Town Board - workshop

All right. Okay. Yep.

All right. It's called town board workshop number 17 order. And the clerk note that all the council members are present except Councilman Kilmer, which will be along shortly. So we want to skip agenda review for now and advisory board review and go right to the Erie County presentation for GI Composting site grant. Good evening. Yeah, here.

Aha.

All right. A little talking gets you. Yeah, I could just say a couple of words real quick. Sure. Because I'm Zach Piper, a Conservation Advisory Board alternate member. In the last couple of months, we've been working, talking with First Farmer Pirates Compost. Then they turned us on to Erie County. There's this amazing grant program. And we reviewed it at our last meeting. And now we want to present it to you all at Jose's invitation. And we thank you for that. And I'll let Tyler and Safdie and Gina take it from here. Sure.

Thank you.

First, and then pass it on.

Cool. Everybody, Tyler Hamilton. I'm with Erie County Department of Environment and Planning, and I manage all the county's compost and organic food waste. I'm joined with our project partner, Saskia, with We Radiate. And we'll talk a little bit about our current program that we're working on. And yeah, feel free to give an introduction slash tips today.

Of course, hopefully the screen is clear. I can't see if it's on the board. Awesome, great. Pleasure to meet you. Thank you for the invitation to present. I know it's a very busy time, so I appreciate sort of the 10 minutes or 15 minutes that we have to present with you. My background quickly is in public health. I grew up in Buffalo, went to school in UB and then also Columbia University, lived in the city for a bit. moved back, supported the mayor's office to do composting at the city of Buffalo and now actually have my own small business where we work with municipalities and private facilities to support organics recycling and through education or expanding organics recycling initiatives mostly across New York State, but we are in actually eight states using our equipment and technology and services. So This is just an opportunity for learning and sharing and seeing what's happening within Erie County. So that's looking, look forward to hearing your questions and I'll sort of present a way. Tyler and I are co-facilitating this opportunity called plate to field, essentially has three main metrics. One is obviously to reduce waste, improve communities, and boost economy. Along with the environmental aspect, there's also an economic and financial benefit. Economic impact. This is a green jobs creator. So this is my career. This is my line of work. So instead of materials going to landfill, there is an opportunity to create local healthy jobs. And then financial as well. There is a savings. Instead of going to a landfill, there is an opportunity to create a value added product as well. So cities or governments can potentially save money in the long term doing this type of work with organics recycling. So that's sort of the threefold goal, sort of jump into it. So these are the initiatives that we work when we're working with municipalities. So we are... We do have a time-bound sort of grant through the DEC that is funding us. And our funding stipulates to work with five municipalities within Erie County. And it's to understand where municipalities are at the moment, but then also create custom programs to see where they can grow and to improve upon. So one of the things that we can do is to support municipalities an organics management plan. This is essentially creating a plan of action for the vision of Grand Island in terms of food waste reduction or organics recycling. So that's sort of a plan of action that is custom. Tyler has a lot of experience, so he would be helping build that plan of action. Second is, my background is also in education. I used to be a school teacher. So we do a lot of training, whether it's hands-on learning or workshops, and we're creating an opportunity called Soil Stewards. So this is outreach efforts to the local residents, learning more about these themes, answering questions, and sort of building that capacity locally. Third is thinking about creating a pilot program. Whether you already have one or planning to develop one, we're here to guide, here to sort of give the logistics planning or the infrastructure to really think about creating a food scraps diversion opportunity. And then we also provide resources, so resources, meaning actual infrastructure. So we can provide kitchen totes. We can provide collection bins and then we also can do education specific custom flyers to share with the residents of what can go in what is unacceptable. And then how do you.

How do you do this effectively?

Lastly, we can support with climate smart certifications. So I know Grand Island is bronze. So Tyler has a lot of great expertise to maybe push that to silver rating and organics planning or organics management or recycling is one of those key bullet points that can actually add points to sort of this certification. So that is a mix and match. We don't have to do all, but this is in our wheelhouse to do them. I'll hold off on the video, but this is an example of what we've done locally. This is specifically with Amherst in sort of creating their food scrap drop-off program. So I'll do that at the end. So what does this look like? Essentially, this hands-on guidance or support. We're here at a town hall at a sort of a board meeting, so we can help with citizen action, whether it's providing bottom-up support, where we spoke with the conservation meeting and spoke with members at the local residents who actually... made this connection to elected officials. So we could drive that. And then we can also do it the other way. Number three, guidance to elected officials. So we can provide this logistical support to create programs, to do on-site monitoring, to roll out this infrastructure such as kits or gallons infrastructure to roll it out in an effective manner. So we're here to sort of build this capacity with you. And number two, I gleaned over it, but it's also learning and education. So I think the community or the residents, if they're interested, we could also then guide that education to others across the community as well. So this is an example of what we're doing. Um, this is actually an Eden. We did this last year. So this is sort of this participatory opportunity where citizen action can support members and community residents. I'll pause there. Maybe if Tyler, you want to take the next couple of slides.

Yeah, sure. So Sashti mentioned the Soil Stewards course. This is one of the courses that was held in the past at Journey End Urban Farm where the students had some hands-on opportunities. And then alongside of the hands-on portion, there's also opportunities for some virtual classes for residents who can't leave the house or just want to learn virtually. So kind of like hybrid learning. And one other thing to mention, all these things that Sashi's talked about so far would all be free of charge to the town. It's roped into the current grant that Erie County has. So if you partnered with us, all these items would be available for you and your residents. Here is another example. We have currently partnered with the Village of Alden. And so we're working right in their high school, collecting their cafeteria food waste. So kind of back of house. And our goal is to expand and collect from the students in the cafeteria. We're aiming to roll that out this September when school starts back up. And then another model is community drop-offs. So this was at the Alden Farmer's Market and we were there talking with residents, kind of gauging interest, getting people to sign up for a potential pilot there. We haven't rolled out a pilot yet at the Farmer's Market. Our current stage in that process is getting enough residents on board to dedicate a staff person to collect there. So, you know, we've just been offering our time and chatting with residents and, you know, the feedback's been great, you know, talking to them at the farmer's market. Along with the high school, we're also collecting from the Grand Island, or from the Alden Senior Center, as well as the Alden Meals on Wheels. So we have three current collection sites there in the village of Alden. And then... Alongside these other things, we also can develop resources like Sashti mentioned. This is the flyer that we have posted in, I believe this is the one for the Alden High School, but we could tailor these flyers specific to a location based on what the typical food scrap items might be. um or materials um as well um they use these like boats for serving and they're wax lines so we don't take them um but we could you know make custom flyers depending on the site that we're collecting from um and then this is a website for the program that um can serve as a tool for residents to you know learn more about composting and food waste and why it's important and how to get involved in a pilot program. It's currently in the development stage, but it'll be going live soon and serve as a tool for both the municipality and its residents. So yeah, that's basically the long and short of our Plate to Field program.

