Good evening and welcome to the Burlington Board of Electric Commissioners monthly meeting. This generally occurs on the second Wednesday of every month. This meeting is November 10th, 2021. And first up on the agenda is the agenda itself. Are there any corrections or modifications to the agenda itself? No, it looks great. Yeah. Great. Hearing none, we'll move on. Thank you folks. And the next agenda item are requirements for approvals for two sets of minutes. This is minutes for our monthly meeting October 13th. And then also we had a special meeting on October 27th to review the audit results. So if the other commissioners have had a chance to look them over, if you've seen any content related edits or changes that need to be called out, please raise them now. Otherwise, if it's just, you know, typotype edits, that's something you can send via email to Lori. But otherwise, anyone see anything in particular related to the October 13th meeting that needs to be addressed substantive wise? No. Okay. If someone wants to make a motion to approve them. So moved. And a second. Second. Thank you. Commissioner Modi. Hi. Commissioner Stevens. Hi. Commissioner Whitaker. Hi. Thank you. And same for the minutes of the October 27th meeting. This was focused on the audit review. If you saw any substance related issues that we need to modify. Now is a good time to raise it. Hearing nothing. Would someone like to make a motion and second? So moved. And a second. I'll let Bob take that because I was not at that meeting. So wait a minute. Is this about the 27th meeting? This is yes. This is the audit. I was not there. I was not there. Right. So there are only two of us. We might have to hold off on that one. Okay. Okay. So we'll come back to that at the next meeting. And welcome, Commissioner Herendine. So next up we have the public forum. I'm not sure if anyone I see that Paul Alexander is in the Pine Street location. Not sure if anyone is there or if anyone, Laurie, you could tell us if anyone is here remotely. There is no one remotely. Just myself and Emily. Okay. Well, just for anyone who might view this when it's shown on local access TV, you're always welcome to participate either in person or via teams meeting. You're also always welcome to reach out to any of the commissioners. And also we do have Mike Canerick's customer care team that's always ready to pick up the phone and answer any questions or concerns you have as well. So next up on the agenda is the commissioner corner. This is an opportunity for commissioners to raise any thoughts or considerations that you may have had since we last met two weeks ago for some of us or the rest of us four weeks ago. Hi, this is Bob. First of all, I seem to have a problem every time of finding the link. I think sometimes they're sent out quite early and they're not sent out again close to the meeting time. So I'm suggesting if if I'm correct about that and I'm not sure I am, please consider sending it out again 24 hours before the meeting. Okay, three quick points. I asked for three favors last meeting I was at, which I guess was the 13th of October. I asked for specific info from three people at BED. They all responded and I want to thank them. That's Chris Burns, Freddie, Hall, and Munir Akosti. Everybody answered my questions perfectly. Thank you very much. Thank you. I was just going to say, Commissioner Herendine, that if you have Microsoft open before you get on to the meeting, I often lose the link too, but it pops up a reminder like five minutes before the meeting and it just gets the link joined so it shouldn't, it should have popped up in a reminder for you. Okay, I was actually on five minutes before the meeting and no. I'll be happy to send out an invite again the 24 hours prior. Thank you. Thank you. I had a couple of quick things. One is so Jen Green, I'm a e-bike user and enthusiast and Jen Green invited me to do a podcast about e-bikes and net zero energy, which I did yesterday at BED. It's a super easy and a pretty fun experience I would say overall. And then one of my questions for maybe you, Darren, I don't know, for staff is like so related and we had this little discussion as part of that doing the podcast about some of the bike link projects which have become a little bit controversial in Burlington and I don't know if it's appropriate or for Burlington Electric to weigh in on that given the net zero energy plan and the desire to reduce VMTs and the importance of bike infrastructure. I'm just curious about that. So that's one question and then the other thing that we talked a little bit about last at that special session but wasn't like the right topic at the right time was just if you guys could comment a little bit about staffing and any impacts to BED based on sort of this society-wide problem finding retaining staff. So those are my two questions. Excellent. Well first thank you for joining us for the podcast and we actually have the first podcast episode focused on the Revenue Bond is up on the website and we have an episode with Chair Stebbins that's coming out soon as well focused in part on the Revenue Bond and in part on heat pumps and other technologies. I think e-bikes may have gotten a mention in there too so we're doing a lot of a lot of e-bike discussion which is great. So we're going to have both of those episodes Commissioner Whitaker Chair Stebbins up shortly and and just maybe a just a further comment on the podcast this is something we came up with as just another way to communicate directly with customers and the community and our hope for the future and I know Adam Rabin and Jen Green and Mike Kanerick are all working on this is to be able to highlight customer stories about the energy transition about moving towards these new technologies and the benefits the challenges all the the you know honest discussion about this effort through the podcast so we're excited about having this new this new vehicle for communications and thank you both for joining us for that. On the bike lanes we definitely in the net zero roadmap have a focus on supporting all means of alternative transportation all modes and I think as part of our update with Synapse earlier this year we really tried to make a push publicly about making sure that not only do we continue to support walking biking and transit as ways to buy more time from an emissions standpoint for for the move towards these clean technologies but also remote work as an option as well given the impact that it had on on vehicle miles traveled in the city and so we certainly are supportive we definitely defer from an expertise standpoint to our colleagues at DPW and planning who are kind of leading the effort in the city on those different bike lane planning projects and infrastructure projects I know Jen is definitely engaged as well on some of that and does a good job for us in terms of trying to maintain those interdepartmental partnerships so we're not necessarily the lead voice but we're certainly trying to be a voice supporting those efforts and certainly the e-bikes we want people to be able to use the e-bikes for transportation and for recreation and having the bike lanes provides that opportunity so that's one piece and then on staffing we definitely have seen impacts at BED and the entire city it is a very challenging environment to hire we're seeing that in some of our search processes I think we saw recently with at least the Burlington Police Department there was a bonus that was put in place in order to support hiring and retention I think there are other city departments that may be struggling with hiring for certain positions we've certainly seen some turnover that's unexpected that we're addressing and posting for positions we had a packet that went through the city council this past week that made some organizational updates and changes to some key positions that will now be posting one of which is our superintendent of distribution Jim Leep was formerly in that position we're going to be posting for it soon but every time we have a vacancy we review the position we see if it's a competitive salary for the marketplace we see if we need to update any of the job qualifications and requirements so we did that with that position and that will be posted soon we also have a packet going again this coming week to convert