernney. um she reached out to the town at the beginning of June. You all remember I think th those of you who are here, she actually attended our meeting last month and she offered to help us work on getting reertified. John Linda Lauraniano and I had a subsequent um actually I think a couple of meetings with her in June and the point of that was just to get additional questions answered and to see if it's

even feasible to get you know like do we have enough of do we have enough of enough of enough actions within the different categories um that we can we have a shot at it. And the answer seems to be yes. We have we've developed kind of a high level work plan and Amelia and I think one other individual will will assist us with uploading documents in the application process. Um the deadline is August 15th which is very aggressive. Um, but we'll see what we can get done. And I think the um point being if we can't get it done, we can make a really good start on hitting the next deadline. So, that's that update. Um, are there any questions about that? Okay. Excellent. Okay. Um, the next thing on under old business is the extreme heat webinar and I want to give um actually Nancy an opportunity andor Claudia to give an update. Um, we have finalized what we're calling the our draft. finalize a draft as opposed to finalize the full set of slides that we want to use. And I shared it with the three individuals from one from the police department and two from our emergency management systems or emergency response service people um right only about a week and a half ago. And I also sent them the original two documents from the Lancet that we would that we use for a lot of our data.

Um, and I have not followed up with them, but the next more difficult piece is going to be trying to find a time when we can all meet to discuss it. So, but I haven't heard back from any of them with any comments either. So, you know, for the July weekend and all that stuff. I'm just kind of waiting. Um, but hopefully we will get a group together in the next week or two to run through the slides, see if they would add anything, talk through the narrative that would go on. You know, the slides are kind of bullet point summary. So, what would we say to augment those as we go through the webinar? And um I haven't yet shared or been in contact with the health district mostly because other than Amy I I don't know who we were supposed to talk to or if anybody anymore and I don't know if you remember the name of the person. I I don't I will look but um you know we can certainly I think send something to Amy and she would get a I mentioned last night that you're working on it and you would eventually loop back. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I don't I don't know what kind of role they want other than I just want to be sure that they're okay with what we're saying. Yeah. And that's what I said. I I'd mentioned that you were working with police, EMS folks, and um that you certainly wanted to make sure they had their eyes on it, right? And so everybody was in the loop. Yeah. And I'm I'm hoping that one or more of them will be presenters of the during the webinar talk on some of the slides. Not just not usually. I think that'll be more effective. The other thing is that I'm just seeing um the issue of extreme heat. Every time I turn around, somebody's talking about it. And um actually I'm a master gardener. So we have once a year we have to go to a a webinar called hot topics.

And this year it's always called hot topics but this year one of the topics was extreme heat. And um the woman that was speaking from Yukon is uh on the she's the COO I was going to say on the board, but the COO of something called the Corey Stringer Institute, which I didn't know about, and I don't know if the institute is located in Connecticut or not, but it's named after an athlete who died from heat stroke after a workout. And not being a sports enthusiast, I know have no idea what the circumstances were. But anyway, that's another resource that I just found out about that we have here and they work on policies and things like that. Not I'm not intending to include that in our webinar, but since we've talked about maybe looking at town policies and uh giving recommendations. I think that's an institute when we get to that phase of the project maybe next year that that's an institute that we'll be a be a resource anyway to to call on. So, it's my report and I'll mention one thing but then see if anyone has questions. Um during the um subcommittee meeting last night um the fire districts reported out and they reported on the incident at East East Newsbury East Newberry Road where some drums filled with chemicals exploded and it the the cause is attributed to the heat. It was during that real hot heat wave. I'd read that in the paper, you know, in terms of like this happened or it was a news break and um I asked a follow-up question and the answer was yeah, yeah, that's what we're attributing it to. And it was like then I was asked, well, why do you ask? Is that going to be part of the webinar? I just said, no, it never that's something that never occurred to me that would

