of A.V. Holland, Executive Director of the World Affairs Council of Maine. I want to thank all of you for coming. We are honored to have Senator Collins speak with us tonight. And the council is thankful for the support of tonight's sponsors who helped to make this program possible. Our lead sponsor is People's United Bank. Our other sponsors are Bernstein-Sher, Pretty Flaherty, and Unum. Unum has sponsored a table for students and educators here tonight. So we are joined by students and faculty from the University of Southern Maine. We know that tonight's program is being recorded for both MPBN and Community Television Network. And we appreciate their rebroadcasting on both radio and TV. And when we do get to questions, I will bring a mic around so you can ask into the mic. Sam Ladd, Vice Chairman for Maine of People's United Bank, has supported us in making tonight's program happen. And I want to invite him up to introduce Senator Collins. We're going to hear a lot about cybersecurity tonight. I got a little bit worried when she went behind the curtain. I'm really happy to be here and happy that Susan could be with us today. Senator Susan Collins, as many of you know, is originally from Caribou and now lives in Bangalore and obviously Washington. She was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1996. She's very well known for her work in facilitating bipartisan compromise on important issues. She's a true leader in the U.S. Senate and I know you all know that. Her record signifies legislative accomplishments in critical areas including homeland security, national defense, disaster response, education, business development, and health care. And as of last July, she cast her 5,000 consecutive roll call vote. The number is much larger now and she has never missed a roll call vote in her entire time in the U.S. Senate. Senator Collins is a member of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee and a member of the Appropriations Defense Committee. She has served as the ranking member or chairperson of Homeland Security Committee for 10 years. She joined Senator Joe Lieberman and wrote the Intellectual Reform and Terrorism Protection Act of 2004. That's a mouthful, but it created the office of the Director of National Intelligence. Most recently, she led the effort to combat the growing threat from cyber crime and espionage during her 10 years as the ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. She continues to advocate for the passage of comprehensive cybersecurity legislation which leaders such as General Keith Alexander believe is really necessary to protect the security of our communities and our economic prosperity. Susan spoke to us, Senator Susan Collins spoke to us a few years ago here and I'm very happy to have her once again speak to the world affairs council. Thank you so much Sam. I very much appreciate all that you did to get me here and thank you Gordon for for your invitation as well. It's also great to see my good friend and mentor Mert Henry here tonight. I told Mert that he was strategically located in case I get in trouble answering any of these questions. I just looked directly at Mert and he mouths the answer for me. You know, I am constantly impressed by the number of manors of all backgrounds and occupations and professions that care about international relations and joined together in this organization to better understand the world and America's role in it. And I think it's wonderful that we have the group of students here tonight. That's really important as well. Though I have a feeling that they've come armed with really tough questions and that their professors grading them on how tough the question is for me tonight. As Sam mentioned tonight I want to discuss a thread that strikes at our country every single day and that is the challenge of nearly constant cyber attacks. We live in an interconnected world driven by advances in technology that have truly changed the way that we live and our economy in very positive ways. But those same technologies have given terrorists criminals anarchists and rogue states new tools by which to attack us. These virtual threats have real world consequences. Cyber intrusions deprive us of intellectual capital and business trade secrets. Cyber thieves steal millions of dollars as well as our personal identities. And an attack on our critical infrastructure such as crippling our electrical grid could result in a devastating loss of life and severe economic damage. Given these consequences terrorist groups will undoubtedly seek to exploit vulnerabilities in our cyber defenses. As Sam mentioned I served for more than a dozen years as either the chairman or the ranking member of the senate homeland security committee. And of all the threats that our country has faced during those years there is none that concerns me more than the prospect of a massive cyber attack largely because our vulnerability is so great and our preparedness so inadequate. Cyber security requires far more attention from individuals from the private sector and from government. Secure computer systems are critical to our national security the operation of our critical infrastructure and our economy. Yet cyber intrusions and attacks are daily occurrences. If the crimes that I'm about to describe had been committed before our age of computers you might think that they were pages from Sherlock Holmes casebook on his nemesis doings and his vast nefarious crime network. Yet none of these crimes required elaborate disguises the dark of night brass knuckles or revolvers. They were all committed with nothing more than computer keystrokes and relentless ingenuity. Consider this sampling of recent events beginning in January the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers inventory of dams across the United States was hacked. This database contains extremely sensitive information on some 8100 dams including 2500 that produce electricity. The database not only describes the role that each dam plays in our electrical grid but also an estimate of the level of death and destruction that would likely occur should the dam fail. The hacking is believed to have originated in China though one of the problems with all of these attacks is the attribution figuring out from where they came. In two skillful operations beginning last December criminals in more than two dozen countries stole more than 45 million dollars from ATM machines around the world. This heist combined the talents of sophisticated computer experts and the boldness of common street criminals. It started with the infiltration of the computer systems of debit card processing companies and ended up with criminals emptying out street corner ATMs into bulging backpacks. Even the world's most respected and tech savvy companies are not immune. Hackers were able to penetrate Sony's PlayStation network stealing the personal information of more than 80 million users and costing the company more than 170 million dollars in damages. In a more recent example just last month an Algerian known as BX1 was extradited from Thailand to face charges here for developing and marketing a computer virus known as spy eye. This virus openly advertised on internet websites popular with cyber criminals is designed to take over home computers and reveal passwords pin numbers and all other information that safeguards our personal finances. Most alarming of all is the recent report that nearly 40 Pentagon weapons systems and almost 30 other defense technologies were compromised by cyber intrusions again most likely originating in China. Early this year the cyber security firm Mandiant linked a secret Chinese military unit to years of cyber attacks against American defense contractors and government agencies and the details are truly alarming as is the scope of the operation. The worrisome truth is that we have not adopted safeguards that come even close to the stakes if we cannot protect our most sensitive information about hydroelectric dams or military technology knowing in advance that they are prime targets. How can we respond to government sponsored military trained hackers who can attack anywhere at any time. We must face this sobering fact the internet is under constant attack on all fronts from unfriendly nation states, terrorist groups, transnational criminal gangs, hacktivists and other persistent hackers. Cyber attacks from every corner of the world are also a threat to our economic edge in this global economy. The rampant cyber theft targeting the United States by countries like Russia, China and Iran has led to what General Keith Alexander the head of the National Security Agency and of Cyber Command has called the greatest transfer of wealth in our history. He estimates that American companies have lost 250 billion dollars a year through intellectual property 114 billion to theft through cyber crime and another 274 billion dollars in downtime caused by these thefts. General Alexander gives one case of a company that lost a billion dollars in R&D that it had developed that took 20 years for the company to develop but that was stolen overnight. Other experts have warned that the cost of cyber espionage is easily billions of dollars and millions of jobs. Whether a business makes music medicine or military hardware the research and development that result from hard work creativity and investment are at risk of theft by nation states and cyber criminals. The computer security company Norton peg b annual cost of cyber crime to businesses and individuals at 114 billion dollars that's the number that was cited by General Alexander as well. To put that huge number into perspective that's bigger than Apple. That's right all of the revenue generated by the sale of those Macs iPhones iPads sold last year by Apple doesn't equal what cyber criminals have ripped off. Experts have also repeatedly warned that the computer systems that run our critical infrastructure our electrical grid our gas pipelines our water treatment plants our financial networks our transportation systems are vulnerable to a major cyber attack. In fact several natural gas pipeline companies have already reported that they have detected intrusions targeting their industrial control systems. 