Feel free to... What's the obligation of the town? Let's say we say we want...

Wait, you don't write anything down after conversation?

This is...

Sorry. So we're looking for a letter of commitment to follow through with, you know, the organics management plan drafting, you know, for your municipality and... getting together some sort of pilot program for diverting your residential food waste. So we offer our county composting site with no tip fee or charge. You know, you're welcome to bring it there.

We would have to transport.

Yeah, you would have to transport. And then there's some other options that Gina will talk about, you know, some third party options for managing your residential food waste. But yeah, getting a pilot program up and going and then working on getting the organics management plan for your municipality would be like the two main components, actionable things that would we would be requesting

But essentially, the next step would be if interested, there is a template to do an MOU. And there are four municipalities already interested or that we're currently working with. So we're looking for sort of that fifth partner to support. So that's it. We've been currently the other partners include it's Alden, it's the village of Lancaster, it's both the village and town of Aurora. so those are sort of the four municipalities within erie county that we're currently serving and supporting um this is just a video it's about two minutes long this is an example from the town of amherst and how when i started this program it's essentially started at a community board meeting there was interest from the recycling and waste committee and this was the second year of doing a food scrap collection drop off with residents at their farmers market so the The idea of doing a community drop-off can be similar to this concept and hopefully the video can explain and show the engagement that's happening at this space.

Well, this is funny, just to reiterate that off of what Tyler and Sasha have been saying is that this is all funded with a grant. The DEC gave Erie County a grant of over $500,000 to partner with five municipalities for our there's one spot open, but all of the infrastructure for this would be paid for by the grant. The only financial responsibility from the town would be to transport the food scraps once a week to if it was Alden Farm, then it would be free of charge. And if it was a third party, there would be a tipping fee. Depending on where we went, it would cost a variable. I don't know the exact amount, but you have to ballpark that or get estimates on that. And one other little detail is even the grant even covers the cost of a tent and tables and chairs to set up that community event. It's like, they really thought through all of this to make it, you know, just do it.

And also part of the reason calling wasn't included in the grant is because you know grants are finite you have x amount of years and then we would hate to see a problem or a program dissolve after the grant ends due to a lack of hauling so we didn't include that in the grant because we've seen that as the biggest hurdle following the grant ending um you know and you said that some other municipalities i am winning gear professional that's right yeah i know it's like you may have mentioned it but what's to get holden We can provide the totes. We have 21-gallon totes. If you bring them to our site in Alden, we could swap them out upon delivery with clean totes because we have a rinsing station there.

We would need to provide a trailer. Basically, if we had people bring them to the highway garage and we had a highway guy haul them to the tipping station, if we brought 20 cans, put 20 empty cans on the trailer and he heads back home?

Yeah, exactly.

It sounds like you could put the 20 cans throughout the community. Once a week, somebody will... The highway guys will collect them, take them, and bring them back so that they're not all in one place.

Right, yeah, we can talk about logistics on how you want to set up this drop-off, but yeah, it could be something like that.

Let's see, let's take a look at how we guys do it.

yeah um want to be respectful of your guys's time so i guess we just pass it off to gina for now and if you guys have more questions you know i'm i'll be hanging out so feel free to what's your what's your level of so obviously people are going to ask about organic yard works

You guys don't put into that at all.

So we take yard waste at our site. However, we need it to be chipped.

Not part of this program.

It's not part of this program. I mean, you can bring it to us if it was chipped.

What if it's grass clippings?

We don't take grass clippings either. So I'd say mostly just food waste, but we take wood chips as well.

Oh, we keep those.

Yeah. We take them if you were willing to give them.

I'm sure we always have a little bit extra, but yeah. Yeah, of course. Oh, yeah, definitely.

Yeah, and I have a presentation, but I'm also just happy to talk about what we do if I'm required to, but it's complicated to get up on the screen. But we're basically separate from the county, but we do work with the county on things. We are just like an independent composting company. We've been in Buffalo for 14 years now. We have a compost site on the east side of the city. It's about three acres and we do all of our composting there. So we drive around western New York five days a week and we collect from over 2,500 households and businesses, pick up their food scraps, we bring them back to our compost site, do the processing there, and then we sell and give back the compost two times a year in the spring and the fall. This last year we picked up about 1,500,000 pounds of food scraps. We pick up from 18 TOPS locations, lots of grocery stores like Wegmans, schools, universities, and then we collect from residents as well. So we have a bunch of different programs that we do. We have programs where we go directly to people's homes and pick up their food scraps. We have drop-off locations located all over Western New York where people sign up. They pay us a subscription fee and then we deal with the food scraps for them. And everyone who pays for a service with us, they get free compost back once a year. We also partner with a few municipalities. These programs are funded differently. So we work with the Town of West Seneca. We have a drop-off program where around 130 households collect their food scraps at home, they bring them to a central location, empty them into these drop-off totes, and then we pick it up. That program is funded directly from the town, so they don't have a grant or anything that they do. We also work with the village of Orchard Park. They did receive a grant fund from the DEC. And so they have a program that's free for residents and it works the same way. Now we also partner with the city of Buffalo. There's a really large curbside program that we do there. We pick up from 2000 residents every week, just like with their garbage and recycling. They bring out a small tote every week and we come by and empty their tote, give them a new liner, and then we provide weekly collection here. And that program, they got a fund from the Climate Smart Communities grant a few years ago, and that we're gonna be expanding from 2000 to almost 10,000 over the next five years. So the difference between us is we're kind of an option that if you guys don't wanna do the transportation, or if the need arises one day that you need, you know, assistance with processing the food scraps or transportation or someone that you could hire to do that part for you. And we could either bring them to the Alden site or back to our compost site, but our service does have a fee associated with it and it's dependent on how many food scraps, you know, are collected inside the town. And so, yeah, Farmer Pirates Compost, if anyone has any questions, you can feel free to reach out to us and I'd be happy to answer any questions.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

I could add one last thing, just as a way of like connecting these two opportunities. It's kind of like the Erie County plate to field opportunity. It was something that's ready to go now, but the funding's there. We can get that going, but we can also simultaneously begin working with fire compost to start looking for grants like ultra park guy. That takes about a year or so. So that gives us, we would have basically had to run 18 months to start seeds. when the funding for Farmer Pirate, I'm sorry, the funding from the Erie County Plate to Field program runs out, we would already be working for that.