happen because of extreme heat. things would just start exploding which is worrisome. So yeah, it was not that hot. It wasn't hot like they get in Arizona and we could, you know, the whole issue is if we get a real heat dome that doesn't go away for a week or two. Yeah. Yeah. You know, we haven't experienced it yet. We haven't experienced the worst of the worst. Yeah. Any uh followup, you know, any questions for Nancy? Okay. Excellent. Okay. Um let's see. The next item on under new B under old business is the PCD review. Um which I think we're kind of collectively working through. Bob sent me some comments. Dave Hager sent me some comments. I compiled some comments. I have I have sent those things on to John and Linda. Um I actually wrote a short piece for the Green News this week encouraging people um to turn up for the um for the public hearing next week. I also editorialized a little bit in terms of what some of the positives and negatives I saw. Um negatives being loss of forested land and agricultural land um to development and uh positives we've actually we as a town have actually done some things that are identified and it's kind of nice to see that um that we're already making some progress. So, um I encourage you all to, you know, go to I was going to say go to the town website. Um yeah, was it's kind of hard to find. Um which is

surprising. Yeah, it's on the website regular, but we've also now put it on the TPC. Okay, great. So, it's now should be in two locations. Okay, good. So, look at the TPZ web page. Okay, look at the TPC web page. There's a link to the draft and there's also a link to a future land use map which would you know that that's part of it but it's kind of a separate piece. So please take a look. Um there's something to wet everyone's appetite if you look at the chapter headings. Um so you know people shouldn't feel compelled to read all 120 pages. Um, but you can certainly find something that you're interested in and and you should offer your input. Claudia should because she printed it all out. Oh, okay. Well, then you still need to read the whole thing. Y um, she loves to read it. I I have a question just tangential probably to the POCD, but there is a mechanism within the state of Connecticut for towns to set up something called an agricultural commission. And I'm just wondering for those who have been around long enough to know, have we ever had one? Not that I'm aware of. Okay. You know, maybe way way back when. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Way way. Yeah. I don't know how long they've been around. So, not every town, maybe I forgot now. I looked it up, 30 something, maybe 40 towns in the state have them. And and I just went to something in Windsor where uh Pip Kolasinskus was recommending that Windsor look into that option. And you probably no reason why each town has to have its own. You could have, you know, you could come together in some way. So I just mentioned that as something that when you talked about disappearing farmland and that's something we want to do if we had an agricultural commission

that maybe wouldn't be as likely to happen somebody would be focusing on it or putting forth some recommendations on how to avoid that wouldn't have to be a form well I don't know how what it relationship would be to council or to town but maybe but we we did have an agricultural co-op for many many years there In addition, you know, they ran the farmers exchange when there were at least nine nine to a dozen farmers at one point that belong to that co-op and contributed to it. Cool. Is is that something is that something that could be incorporated as a an action potentially? No, it's it's not it's not because I if if it is, I didn't see it and I've read I've read the document. Um, I mean just in terms of considering the establishment if we have it certainly can be an action item. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. An action item because that that would be easier to add. Okay. Any recommendation? Did you get that down? Thank you. Okay. Um I um I I love the idea of an agriculture subcommittee. Um given the issues around food access, I think that there are a number of agenda items that that commission can uh pay attention to. And you know, we have a lot of local farmers in town, but also there's Lisa Lane Farm. I drove by there yesterday to show someone who lives in that neighborhood that the farm exists and she was completely shocked that that was happening right in her own backyard. So, thank you for that recommendation. Yep, that's that's good. We'll we'll capture that. Just be a little be a little careful what you ask for because I can see the see the council saying, "Well, we have a lot of boards and commissions now. What one can we assign that to as opposed to creating a new one?" Yeah,

I see your point. I mean, that that's also true. Yes. Yeah. I mean, and actually, I'll stop. Bobby, you look like you want to say something? I just saying South Windsor H has one and two years ago I you know went to a couple meetings on some issue which I which I even forget but basically the people on that commission would make recommendations uh if there was going to be zoning changes or something like that. They they were there was expertise on that committee from farmers and and others that understood. Right. And one of the things um I include in my comments and recommendations is we've got um the Trap Rock Ridge Land Conservancy. We have Ironwood Community Partners. Traprock has a um Traprock has an acquisition committee um and is always looking at maps and trying to identify you know parcels that would make sense for acquisition in terms of connectivity for different resource values. So to the point of a an agricultural commission getting representation from say someone from CEC but somebody from the land conservancy, somebody from Ironwood, um you could get some expertise um and kind of leverage the work that's probably being done, you know, terms of looking at these things. Good. Other other actually uh Claudia. Yeah, go ahead. Um I haven't read all 100 pages. I I haven't. Oh yeah, that's good. But um what I did do is that you know thing you you do which is go to the executive summary and go well I'm going to read