85 percent of essential infrastructure in this country is owned or operated by the private sector. Are these operators of these critical national assets prepared for a sophisticated cyber attack? The evidence strongly indicates that they are not. For example a study that was done in 2011 on cyber threats to critical infrastructure found that 40 percent of those surveyed were not taking even the most basic precautions to protect their systems such as changing the default passwords that came with their industrial controls or their administrative computers. The owners and operators of our nation's critical infrastructure reported nearly 200 cyber intrusions in 2011. It's much higher than that because those are only the ones that were reported. Despite this obvious and looming threat Washington continues to debate whether or not cyber security legislation is needed. The fact is societies throughout history have adopted safety standards to protect the physical structures of everyday life from homes and businesses to power plants and dams. And the reason we do this is obvious if our home has faulty electrical wiring that could cause a fire we pose a threat not just to ourselves but also to our neighbors. We need to bring this age-old approach to our collective safety in the physical world to the world of cyberspace. We live in an increasingly wired world that we need to bring up to code. So last year former Senator Joe Lieberman and I introduced a bipartisan cyber security bill. It would have forged a strong public and private partnership to secure those critical systems on which a cyber attack shouldn't occur would cause either mass casualties, evacuations, disruptions to life-sustaining services, or catastrophic damages to our economy or national security. In other words we're not after trying to control every little company everywhere or computers in people's homes. We were aimed at trying to improve the security of critical national assets which if attacked would cause catastrophic consequences for our country. Think how badly we do as a country when we just lose electricity for a few days. Think if there were a deliberate attack to take out the entire electrical grid for the entire East Coast. We worked with our Senate colleagues, our House counterparts, the administration and the private sector to craft a bill that relied upon the expertise and experience and the innovation of the private sector plus government and rather than mandating specific standards our bill would have simply encouraged the owners of critical infrastructure to voluntarily adopt best practices similar to the way that plumbing and electrical codes are developed in consultation with the experienced experts who actually work in those trades. It would have included privacy protections, it would have granted some limited immunity to companies that did adopt these standards to give them an incentive to do so and it's important to know that nothing in our bill, and I'm going to look at the students now, would have regulated the design or the architect of the internet or given anyone in government the authority to close down the internet. So we were very careful to be sensitive to those communications and privacy concerns but despite our hard work to find common ground the Senate twice failed to pass cybersecurity legislation in the last Congress for fear that it would be imposing too much regulation. Well since that time President Obama has unilaterally issued an executive order regulate regarding cyber security without any clear direction from Congress and without any authorization from Congress. So to me this is yet another example of Congress's failure to act because of gridlock and an inability to deal with a very serious issue. This is how former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and former NSA and CIA Chief Michael Hayden who both served in President Bush's administration described the challenge. They said the following, we carried the burden of knowing that 9-11 might have been a burden with the intelligence that existed at the time. We do not want to be in the same position again when a cyber 9-11 hits. It's not a question of whether this will happen. It is a question of when. So here we have administration officials in both the Bush and Obama administrations warning us that we must act and yet we have not done so. It wasn't until after the devastating attacks of September 11th, 2001 that we learned of the many early warnings that went unheeded. When a major cyber attack occurs the ignored warnings will be even more glaring because our nation's vulnerability has already been demonstrated by the daily attempts often successful to penetrate our computer systems. This time all of the dots have already been connected. We know that attacks are occurring in our cyber systems every day. This time the warnings are loud and clear and we must heed them. The fact is that foreign terrorist groups operating overseas are already using our technology against us. They can use the internet to indoctrinate and to teach others to conduct attacks. The Fort Hood terrorist attack is a perfect example. Major Hassan was radicalized and converted to an extremist Islamic ideology through the internet. He was inspired to kill his fellow soldiers. Foreign terrorists can coordinate their operational activities via our communications networks. They can use technological advances to conceal their activities and that brings me to the second topic that I would like to touch on tonight and that is the recent disclosures related to the NSA activities with telecommunications and internet companies. You may have heard a bit about that in the past couple of weeks. By the way the nickname for the NSA is no such agency which tells you something about its secret work. Its real name is the National Security Agency. First let me say that as a member of the senate I believe that my primary obligation is to protect the life and liberties of the American people and to protect the rights and freedoms that are preserved in our constitution. I also recognize the ongoing threat that we face from foreign terrorists and believe that congress has a responsibility within the confines of the constitution and our laws to grant our intelligence military and law enforcement agencies the authorities that they need to detect deter and disrupt terrorist plots but to do so with rigorous safeguards and careful oversight. Some describe these dual responsibilities in competitive terms. You often hear people in Washington or the pundits on tv talking about striking the right balance between security and liberty. I don't view them as being in conflict or in competition. I view them as being complementary. They can and must exist together. Working within the system of checks and balances envisioned by our founding fathers. I believe that both goals can be accomplished but doing so does require constant vigilance by congress, by the courts and by the people. Let me discuss the critical role of congress. After the september 11th attacks congress recognized that our laws had not kept pace with advances in technology. We recognized that foreign terrorists were able in fact to use our laws against us. The patriot act was designed to address issues that had been percolating for years. Many of us recognize the need for constant review and oversight however and that's why we insisted on including a sunset provision requiring congress to read salmon the law periodically. It's also why when Senator Joe Lieberman and I drafted the intelligence reform and terrorism prevention act in 2004 that we insisted on including a privacy and civil liberties board as part of the law. Later congress decided that it was appropriate for our intelligence agencies to monitor foreign terrorists operating overseas when their communications were being carried over US communication systems. Now judicial scrutiny is a critical part of these laws. There is a robust legal regime in place governing all activities conducted pursuant to the foreign intelligence surveillance act known as FISA. These judicial checks ensure that the activities comply with the constitution and laws and appropriately protect privacy and civil liberties. For this very purpose congress created a new court known as the foreign intelligence surveillance court usually referred to as the FISA court. The court prohibits NSA from indiscriminately sifting through telephone records acquired under surveillance programs. The court only allows the data to be queried when there is a reasonable suspicion based on specific facts that the particular basis for the query is linked to a foreign terrorist organization. And I can tell you this authority is used very carefully and very conservatively. Along with judicial review and constraints congressional oversight is particularly important when some executive branch activities must remain secret to protect our national security. Yet here is an area where improvements are needed until the last two weeks the details of the NSA collection programs were fully known only to the House and Senate leadership, the previous members of the Intelligence Committees and very few other members. By that I mean although I now serve on the Intelligence Committee I've only been on it since January and had not been briefed on it. I had received a monthly highly classified thread briefing in my former capacity as the leader of the Homeland Security Committee and I'd also visited the NSA personally to learn more about its computer security programs. So there were ample opportunities for officials to brief me on these collection programs as well. They did not do so and I could not ask about a metadata program that I did not know existed. One reporter said well why didn't you ask about it? It's very hard to ask about a program that you are unaware of the existence of. Expanding the number of members with access to detailed briefings would help ensure more oversight and accountability and is a change I believe that we should make. Now during the past two weeks I've been at this point fully briefed on the NSA collection programs that were revealed by Edward Snowden the 29 year old high school dropout an IT contractor reportedly earning 120,000 dollars a year. I have concluded based on these briefings that his disclosures did tremendous harm to our national security and that he is no whistleblower. There were avenues he could have pursued within the NSA if he had concerns. He could have quit. To me it is shocking that an individual with so little experience had access to such highly classified information and that represents a stunning security lapse. Nevertheless Mr. Snowden's revelations many of which I want to tell you are not accurate such as his claim that he could wiretap the calls of any American or read the emails of any Americans that is simply false. But his revelations have raised concerns about whether or not the government is infringing upon the privacy rights of our citizens. And while I cannot give you a great number of details due to the classified nature of the programs let me provide you with some information. By the way one of the harmful aspects of these disclosures is the terrorists are smart. They will change how they communicate. First of all there is no sweeping collection of the content of telephone calls. Think of this collection as having the telephone numbers and the duration of the calls. Access to this database requires what is known as a dirty number. That means a telephone number of a foreign terrorist operating overseas whose surveillance has been approved by the FISA court that I described earlier. What is most important to know is that this system has been responsible for the detection and the thwarting of what General Keith Alexander referred to as dozens and dozens of terrorist plots both here and overseas. I have strongly encouraged the administration to reveal the actual number of disrupted terrorist plots as well as identifying more of the actual plots beyond the two that the administration has revealed to date. I personally don't see the harm in revealing the aggregate number. I can understand that revealing some of the specific plots might compromise sources or methods but I hope and I've urged the administration to tell the American people just how many plots