One other thing that I'll add too is if you opted to go with Farmer Pirates even off the bat and have them transport and deal with your food scraps, you could still partner with Erie County for Plate to Field for the organics management component, the um resident education component and you know getting the word out and flyers and all that stuff um would you know you could you could you know work together um in that as well so yeah thank you all right thanks everyone thank you

Thank you for joining on mine. Thank you. Of course. Yeah. Our contact info. I think Tyler will be there. Feel free to reconnect and engage. Happy to provide further assistance or guidance if you're interested in next steps. Thank you.

Thank you. Of course. Thank you.

Yes. Thank you, Richard. I'll leave a few cards on the table.

Thank you.

Thank you all.

Thanks. As long as we're on a roll, why don't we skip to the Verity signing presentation. I'll let you gentlemen right here. So why don't you guys take the floor and tell us what you got going on.

Hey, thanks everybody for the time tonight. Energy, I'm Steve Voltita, County Executive, San Morales. I'm an engineer. Really appreciate your time. Glad to thank you for setting this up. I'm not going to speak too long. Since we last met, Sam and one of our subject matter experts, Justin Bumble, came in from Phoenix. Had a really good opportunity to walk the wastewater plant and the water treatment plant. HAB-Jacques Juilland- That was the department heads sam's going to get into that a little more detail, but I just wanted to say that you know we're in a we're at a good place got really good findings we're ready to you know jump to the next step, but it's going to be a process obviously got to make sure everybody's bought in. HAB-Jacques Juilland- Because the goal from the get go. HAB-Jacques Juilland- So. We're also going to answer questions. Anything that comes up today, we would be happy to walk through it. Again, I'll turn it over to Sam, but it's an open forum. Just ask away as we're going or as you're going. And maybe 15, 20 minutes. If it takes longer or shorter, that's fine.

Thank you. Great. Thanks. Bye, Sam.

I'll try to keep it short. I think Juan was making a list of the letter of intent. So our process to date was, you know, we had some assumptions that went around. We had some ideas. We've solidified those ideas. We worked with our operators, came up with a list, went down all right. Gave some time for the operators in operation here to look at that list and say yes, no, maybe they will add something to this is the final list that we've come up with. Now you look down this list and maybe some things on there that you may feel like it could be added to it. We're not saying that We didn't want to be inclusive of things, speaking of which like digesters, the future of those are kind of uncertain. You get that thing completely empty and take a look outside. So we already have a company already in there doing that evaluation. So at some point in the future that you do ascertain that you want to move forward with either revamping those digesters or changing them over. Just all the attempts. That's something that we can help you with in the future. In one week, create double work. These are the lists that were from Korea and Tim and Bob and me one on the bottom there. So these are the ones that we looked at and We reviewed them for Operational need as a next failure. Capital improvement plan. You need to replace the next five years anyways. Energy savings. We looked at that. That was one of the criteria. And then some of the other criteria was looking at it from the standpoint of the constructability about it and then the fact that it was operators there. preference of touching a system that might be a little bit finicky at that point. So they didn't want certain things they don't want you to mess with. And I can understand that. I've walked into cheese plants before and they say, that's great. It could save energy, but that will affect the way the cheese comes out. So we're not going to touch that. So understood. So we gave them all their chance for input. And I believe we've gotten that input and we're Able to move forward. And now it's time to bring the rest of the stakeholders and table and start looking at it. And at this point, after you say yes to this letter. That's when we go do the detailed Engineering by detailed 30% conceptual design, then we bring you a guaranteed max price to be able to construct projects.

At the same time, what I'd like to add is that if that's a goal, when it is the green light, hopefully that's sooner than later, I'm going to have a contract in front of Peter for the terms and conditions, legal terms he can start looking at. So while Sam's conducting the investment grade audit, I've got the contract in front of the turn-town attorney, and we're simultaneously keeping everything moving in the same direction.

On the number seven, According to Cody, he has, he can just hand you it. It's done. It's ready to go. It's just money. So yeah, how does something like that, where all the engineering, most 99% of it's ready to go. He literally said, you can just hand it. and start building it. I don't know if that's what I'm trying to do. But I do want to say that we don't want you guys to start from scratch on a project like that because we've already invested a lot of money to get us to know what it's going to cost. And then we're out begging for money from federal and state agencies.

At this point, what you're asking me is, you didn't read the letter, did you? No, I didn't. Because it answers that question. Where?

That's all right. It's just being a letter. Just being a joke. Oh, I'm sorry. Inside of it, it basically states for anything that's already under contract for engineering. There's consultant engineers already there. One working with the wastewater department, one working with the water department. Second sentence. Very good. So if it's already designed, we're going to review it with our in-house engineering staff. Possibly, possibly. provide some value engineering notes or improvements to said project that may bring better value to you.

But even for those, you will still also put together a guaranteed max price for that project.

We won't be doing a full detail of engineering because it's already done. We can assume since they are stamped by licensed engineers that they were done correct.

The price that's in here covers... The 30% engineering and the guaranteed price for all eight items, correct? We're going to give you a pick list for each. And then the next step would be, we give you that, we get these, and we pick which one of them, or which of them we may want to use.

Then you pick which ones you want to use.

Okay. And, Tom, just to close that loop on that question, it's a great question. What's going to happen is, from Vergy's standpoint, and Peter will see this, in the contract, whatever that final number is that Sam and our guys come up with, we're holding to that number, unless you guys say you want to add more. Okay, yeah, that's that's really important to know that this is a change order.