this and see you know what I've what what it's about. But I I found the executive summary confusing. and um that is it had a bunch of parts and I didn't get that sense of a summary um and I I think it would be very very useful to have a really high functioning summary for this document might it might raise some issues about well maybe we hadn't thought this through that far or whatever I don't know I I'm not saying what because I don't really know how to do this this kind of a document but I think this summary should be really tight and because I mean as a member of CEC I think that because I think we are doing I mean this document has a map called future land use map and I'm assuming this map has some authority in terms of what uh we've the town leadership has decided we're going to do here. And um I just wanted to be really clear. Um for example, I'll give you an example of something wasn't clear to me. We were just talking about agriculture and there's a little wavy black line in several places on this map. Um, and that represents potential agriculture, agricultural clusters, which did not mean anything to me just as a, you know, first- time reader.

and um and and in compared to the housing and density, residential stuff, industrial mixed use and so forth, that was all very clear. But the agricultural part of Bloomfield feels terribly important to me and and a lot of people and we feel that it's part of our the definition of our town that makes us different from other towns. And um and I we should really tighten up what we're saying about agriculture in Bloomfield in the plan. Um, and so I don't know. That's all I've got, you know, and I'm except I'm offering to help if it would be because I've done a lot of this kind of writing. So I don't know if that's a good offer or a bad offer. But I mean, I just want to see uh the executive summary really speak to the person who only has 27 pages time. In fact, I think it should be 10 pages, not 27 pages. And um maximum. And I'd like to really define the world the what we're saying on agriculture in this plan. We were talking beforehand about how old we're going to be when the next plan is written, and I'm going to be very, very old when the next plan is written. So, I I care a great deal. Yeah, I care a great deal about what happens with this plan. Did you want to comment? Hang on. um you're very perceptive and um have hit the hot spot. Coming back to the first to the overall the land use

plan that does have a fair amount of force. It didn't used to um about 10 years ago. It used to be you have a future land use plan and it's nice and you can and it provides a guide, but you could generally do what you wanted with the zoning regulations and the zoning map. didn't have to necessarily you didn't have to you could sort of wink at the about 10 years ago that was changed and now the now the zoning regulations zoning map has to pretty much be in accord with what the land use plan says. So the land use future land use map has a fair amount of weight and requires a fair a great deal of attention and um I've been taking notes all along and once we have the public hearing there will be some some revisions to that map. Um I can guarantee you that at least from the staff perspective and I think from the commission um the aeic agricultas um the the three agriculture came out of conversations really with the gentleman sitting behind you. Uh we are we are challenged quite frankly and and and to some degree struggling with how to properly um recognize um the preservation of agricultural areas in town uh without doing a taking. uh we have to be very careful that if we if we that you know they're now zoned for types of development so that a property owner has the right to sell that land or develop that land. If we just flat out designate it as an

as an agricultural we then begin to really limit how that land can be used. So, what we're trying to do is whether or not we can reach we're we're getting there. I'm not sure we're there and I I don't think Kevin thinks we're there yet. Trying to reach a, you know, a compromise where we can state clearly that we would prefer that this land remain uh as agricultural in these three basically three zones where we really have it in town. uh but at the same time you know designate it for some type of of developable development which may invitably happen and it's a it's a very challenging balance and um I'm not sure we're there yet and I think it's going to take um you know some some real focus by the commission and by the staff and by our consultant. Um in terms of the executive summary, you're absolutely right. Um the history of this plan is not good. Um it's obviously it's three almost four years overdue. It was um written um the first effort with the consultant and the staff in my personal opinion was very unsatisfactory. Uh, and we have switched. We did bring in another consultant to try and tighten it up and we're still working with it and we still got some tightening up to do. So, I can assure you from my perspective uh and the staff perspective that um we hear you, we agree with you and we'll endeavor to do that. And hopefully by mid August we'll have a revised document that um we would welcome your review at least of the executive summary. Thanks Bob. Thank you. Y