were thwarted because at least in part of this program to date they have not done so but they are considering doing so. As Congress and the administration and the American people learn more about this program however there do remain questions that must be asked and issues that we must address but in doing so I want to repeat what I said earlier and that is we must not assume that there is a tradeoff between liberty and security. Security ensures our freedom. During the past decade the American people have lost a great deal of confidence in their government. Thus when a person like Edward Snowden steals and reveals highly classified information and distorts the facts gives out false information it gives rise to concerns that government officials may indeed be invading our privacy or infringing on our rights. The failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the IRS's targeting of conservative groups, the belated admissions about the Benghazi attacks, even the inability of Washington to address the unsustainable national debt all contribute to a loss of faith in government and I think that's why when we have a disclosure like this one people tend to believe that there is a big brother program that is infringing on their rights listening to their phone calls and reading their emails and the polls show that the younger people especially are likely to believe that that is true. That to me is indicative of a loss of faith in our government that is pervasive in our society today and is in some ways deserved. That is why I will continue to press the administration to reveal as many facts about this collection program as it possibly can without further compromising the effectiveness of the program and sources and methods and it's also why that I will continue to work hard each and every day to do my own small part to try to restore people's faith in their government. Thank you very much and I'd be glad to answer your questions. Thank you. Thank you Senator. Thank you very much Senator Susan Collins. We'd also like to thank UNUM for donating these seats and the World Affairs Council and the sponsors and Amy for making this event possible. So you mentioned that we'd ask a tough question. My name is Mohammed immigrated from Somalia and I'm a citizen now able to take advantage of all the opportunities that America has to offer. My question is a little bit off topic. It's immigration bill and the grassy amendment 1195. Now the amendment will directly impede on individuals on document individuals to become citizens of America. Now I know immigration is a very hot topic right now especially with undocumented individuals coming from the southern border but my question relates to the refugees and asylum seekers that live with in Portland me as well as Louson who have fled violence and persecution and conflict. Now my question to you is Senator Collins will you oppose this bill for to justly represent your constituents and the family members as well as in my hope future constituents of yours as well. Thank you. Thank you. Can everybody hear me or do I need to good because this seems to echo. First of all thank you Mohammed for for that question because we are debating the immigration bill on the senate floor right now so it's a very timely question indeed. The bill as it was reported out of the judiciary committee on which I do not serve is 1900 pages long and we are still going through it very carefully to make sure that we know what is in it. I do have some amendments but let me say this first of all I think we need comprehensive immigration reform and I hope very much at the end of the process of considering this bill on the senate floor which is expected to take two to three weeks that I will be able to vote yes on final passage I want to be able to vote for a comprehensive immigration bill but it would be full hearty for me to give you a commitment right now because I have no idea which of the hundreds of amendments that have been filed to the bill already are going to be adopted and it even could end up being a bill that you would not want me to vote for. So but let me say that we have 11 million undocumented individuals in this country and it is clearly not feasible nor would it be the right policy to try to round them up somehow and ship them back home that just would not work. I'm particularly sympathetic in cases where young children were brought into this country illegally by their parents. They've known no other country. There is American as all of us and the fact that they were brought in illegally by their parents they should not pay that price and that's referred to as the Dream Act which you may be familiar with. I do think however that individuals who come to this country illegally should not be treated the same as someone who evade the laws and that's why this bill has what is known as a path to citizenship in it that requires paying a fine making sure the person has a clean criminal record pays back taxes learns English has a job or is going to school and I think that those are appropriate hurdles on a path to citizenship because I don't think that it's fair to people who stood in line and followed the law and came in legally for them to all be treated the same but the final point that I would make is we do need to secure our borders. We can't be here a decade from now saying oops we now have 22 million people who came to this country illegally so border security has to be part of the immigration bill. We can't just focus on the people who are here illegally. Thank you. We might have time for just one or two more questions so please make them brief. Was there any progress made with Xi Jinping on cybersecurity when it with the meeting with Obama and then secondly for the is it reasonable to ask the NSA to give the total number of phone calls recorded and emails recorded per year? On your first question the president has put out a statement saying that he did press China hard on cybersecurity. When you look at the nations that are most involved in cyber intrusions and cyber attacks China appears to be number one followed by Russia followed by the Iranians. The Iranians however are increasing their capability by leaps and and bounds but China appears to be in a class of its own and also China appears to have a national policy to target our industrial secrets in particular. So I know that the president raised the issue but I do not know what the Chinese leader's response was. As far as disclosing the number of phone calls I wanted to distinguish between two things and that is the collection of telephone numbers versus content. The content cannot be accessed without a court order just as if you were a drug trafficker or a regular criminal the FBI would go to the court and get a warrant to allow for wiretapping. So those numbers I will tell you are extremely different from one another and I don't know the answer to whether or not they could be disclosed as far as what the national security implications would be. I wish however another fact that I would like to have disclosed is how few people have access to the database with the phone numbers in it that can be queried for a match if there's a phone call from a foreign terrorist to an American number and then by the way it goes to the FBI because then becomes a domestic matter and I will tell you that that number is very small but I just don't know. That's what the administration I think is trying to figure out right now is what can they disclose that won't cause further harm to our national security. When both Ron and Sally have a question who gets the answer? I happen to be sitting closer. I guess my big question is you talk about legislation as being part of the reason our cybersecurity is not what it should be but it seems like it's a much bigger question. I mean legislation is not going to solve the cybersecurity security. It is not going to solve the problem. I mean who's working on the solution? Well here's why I think legislation would help solve the problem although you're absolutely right that it's not going to make it go away is if we could have all of the operators and owners of our critical national assets in our infrastructure adopt the best cyber practices that would improve their defenses against attacks enormously and I'll tell you I talked to chief information officers of large corporations all the time and they tell me they have to fight to get money to improve cybersecurity. The chief information officers get it but the CEOs often say we don't want to spend money on that and that it's a constant struggle and that's why I think you need legislation is to and I think the incentive you give is limited immunity if they if they adopt these standards the best practices and then there's a breach that they can't be sued as long as they adopted the standards. The second thing that legislation would provide which I really think we need is for critical infrastructure I think we need a requirement for mandatory reporting to the government when there's been a major cyber intrusion and I think that's important because then the government can share with other vulnerable companies what happened and what the IP address is that they should block how the attack was done but what happens now is when a business has a breach they tend to try to cover it up and keep it quiet because they don't want their customers to know about it for fear that they'll lose business and so I think that mandatory reporting is really important I'm not talking for small businesses I'm talking for for critical infrastructure and I also the third reason we need legislation is we need to give specific authorization for agencies to share threat information and we need that threat information to go in both directions we need the private sector to share with government and we need government to share with the private sector I remember being at the department of homeland security computer center it's computer security center and I could watch in real time an attempted intrusion into a government agency system and because they could track it they were able to call that agency and tell them what was going on and they stopped it but it was just amazing to be able to see it in real time as far as who is working on it sorry I know I'm answering too long as as far as who is working on it cyber command within the department of defense is a new command that was set up that is working on it from both an offensive and defensive measure there are a host of computer security firms that sell their services and are working on it and and there are international organizations that are working on it as well because obviously this crosses national boundaries and again there's an attempt to come up with standards and a more cooperative sharing information sharing make it one last question thank you senator um my question revolves around Syria um clearly there's a ongoing humanitarian crisis uh i missed a civil war which is now spreading into a sectarian war pulling in hezbollah aran versus saudi arabia and so on and so forth but recent news at the united states and perhaps europe it will be arming syrian rebels i wanted your thoughts on that because in effect we would be arming some al-qaeda affiliates who are tied to the rebels and that could have