an IT position that's going to be vacant in December from a certain position to a position of greater need organizationally so we're trying to as we see resignations and turnover we're trying to adapt organizationally to the greatest needs and then we are working with HR to try where we can to make sure that we're offering competitive offers and making the strongest case we can for employment but I would absolutely say and I know several folks on the management team who are on the call particularly Emily and Munir are all directly grappling with this as well and we're not unaffected by these challenges and in some cases when we lose someone we're not losing them to an organization locally we may be losing them to a remote opportunity in another state and that we're seeing that now which is not something we dealt with in the past typically thank you thanks turn other comments or questions for the commissioner corner okay hearing none I do have one question I'm just curious about it because it and maybe he'll touch on it on his overall thing but here but because it just started this all right this is a little nervous about this facilitating a white accountability group for city employees just seems like a loaded gun to me just would like to know more about that sure so commissioner moody I think you're referring to Emily's update and I can say that overall we're working on a racial equity training that's going to happen for the entire city workforce and in fact we're in the process of scheduling the first cohort that's going to go through that group is going to be mostly folks at BED who have a schedule that's a little more predictable I believe the shift workers and folks who may have more field responsibilities are going to be in a later cohort but the first cohort from BED and from other city departments is being scheduled currently for a racial equity training that's going to last I believe 16 weeks or so and is going to include between 16 and 20 hours of training over the course of that period of time it's going to be facilitated by the city's office of racial equity inclusion and belonging is something that the mayor I think touched on in his state of the city speech back in April and was a commitment that he had made then that that the city is working to advance now I think as part of that work and Emily can certainly speak to this if she'd like Emily's engaged with some other city employees in a I believe what's termed an affinity group so I see Emily on if she wants to offer further comment on that Sure just a little bit and by way of background if helpful as Darren mentioned addressing structural racism was a key priority of the mayor and as part of that initiative he and HR and the REIB office created opportunities for all city employees both people who identify as white and people of color to participate in affinity groups throughout the we started about in March 2021 and they'll go for about a year so there are groups for as I said people who identify as white and then people who identify as people of color it's a voluntary thing and essentially we are reading a book about structural racism and white identity and just discussing a chapter each month and I'm a volunteer peer facilitator who's just kind of participating in the group in that way okay thank you I just I guess the way it was phrased just just seemed like a loaded you know yeah just seemed kind of just stuck stuck out at me thank you what book are you reading sorry I had to think for a minute then it's white fragility by Robin D'Angelo so I thought okay thank you so next up we do have the general manager's update okay I just have a few items because I know we have a longer substantive agenda so I don't want to take too much of the time up front but couple key items obviously we're going to hear a little more I think from Emily about the audit but I do want to say that I'm grateful to Emily and the finance team for their work on the audit this year we obviously went through that process which is always a major undertaking without a finance director in place and so Emily and the entire finance team and the broader organization have contributed and had a clean unmodified opinion that was timely filed that's a significant accomplishment and very very appreciative of that that's an important outcome for the organization and I know this is of interest we are we did close our applications for the finance director position we have interviews with candidates scheduled for next week so we're moving forward with that process but a very big thank you to Emily and the finance team for their work on that and we'll hear more about that I know in a moment in terms of the the major item on our mind going into the December 7th vote is the net zero energy revenue bond spoken with a number of media outlets that are interested in talking with us about it we had the podcasts that we mentioned we've been doing information and outreach through a variety of channels we visited all the npas we have shared a frequently asked questions and with a list of answers on our website please check that out and share it if you see a value with anybody who has questions I think the key points that we've certainly emphasized in all of these different communications is just making sure that folks understand what the revenue bond is investing in the fact that it frees up liquidity and capacity to double our customer incentive funding over that period of time where the revenue bond will be in place that the bond does not affect property taxes does not affect the city's debt policy doesn't affect the ability to go out and bond for a new high school when that comes up next year and is something that actually decreases rate pressure in the near term and puts very minimal upward rate pressure in the long term because we're providing revenues from projects and maturity savings to help with the repayment so we've certainly been emphasizing those points and we'll continue to do so we have a page for the revenue bond on our website as I mentioned with a variety of resources the city also has a bond page for the infrastructure bond and the revenue bond and the other thing I've mentioned is we had federal infrastructure legislation that passed which is great and our expectation is that the and perhaps chair Stevens might might be able to share something on this more than what I can share our expectation is the legislature will have a significant role in allocating some of the funds from that federal bill to the various communities and utilities and so we're working along with the other distribution utilities on sharing what our needs are relative to the electric grid and relative to other technologies that might be eligible for funding through that bill so we expect that'll be a topic of conversation during the upcoming session and lastly wanted to share that we have a new performance evaluation form that's been put in place part of a collaborative process we had really great engagement from both the IBEW and the management team and all the employees at the Burlington Electric and the new form is really focused on finding our core values and using those as guideposts for evaluating performance it's a lot easier more straightforward more streamlined review process it includes a structure that starts with an employee self-review and provides kind of more of an opportunity for a two-way discussion and we've had an HR training for all of the supervisors so that we have consistency across the organization in terms of the form so I'm appreciative of all the folks who contributed to that process and it's a good outcome for the organization as well and we're excited about that that approach and I'll share one last thing that wasn't in the report but I'm sure you all will appreciate which is recently we had a member of the line crew step forward and suggest replacing our gas-powered chainsaws with electric models as the commission knows we we have a net zero energy employee benefit program that provides a limited incentive to all of our employees whether they're BED customers or not to take steps in their own life that support net zero goals and in this case we had a member line crew who had used that benefit to purchase an electric chainsaw to replace a fossil fuel chainsaw and learned about technology brought forward a proposal