did you want to say anything else? had couple comments and you know on farmland uh south I think agricultural committee is one of the ones that made comments on it and that is the only way to preserve farmland is to buy the development lands rights because eventually that property becomes so valuable that you can't stop it except unless you already own have have development rights the other is about a summary I I I I took an 85page uh bill that the legislature passed and asked AI to summarize it and I think it you know I had scanned it and it did a pretty good job and I'm tempted to try putting this through through that and see what happens and actually I I do think uh I can't resist I do think um I've listened to podcast where writers sort of do that and they do it almost as a starting point like let's see what this can do and and they've got something that they then can edit. So, that's probably not a bad idea. Yep. Okay. Um, good discussion. Keep the comments coming. The agricultural commission is a good idea. Thank you very much. Um, I think the idea about buying the development rights kind of that's that's where we are. And I and one of the one you know in several there are several instances in the implementation strategy about doing more work in terms of um buying undeveloped you know buying things getting grants you know pursuing open space um you know I think that you know that's an avenue that we have anyway but um it's just tough to see the losses when it's obvious that this is something people really care about in Bloomfield and it really is part of our culture, you know. So, South Winters had some

referendum on just just several million dollar referendum which they put into a fund to buy development rights and then at a later date when things became available, they would decide to use that money. Right. Okay. All right. Um we're we got about 20 minutes to go. So I want to um hit hit a few other things here. Um basically artificial turf ban resolution, Highlands region designation resolution. I just want to provide an update on those. Um those two resolutions I believe this committee looked at back in February and we um basically voted to recommend the town council pass those resolutions and long story short then it was budget season. I think that really is the best way to summarize it. So, um, last month, having gotten past kind of the main, you know, busyiness around drama season, I did, um, remind the co-chairs of the governance, policy, and economic development subcommittee of council, um, that we respectfully asked them to take a look at it and consider it, which they did. Uh, that was Monday night. um where we landed on banning artificial turf had a very had a very I thought good discussion. I do think they I do think the council members there and the people attending were very receptive to um the

message that this stuff is really bad from a public health perspective and from an environmental perspective. Um, and the mayor made one comment, which I want to get in writing, that in terms of Rockwell Park, which kind of is what generated the whole conversation for CEC a couple years ago, since we don't have artificial turf there now, we really shouldn't put artificial turf there, which is a good thing. Okay. Um, and we saw the cost estimates, you know, back then $2 million less in terms of the whole project to go with natural grass. Um, you just have to 2 million. The the the original price tag on the concept for for Rockwell Park was 13.4 million. That that was originally done with artificial turf playing fields only. And when when the committee went back and got a quote with natural fields, it was 2.1 million less, 11 whatever 11.3 million. Okay. Um the argument is 247 playability of artificial turf fields. um the claim that it's cheaper in terms of maintenance and all that I'm not you know personally I'm not convinced um but it was a good discussion and where the subcommittee left it was the town manager was asked to have a conversation with Dr. Youngberg from the board of education because now we're looking at replacement in the not too distant future of the field and the question is okay what's the cost of putting in another artificial turf field versus redoing it as natural. Okay. So that was

where that was left. Um, I was pleased it was such a good conversation quite frankly and I was pleased with the um I thought it was a good response about Rockwell, you know, in terms of where we would go with Rockwell. Um, but again, it'd be nice to get that in writing. Just making an editorial comment here. Um, and then the Highlands region designation. I don't know if if you even remember that. Um there's um there was something called the Federal Highlands Conservation Act created back in 2004. It was originally set up to protect um the area along the Appalachian Ridge and the Hills of Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Um, in 2022, December of 2022, the act was reauthorized in the area in Connecticut eligible for inclusion was extended to include the trap rock metacomt. So, East Graanby um Husatonic Valley Association seems to be driving this and East Graanby was approached first by HVA um along with Farmington and Thomas. They got designated. So then HVA came back and asked um Traprock Ridge Land Conservancy if if Traprock could push Bloomfield in West Hartford along the ridge line. And that was what prompted um me bringing this to the CEC back in February. Okay. Um and our counterpart in West Hartford um the Sustainability Commission in West Hartford, Dave Sagers, the chair of that commission, um visited us last month, two months ago. Um he's doing the same thing. He's kind of pushing it through in West Hartford and I think it will go to their council in August at their, you