serious implications for our troops in theater thank you you've asked an excellent question about syria and it is such a complex and difficult to issue um ironically early on if we had armed the opposition we would have been far better off because that was before they were infiltrated by elements of al-qaeda now virtually every experts believe that that infiltration has occurred i mean we do know who some of the good guys are but i think as we attempt to arm the opposition at this point that some of those weapons inevitably are going to fall into the hands of terrorists who will seek to do us harm syria is a disaster there have been 93,000 people killed there are more than a million refugees who have fled into jordan i'm worried about the stability of jordan as a result of this influx of refugees um russia is sending weapons to the Assad regime the Iranians are sending hezbollah fighters to fight the opposition so you've got proxies for major powers in the area and a destabilization of the entire middle east which is very frightening it is a very difficult problem i know from the intelligence briefings and i'm not disclosing classified information because the president has now released this affirmatively that the Assad regime has used chemical weapons including the nerve gas sarin against the opposition and the president said that that was a red line now if you say that something is a red line then you've got to be prepared to take action once that red line is crossed or else america's credibility in the world is worth nothing and what kind of a message would it send to iran and the north koreans if the president did nothing i think um i wonder whether he had a plan in mind when he drew that red line and uh i truly wonder whether he really had a plan in mind i don't think anybody is arguing for boots on the ground american boots on the ground and there is a contingent in the administration a small contingent and in the senate a contingent led by john mccain that believes that we should try to take out the aircraft of the syrian government now syria it's not libya it has stronger anti aircraft defenses the question is whether that could be done with cruise missiles and i probably should ask these questions he'd probably know the answer so it's always bad to be talking in front of experts you know but some people think you could do it with cruise missiles uh from afar and take out the anti aircraft defenses i don't know i do know that it appears that a certain middle east nation was able to do an intrusion into syria and take out some weapons deep hoax and come back out without getting shot down so maybe those wanted anti aircraft defenses aren't quite as good as as advertised but i i cannot pretend to have an answer to syria i just think it is a complete disaster and that if we were going to arm the rebels we would have been far better off doing it at the beginning when we knew who the the opposition groups were and now for the reasons that you articulated arming them is is dangerous and yet how can you not take action after that red line has been crossed and with 93,000 people massacred so it is a really tough tough situation i guess my prediction on syria is that the country's going to fracture and that we're going to see it break into different parts that will no longer be one country but i it's very hard to envision a good outcome thank you very much senator thank you


Mae'r ffordd yw rhaid o'i wneud i'w cwestiynau i fynd i glyfu ar gwych ar gŷn am ymddangoddiad o'r myfyddwch yma, am eu dweud ymydd cysylltiad Torfifathau ar gyfer unrhywm. Ac neb yn fawr i gweithio chi'n gwirgyn dangos eich symg i fynd yn ysgrifennu ar gyfer hyn o'r modd. Ond mae'n hefyd! Ben ydych chi'n hynny, mae'n rhaid safod â'r ysgrifennu eraill, gyda'u bathol yr hynodau hesidigion yn elwyr angen. 500 yw'r yw'r yw'r hyn sydd y bethol Abbey yn ymddangos i'r ysgol, a'r allan o'r hyn sydd yn gweithio a'r ystafell yn 1066, sy'n symud o'r bwysig o'r sallfyniadau. Ysgol yw'r ysgol yw'r hynny'n ymddangos i'r llwyffydd yma, mae'r ysgol yn ymddangos i'r ysgol ymddangos i'r ysgol. Mae'r ymddangos o'r llwyffydd o'r sgol, rhan oed o'r monastri yn elwindi Gweithreithio 15th. Mae'n ddiddorol o unrhyw o 30 oes o iddyn ni i'w gwneud y hynny o'r Llywodraeth Merieddfa Llywodraeth. Ond yna, os yna, mae'r bath o'r hyn sydd yw'r cymdeithasol yn gweithio'r cymdeithasol. Mae'n rhaid i ni i fynd i'n gweithio'r Llywodraeth holl, ac yn ddiddorol o'r cymdeithio'r Llywodraeth. While transcribing the inventory and identifying the 140 or so relics it lists has been a fascinating and dare I say enjoyable experience and at the very least it's greatly enhanced my understanding of the medieval cult of saints and their relics. But work in the inventory has been much more than an antiquarium to you and standing at this podium how can I say but there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. The inventory is an incredibly valuable source for the study of battle abbey. As I'll explain it's possible to determine how the abbey obtained at least some of the relics in the inventory, evidence of battle's enduring relationship with the conqueror and his successors well into the 13th century. It provides some gleanings about the art and architecture of the monastery, riches destroyed at the Reformation. Most importantly of all it significantly adds to our understanding of the spiritual life of the monastery, most obviously the cult of saints relics there, but also the religious identity of the community at battle. The abbey's liturgy, pilgrimage to and from the monastery and battle's relationship with the wide English indeed European church. These are all subjects of great scholarly interest indeed I hope to eventually publish my research on the inventory and appropriately learned journal, but I also think they have the potential to enhance the visitor experience and understanding of battle. And the religious life of the monastery will be a major theme in a new museum opening on the site in the spring of next year and I do hope my talk here today acts as a stimulus for you to visit. Now, the inventory is now in the Huntington library in San Marino California where so many of the abbey's manuscripts are now cared for. Since the middle ages it's been bound with six other works all of a historical nature. Indeed it was common for relics lists to be placed with historical works as they helped very much construct the self identity of religious communities. The inventory covers four pages or two folios and the battle provenance is explicit. At the top you've got an ex libris inscription and this shows that the inventory entered the abbey's library in the mid 15th century recording as it does. There was a book of the monastery of battle donated by Abbot John Newton. Now he was elected in 1463 dying in 1490. The inscription is accompanied by the press mark I N which you can see there. This is found in other surviving manuscripts from the monastery which were likewise donated by Newton. The inventory opens in translation with these are the names of the saints whose relics are contained here at the battle. Before his election to the abbey Newton served as the monastery's seller and it appears that the inventory was actually compiled somewhat earlier by a predecessor. That was Thomas Bird who occupied the office between 1436 and 38 and his signature is very faint there at the end. The inventory is in Latin and it's written in a neat black letter gothic book hand. Each page as you can see has two columns and each is ruled with 26 lines. There are two large decorative initials at the beginning you can see there and you can see also I hope that there's further rulings down each of the columns of the addition of other catch letters but these were never added. The inventory follows at least in the first two thirds a standard hierarchical arrangement found in almost all medieval saints at relics inventories. It starts with the relics of Christ followed by those of the Virgin, the Archangel Michael, John the Baptist, the apostles, the martyrs, the confessors and the virgins. However the convention breaks down around about here and after that the arrangement becomes much less predictable. The final 46 or so relics approximately a third of the total don't follow any discernible order and the significance of that I'll get to later. We have quite an array and a variety of relics. They include the relics of Christ as I've said, of his life on earth and of his passion, portions of the cross on which he was crucified, the true cross, part of his tomb, the Holy Sepulchre, the marble table where he dined with his mother and disciples and the wood of his manger. There are portions of the clothing of the Virgin and various other saints. We have the hair and beards of some saints including Peter and Paul and there are also assorted body parts, the finger of Saint Lawrence, the third century Roman martyr, the arm of Saint Wilfrum, who was Archbishop of St in Northern France in the 7th century, the jaw and 13 teeth of some Bridget Abbas of Kildare who died in 525, I could go on. And we have the dust of the flesh of various saints as well, adding to this various bits of holy ground. They include fragments of the rock into which the cross was fixed on Calvary, the ground upon which Christ, the Virgin, St Michael, John the Baptist and some other saints stood. And there are a large number of relics which just begin with der meaning of. That's to say a non-specific relic or even a contact relic. It was believed that some of the sanctity associated with relics could be transferred by me in touch and indeed I am wearing such a contact relic. In 2004 there was a trip from the Courtauld to Arkham where there was a major exhibition and it coincided with a major pilgrimage to Arkham Cathedral, which has an incredible array of relics. So in a piece of experimental archaeology I took off my wedding ring and out handed to an attendant who touched it to the reliquary containing the swaddling clothes of Christ. So there we are, a contact relic of the swaddling clothes of Christ. Now many of the relics I'm going to discuss were found in other medieval English lists, but there are some especially rare or interesting relics which I'll get to presently. But first of all what are relics? Well they provided and to many still do physical tangible reminders of Christ and his saints. For the Catholic faithful they were and are an aged salvation, believed to offer protection or even to be endowed with magical powers. And the cult of relics goes right back to early Christian times. This was a time of periodic persecution for the church. Followers of Christ did give their lives for their faith and by the late second century the remains of these martyrs were being collected, preserved and venerated. Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, died for his faith in around 160. You can see him depicted here in this wonderful mosaic and revened it into the sixth century. Eusebius, the fourth century church historian, records that Polycarp's companions took up his bones which were more valuable than precious stones and finer than refined gold and laid them in a suitable place. In the following centuries the cult of relics gained in importance from the late 8th century.