There are no change orders from the project.

That brings me back to the question. I didn't read the 2nd sentence on. So, since we have a large portion of that done. Say, there's a flaw in some of that engineering. If we start moving forward, are you taking responsibility for the 90% with them before you're going to review it before we move forward? So, so they'll check on it. Okay. Because that's what you'd say is come back, say, hey, you get 90% done. We took over wrong. Someone else.

And another really good point there, Dan, is that. Vergy owns the risk. Once you put your hands on it, you are correct. We don't want to sand those people in just a long time. Our engineers are going to look that over from... We've been trying to do the grants for years. It's one thing, and your review is easier than starting from scratch. Now we own it. If we take those and we own that, we want to make sure that there's validity.

They're all in-house. It's their group. They work together.

This is the only weird one that had so much done. I want to make sure.

Another question that the guys had was, if they have a preferred vendor that they've worked with before, we already have it in place. That was one of our initial questions. My response to them was, We do have say in the vendor, but you're still going to have the opportunity to vet it because you're responsible for the final cost. And if you know that that particular vendor is not reliable in X, Y, or Z areas, you have the ability to say, no, we can't price match this. We can't, right?

I have this discussion that we're much like a public vendor. I'm going to try for three bids, no matter what, whether it's vendors that are constructing or it's vendors that are just providing bids. may have been standardized. We had a discussion about certain pub stations that were standardized. Understandable. You're familiar with them. You want to work with them again. Still going to... on the streets so that way you get best value.

That's good. You're shaking the trees. We're still used to working with the same people. It's time to shake some of these trees.

The objective typically is to get as many local subcontractors as possible, but sometimes local isn't always better. For the most part, it should be. You guys might have someone on that list and say, absolutely don't go near these people. The other ones are fine, but we're going to go to you and ask you what are your comforts, discomforts, whatever, but we've got a pretty good working list of subcontractors in West Virginia.

Much like this list here, you're going to get a big list with contractors and manufacturers. There will be stakeholder engagement from your operators and your engineer to say, yes, this is what we need. And they will see the pros and cons. Estimate for how long the audit would take? We're targeting two to three months right now. From the date you say yes. Because as of right now, we don't have any major holidays in front of us. So if you were to say that a week before Christmas, I would say it's going to be three or four months just because nobody works until January 7th.

Gotcha. I don't know how you guys feel about entering into the LOI now. One of the things, and I don't know if it happens now or after the audit when we have our actual costs down, but I would like to see us do a meeting together with Elaine from the grant side Corinne, for our financial and capital plan, and then Cody, and when we start prioritizing and where to line them up and when. And maybe that happens after this audit where we actually have crisis. I'm not sure where your comfort level is.

Maybe it's to have everybody there laying anchor and discussing it.

Everybody's on the same page then.

Right. Start working towards which projects are going to be coming out of which budgets and what it's going to allow the constructability for.

Yeah. Yeah. My suggestion was going to be, I'll just piggyback off what Sam just said. And Tom, to your point, how long? Well, as soon as we get green light sands hitting the ground, I mean, the sooner the better, because once we get those drawings, we can go applying for, we get 30% and start applying. And just, yeah. And one more thing, when we're doing this audit, this isn't, he's going to start off and three months later, we're going to start coming back to talk. We're going to have meetings. We're going to have, and that's, I think we're on to where it might make even more sense to have Elaine, Corinne, whoever else from the grant side, potentially.

Well, I think right now, I don't know if she pulled it off, but. We may possibly be missing the train on a few grants coming up this next month because we didn't have the information she needed to plug into the grant. This will give us so she can start reaching when those cycles come and we'll have enough to put into the grant. Because that's a sad day when you just miss a deadline on trying to get money.

If we enter into the LOI and get all the pricing and stuff, do you guys have a timeline where you say, well, that we gifted all the stuff. You guys need to do at least three of these projects by April 1st.

Funding and things, sir. I was about to say, this is a 10-year list. Easy. It's about 10 years to come to Havana's list. Eight to 10 years. Financially for the town. I'm not saying for you guys.

To Rhonda's point, you have this. If we don't have a grant, you might not have a million dollars. Applying with, well, we might want to do this. We've spent money to get that 10%. Well, it's just in a better position to apply.

I'm sorry. Typically, I think I know where you're going, Jose. We're going to be on a timeframe of 9 to 12 months of construction, probably longer because there's a lot involved here. These are some major components that are being dealt with. Grants come and go, but our focus is we are going to try to do everything under the sun to get jobs done with or without grants, if that makes sense. And to your point, Dan, there's eight to 10 years of financial aspect. You're absolutely correct, or longer. But what we're going to do is exercise in every way, shape, or form how many grants can be applied to what Sam and his crew are going to be doing. There's no timeframe on that. It's just what's coming up in a chronological year each time.

Right.

But from the construction end, I'm not going to speak sample. Obviously it has a lot more aspect of an understanding, but it's, there's a lot involved, but the sooner, the better to Tom, your point. I get it.

A lot of that stuff on the list, like the reactive doors were the only thing that we had drawings. I could theoretically be put in line for a grant.

actually did we ever even get them actually i don't think we had them they were the drawings they weren't wrong they were trying to get them they missed well they missed support thing or something so they had to go back to the drawing very unique thank you

That's not what I meant. I meant you take it and you run it.

You pay for it. I lost my question. Sorry for the comment.

No, that's okay. Yeah, we needed it. You thought I was joking?

Okay, I don't know.

Well, where, where are you guys with that? I mean, the drawings obviously are going to help us with the grant cycle. That's coming up.

This follows everything you've been doing here on that and it also. Everything that we've done having drawings on the shelf. The lane is expressed to us that we don't have so much done. You can't apply for the grants. And that's the problem.

I think you have some of these in the shelf, though. Is it number eight already done?

Yeah, I think number eight is in the process. Number nine is obviously next in this category.

Right, right. So eight's already cooked.

Wait, you mean number eight or station eight? Station eight. Well, right. And they, I mean, Tim's... You buy the lift station as a unit so they don't really need the kind of plug and play.

He said they're in design. I don't know if it's complete.