Muneer and his team reviewed it I looked at it and we're going to be funding it partly this year and partly next year not a you know not a very significant cost relative to our budget there may be some tier three value that we can squeeze from James as a part of this replacement but I think when we when we think about the culture of innovation and the support for net zero and the institutionalizing net zero focus that we want to have at BED this was a great outcome and we'll certainly highlight more of these as we go forward but that was that was one that stood out to me as a great opportunity for our line crew to step forward with electrification so wanted to share that as well and that's everything for me great are there questions or comments from commissioners and in particular related to perhaps the narrative update that was shared in this month's packet if there's anything that you wanted to follow up on that Darren perhaps didn't touch on verbally not hearing any nope I'm just saying nothing okay thank you okay so then thank you Darren we'll shift over to Emily with the financial update teacher Stevens I recall correctly the FY21 audited financial statements are first on your agenda is that correct yes in your packet I included the first 16 or 17 or so pages of the audited financial statements for BED for 2021 I did not include the notes to the financial statements which carry on for another 40 pages or so in the interest of saving some paper and reading time for you all but the audited financials are available in full on the BED website if you care to get into the detail of any of the notes at this meeting I was planning to just walk you through the face of the financials the balance sheet income statement and cash flow and then also cover the financial statements for the EU custodial fund which we discussed at the special meeting with KPMG last month so starting at the top with the balance sheet I just wanted to highlight a few things here as you can see from 2021 compared to 2020 our capital assets were reduced by about $742,000 that's mostly due to or my notes a fewer capital additions offset by increases in depreciation expense which makes sense if you think about the way that the pandemic has affected our ability to complete capital projects which we have discussed in prior meetings challenges related particularly to supply chain issues and other disruptions from the pandemic coming down cash and cash equivalents was also down for 2021 compared to FY20 by about $1.8 million again I think we've discussed some reasons for that throughout the fiscal year increased customer rearages being a primary contributor as well as decreased customer contributions for capital projects the primary drivers there and then moving down I was going to note here in the accounts receivable where we have made adjustments both in FY20 and again in FY21 for the allowance of for uncollectible accounts just to take into account or reflect the fact that our rearages are at really unprecedented levels and that the standard process we had for estimating the uncollectible accounts kind of didn't really make sense to use in this context so those that that allowance there kind of takes into account the both the state of our receivables as well as the funding sources that we know we have secured to help offset those rearages including the state rearage assistance funds as well as the federal ARPA funds we've received from the city for that purpose just coming here just total current assets kind of taking all of the above into account were down 867,000 for 21 compared to 20 and I'm just going to flip down the changes here in regulatory assets are some deferred depreciations changes and I wanted to just call your attention or remind you that we did record we did receive approval from the PUC to again in FY21 record a regulatory asset related to non-capitalized labor this was labor that we had budgeted to spend on capital projects but could not spend on capital projects due to the pandemic and then total deferred outflows of resources were up 1.1 million compared to 20 most of this is due to changes in pension and OPEB liabilities and actuarial reports. I move now to the liability side of the balance sheet. Emily can I probe a little bit the arrearages that we've had that we're seeing I mean is there there's been in you know various opportunities for brilliantonians to you know get help to pay for you know past due accounts I mean I know I've sent out reminders on front porch forum wondering I'm assuming you guys have talked about this what what your thoughts are in terms of moving forward how do we how do we I mean we're still in a pandemic you know you just said it's so hard to hire people we also know that a lot of folks have you know sort of chosen not to you know keep trying to apply for jobs there are people who are hurting can't get jobs any thoughts on what we could do differently besides you know letting people know that there are these grant programs and and other opportunities to to sort of dig out from wherever they may be in terms of arrearages. Sure I mean I can address that initially and then Darren may want to add or Mike Canarec we have urge customers to take advantage of the two state programs one which recently ended one which is continuing VCAP has recently ended Vwrap for renters is continuing we have been approved to receive I believe over $400,000 from those two programs combined since they began this spring so we are having success in reaching customers there we also received as was budgeted we received $1.3 million to use toward customer arrearages from the city's ARPA funding and what we've discussed is just in recognition of the fact that the pandemic is still continuing and continuing to affect our customers economic situations to continue voluntarily our moratorium on disconnections through the winter season and then in the sort of end of the winter heading into the spring begin to message to people that we will be reinstating our disconnection policy and you know asking them to take action and then if they're unable to take action on their arrearages offering the ARPA funds as a means to help them catch up that's helpful thank you should flip back thank you yeah you're welcome right my abilities so the top of this really is kind of what's current in terms of current means sort of due in the upcoming fiscal year so most of these the accounts payable sort of is what it is as of the end of June and then these bond amounts here are really set by our current maturity schedules for the bonds so there's some slight changes there but it's really driven by the the repayment schedule the debt service schedule on the bond overall our current liabilities were up only $200,000 for FY20 compared to FY20 sorry for FY21 compared to FY20 similarly here and non-current debt this is sort of the rest of our bond or debt service obligations again as determined by the maturity schedules the biggest increase in this section is right here in the net pension liability this number comes right off of the city's actuarial report it's up $2.4 million that number can swing a lot and often does swing a lot it's one that we don't have a lot of control over and so then coming down again here we can see that total net position for where we ended about from a balance sheet perspective for FY21 versus FY20 we had a decrease in net position but very small only $43,000 and the most I could say the key thing sort of driving or keeping that net position relatively steady from year to year was that we had less of an operating loss in FY21 as we'll see when we do the income statement next offset or helped by an increase in other income so all that's kind of a preview of what we'll see here on the income statement just make this a bit larger for you over here just give me a moment to flip my pages please so starting at the top on the revenue on the revenue side we had sales to customers up by $122,000 compared to FY20 other operating revenues this is mostly recs driving this we're up by almost $260,000 where we saw both an increase in price and volume of recs sold in FY21 here's the provision for uncollectible accounts I mentioned on the prior page production expense so this is really generation was increased by just under million dollars compared to FY20 we spent a little bit