Great. Well, then I would like to call the November 17th, 2021 long month sustainability advisory board meeting to order and could we please start with a roll call? Yes. Kate Collardson is absent. Mary Lynn is also absent. Adam Reed. I'm here. Jim Metcalf. I'm here. Charles Musgrave is going to be joining us shortly. Kate Volmeyer. Present. Robert Davidson. Hello. Lisa Nabla. Here. Here. Annie Noble. Here. Francie Jaffe. Here. Debbie Seidman. I'm here. Debbie, did I pronounce your name correctly? Yes. Okay. And it's confusing, so I don't mind either. All right. Okay. I think the entire is here. And Susan Bartlett is also. And we don't have a council member currently because they have not made that decision since the election. So. They're probably fighting it out. It's the most desired. It's the most desired board position. I think they're discussing that in next week's meeting. So it will be January. I think it's the most desired board position. I think it's the most desired board position. But for chair, you have a quorum. Wonderful. We have a quorum. With the land acknowledgement statement, I'll read it this time, but I was going to float the idea that perhaps we could actually do this in around Robin in the future, just so everybody is saying it at some point. Somebody would also like to read it this week. That's fine. I can just go ahead as well. But I kind of thought that maybe in the future, instead of just the whoever's chairing reads it, but I'll go ahead and do it. Thank you. Thank you. I think it's important to have our comments on the traditional territory of the rail area and other indigenous people. The first people to have this land is our commitment to face the injustices that have happened when the land was taken to educate our communities, ourselves, and our children to ensure that these injustices do not happen again. All right. Is there a motion on the floor? Yes. I will make a motion to approve the meeting, the meeting minutes. Wonderful. Somebody like to second that motion. I'll second that. All right. All in favor of approving the meet, the minutes from last month's meeting. Hi. Wonderful. Unanimous. Now, as. I would like to open it up to the public, I would like to open it up to the public invited to be heard. Each person wishing to speak would be unmuted to speak one at a time. To speak, please state your name and address for the record. You'll have three minutes for comment. Heather, do we have any public who wish to be heard this week? We did not have anyone reach out to us. We don't have any present with us this time around. We did. We did not. Well, we will fly on to agenda item number seven. Then are there any revisions or submissions of documents? The staff need to bring up. I'm aware of. All right. I will take that as no. And we are already on to general business after four minutes. Man. All right. Yeah, I know we have two, two items. I just like to remind the board members to hold your comments until the end of each presentation. So after the staff has finished presenting just for time's sake. We are going to start with the electrification plan update with Susan Bartlett. Well, thank you, chair and board members.  This is great. I'm Susan Bartlett. I'm a key account manager with the energy strategies and solutions group. And I recognize many of you from the last time I was able to come and talk with you about electrification, but there may be one or two new folks. So good to see you all again. Heather, let's see. Oh, no, not yet. I think it was March when I was here last time talking about this. So I just wanted to share with you where we are and let you know, any progress that we've made so far. And you can go to the next slide, Heather. Or am I, oh, there we go. Beneficial building electrification planning is just one of a number of initiatives to help us move as a community away from fossil fuels toward efficient electricity. The city also has a 1% carbon free by 2030. In addition to the renewable electric energy goal, the city also has goals as you all are very aware. Related to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and building electrification is. One of a number of things that will help us get to those goals. Next slide. And so as a reminder, or for those of you who are new to the city, electrification is simply shifting from using fossil fuels and buildings to using electric equipment instead for building systems. And it's, it's simple in its basic form, but it's complicated because it involves both new, new construction and existing buildings, residential and commercial. And, you know, we want to, we want to get it right. Our planning effort entails also being mindful of affordability and safety. And so we're trying to, we're trying to balance all those different tensions. Next slide. We're about midway through our planning process. And that process includes convening an advisory committee. And that committee is made up of two city council members. We have. Mayor. Mayor peck. We also have council member Martin. We have several city staff members. Lisa is among them. We also have two at large community members. And then we have representatives from some key sectors like affordable housing and real estate and building and development. We also have a couple of partners at the table from like flat river power authority and also Boulder County. So in addition to our advisory committee, we began early this year with some market research. Then involved talking with contractors and consumers about some building, electrification opportunities, their level of awareness, their understanding of what's involved in that. And we're also close to having some results of a cost benefit analysis that looks at those opportunities from that, from that framework as well. In addition, we've been working with that river power authority on a study that looks at, that is looking at grid capacity impacts. That's associated with different electrification adoption scenarios. And of course they're looking at their whole service territory, but we're, you know, hoping to draw some information that will be specific to Longmont. And this work is just going to inform our planning strategies and also more specifically kind of, how we can implement in a way that works. Next slide. Actually Heather, I'm going to have you go back one. I jumped ahead. So, aside from the, the research and the advisory committee. And the advisory committee is one form of stakeholder engagement. You all are another opportunity for stakeholder engagement. But, but we're looking at developing a communication strategy to communicate more broadly. And that's on the next slide. And then we hope to have our plan developed by mid 2022, so that we can begin implementation at that time. Okay. Now, next slide. As you all know, stakeholder engagement on something like building electrification, which is not an easy topic is really important. And we want to make sure that, we're using all of our avenues for sharing information and also for gathering feedback. So again, we have our advisory committee. We're also working with our consultant to reach out in other ways. That includes some one-on-one interviews with peer cities that are also embarking on this task. Talking with key sector representatives. And then, we're hosting some focus groups to give us a sense for level of awareness, what the potential benefits and barriers are from those perspective. And then what are some meaningful ways that we can communicate about building electrification that are going to resonate. In a variety of ways in our community. And then. But finally, we want to continue to be engaged with boards and commissions like yours. And other local organizations that are interested in, in our progress that could be, you know, the long, sustainability coalition, e-cat. So there are a variety of options that we're taking advantage of there. Next slide. So far, we've had four advisory. Committee meetings and during those meetings, we've focused on identifying these community priorities. These priorities align with other city efforts. That was something we were intentful about. They're also going to service some guide posts for strategies that we're going to put in the plan. We've also been working with some of the, we've also spent some time building an equity foundation within the committee. So that we have that as a, as a lens, if you will, for evaluating what's going to go into the plan and how those things are going to be implemented over time so that everyone in our community is going to benefit. And we had our fourth committee meeting this Monday. At that time, we had a chance to dive into a host of building electrification best practices, which can be kind of overwhelming. There's just a lot going on right now. And much of it is trial and error. You know, there are new things happening. So it's a lot to sort through. We also, in addition to getting some introductions to some of these best practices, we also talked about how we're going to try and winnow the list and prior prioritize the things that make the most sense for long months. So that's sort of the, the next big lift for us. Next slide. So as I mentioned, our research, our current research efforts are going to wrap up at the end of this year. It doesn't mean we're not going to need to look at other things, but at least those things that we have underway are going to wrap up. At the end of this year, there's, there's a lot to do yet in 2022 to hit our goal of having a final plan. Mid year. And that includes identifying what the best practices are that we want to have in our plan. That also includes modeling some of the potential outcomes. If, if we implement these practices effectively. So we have a consultant that's modeling some of the best practices. That look at timelines and potential emissions reductions and costs. And then we're going to continue to incorporate stakeholder feedback as we flesh out the communication strategy and develop an actionable plan with things that we think we can start working on right away. As well as things that we know will, will take a longer runway. And need more development. And as we get into the next year, I'm happy to come back and share progress, but again, look for a final plan. Wait in the summer of 2022. And next slide. Any questions? Vice chair, I just wanted to mention that Charles Musgrave did join us now. And Charles, you should be able to, there you go. All right. Welcome. Well, I see Adam has his hand up. Sure. Thanks, James. And thanks, Susan, for the talk. I had a quick question. Is the PRPA involved in this work at all? Yes. We have a committee member that's from. Flat River. And as I mentioned, we're working on a plan for the next year. We have a committee member that's from flat river. And as I mentioned, we're working with them on kind of looking at if, you know, if we have certain levels of electrification on the grid, not only on our distribution, but, you know, on related to generation, what does that look like? And how do we need to plan ahead for that? So yes. Yeah, Robert. Thank you for the presentation for new construction. I'm just going to go through the next question. And then we'll move to the next question. Obviously we have a lot of say in what the rules are for that in long amount for existing buildings. What levers are we looking at? I realized we're still early on. But what, what carrots or sticks are we looking at using to try to motivate people to get on board. In their