So if I could just add, so Sam did a really actually remarkable job in my opinion. I've been doing this a long time. And what I'm getting at is he gave these guys, the department heads from those plants, all manner of say and get back to us, give us some feedback, what's good, what's not. And it really would prove to be very helpful From the aspect of people, you just said some of this is already in motion. Well, we didn't know that. Right. We know that, which is great because now Sam can focus on this instead of that.

Right. Exactly.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't mean to state the obvious, but it was really helpful.

The other thing is all of these projects present energy or operational savings. Of course. So once they're complete, they're going to begin to pay for themselves. We just had a conversation about the, everybody calls the water something different. The water plant, I call it an add-on. Somebody calls it a filter building.

Whatever, that $15 million project.

Yeah.

The most expensive one.

We'll call it the $15 million project.

That's what it goes about. Yeah, I think it's good with this. I think we need to all think about it. Will you mull it over and talk to engineering? Yes.

It's 715 already.

Yeah.

Okay. So what are we going to do with this? Are we doing an LOI now? Are we doing it?

Do we know where the money is coming from to pay the 92K? I don't know.

That's what I'm asking. 92K isn't due unless you don't do it.

That's all. It's not a fee for service.

It's just so they don't do work for free for us.

Right. As long as you pick one, it's... Nope. You're no money out of pocket. One or all.

Preferably all or one.

We don't do...

The idea would be to do the ones that make the most sense for you first and then work with you to...

I guess my perspective is I want to know where each one of these is already because I think there's some stuff done on some of them. I don't know how much is on all of them.

But I guess it doesn't matter. Even if we pick one of these that's already done and they didn't have much work to do, we still get it at their guaranteed max cost and don't have to reimburse that $92,000. Correct. Accurate. So with that in mind, I think we... What you want to see is a shovel in the ground within 18 months. Oh, yeah. Which I don't think there's a snowball chance in hell we can get away with kicking all of these things out for another 18 months. We have to do something.

I understand one in three needs to be done pretty quickly.

But if you talk to Cody, seven needed to be done 10 years ago. Yeah.

I guess there's no harm, no foul with going forward. I'm not just promoting the fact of the letter of intent giving Sam the freedom to start doing what needs to be done. But Tom, to your point, yes, it's not getting done now. It needs to happen. And so when he gets on the ground, we get our troops going, that's when that starts to come together.

And then any work that's already done, engineering should have that file and that could be forwarded. And that just takes it off of our cost and your time.

Yeah.

Other than the review.

I've requested most of that stuff. It's just, I would say some emergency fires that put out the last few weeks or in weeks, you know, and digesters, et cetera. Giving them as much rope as possible right now because four guys are just reacting.

Yeah, that's what we want to stop. That's a big goal.

It would be great if we could manage the future instead of... What do you think?

Proactivity. Like I said, I'm good with it. I would love, even if we only do one, to do it and to try to get through one project without having to deal with change orders. It is certainly worth giving it a shot, in my opinion.

I would like for us to start managing things more and... become proactive in our operations instead of reactive and understand why we're there. But this might be a way for us to manage our budgets because we know exactly what it's going to cost us up front and it's going to be managed.

How long would the guaranteed max prices be valid for? One day. Well, I mean, or I guess more importantly, let's say it's an issue. We do this, we decide to move forward with one of our projects. I mean, is this a situation where next year we can just come back and get a new guaranteed max price and reevaluate because all of the work work is done other than you guys having an idea as to what's changed in the market with respect to the cost?

I think we would hope to be a partner so that way after the first project come back to us next year and say it's a new budget cycle new grants are coming in, what's the guaranteed max price? Because right now, some contractors are hard pressed to hold the price for 30 days. And if you work in the school market, I feel bad for people there because you have to go through SCT and that takes six So we'd like to price things for the future. So that's a discussion when we say.

I meant more just.

In general.

Yeah. For we know it wouldn't be okay. We're into this one in two months. We're going to suck. It would be okay. These are this. And then next year, the relationship you just said would be kind of what I would be thinking is next year. Just, Hey guys, we're contemplating these three. Can you update the guaranteed max price? We can determine.

You have a lane. Call me. Absolutely. Help you.

Got it. So firstly, I'd like to put this back on the workshop agenda in two weeks. I want us all to take some time to talk to our people in-house. I do. I want to talk to the people in-house and understand a little bit more what's done, what isn't, what is the number one priority here.

I'm here to inform. You're here to decide. Whatever you say.

I want to see what's not started and what's our number one priority. Because all these are priorities, but which one's the biggest priority?

I have that list from them, so I don't need to do that.

Is this their priority? Yes. So number eight's already pretty much done?

So one in three. They've already begun. two four and five all need to happen sooner rather than later

I guess what's getting lost here in talking about the priorities is the fact that if we take this step and do this letter of intent, for any one of these projects, we are going to be one step closer to getting them done when they need to be done. We aren't going to have to say, okay, well, now we can finally go do the engineering for number five that hasn't been done so we can apply for grants. We'll have all eight of these teed up and ready to apply for grants when we're ready for them.

Right.

I agree with that, Tom. That was our goal.

Our priority would just turn that once they're done.

Which one of these are we going to do? You got it on the board. If you guys interview these guys and these are their priorities, that's not going to change anything.

Just for your knowledge, we had a secondary follow-up. It was much longer than this. It kicked a bunch of stuff out.

So this is the turn down list.

Okay. Can we do this? I think we're all in agreement.

Do you know that we have, are we out there looking for grants on any of these yet? Not yet. Okay. Some of them we have.

We don't have material.

The WQIP and the WI, the WQIP grants and all that?

WIAA. Once we lock it, we could definitely, we could hone in on more on what is available for grants or potentially available.

Should we have Peter take a look at the LOI before we sign it? We normally do that.

You can make the motion upon approval of the attorney.

Okay.

Although some of the edits could be substantive, not just.

Tell me with the motion then how it needs to be solved.

Supervisors enter in agreement with the LOI.

You could instead work out an LOI with Verigy to return back to the board.

Are you approving it or two weeks from now?

Direct me out to try to work out an LOI with these guys.

That we can adopt next meeting?

Yes. I mean, if the, I understand the broad strokes of what everybody wants to do, I could. So we don't need to adopt anything tonight? I can work with these guys to come up with a language that.

But they all have it cooked. That's cooked. That's the LOI right there.

Yeah. Peter, you're okay with that? Well, sure. Okay.