more on O&M at McNeil and the gas turbine in FY21 in in part because we produced more generation in FY21 than FY20 purchase power costs decreased significantly by just over two million dollars we saw reduced capacity prices which we've discussed before we saw lower wind contract deliveries which we've discussed I know throughout the fiscal year and we had some offsets too in terms of specific contracts particularly Hydro-Quebec having an increase in volume but net net for power supply or purchase power excuse me we were we were down two million dollars compared to 20 transmission costs were up about $146,000 compared to FY20 distribution was just about in line where we were before this category customer accounting has a lot of different sort of pieces that make it up it was up overall about $417,000 one of the big drivers of that increase was actually higher tier three expense which is a good thing compared to budget and A&G administrative in general is also a big category with a lot of components that was about $350,000 a lot of that due to things that tend to go up every year like salaries, pension, benefit costs, property insurance depreciation and amortization was awful also up slightly as were taxes so we had you can see here the operating loss was improved by about half a million dollars from FY 2020 and then in non-operating revenue dividends these are the dividends associated with our VELCO investment interest rates are very very low so unsurprisingly we made a lot less than interest income and then grant income as you can see is up quite a lot and that's because of the grants we were able to access FEMA reimbursement, the local government emergency relief aid which was significant so there are a number of grants that were significantly increased for FY21 so I'm just going to come down here to am I going oh here we go so the decrease in net position this is what we when we typically do our financial review each month talk about in terms of net income or net loss it appears here is decrease in that position you can see we had a $43,000 net loss for FY 2021 much improved from FY20 obviously it wasn't where we budgeted to land FY21 but given the challenges associated with the pandemic I think it was a you know as a positive result as we could have hoped for and so then those changes sort of agree to the net position that was stated on the prior page on the balance sheet any questions on this before I go to the cash flow listeners no all right the cash flow is the cash flow is busy so I won't go through it in very much detail but as you can see we had increased net cash from operating which makes sense what we've been talking about we used a little more cash for capital and financing and coming down here we had we kind of ended the year right with about two million dollars less in cash kind of writ large compared to FY20 which again the rearages the customer contributions right this is just sort of another way of looking at the same same inflows and outflows and calculating it in a different way from here I was going to go to briefly some statements that are new for FY21 and as you recall from our discussion with KPMG in January 2020 BED became its own fiscal agent for the EU funds which previously were administered by another financial firm in the state and so we became our own fiscal agent which means we sort of collected the money we collect the EU fees ourselves we put them aside and then we do EU projects we invoice ourselves and then transfer the money spent on the projects from the EU account to our operating account to reimburse ourselves we continue to submit the same monthly reports to the state to document and you know approve our EU expenditures and account for them but what that means is that in FY20 we sort of brought the EU into BED's financial statements and then this year we were required to adopt a new accounting standard GASB 84 coincident with the city's adoption of it and that requires sort of separating out those EU funds into a separate fiduciary or custodial fund which really is a more transparent and better way to report it in theory someone else could again become the fiscal agent for our EU activities and these these funds are not really you know hours they belong to our EU program so just looking here at the assets for the EU about 3.2 million here in cash that was up slightly from 2020 AR was a little bit up as well so increased assets accounts payable were down for for timing so we had decreased liabilities and therefore a slightly increased debt position for the EU on June 30 it's a fairly simple balance sheet you know for a relatively limited activity and then there's a similarity there's a not really well there's a statements of changes in that position kind of an income statement where we have additions to the fund right collections from customers this was the transfer in from the prior fiscal agent over here in FY 20 we do receive for capacity market and regi additions as well and then here you can see the payments for programs flowing out payments to BED for administration total deductions and you can see the change in that position is relatively small compared to FY 20 because FY 20 was starting from zero and then sort of added to sort of three million dollars sort of came in to start the year for FY 20 so again staying right around the three million dollar balance in the EU fund for 2021 any questions on anything related to the FY 21 audit I'll save you from watching me scroll just a moment so we're now shifting just for viewers we're now shifting to the financial update for FY 22 september as compared to the audited financial results for FY 21 thank you chair stevens for the segue yes so here are FY 22 month of september results budget to actual results so down here so for the month of september we had a favorable budget to actual variance favorable by three hundred and thirty three thousand dollars contributing to that favorable variance were increased sales to customers versus budget which is a welcome thing um interestingly this month both residential and commercial sales were up by about four hundred thousand dollars so i think that's welcome and indicative of the sort of more normal operating conditions at the schools in burlington um other revenues this is mostly EU while we're unfavorable by about fifty thousand dollars it was not a rec delivery month so we have no power supply revenues power supply expenses were very slightly over budget making that up we had less fuel due to a combination of i think a couple maintenance outages at mcneil and also some sort of strategic outages at mcneil to not run now so that we can make sure we have plenty of wood supply for the winter operating expenses were over budget by about two hundred and eleven thousand dollars um some of this is power purchase power being over budget which makes sense because we ran mcneil less and therefore needed to buy more power and the some of this is also timing just of maintenance contracts and tier three expenses in particular not much to note here again the pilot the tax is contributing to taxes being under budget for the year other income is under budget as well for september this is mostly i think customer contributions not arriving as planned so year to date we're doing we're fairly on track actually we have a you know just a seventy nine thousand dollar variance in net income we're at two point two nine million here we budgeted to be at two point three seven two and we'll head down here to capital spending we're about 11 percent total as of q1 mostly timing here again some supply chain factors contributing and then i'll come down to cash and the ratios cash is quite a bit under budget for where we had thought we would be at this time it's just under seven million we had budgeted to be around an 11 and a half three million dollars of that variance is due to the timing of the bond anticipation note which is sort of how we get our annual three million dollar general obligation bond that ban was issued in early november so we will see that three million in cash for the november the november financials that we review in december and some of the other variants in the cash versus budget is the timing of the receipt of the arpa rearage money we receive that transfer but we cannot count it as cash until we actually apply it