existing buildings. Well, that is the conundrum, right? And I had a snarky answer, which was going to be magic or candy or something. But that's not a real answer. You know, we're considering incentives. We're looking at, you know, you know, policy ideas where, you know, we would look at, you know, if you get a permit to replace a certain type of equipment, what do you replace it with? Where we're looking at working with, you know, folks that are doing benchmarking and they have to hit certain performance requirements. How do you do that? So it's just, it's a harder nut to crack for sure. Okay, quick one. I'll say, I know that city sales tax hits every business owner that does retail of any sort. Have you considered doing offsets or deductions off that to motivate businesses or are you primarily just looking at residential right now? We're looking at both commercial and residential. There are much, there are many more opportunities that have been demonstrated on the residential side than the commercial side, as you might imagine. But we hadn't considered the tax consideration that you just mentioned, and I'll make note of that. Because I would say that would be a big motivator for retail and commercial to incentivize. I'll tell you that. Well, thank you for the input. I think it's a good option for us to put on the table. I'd just like to add, I know that our schedule on this board can get pretty jammed up, but I would love when the research phase has been completed to actually invite you back to get a synopsis of what some of the major findings are. I think it would be very interesting and informative from my perspective to actually kind of see how things are framed before the actual plan comes out. I'd love to see some sort of a kind of like a basic take home points from the research and some of the modeling possible. And I, like I said, I know that we're very busy, but I would love to find a time in the spring where you guys would be ready. And then we would also be able to have you back. Well, I would like to do that. As I said, it's really important for us to keep your board and other commissions and boards kind of up to speed so that we don't get to the end and have everybody say, what, wait, we didn't. That's not what we thought. This is helpful for us along the way too. So if you'll, if you'll work us in, we'll gladly come back. I say we all gladly come back as often as you let me. The Royal way. Right. Wonderful. Are there any more questions from, from the board or city staff? Looks like it. Well, thank you so much. All right. Well, thank you for your time today. Yeah. All right. We will now move on to item B. 2021 sustainability review and 2022 priorities with. Yeah. Good afternoon, everyone. And this might be a pretty quick meeting. So I know normally our meetings are pretty packed, but. You know, I shouldn't speak too soon. But this is, this is a pretty. Pretty high level. Overview and we don't have a December meeting, but I just wanted to take advantage of the opportunity since we actually did have some time on the agenda today. So I'm going to go ahead and do that. And then we'll move on to item B. So how do we do this? Is it okay if we take a minute to introduce Debbie. Heather. Yes. Absolutely. Do that really quickly. So if some of you, some of you may be. Familiar, but Tim Ellis, who was our. Representative from. Long Island power communications or LB on this board. Just left us recently. So the new LPC rep is studied Sideman. I'm going to go ahead and do that. And then we'll move on to item B. And then we'll move on to item B. And then we'll move on to item B. All right. Can you. See me. Okay. Thank you for that introduction. And yes, I am new. Representing and working with LPC on this board. I do work for Longmont power communications, which is a municipal utility with the city of Longmont. And my primary goal. My primary, sorry. My primary goal was. A lot of the city's Ruben, many of our larger commercial buildings. And right now we have a fairly large, voluntary program from buildings, 20,000, working in larger. And just to give you a little bit about my background, I'm a, I have an undergraduate. Degree in engineering. Building systems, engineering from CU and an MBA from CSU. I've worked with other utilities and I'm excited to be here at the city and I'm helping with the benchmark. So, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for that Lisa and welcome. All right, Heather so you can pull that back up. Thanks. Okay, so. Oh, can you go back one. Yeah, there you go. So, okay. There we go. All of these things I think are going to be pretty familiar with you all but it's nice at the end of the year to just take a couple minutes to look back. There's a lot that's happened this year and then just I'm going to highlight some 2022 priorities to give you all a sense of what's going to be coming your way. And then we don't have a December meeting and so we'll pick back up in January. There's a conversation that we've had before around what are the top priorities from the board so Jim you're talking about making sure to bring back the electrification plan at key points. There's going to be some other things that I'll highlight that we'll just want to make sure really stay at the top of the priority list for this board to make sure that that you all are adequately in the loop and providing your expertise and insight into different things that are happening so you can move to the next slide Heather. So we've got our climate action space, as we've been keeping you all pretty abreast of the climate risk and vulnerability mapping project that's wrapping up pretty soon we had a demonstration with our consultants, just this week, and it's really exciting and I'll be very excited to share with you all the final, the final version of that although it's really phase one so we are looking at, as we talked to you about using sustainability tax money in 2022. We're going to touch on some additional data and really start the planning aspect of what do we do with this information in terms of building resilience for community members. The building electrification plan is Susan was just talking about the AMI rollout is underway, and it's set to be completed by a belief at this point, early to mid 2023. And the latest resolution is how we did have to kind of put that a bit on hold because we lost a couple key staff members in our communications department and our equity and engagement specialist who was really helping get our community engagement plan going. But Francie from the sustainability team has been helping me with that and engaging the Equitable Climate Action Team and I think we're still on track to have that completed by mid 2022.  And then the Equitable Climate Action Team is very much interested in doing a zero waste education project and if Francie is on you want to jump on for a second and just give people the rundown of what that project is about. Yeah, and before that I figured since this is kind of, I'll give a quick overview of all that kind of everything the Equitable Climate Action Team or ECAT worked on this year. The first half of the year they had, if I think we invited the board had a big educational event as part of the Sustainable Resilient Longmont Earth Day where they talked about the Equitable Climate Action and they gave feedback on different city projects like the Climate Risk and Vulnerability Map that's actually going back to the group. They gave feedback right at the very beginning and then they're going to give some input to the final product in December again really focusing on making kind of bringing that climate equity lens to this vulnerability mapping. So they've given some feedback on some different projects over the summer they added new members so there's now 10 members on the ECAT. It's about five members who've been there from the beginning of 2020, five new additional members so they've kind of reset and kind of try to focus on areas they wanted to work on. One of them was zero waste as Lisa mentioned they also have expressed interest in air quality. So we spend some meetings learning more about kind of what's happening regionally or locally with those efforts. And recently they identified besides continuing to give feedback on city projects they really want to do a more actionable project in the community. So one of the members proposed working in finding a local park and neighborhood to really kind of engage that community and increase zero waste education what is recyclable. Most of all also really trying to focus on a park that they might actually work with our park staff and our waste services manager to add more recycling to that park so it's it'll be a good opportunity to to work on engaging community members who maybe haven't an increasing knowledge of what is recyclable. So we actually tonight, I, if I'll have to leave the meeting around 445 today, because we have a big brainstorming meeting tonight with the group and where they want to go on that project so I should hopefully have more updates for you all on where they're focusing on and what that looks like in January. Alright, there you can move to the next slide please. Well, in the electrical electric vehicle space of the go resolution that was adopted by council at the end of September, which is really exciting, and that you all gave some feedback on I did include your feedback around the hydrogen fuel cells, and as I'm sorry that I'm blanking on there was another key piece of feedback that you gave me and I'm so sorry that that's not coming to my mind right now, but I did include that in the Council to communication that went to console with that resolution. The DOE grant I am very sad to report we did not receive that grant. We had really high hopes of that. We got really good feedback from the DOE on that grant and Tim Ellis who who helped pull that grant together who's worked for the DOE and has done things on the grant side of things. So that really, really felt like they that our application was really competitive and that based on their feedback. They had lots of strengths and very few weaknesses so I think that just indicates it was a really competitive pool and they really did have to reach to find reasons to not fund our application which is both disappointing but I think also speaks highly of of the proposal that was put together. And even though we didn't get that funding. It really put together a strong foundation and a strong team to go after additional funding opportunities that are now going to be coming through particularly through both the infrastructure bill and the state transportation funding, and potentially some other funding sources and our partners at the Clean Cities Coalition are helping us to identify some hopefully some additional funding opportunities we're probably going to have to chunk pieces of that out because that was a pretty proposal. But I think it's okay I think it gave us some opportunities to do that so we'll definitely keep you all posted as that evolves. We are participating in the regional electric vehicle planning cohort that's being led by like sales partners and energy program and some other communities with Boulder County. And that effort I think will also really line us up as a as a region to do some collaborative hearing hopefully around regional things like the infrastructure and then continue to work on our fleet electrification. And then looking at 2022 priorities. So a lot of stuff around