So I'll connect you guys, and then we'll have it on the next. Okay, we'll have it on the next town board. Awesome. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, guys.

Bye. Thanks, guys. We're dancing now. Thank you. Thank you, guys.

I've got the poor mega guy. I think it's still. All right, so we have one more for Alex.

He was on. No, Alex was on.

Alex, you're still here? I'm still here. Mark Levine is on as well.

Okay. Wait, is he? Hang on. Let me make sure. Yep, we're good. All right.

Okay. I'm going to give. There he is.

Can you hear me? We can, Mark. Okay, great, thanks. We appreciate you putting us on the agenda tonight. I'm Mark Levine. I'm the Executive Director of the Municipal Electric and Gas Alliance. We spoke, we presented a couple of weeks ago, probably six or eight weeks. We wanted to come back and just talk about where we are in terms of the energy market and provide you with some updated pricing and give you a market update. So I'm gonna, the first three slides are here to remind you of who we are, our mission and how we accomplish the work. And we really, you know, we do good things for local governments and school districts across the state. And we'd like to continue to help as many of them as possible. So if it works, we'd love to work with Grand Island. I want to introduce Alex Urocevic. He's the vice president at our energy consultant program. priority power management. And he does a great job explaining the energy market to our members. So Alex, you can take it from here.

Thanks, Mark. And for the board members, I just want to make sure everyone can see the screen. I've kind of been displaying a couple slides.

Yes, we can.

Okay. Excellent. So these are the first three slides Mark mentioned, just some background information. I'm not going to take the time. I think you're all familiar, relatively familiar with MEGA. What I want to focus on is really the pricing and what's going on in the market. Our goal is to inform our participants or interested participants on what's happening and where projected electricity and natural gas prices are. And then we'll leave that information with you to make a decision. And we're here to support and answer any questions. So I know that that town has been in communication with NRG for natural gas and Constellation for electricity, the winning bidders for the mega program. NRG sent us updated natural gas pricing today, which I'm displaying on my screen. And you'll see in the middle bottom. The different terms, so there are options for a 1224 or 36 month term and the contract rate that is the fixed rate. That would be the rate for the entire contract term. Now. When we look back at what you've historically paid over the past 12, really 24 months, we've seen natural gas be relatively low compared to where it was from COVID through end of 2022. And so it's been a cheap variable rate that you've been paying for the last two years. Looking ahead, we're seeing prices go up. And so that's why the offers here at 12, 24, and 36 are about $5 per decathern. The one invoice copy we have, From the town is from December to January, where you paid about 5.8 cents per term. So these rates are lower, but that's one month and that's a winter month. That's not a real savings. We're not going to put savings on here. That's not reflective of what you pay over the course of an entire year. So what I wanted to show. is this. Now this chart, I know it's probably a little hard to see on the screen, but this is the wholesale cost of natural gas averaged out per each calendar year. So the dark red line that's very low, that's the balance of this year. So that's 2026. So you can see where natural gas prices in 2026 are and how much lower they are than all future years. So what does that mean? It means that the utility, it means that the market are anticipating natural gas prices to go up. Now, this is a short 12 month look back. If we go back and look at the last five, six years, this looks a lot different where current pricing is higher than future prices. If that were the case, we'd be showing you future rates far lower than what you're paying now. But it's the opposite. The market is increasing and this is being driven by demand. So you've all, I'm sure, are familiar with AI data center demand that is impacting energy prices, natural gas and electricity. So I'll go back quickly to the energy prices. These are the options. You have the opportunity to fix a rate, provide yourself with budget certainty, and ensure you know what you're going to pay over the next 12, 24, 36 months. Now, before I take questions, I'm gonna quickly go to electricity. So electricity with Constellation, similar story, a little different on the rates. The energy markets are moving differently, electricity and gas, but similar story where you have options to sign for, if you look at the bottom here, term 12, 24, all the way out to 50 months. So just over four years. The different terms are included because Constellation identified specific terms with better pricing. But you can see the fixed electricity rate that they're offering is in the mid $0.08 per kilowatt hour range. Now, it's very important. I want to identify this. The fixed components in this rate are identified here. There are pass-through components in this product that Constellation priced. They can price any product. They can fix all the components. They can exclude others. In this initial pricing, before having a conversation with the town, they excluded New York State clean energy costs. These are variable rates that are not known ahead of time. And so Constellation's recommendation is to exclude them so you pay the true cost each month rather than a premium to hedge them. That can be adjusted. That gets discussed down the line when we identify proceeding or not. But what we see here is the 12 month, the one year is just under eight and a half cents per kilowatt hour. But as you go further out in electricity, it gets cheaper. So different than natural gas, which is increasing, electricity is actually cheaper the further you go out. So I'm gonna show the same thing again here. This is an electricity market update. so you'll see electricity costs dating back this goes to 2022 january 1st of 22 and you'll see the calendar year averages now again you'll see the dark red is 2026 and you'll see how now all the way to the right it's trading in the middle of the pact but every year beyond that trades at a discount from the year prior so 27 is the highest 28 is just below 29 is below that and 2030 is the cheapest So the further out you go in electricity, the cheaper price you can get at this time. Now, why is that? We're seeing a lot of this data center talk, demand talk. We just had extreme heat the last few days and we saw peak demand go up. Many of you probably got text messages or you saw friends who did about curtailing, trying to help the grid. There's a lot of speculation on how many data centers are going to be built, what's in the queue and how many of those are actually real. And so future years have actually dropped a bit and they've remained lower than current prices, which is a buy opportunity to secure lower pricing. So For electricity, similar to natural gas, you have the opportunity to hedge a price and lock it in for a term of your choice to provide you with budget certainty. Any questions?

That sounds relatively simple.

I've had, yeah, to give you a background, I've been in the industry for almost 15 years now. And I think it took, the joke I always say is it took me about four and a half years to know what I was doing. So I, now that I'm 15 years in, I feel pretty comfortable talking about it, but it is complex and there's a lot that goes into it.

Social security rate, basically. Okay.

When do we need an answer today? Do we, I think all those change pretty quickly, right?