to customer accounts so it's kind of held to the side until that time comes and then just looking at our ratios the debt service coverage ratios here at 4.27 adjusted debt is at 1.09 and then 121 days cash on hand and i'm happy to take any questions any questions for commissioners yes hi this is bob early on emily you mentioned that demand of electricity seem to have more or less gotten back to normal which you attributed to the schools and i think this may be the first time you didn't show one of those graphs showing the changes both in commercial and residential and all that so the question is did i interpret what you said right but you think we're back to normal quote unquote well not not entirely i think both residential and commercial were up by the same dollar amount and so when i said the schools i meant k through 12 schools and the colleges right have on-campus populations really for the first time at more at a normal level of population and faculty and staff population right than we've seen prior to any point i think in the pandemic and so i think in that respect yes i would say that's more like normal i think the fact that residential was also up so much all sort of speaks to a continuing not the old normal right if that makes sense yep other questions from commissioners i'll be interested to see if we can you know hold steady like we have thus far um we'll see thanks for your work emily okay so next up on the agenda is uh pal alexander presenting uh bed's 2021 property uh and this is the um renewal discussion and vote do this every year to try and figure out uh insurance etc okay uh miss can make sure you can see my screen here let's see i'll try to pull this up can you see that yes it is big enough to read more or less excellent okay um so i sent you into package quite a bit of backup information this is just my talking points the good news there's only three slides but um i'll walk you through it and if you have any questions i'm more than willing to answer them um so this is our annual this is the big the big line of insurance uh those have served for many years here you'll notice uh this this line was three years ago was 228,000 now we're in the mid 600,000 so just giving an idea of what we've experienced in the last three years um just generically what what is covered under the property boiler machinery i won't read this verbatim but it's physical assets so that's much like covering your your home to perils of fire lightning smoke and those kind of things and it covers all the tangible property things you can put your hands on so intangible would be um trademark secrets and that kind of stuff goodwill etc so everything from our furniture to computers to everything pieces of paper that you can put your hands on that's covered under this policy our current status so we have and we've had now for three years this line used to be written by one underwriter one insurance company if you will and because of the issues we've faced not unique just to us but to buy biomass plants across the nation we have a team of four carriers aig star tech zerk and aegis that write this this policy expires on 1120 and we currently pay 644,506 dollars the handouts that that you received through lori a cover letter from hickok and bourbon that's our insurance agent um a property boiler machinery fuel a history that would reflect 21 years just so you could see with some excel graphs um a hickok and bourbon a quota share program and that's pretty slick it's uh not a huge exhibit but it shows the breakdown between the mcneil and non mcneil and the different carriers how many the percentages that they're writing and stuff it's important to understand right now this is not finalized so that's why you'll see in this recommendation it's a not to exceed we know we're optimistic that we're actually going to go down from the not to exceed but um i'll get to that in a second and finally just a cover letter that went out to yourself as electric commissioners board of finance and city council that vote will come up next monday so what's new this year um again our insurance agent hickok and bourbon uh paranormal in the last few years have been brutally uh paying for them work diligently with those existing for carriers and again still a negotiation with with aig i think i've shared many years in a row um the carriers in general will wait to the last minute because a day or two or a week in the insurance world particularly the market that we're now can mean a lot of money so they'll go right up to our 1120 date as close as they can um we're still a negotiation that is hickok and bourbon with aig which is a positive sign because aig their rate per hundred dollars of coverage is significantly lower than the other carriers and they currently write 25 percent of our business both on the mcneil and the non mcneil side so um paul plunkett the lead agent we're in some very positive negotiations with them it's going to go down to the wire but they are uh willing to write five percent more which is huge for us we're talking probably from a rough number 40 to 90 thousand dollar difference just by swapping that over so that's good news um again the renewal premium is anticipated to increase from last year's amount which i mentioned before the 644506 to a not to exceed 676755 and that's nothing more than a five percent increase that's exactly what we budgeted for in our fiscal 22 year budget so if we come in in the worst case scenario at the 676 that's going to match our budget exactly again we're optimistic that we may come in at at the existing premium the 644 or even as yesterday uh the agent and I were talking he thinks we might come in a little bit below that so that's all very positive um won't bore me with a lot of insurance stuff but uh total insurable value just means uh how much is the total amount of property that you're trying to cover um for many years in a row it was whatever we we had right now our total insurance is like 264 millions that's capped and has been capped the last several years um at 175 million no real concern because the McNeil station is just barely over that 175 limit it's at 187 million and of course the property side is much lower that's at 76 million it's again because those plants are sites of three and a half miles apart there's really uh if an event takes both those plants down at some time we'd have bigger issues than insurance um and again Hickok and Borman has appealed if you will to AIG to increase their capacity by five percent and in trade off of that we're going to most likely raise our deductible this is just for the boilers themselves we've been at we were at 200,000 years ago we went to 500,000 now we're going to move to a million dollars again um not a big deal and very common in industry standard um and we're getting near the end already just um some of the things so what have we done and you you've asked questions and uh the board of finance and city counselors some of the things that we can do whether within property or the other lines to save some money so since we met a year ago on this topic um we actually eliminated we've had a professional liability policy that I started in 1994 um and knock on wood we've never used it's actually for the engineering department um but we joined with the city as they're um and these a lot of acronyms but directors and officers that protects you right here as commissioners public officials and the professional liability coverage is included under travelers under one policy so we lowered our fiscal year 22 budget by a little over 50,000 by doing that so that's good um Hickok and Borman is exploring um we are with the city on workers comp and auto through travelers and so they're talking or looking at ways to maybe separate without harming either the city or BD uh with mutual savings on that on those lines um in addition combining with the city obviously the city has different risks than us again our the McNeil station being a generating plant has unique risks and that's what makes it so expensive um combining with the city on a property policy to meet what they call minimum premium for instance Zurich which is interested and maybe writing the whole thing or Chubb excuse me has a $750,000 minimum premium so we're getting close to that so we combine with the city that may be some savings on there