education and engagement. And so, Bernice is launching the to go composted compostable to go where program with small businesses and partnership with Boulder County's pace program. We're going to have a little expansion of the sole program so especially with our additional staff capacity that we're going to have in 2022. So we'll be continuing to recruit additional volunteer technicians, as well as household program. We're going to be continuing the climate lecture series, which we launched this year in partnership with the museum. So we've been at this past year as part of Earth Week and looking next year we're going to spread that out over over the year so have probably one lecture per quarter. The sustainability liaison program which is one of the strategies identified in the climate action recommendations report. So we'll be getting the foundation for that program in place. And working with, we are going to be rehiring the equity and engagement specialist and one of their key tasks is going to be helping to establish an equity based community engagement template that we can use not only for sustainability and climate action work but for city projects and programs across the organization. The energy space the commercial building benchmarking program which was also identified in the climate action recommendations report. And as Debbie mentioned that's the program that she leads so probably in a couple months will have her give you all a rundown of that program. And especially some things that are happening as far as state legislation in this area and how that impacts Longmont and businesses in Longmont or buildings in Longmont. Including the care program which is low income energy efficiency program, expanding commercial and residential energy efficiency, and then continue with work on the distributed energy resources and partnership river. Next slide please.  And that'll be specifically to support low income households and small businesses in any climate action work. So, really establishing fund and revenue sources that can support transition and policies and programs around, you know, things like electrification or energy efficiency, building code updates. So looking at solar and you'd be ready as an electrification. And last as I mentioned to you all, not too long ago with Aaron Fosdick from planning, picking off the sustainability plan and envision Longmont updates. Next slide. And that's it so pretty high level. So a lot of stuff going on. Thanks, Francie if you want to jump in for a minute since we have plenty of time do you want to just give folks a quick snapshot of water conservation priorities for next year. Sure. So, for water conservation right now we're wrapping up the year, looking into some new projects for next year we're starting to get data from our automated meter readers into our data management system. So with that, we're looking into can we do a demonstration project that looks at more proactive continuous usage, specifically trying to identify continuous usage that might be a water leak. So, currently our system, when it's billed monthly. We, we can't, it's usually a high bill alert if someone has a leak with being able to identify continuous usage with in one day two days three days. We could be much more proactive and really engage the customer earlier in identifying these leaks at a much faster time frame. So we're looking into how we can do that given our data management system for next year. Our customer our future customer portal on which there's not current timeline on would ideally be able would have some more integrated features that we can engage with the customer. So that is hasn't. We don't there's not set timeline for when they'll be updated so we're trying to figure out are there other ways we can start and maybe like a specific neighborhood kind of trial, how to notify the customer, what information to provide so that when we do launch that customer portal we can be really effective and how do how we notify people about leaks. So that's a project upcoming for next year. We are continuing with our normal efficiency works and commercial rebates and residential rebates we did this fall start to see a uptick in commercial participation. We seem to have steady participation on the residential side. So hopefully we can see a continued increase in commercial press participation. And then resource central we're continuing our normal programs as well as continuing the income qualified garden a box program that we started this year. We're continuing a lot of work across the organization, but especially with our planning department in our effort to try to integrate land use and water use planning. So last year we supported kind of a document about how to transition your landscapes this year we are helping to support the sugar mill project to make sure that they're factoring in low impact development water conservation practices into that project and next year we're talking with supporting planning and development being a more detailed plant list so that when developers or redevelopers are going in person in their designs instead of just having a very, very open ended please install as your escape though actually have a list of reference, and that'll be easier for us to review as well as the those developing plans for us to review. So we hope this can be a step in towards having kind of new development or redevelopment, having more water wise practices so we're looking for more opportunities with planning and across the organization to do that. And then next year we will start our water efficiency master plan update. So the update is required by state law to be complete in 2024. We're starting early because if for the board members who are here last year when we were doing the climate action recommendations report. So there was a water conservation recommendation, which the board as well as staff recommended that instead of pursuing the kind of increase water conservation goal in that recommendation and instead staff reevaluate the water conservation goal and determine whether we should increase it into what amount so that's what we're hoping. That's why I wanted to start the process early. Look at most recent climate data see if we want to continue with our current water conservation goal or propose different goals to city council and then once city council has made that decision will then start to actually develop more in depth the strategies that would go into our water efficiency master plan. So we want to start that process early. And so that we can do that by 2024. That's my update for upcoming priorities. Thanks fancy and my internet I think just picked me up zoom for a second so I'm back on but if for some reason I disappear or you both can't hear me. But any questions or comments on on any of that. Just one question is the is the DOE grant something that can be resubmitted. That's a good. That's a good question from what I recall it's not a program that has like an annual cycle. And I think from what I understand and Charles you might have a better understanding of this is that sometimes they just have pots of money, and they'll go through a grant cycle to spend down that money and it's like it may come back at some point and it may not I don't think there's any guarantee will definitely keep an eye out for that for sure. But my understanding is, no, but I wasn't as directly involved. Do you know, or do you have any insight on that. I think that's right I think this was a specific for specific call for proposals that we were responding to that's not an ongoing program that you can apply to every year during their, their open window. So. Any questions for Lisa or frenzy. All we have given this is, is a huge focus. Oh yeah, thanks German thanks Lisa for the presentation I was just going to ask a follow up question to Jim's for the DOE grant, how much of that could be used for other grants, like for example the materials that went into that, and what sort of opportunities are out there. Yeah, so that's what we're hoping that we can actually read essentially recycle that application for. We don't know all the details is yet in terms of the infrastructure bill and we know that there's a ton of money in there for EV infrastructure. We don't know yet how much is going to come down through the states how that money is going to be dispersed, you don't know those details as yet. It is also state funding from the transportation package that was passed last year that also has a focus on that so Phil Greenwald who's our planning manager who has been to this group a couple times he's keeping an eye on that so we have, as well as after the grant is looking out for those additional opportunities and as I mentioned our partner at the things that he's coalition has some ideas. Like I said we probably, I don't think there's going to be another opportunity necessarily where we can resubmit it in its entirety it was an almost close to $12 million grant, although about 60% of that was a match that we were putting in but it's still a significant ask. So we'll probably take pieces of that as we can, as given whatever focus areas are coming down from these other sources so I don't have a more specific answer at this point but I do feel pretty focused on this right now. Yeah, Charles. Yeah, so, so the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill that just passed does have 7.5 billion in it for EV charging stations but taking that from a bill that's been signed into, you know how they're actually going to implement that that's. So there is, there's, yeah as Lisa said there's definitely money. It's just a matter of like how are they going to basically distribute that. Are there other questions for fancy or Lisa. All right. Well thank you. Thank you both and for the presentations. We are now on to other business is there any other business that is not listed here. I don't have any on the agenda. You're going to assume that means no. Are there any items from staff. I don't have any and left anyone else on anything they want to throw in there. Francie or Annie, either of you, I'm guessing no. I don't have anything. All right. Items from the board. That's us. All right. We have no real creativity today here. It's like we already just ate an enormous Thanksgiving dinner and are all like tired now. It's like the, the trip to fan is already is preemptive. We don't have any items from the council because we are a council person less in our, in our right now. Informational items and board correspondence Heather, I'm not sure what that means. Yeah, those are just usually the attachments at the end of the packet but we didn't have any this month. We did not. It was just, it was just a minute. But Jim, I think you were going to do something today, weren't you? That is true. When Heather told me that I was going to be chair, I asked if I could, I could demand that we have jousting competitions and other other other feats of strength. But it's a little bit hard to do that remotely so I think we're going to have to postpone until we're back in person for the feats of strength and daring. All right. Everybody starts stretching. All right, well then, if there is nothing else, if nobody has any other things that want to bring up, I think that I'm looking for somebody to move to adjourn. I'll motion to adjourn. For a second. I'll second. All in favor of adjourning. All right, well, thank you everybody and have a wonderful holiday season. Thank you. Thank you.