No, that's correct. The prices technically change every few minutes, every few seconds. But suppliers will typically offer a rate the morning of that they can hold on to throughout the day for same day transactions. So it's not going to move from eight and a half to nine and a half cents day over day. It might go from 0.0845 to 0.0847 if it goes up. It's a minimal increase or change, but it does change daily. No decision needs to be made today. Mark and I are here just to make sure that our team, Constellation and NRG, the providers for MEGA, are doing their job getting you the information you need, and we're here to answer any questions you may have.

Okay.

I don't really have any questions.

And the other reason, Alex, that we're here is that we do anticipate the market will creep up in the next couple of months as we approach autumn and early winter. So we have been providing this type of advice and pricing for all of our members over the last six weeks or so.

Yeah, I have some supportive information on that, too, that I can go through in about two seconds. On my screen, I'm sharing a PDF now, just confirming you can see it. It's switched over correctly?

Yes.

Okay, so this is a, and I'll go quick here, but our country has natural gas in storage. And so in the summer months, we replenish our storage bank, and in the winter months, we pull it out and use it because we don't produce enough. Where we sit in storage is very important for where prices are going to go. Prices are about 6.4% above for the nation. On the east side, we're about 2.3% above the five-year average. So we're in a good spot with storage. This has helped keep prices down. Now, with electrification booming, summer heat, like what we've seen over the past week, is using more natural gas. Because natural gas is about 50% of electricity generation. So we're expecting that the summer months are going to use more gas than historically, based on peak demand levels, in addition to winter months using more gas than historically. So we think that our natural gas and storage is going to deplete from where it's at right now, which is a very strong position. So when that happens, prices go up. We have less gas in storage. Then we look at production levels. Compared to prior year, this is the red line, we are well above prior year for production. You've probably heard record production, we're doing great. But if you look at future, we're kind of staying flat and we're getting close to last year's production. So we've been in this position with strong storage and strong production, both of which are kind of going away. And then to the right, you look at liquefied natural gas exports. 10 years ago, we imported liquefied natural gas. We converted our import terminals to export terminals. And we've started selling our domestic gas to Europe and Asia for three to four times more than we can sell it for here. And that's increasing more. We're already up to about 20 BCF per day. We produce about 105 or 110. So almost 20, 18% of our domestic production is now going out the door. And that's going up to 28 BCF. for the forecast for next year. So that's gonna be above 25% of our domestic gas leaving, which is gonna increase prices. So energy's fun because prices just keep going up.

My question is, we picked a company, them, out of all the people we talked about, what are we waiting for? I mean, these are the rates. Yeah, no, I mean, we just need to pick one. We gotta pick what?

What do we want to do as far as locking? Do we want to lock into one, two, or three years? That's the question.

I'm wrong, Alex. Let's make that decision so we don't keep having to address the same things at every meeting. Let's get things done.

This is the first time they presented the actual numbers.

I'm saying it's the company we picked. Just pick a year. Aren't we at just how many years we want to go now?

Yeah, this is what we have to pick from.

Yeah, that's my point is we think on the right. So, which 1 would you let's make a decision on how long we want to go out for? And I mean, how long do we have to think about that for? So, I don't think about more than this meeting. Well, 4 years, let's go for 4 years. I only got 3. yeah. 3 3 years. Let's go. I mean, the electric rate went out to eight years.

The reason that it's getting less is because if we lock ourselves into seven years, we may be shooting ourselves in the foot. In years five, six, and seven, when we're paying more than what we would be paying if we weren't locked in.

No, no. We lock in gas, but we should lock in electric for it.

I was thinking, looking at these, three and three, because electric creeps back off if you go to four. Right, and we're locking in on afterwards.

So we're not locking in a future board into something we did too. They can read, they can read.

I threw it off my passports.

I'm not working on future boards. So do we all agree three years is a thing we just, let's get moving on this thing?

If it makes a difference, that's the term we're seeing across the board on both commodities. People are going three to four years. That's been the concern with prices continuing to rise.

Mm-hmm.

I'm free on each 3.

We've got to do it. We are on this. Yeah, you should do that.

You need a contract. Yep, but you could work.

Have we started a contract yet?

No, we have pre, we have pre negotiated contracts through the mega program. So if you select a term, we'll let our partners know and they'll send 1 over tomorrow for your review.

Do we need a motion to say we've agreed on three or is just this discussion good enough?

No, you're going to have to approve the actual contract at a subsequent board meeting anyway. So it sounds like there's consensus to move forward and these guys can send over the agreement. We can try to get an honest discussion.

I'll see you in the next meeting. Good. You guys know the contract tomorrow, right?

Sounds good. We'll have it in the morning.

All right. Forward it to the whole board and copy us.

Can you also give it to Corinne as well?

Yeah, absolutely.

Okay. Thank you. All right.

Thank you all.

Thanks, everybody.

Thank you. I just, I don't know, maybe notes I won't use that.

I just had some questions on the latest update on the battery law, just some clarifications for our project. I'm not on the agenda.

Okay. All right. I don't think the battery law is anywhere on here tonight. It's going to be on the planning board on the 20th for public hearing, right? Yes, it's for the 20th.

I just emailed it to all of us. It was recent, Bridget, the one that you and I worked on that I gave Dave and those guys.

That's actually going on the planning board this, when is that? I need to read from today.

Yeah, a week from today. 13th. Yeah.

If you were going to be somewhere, that would be the place. It's got to go through them first.

Yeah, I was just worried. I just got a couple of questions on someone said that, but if the planning board is the way people talk to. Yeah, it is. I have time to get the check off, maybe. Okay.

Sorry, I should have checked with you earlier.

No, I wasn't on the agenda. I was just asking questions.

Okay, thank you, sir. You guys have a great evening. Okay. Let's go back to the agenda review.

Do we want to do that with only 20 minutes for the executive? I'm sorry. I thought you said advisory. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Sorry.

Agenda review. agenda review any questions no um so i have um i have the secret documents for uh local number one of 2026 and local law number two of 2026. um i have letters from the county uh saying local jurisdiction on significance um peter do you want to adopt them upstairs or should we just and then we give them the patty when we're done That would be good. Okay.

That's fine. I mean, you could do the secret down here.

No, let's not mix it all up. Let's do it all at once.

Okay.

Do it at once. I'm with me. Those are the unfinished business ones, right? Those are on the unfinished business. I have those with me. Don't you have a memory? What's that?