know, hopefully for approval. So, um, that's just reminding you of what this thing is. The subcommittee, uh, just voted unanimously. Really didn't need any discussion. There's no downside to this. Um, the only downside is there will be something for John to do, I think. Um, I think there's a little bit of paperwork, but I'll find out what's involved. Um, just in terms of once the council passes the resolution, which they plan to do on Monday. Um, there's just some kind of paperwork to do with DEP. and DEP is the agency that then kind of carries the flag for us. Okay, so that's the update um on those two items. Any questions there? Okay. Um the next three items on under old business I had not planned on kind of doing anything with today because there's no update. Um, that's the climate the climate action task force. Um, that's just more some planning and talking to the manager at some point. Um, the tree clear cutting letter to Connecticut DOT, I have not drafted anything yet. It's on my list of to-dos, but um, other things keep rising above it. Um, recycling program, that's something we need to resurrect again and talk to the manager about. Um, but I have no updates from last month. Any anyone want to say anything about that before? Well, I'm going to say something and I may have already said it about the climate action task force and other such things including um solarizing and egg commission and things like that. Not

everything has to be run by the town. Not everything has to be under a town. I'm going to use the word control or have to report back to the town. And we don't in this town. I would, this is from a conversation with another individual in town who's interested in getting involved in some things, maybe on committees, maybe not. Y and let's take ad commission, but the same thing relates. If there are people who really are interested in maintaining agricultural and farmland, including anybody who is a farmer in this town and anybody who wants to be able to visit a farm or know that their food is grown locally or support a friend who's a farm, those people should be encouraged to to form an organization. It doesn't have to be a nonprofit. There's a lot of issues with 501c C3s, but you can form a group and you can start to work on it. And I say that in this environment of where our government, at least at the top, is starting to fail us. Not sure about the state level yet. That wasn't such a great ending to the to the legislative session. We know we have a lot of discord in this town. in order to get something done. Sometimes you don't want to have to ask permission from a regulatory or an elect even an elected organization. Um, so I would encourage us not always to look at what kind of town committee we have to set up, but see if we can get groups of people together. And Solarize is a perfect one because I am not going to be in favor of the town getting involved in promoting any particular solar

company. I already went through that and I'll I can share that but you know wasn't great and I wouldn't want to be on this side of it. I was on customer side, right? So, you know, that that's just what I I feel like there's nothing stopping 15 or 20 people in this town who want to look at solar and get an advisor and do all of doing it right. And let me just let me piggyback on what you just said. Um, excellent point. I agree with you. I can certainly think of like the market manager for the farmers market. she would be a good addition in terms of the agricultural piece. Um I know I know you and I have had a conversation about another farmer, right? And um to the degree we want a connection with somebody from the town, we're going to have an environmental planner hopefully very soon, you know. So, I think um I think there are ways to to get things going and you don't want to be stalled by um kind of what's going on politically and you know through bureaucracy because sometimes that can really um just kind of stop something dead, you know. So, we only have only so much town staff, right? Exactly. Who are doing a lot. Yeah. Okay. So, good point. Um, I Okay, old business. Last thing is the CC August meeting. Um, I Yeah, I I No, old business. Okay. Old business. So, all business is the CEC August meeting. Um, we typically cancel that the regular meeting which I am for

doing again if we, you know, I think there may be some things that we're interested in working on. Um, if it makes sense to have even a special meeting or something because we want to get going on something, we can do that. Um, I had thrown out two potential dates for a potluck. um August 26 and August 27th, Tuesday and Wednesday. Do those dates work? Um, everyone on the screen is invited. Yep. And we can and actually our our CC guest and groupies and former CC members are always invited as well. So, we have we have a crowd here, which is good. Does that work? The 27th, I'd be happy. Okay. Shall we try for the 26th? Does that work? 26 works for me. Yeah. Okay. Does that work? Okay, let's let's try that. Let's try the 26. It's a It's a date. Thank you for Oh, it's it's fun. I'll try to get the um make sure I have enough of a replacement for my mosquito repellent thing. I always remember it like three days before it's like then I can't find it. So, all right. Um, new business. Um, I sent I think I sent something out to everybody and obviously we're not going to have a lot of time to talk about it, but Devitaoy Crabtree reached out to me. She is heavily involved with third act and is actually working um with Lynn Stoddard from sustainable CT for kind of Connecticut Connecticut doing you know Connecticut's program for for sun day