MOOC is basically massive open online course. So massive meaning a lot of students take part in it, open meaning that it is open to anybody. There is no admission process as such, there is no entry criteria. Online meaning it is delivered using the internet, put up on a server, anybody can access it. And course is of course, course. So distance education has been around for a long time, everybody knows what distance education has been.  So in the MOOC model it is almost like it replaces the distance education model of the past. But instead of giving the course material, shipping the course material physically to people, the course material is made available on a web portal. People register for the course, it is open, that is the new thing about MOOCs, it is open. So anybody can register for it. Anybody who has access to the internet can go online to that web portal, register. And they get a login and password and they are registered. And the material becomes available to them immediately. But the interesting thing about what is being given as MOOC right now is that it is organized exactly like a university course. So it is not that all the material is given to the person immediately. Some material is released in the first week and the student has to study it and at the end of it there are some assignments that they have to do. And after that some more material is released in the next week. So it almost runs like a university course. So you go for a few lectures every week and you do assignments and then the next week you go for a few more lectures and some assignments etc etc. And it mirrors a university course. So well there has been different formats for MOOC lectures. Usually they are short so they do not have a long 50 minute lecture for it. But it is not really a format of the MOOC as such. But it has got to do with what people can, what kind of time people will have with them. So for instance when students are assumed to be busy in college so they may not have all the time in the world. So they would have maybe short periods of time in which they can quickly watch one module. So that is one way of thinking about it. But usually the modules are short and there is no real reason for why there is a format. You know that is the accepted way in which MOOCs are delivered. Short modules so that can be assimilated very easily. This MOOC specifically is on computer science, basic computer science and specifically we focus on programming. So most people would have studied programming in some form or the other in school and there are lots of institutes out there which offer programming courses. So what is different about this specific course? The main thing is that we are not just doing programming. We are also doing data structures and algorithms. So these three together programming along with an with an ample dose of data structures and algorithms really is what is needed to make somebody job ready. In the IT industry particularly not just in the IT industry in any industry today people are expected to program and not just write program any program that works but write good programs, efficient programs and for that you not only should know programming which some people might say just the syntax of the language. It is not enough to know the syntax of the language. You should know something called data structure, how to store the data efficiently and you should know something called algorithms, how to process the data efficiently and write efficient programs. So since all of these things are coming together I would more or less say this is an introduction to computing kind of course, how to write programs, how to write efficient programs, how to write good programs. So so it is a nice it is a nice bag of topics which you would probably find in multiple courses in engineering colleges but we have collected these topics together with the aim of making people job ready for specifically for high tech industry any industry that needs program. It is not aimed at a very high level so the MOOC lectures the background that is needed for students is more or less 12 standard level we are not expecting anything beyond that some basic algebra and calculus and basic mathematics is probably needed but we are not expecting anything beyond that. So we do not expect researchers in this area to be excited to be taking part in it as students but definitely people who want to be job ready this will help a lot and people who are already in companies maybe they are fresh recruits going through their training process for them this will be of invaluable use. In this specific MOOC we are doing programming like I said and programming assignments are nice in the sense that we can evaluate them automatically by computer online. So there is a portal in which there will be an editor that will pop out and you have to key in your program and then you press submit and the program gets submitted and some server compiles it runs it checks the output against some preset actual output that it should obtain. If the outputs match it gives you marks so that is how the assignments are graded so that is the nice thing about programming everything can be done online. So all our assignments that is the other thing I should point out all the assignments in this MOOCs are going to be programming assignments more or less there is no simple multiple choice there will be also some multiple choice questions but really multiple choice questions are not going to measure how good a programmer you are so you really need to actually program. So more or less all the assignments in this MOOC are program based. So NPTEL is the organization which is organizing the content behind the MOOC and NPTEL is a project under the Ministry of Human Resource Development and it is a project that has been running for about 10 years now we have a collection of lot of course material. In this specific MOOC we have had faculty from the computer science departments of several IITs who have come together and have created a syllabus. And this syllabus was created after several meetings and in those meetings we had participation from IIT companies such as TCS, data consultancy services and CTS, cognizant technology solutions and NASCOM also. And through NASCOM a lot of other companies have also contributed to the content creation process in the sense of in the syllabus creation process. Now after the syllabus was formed lectures were recorded and for those lectures faculty from IIT have contributed. So different faculty have contributed faculty from IIT Madras, IIT Kanpur, IIT Kharagpur, IIT Goahti all of them have recorded lectures eventually these will be released in the MOOC. So that will that will happen later but the content creation industry has played a role in the syllabus creation and IITs have created role played a role in the content creation. Now it is all we will also have some special lectures from industry. So that is to provide a industry view of how these topics are useful in say in applications that they that people have seen in industry. So we also have industry lectures but those are different from the main course content lectures. The main course content lectures are from the faculty at IIT and industry lectures are to supplement this effort also. So the recording of the lectures happened in the NPTEL studios in IIT Madras, in Kanpur, Goahti and Kharagpur. So through the NPTEL project the IITs are equipped with really high quality studios where one can record lectures very easily HD format and all the latest technology is out there. And the other part of it is the portal itself. Now the web portal also plays a very important role in delivering the MOOCs. Students log in to the web portal, they see the lectures on the portal, they submit the assignments on the portal. So everything happens on the web portal. And for the web portal we have a very strong association with Google. So Google through its course builder platform and in fact they are modifying the course builder platform to host this MOOC. And Google is also offering services for hosting the portal so that that cost is also being provided by Google. So we have a very active partnership with the engineers at Google, the team in Bangalore as well as there is a small team in Palo Alto which is working on this. So they are creating the portal. So the portal is one part of it and the studios are the other part of it. Of course the content input comes from the faculty. What a student will need definitely is a computer and an internet connection. And the internet connection it's good if it's broadband but even I would say even let's say a 2G dongle, the USB dongle that people have a 2G one might also be good enough. But if you have a 3G connection that's great but an internet connection is definitely a must and a computer is a must. Now it might, so in case as a student if you don't have access to the internet, if you don't have a computer at home, we are hoping the colleges will get involved and help out in getting the students access to internet and computers. Most colleges today have internet access and if they are involved then the internet connection and computers can be provided by the college and then the students can access it through the college. As a student this is an exciting opportunity to learn basic programming and data structures and algorithms which will first of all give you the essential requirements for becoming job ready in the IT industry and the high tech industry but not only that I think it will take you towards an analytical approach to problem solving. So that is quite important as you become better and better engineers to be a good engineer in general you have to be able to solve problems. Not only just by practice but you should also have an analytical reason for why you are solving the problem in that specific way and this course will really teach you about that. You might be surprised at how some simple things which you might have done in very inefficient ways can be suddenly made very efficient if you analyze it carefully, apply your mind and solve the problem very nicely. So I hope you enjoy this course and all the best.