Do you want to look through them with the M1?

The planning board suggested a buffer, which was a concern I had.

So the only other question I kind of had is that incorporated, are you changing the law on that though? So is planning board correspondence on number two? You've got the SECRA. Is there a modification to the local law based on the planning board correspondence? I want to do that too. Yeah.

We'll put it in there.

Now, it has a couple of things in it, of course. I'm sure it'll be on there. It says correspondence. Just carry it over on the agenda so we don't have the documents. The planning boards, if the board's going to adopt local law number two. Local law intro number two? Yeah. Inventor number two is gonna be adopted tonight. The speaker is fine, the board can do that.

But if there was, if the planning board correspondence requires some modification of the- The approving rezoning split of kind of proposed sites when they have proper buffered R1 areas.

I don't know what that means. Does that just mean it would be recommended approval?

That's what memo was from the last- Oh, is that a proper buffer?

What's proper buffer?

with that contingency in there. Rezone and slip-con proposed site plan to have proper buffer in our one area. Very different question.

We would approve a site plan application when and if they filled one out. That's not the question that's in front of the board. It's just the rezone. Right. Is there a way to work that? It feels like that would be awfully difficult to work into.

The rezone might be on the site. Yeah, so it sounds like no, if that's all it is.

Because, you know, they don't really know what they're doing with the buffer, but they don't know what they're doing with the property yet.

Right, so. So, where does that put us? If you want to approve the local law, you can.

The local law? You can, that's the site plan stuff later. When it comes to site plan, then we're going to have to steer the ship.

Yeah.

Just hope that every applicant does what they should do with that. I don't have any comment.

Runs through the system, right?

So they could, they're negative. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. All right. So we're just going to, we're going to adopt the local laws, but we're not going to, it's like, well, the one is, but like local laws, you don't think it's on the agenda, right?

There is, but there has been no site plan application yet because they don't know what they're going to do with it. Okay.

How about I'll blend and link. But what about online, which one's that? That's the other 1 that's number way. Number 1. Yeah. Did they come in with any board correspondence online?

It is like, go, it's the same.

There's no.

That 1 had a plan, didn't it?

Yeah, but the only thing on the unfinished business is the law anyway, so it's just the zoning change.

Because it's just a reason because the.

Approval and property split per. Cal arch architectural plan a 2 dated 321 26th presented in merger decay away.

They needed the reason because they want to use the 1. House that's there for basically. The supervisor to stay in. Okay. So it's just. They're just moving lot lines around. Okay. And basically, there will be a residential unit within the 1 or C. R. which the planning board recommends adoption of local law.

Number 1 and local law. Number 2.

And the seekers don't use it on county referrals were made. Yeah, um, so an issue. Yeah. Yep. We have a poker theory on these already, right? Yeah.

Okay. Um. So 11, Department of Engineering and Water Resources, Robert H. Westphal for contract town hall EV charging stations. There is a delta in that that is not covered in the grant. Is there any opportunity for us to use tech funds for that? Use what kind of funds? Tech funds.

What are tech funds? Is that a separate budget item?

Yeah. I think we can use that for whatever lot. We use the... Tech funds are from the The rebates? No, they're from that and they're from the franchise fee. The franchise fees we get from Spectrum that get transferred to a fund that half of them go there, half of them go into the general fund. But the point was put them there so that we could use them towards technological advance.

Anything in the general fund there? I don't know if there's any limitations on the rebates that you got around what they need to be used for. I'd have to look into it. Anything in general funds could be used.

So the gaps like 15,000 little over. That was the gap in it, right? Right.

I'd probably just have Corinne confirm that we've got the funds available to be transferred. We do, I just didn't know if there was a legal legal limitation that I see, but I'm not sure of the terms of the refunds. Can we actually adopt this if possible? That's a little gray. So we word it that way. Yeah. If you're confident that we've got the funds available, you can adopt it. You can always, you know, budget transfers later to deal with it. Okay. But obviously you need to make sure that you've got the funds available.

Motion open doesn't care where it comes from. Right. Right. The auditors do. Yeah. Yeah.

If you have any concerns that we may not have available. I have no concern that we don't have it.

Yeah.

Then you can proceed.

Anything else on the agenda that anybody would like to talk about?

Anyone? I think my stuff's mostly informational, but the one that TSAB thing and the historic thing for referral to the zoning board. Okay. And then it's an appointment.

Okay, so nothing bigger. As far as advisory board reviews, anything real quick?

The only thing I just got dropped today, if you guys want to look, this is the Cox road plan design. Okay. Joint applications being created. We're going to go before long range at the end of this month.

Okay.

Um, anyone wants to see it welcome to, but just so you guys know. It's not a high priority thing, but if we do get it approved when we have some time and the guys can do it. Okay, plug it in and we'll get it before parts of work. Also. No, I mean, Dan.

Parks and Rec real quick. They're working on recreation fees, upgrading them. They're also working on the master plan for the parks, which has been going on at Lavella. It's been a few hours of that the other day. Out on the road, actually, looking at different sites. The power is being done in the next two weeks out of town commons. They wanted to start out last week. We said no before the 4th of July because we want a big hole, which makes sense to me. Uh, so that should be done within the next month.

And, um, that's good. Yeah. Yeah.

So, by March, that's good. Also grid. Is treating it as a new service, therefore there is no charge. So, we're not, we're only paying our electrician to run it 87 feet to a distribution panel and put plugs in with and have. I think it has 20 breakers, 20 circuits, something like that. And this may interest you guys, maybe it won't, we're putting a one-inch conduit next to that, empty, in the ground. So if we want to bring something off on that pole, like internet or anything like that, we will have at least off the pole, down on the ground, to a point where we can turn it off.

It's not going to affect National Night Out, right? It'll be... No, I'll take it up. They'll have electricity for electricity for national.

So, but we will have an opportunity to upgrade in the future.

Where is that going to go?

87 feet from that pole across McDonald's. Or at a 45 degree angle that comes out in between two rocks out there. If you actually walk out there tomorrow, there's two sticks in the ground and a big circle around.

Okay, that's where the panel is going to go.

So we're laying that out today. Um, anything else are we could we spend 5 minutes in executive session 10. Okay, motion under executive session. All in favor. Opposed.