which is I think September 21st maybe which is a Sunday um it's basically a you know the emphasis is on solar and she was hoping that CDC could be involved with helping promote this. What what sustainable CT and third act would like to do is encourage some activity in every Connecticut municipality. Doesn't have to be big. Um, you know, she sent out and I distributed kind of an idea thing. Uh she you know we were we were talking about things like you know um oh god I'm sorry. Yeah actually scavenger hunt. Thank you. I was drawing a blank. I was having a senior moment here. Sta scavenger hunt. And she was, you know, she was even talking about like there's one small intersection in town where you, you know, there are, you know, ex residences be, you know, that have obviously um are well cited for solar that have solar in town. And so, you know, doing that kind of thing, trying to make it fun. Um, it seems like the board of education has the community solar installation in the back. That's kind of a neat thing. We've got our new library. Um I don't know if they'd be interested in doing something in September around. Are we gonna Yeah. So I mean I is there interest I'm just going to ask that question. Are people interested in trying to do something and maybe plan something or work with the library? Um because I don't have the bandwidth to lead the charge on this

one, but I will support it and I will try to participate. But I'm not sure what you're asking. I'm not sure what I'm asking either because it's a new thing. Um, but I think it's more about maybe doing a little bit of outreach to like the library. Um, connecting with Dvita. Are there a couple things we want to do? and she said even trying to put some put some material out like um in our weekly newsletter, you know, like the week or two before um just to kind of promote the idea. There's going to apparently be kind of a fair type um event for the whole state as part of this. And the idea would also be to promote PE, you know, promote that event so that if people wanted to go get more information, you know, vendors, that kind of thing. It would be not in Bloomfield, but elsewhere, you know, more just getting the word out. So, I'm not doing a very good job. Uh, I'll help. Yeah. Are are are other people interested? I'm just glancing around. And you may want to talk to India. Okay. using our website. Yeah. Any interest, Bob? Yep. Okay. I see Carmela. Wonderful. Thank you. Uh yes, I think that it would be great if we could do something. She Davidida has a lot of wonderful suggestions and it certainly would raise awareness for people of the importance of sun and solar energy. So I I it'd be great to have um the committee and the town participate in this. So So Car Carmela, can I loop you in with Claudia maybe just to do a little bit of outreach like to the library? Okay. I mean, I'll I'll just copy you. It's just more let's get some ideas because I

think if we identify a few things we might want to do then it's just a matter of putting you know putting a little bit of promotional material together India's department potentially help with that sound good and she gave me the VA sent me one other contact um name and I'll circulate that um somebody I think locally who's been involved with sustainable DT and um I also have a link to a webinar that she did yesterday with Bill McKibben. Yeah, at least I think she did because there's a screenshot of her and then of Bill McKibben. Um but I think it was like the Connecticut event, you know. So, um I can send that out and then we'll have access to the link and we'll have a better sense of it. Okay, that's good. We have a plan. Okay, maybe um we can get together uh and look at that list and see what what strikes our fancy. Okay, so I'll follow up with you, Carmela. Okay, thank you. And you want to just copy me in? Oh, yeah. Copy just so we'll we'll be Yeah, and that'd be great that we can get that going. Okay, good. Thank you very much. All right. Um and then just to wrap up, we have announcements. Um the uh for trees for Bloomfield Tree City USA. Um we literally are like this close to having a final draft of a forest stewardship plan for like 950 acres. It's a really nice document. Um, it's a 10-year plan we which we can use in terms of grants, in terms of planning, invasives, tree work on a lot of our public land.