combining with the city on their cyber liability policy for the first time ever again if you know anything about captives it's pretty unique Vermont has been the leader if you go back to Governor Dean we're third in the world as far as writing captives specifically because from us a captive insurance association via VCIA we're third in the world yes can I interrupt for a sec yes please the combining with the city on their cyber liability policy I mean I cyber security seems to me I mean it's important for the city clearly but for an electric utility I could imagine there are other considerations does the cyber liability policy that the city has is that robust enough for an electric utility great question so I haven't seen their policy we got it in the ground floor many years ago so our cyber is actually significantly low and that was a huge huge quite frankly number one for utilities across United States this year what they were paying they were seeing enormous rates when they were lucky enough to get a policy so we are still at that level I suspect next year that's not going to be the way case and so without seeing the policy I don't know but because we share the same agent great confidence that whatever policy if we do this and these are just ifs it would protect both at the same level if not higher at a lower price I mean we're not going to do it if it's not beneficial to our ratepayers so yeah I would just say that that's a pretty critical piece to ensure that we're we're keeping that as robust as possible but yeah it's huge it's yeah it's unbelievable okay next last bullet here exploring the possibility of joint capital like I mentioned FM global and energy insurance mutuals have shown some interest reaching out to our agent to combine and I won't name them some fairly big local and state transmission distribution utilities so that's an interesting captives is a very unique field there are some start-up costs and legal issues and that stuff but it's something in a hard market that we should be looking into and they're going to and then the last bullet here just we have had a host of engineering recommendations through these carriers that wanted to see get done and and really kudos to Darren and Maneer and all the staff down in McNeil the number one thing we that it actually got delivered on a Sunday and was being installed at the secondary boiler feed pump down at McNeil and that had a huge impact on keeping our premiums down or being reduced so we've knocked off quite a few of those recommendations here so finally the impact on the budget again the as you know we have a fiscal year budget from July to June this budget which we create every January we had budgeted 663318 and that's a combination of will because of the line renewals renews on November 20th it's five months at the current premium and then in seven months at whatever we project so again if we come in at the knot to exceed 676755 it would be a zero percent change in our budget and a five percent increase over the the expiring premium of 654506 so I'll pause there I know there's a slew of backup information of charts and I could walk you through that but I see the time but answer any questions you don't have if not the lauriably put the resolution at the bottom motion at the very bottom of this commissioners any questions or comments bob again uh deja vu right I mean we kind of gone through this before uh I guess we were freaked out at the first time but we don't have any options really do we no yeah bob yes it's um it seems strange to feel comfortable that we're in the range of the mid 600 thousands uh when we were just in the mid 200s just a couple years ago well we'll never see that again in my lifetime but um and hickok more and pointed out all the reasons there's actually five of them typically and again when they're negotiating these carriers but um I'll just redo that brief but says due to changes in as insurers insurers excuse me continue to fund for losses due to climate change that's one increase in material cost due to covid two related supply chain issues and traditional types of claims experience and reinsurance costs so that's when the insurance reaches what they call their stop stop loss stop gap and then they try to peel off or roll off some of their premium to another company the reinsurers worldwide so all those things together we're in it's more than a hard market it's you know we're just doing our best to hang on and with some of these changes we're hoping to see levels stay flat or maybe hopefully even this year go down a little bit but I don't think we'll be down in the 200 thousands when I first came we had a three year policy at $68,000 a year so you can see the change in 28 years what I meant by my question was you don't need to explain it because we heard that from you previously and we were freaked out at that time but now we're living with it yes yeah well also the increase from 2018 to 2019 was you know that was a from just over 200,000 to just under 600,000 compared to you know that increase is pretty extreme yeah that was a sticker shock for sure and in fairness to Hickok and Bourbon that came with a 30 day notice so if we'd had a year to do we might have been able to scram a little quicker but they did all they could in their power to keep that because we didn't have the four players that we see now are really it there's a couple others that are someone interested but they're either not writing it or biomass plants are outside their realm so any other questions okay I'm scrolling down here yep would someone like to make a motion there is I can I make a motion to recommend to the city council that Darren Springer BED general manager or his designee is authorized to review renew BED's property BNM insurance for the period of 11 2021 through 11 2022 with a not to exceed premium of 676,755 dollars as outlined in this memo subject to review and approval by the city attorney's office. Second. Murray. Did I get a second did I get a second from Gabrielle. Well I gave one too. Yeah it was from Bob. Okay I'll give it to Bob. Commissioner Herndy. Hi. Commissioner Moody. Hi. Commissioner Stebbins. Hi. Commissioner Whitaker. Hi. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thanks Paul. So we are on the second to last agenda item this is a market update this is a discussion with James Gibbons and good to hear since we're all reading interesting things about what's going to go on with energy costs. Thank you I'm going to try to share my screen as a full page you know slideshow. If that doesn't work I will flee that option and select an alternate option as quickly as I can. So did that work? No. Did that work? Yes. Excellent. So this is a quick like you say there's been a lot of discussion in the news about prices for energy this winter. I think with that in mind it makes sense for us to tell you a little bit about what we're seeing and a little bit about you know what that might mean to be ED. I want to offer a quick just a sort of a general definition if I may just for those of you who may not be familiar with this you'll see in a couple of places in this presentation the term Henry Hub which is a pricing point for natural gas down in the in the Texas Gulf area and you'll see Algonquin referenced and Algonquin is the pipeline that delivers into Massachusetts. Now Algonquin is the pipeline that most of the generators in New England use to access natural gas as a fuel. So I just offer those the difference between those two locations can be significant particularly in the winter when there's a limitation on the pipeline to transmit the gas up to New England. So the the difference between those two things is either you can think of it as basis differential or transportation costs to move the gas from the Henry Hub up to New England and everything worked there we go. So we're looking at the first time in 12 years that we're entering winter with gas prices above five dollars and MMB MMBTU which is a million BTU so you know we've we've had a very long and this by the way is priced at the Henry Hub this is not priced in New England we've had a long time of relatively cheap gas prices and we are now seeing them tick up for the first time they're ticking up both at the Henry Hub and even more so delivered to New England but it's not something that's happened