It's really a nice tool. So, we've got that and um I know Dan Carter has been going back and forth with the state of Connecticut finalizing what's needed um to get the contract work signed for the rightway grant. And I think I think they're done. So, yeah. So, I think uh that should get underway, which should be which will be good. I just make one announcement. Sure. That's um if you're not aware, the the town town hall and 3:30 Park are on summer hours that started this week. Um and they will run through September 5 at the moment. They may or may not be continued, but right now it's through September 5. And those hours are Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, I mean Monday, Wednesday, Thursday 8:30 to 5, Tuesday 8:30 to 6, and Friday 8:30 to 12:30. So in essence, we're open we we're opening at 8:30 every morning. We're open uh an hour later on Tuesdays and we close at 12:30 on Fridays. Good. We'll see how it works. Excellent. Okay, Val. Uh, yeah, I know it's late. I just wanted to ask Mr. Coleman because I just checked the TPZ minutes and there's very little information. Do you have a brief snippet about the size of acreage of agricultural land and the water use that this proposed data center might be taking up and whether it's part of the quote unquote competition going on in the state for where such a center would be located. I don't I do not know about their water use. Um it's basically a bank of computers. Um the the size of the property is about 40 acres. It's the it's basically the cornfield up in the northwest corner of the of the town. Um the main

locationational aspect for them is a is a willing property owner. The size of the site and its relationship to the grid. It has to it has to be it takes a obviously a significant amount of power. So it has to be in a site where it can get reasonable location to the power. Obviously the power for this site would be the north the north Bloomfield substation. Um I am um we did not have any conversation about water use. There are um there are the rooftop is cooling fans um a whole array of cooling fans across the rooftop which are which are screened for both uh hum and sight with significant parabits but we did not get any volume discharges of that type. Okay. I was just curious because in in general, I know in the past the MDC has been um kind of promoting data centers as a possible purchaser of a major share of their excess water capacity. And uh I think they're also considering adding other towns to their u water service. So it might be something that need to keep in mind as the town moves through that um proposal. Thank you. Yeah, we don't have a formal proposals as yet. Yeah, but thank you. Yep. And Kevin, did you want to say something? Uh yeah, I just and I want Yeah, I just want to chime in on one thing and I think that um what uh Coleman said is is is mostly right. Um I think someone did ask about the water usage. So, I think if you go back and look at the tape, uh, their their their answer was and and I'd be interested, Val, in your, um, data because someone asked about that and they said it was not it was typical of just a normal business. It was not like a Niagara or something. So, they did mention that and what someone

did ask about. Thank you for correcting me. Well, just remembering because and I think they'll come back with a lot of other stuff, but um and also an answer to uh Val's question, the legislature asked um a modification to the MDC's charter, which now allows the MDC to they still have they can only expand within their radius of operation, but they are now allowed to expand to non-ontiguous towns. So the charter previously said that if they were going to expand to um Bristol say they it had to be contiguous to an MDC town which Bristol may be but for example Meridan is not. Um the question it raises for me is okay so some town wants you that's not contiguous. The town that's in between what do they think about all the pipes running through it? But that's that's a separate issue, but that was passed by the legislature. Okay. Um and lest I forget, I have one announcement. Um Adam Cipperly resigned and it's due to basically due to life and job changes. Um he's traveling a lot and um he just said, you know, he doesn't have the time. So, I appreciate the fact that he recognizes that and that's a Democratic o a Democrat opening. So, we have um an opening. I think the official letter came in yesterday. So, okay. So, new new news on that. All right. Um Okay. Public comment. No, I just have one real quick comment. Uh you made the comment earlier about the governance committee and uh John's presentation at the governance committee. I I assume that what we saw

too was we saw an there was an excellent presentation from Dan Carter with a lot of the projects the town engineers working on and a presentation from the manager and I want to compliment the town or putting everything in a nice form. Here's the project. Here's where it is. here's the timeline, etc. I I assume that was some initiative of someone to put together sort of a template. Yeah, we did we we've been doing a slide deck for the governance committee now for quite some time and she periodically asks for the other presentations, but yeah, we have a format that we like to follow that's basically um you know, hopefully as informative as it can be in a concise manner. No, I I thought that was very good. So you take a look at that end of the governance meeting. Yeah, it would it I'll now you've got me going. Um that would be great for the public to see because I think it just conveys a whole lot of information and the progress that's been made on some projects that have been around for a while. Yeah. Um especially in terms of connectivity and trails, there's a lot happening. So it's exciting. Yeah. All right. Um, can I have a motion to adjurnn? Claudia moves. Second, Bob. Okay. Um, all in favor? I. Okay. Um, thank you very much. Thank you for joining and sticking around, Val and Carmela. Nice to see you both. Thank you committee members and thank