for a while so that's why I think you're hearing a lot more about it. The highest price is going into winter in 12 years this is a price of what the cost for peak energy for the month of January 2022 has been trading at since uh since actually late 2020. So we're now up to the point where we're trading for you know wholesale energy at 16 cents that's wholesale energy at prices very very close to our retail rates for residential and commercial customers. Now Burlington is not going to be exposed to that directly because we have contracts that protect us but that's again that's the magnitude of the run-up and how fast it's accelerated this year. You really can see that since May you've had a just a drastic increase in those prices. The higher gas prices in New England drive the higher electric prices in New England. So Mass Hub on peak is the cost of electric energy and Algonquin is the cost of natural gas delivered to New England and you can see how closely correlated they are. They are essentially 90% correlated. The reason is New England relies very heavily on natural gas generation and ever more so all the time. The prices as as natural gas prices go so go electric prices in New England so just sort of that's when you hear me talking about natural gas you'll hear me talking about electricity prices in a lot of ways they're interchangeable so don't be surprised if I'm talking about gas and electricity in near proximity to each other. The prices have also risen in the outer years so right now the most price effect we've seen again this back to the Henry Hub is for the next year to two years. It's pulled up the outer years but nowhere near as much. So right now you know there is an expectation that some of the price increases we're seeing right now will moderate over time. This is the same graph but I've just added a line showing you when BED would need to be considering its next major energy purchase. So right now the front end of that curve is not that problematic for us and the back end of that curve where we would be needing to start to purchase power again is not moved nearly as much. So if we find ourselves looking to do a replacement for power we're not likely to be looking at these prices that we're seeing today unless they continue for foreseeable you know into that period of time. So again right now we're not looking to buy power at these prices. Well done. So far so good so far so good as they say Now this is the New England Algonquin prices so you can see how much difference.  Henry Hub is $6 peaking in the winter. New England is peaking at $19 in the winter. The difference is the concerns about transporting gas to New England. If there is an extended cold spell the first draw on the gas goes to the heating customers. The generators do not sign up for firm gas delivery. The generators typically take spot gas delivery and so they start having to compete with heating customers or with each other for the last little bit of gas transmission when the weather gets very cold. Again though even the New England effect is dampening as you look further forward and again this shows you the line at which point you know we would be doing our next major energy replacement would be starting in January of 2026 so right now we're not looking to buy any power in any quantities at these prices. So previously there have been mitigating factors. We've had some mild winters which have meant that the prices were lower. There have been a lot of relatively large number of natural gas, liquid natural gas imports into the Everett terminal in Boston Harbor which have provided a relief to the transmission pipeline constraints. If you can't bring it up by pipeline another option is to bring it into New England by liquid natural gas carrier and put it in storage in the Boston area then you're not using the Trent Pipelines up from the Gulf Coast. And lastly I'm not sure how much of a fact this has had in New England though New England had one coal plant the Mount Tom coal plant. Coal used to provide protection against natural gas prices. At a certain point if natural gas prices got high enough coal started running more and acted sort of as a cap on how bad the natural gas prices could get but I'll talk about that in just a bit more detail in a second. So this is a global issue prices are high everywhere they're particularly high in Europe and Asia demand is rebounded in large part from COVID but the supply is not and New England's supply is constrained by pipelines and LNG imports. The problem with the LNG imports is we're starting to compete in a global market to get that fuel into Everett. So this is the spot forward Asian and European liquid natural gas prices for deliveries to those areas. You can see how much they're willing to pay for an MMB to you if New England is I'm going to flip back quickly forward quickly. New England's $19 are you going to deliver your natural gas to New England at $19 are you going to deliver your natural gas to Europe or Asia you know at these higher prices? So what we have seen is that generally the LNG receipts at the Everett mass port have been dropping. As you fall back onto the pipeline you start seeing more price volatility. So this is the daily natural gas deliveries that are being sent to US export plants. So we're exporting more and more of our natural gas so that global competition has become an increasing problem. There are a couple of pipelines that are considered that may come online that would relieve some of the constraints in New England. They are the MVP, don't ask me what exactly that stands for, and the regional energy access pipeline. Those would help relieve the current constraints. Right now the gas demand is in excess of the transmission pipeline for part of the year and that's causing this problem. But you know some pipeline relief is possible but if we keep relying on natural gas generation and we keep electrifying loads that won't last very long either. This is just a quick note which is as prices for natural gas went up how much did the the demand for gas go down? And the answer is it used to go down pretty sharply. There was a strong correlation as price went up you started to have things like coal plants come online and start reducing the demand for gas. We're not seeing that this year. So it may be that some of those historical protections are not there to drive this price down. A couple of potential actions for BED. Phil McNeil with Wood for the Winter. We are well on the way to doing that. We have planned for an operation essentially around the clock from December to March to maximize our output. You have to keep in mind that BED is generally got excess energy in the winter periods. Not only are we energy long annually but we are energy long in the winter too. So however we are energy long if and only if McNeil is operating because McNeil is such a large resource for us if McNeil is not operating we can go from energy long to energy short immediately. It's just a critical resource for electricians. We are considering the possibility of increasing oil storage at both the GT and McNeil. Problem is that the GT oil storage doesn't last that long. I mean you know it's days of runtime whereas the McNeil storage we're putting up is a winter's worth of runtime. So you know it's not we're not we have not taken any specific action on topping off the GT storage oil storage so other utilities are considering it. The other option would be to consider selling some of our excess energy and locking in revenues at these high prices extra energy and that's we've been trying to do that but it's proving difficult because we can only sell if McNeil is operating otherwise we go short. So the long and the sort of the summary of all of this is these prices do not represent a problem to BED. At this point in time as long as McNeil is operating they actually represent something more like an opportunity. Our excess energy would be valued at these very high prices and would serve as a essentially a value stream or a revenue stream that would offset other costs. There are a lot of caveats on that. It depends upon you know for example if during the highest price time of the winter McNeil happened to be down you know that would be a bad sequence of events but all things being equal the prices you're hearing about are not posing any problem for BED if our assets perform as expected or even close to as expected we will not see an adverse effect from this winter we'll see a beneficial effect from this winter. So is one potential exception I don't know why I have it echo but potential exception to that would be if I mean we have a problem with the people in Burlington not paying their electric bills right so if people have more pressure on their their bills that could that potentially be a liability for BED if people are struggling to now not only to pay electric but if they're they got to choose between heat you know there's some potential bad choices that could have an impact on the balance sheet. The impact would be primarily natural gas for heating and oil and I'm not sure where VGS stands on their hedging Darren maybe you know I mean most of the customers under VGS are not served under a spot price contract I don't believe so you know VGS some of them are though some are what are called interruptible customers those customers may see a very big impact but I don't know that that's the vast majority of the residential customers I suspect they will see relatively little shock from this but that is a guess. Yeah I was I was going to agree for the most part with that I think given that they run under a regulated model it's not the expectation that those costs would be immediately passed on in their full form to residential or even smaller commercial customers but certainly if this trend happens and then continues for the longer run there would be an impact I think on on you know heating customers in Burlington. You would you would essentially have that vertical line which is when does the next time VGS need to make a major purchase and if that line is sooner than our line for example you could see that effect at some point does that follow they take the same kind of actions we take the hedge they buy contracts ahead of time and things like that but I don't know if their durations are one year two years five years ten years you know some of our power contracts are 25 years some of them are even a little bit longer than that so I'm saying I don't know when they next have a major purchase coming up and how that compares to the price of natural gas in New England and the last thing I'll mention too is of course that VGS does not buy from the Algonquin pipeline VGS buys from the uroquois pipeline which comes out of Canada and none of the data shown here is for the uroquois pipeline. Okay that's helpful other questions but but again you know so the the message is if things behave or perform as we expect them to perform we will not should not see a problem from this and again may see a benefit hmm interesting times. We really need coordinated and flexible demand management. Lots of it. Other questions from commissioners? You're on mute commissioner Herndon. Still on mute. There you go. Okay so we're good for several years because we did the right thing and because we're pushing in the direction of renewable energy. And because we've built into our power supply some buffer in terms of extra energy to protect us against years with low intermittent renewable production and things like that. So a number of different decisions have all you know basically combined to putting us in this net energy position that's actually favorable for this winter as long as the resources produce. Okay so looking ahead to 2026 even if they are still burning gas we would like to do what we did in 2026 uh three years ago. I guess it doesn't make too much sense to worry about or to speculate on what that would look like in 2026. But I'll ask it anyway what are the odds that we can do it again? Well we can extend contracts we can renew contracts we can make new contracts. Even if those contracts are with renewable resources what I think my message would be is that you know we can start thinking about what we want to do while the impact has not hit the years where we need it. We can start thinking about that today and I know that Darren is I think planning strategic meeting you know this may be one of the topics but you know we could start taking action now and absorb this kind of an increase or we can wait and see if this kind of increase extends. So you know and if this winter comes in mild and the price is collapse you might see that get drawn down again too. You know again if we if the winter is a mild winter and you and the sellers of energy start seeing these prices not materialized that tends to pull the markets down pretty quickly too. Okay and the reason that somebody that has cheap energy wants to sell it at a higher price is because they can. And I presume that Hydro-Quebec is not immune to the same temptations. No and you know so really what you find yourself talking to you you're talking with a counter party especially if you're talking about a contract in the shorter term window and shorter would be like you know three years maybe five years maybe seven years where these market energy prices are known. Yes then you're really they're saying well I think I'll get this from the wholesale market even if I don't sell it to you. Where you have a chance to really negotiate maybe different things is if you're doing like a 20 year contract that will get a generating plant constructed and nobody knows what the market's going to be like in 20 years and there's a lot of uncertainty then you might see something that's based on a cost plus a reasonable rate of return for the developer type of thing. But but if you're trading in the window where the wholesale energy markets prices are traded everyone's going to look to them as part of the negotiation and that includes HQ. Thanks. Any other questions or should I stop sharing my screen? Not for me. I appreciate this update because I I mean I had kind of assumed only because in the past you've said many times that we're you know we're brilliant and electric because of our how we've gone about things are you know more responsive to wreck price changes compared to you know New England gas priced prices so I'd assumed we were sort of in this way but it's helpful to see you know the timeline that it's sort of you know it's it's not just six months out it's a few years. Right and if we were what I would describe as perfectly hedged meaning every hour we had just the right amount of energy from a non fossil fuel resource natural gas prices would be kind of irrelevant to the extent that we have excess sometimes short sometimes they're still relevant but they're not one-to-one relevant. And you know again we're we're we're hedged we are well hedged we are actually a little bit excess and that was done with reason as well so. Thank you James. I would like to add by the way I you may have noticed the bottom corner of these slides say next era energy rather next era had done the presentation on this topic that I was invited to and rather than make us recreate some of our own slides to show the same things next era very kindly allowed us to use these slides to save time and I appreciate that them doing that. So again my my folks can do these graphs but we've just seen the exact same graphs and it seemed really really silly to just redo them all so. Thanks for clarifying because I was like huh and it was done with their approval and much appreciated by me. Great thanks. So last on the agenda is the commissioner's opportunity to provide any last-minute comments before our next meeting in a month. I'm trying wait a minute this actually has to do with the question that I asked last time in which Chris Burns answered very well. When I read those great reports about what efficiency measures are being made and I'm still asking myself every time are we making them more efficient in the burning of gas or in the use of electricity. So I'm proposing that when those little paragraphs are written about who's doing what that it be as clear as it can be about which kind of energy is involved. The answer is not always clear necessarily but it would just be helpful to me. Should I explain again what I'm talking about? I think I understand it. Yeah I was going to say Mike Canerick's on on the call and can share that feedback with Chris. I think in a number of cases when we're going into a building it's going to be in tandem with Vermont gas and so there's likely going to be an efficiency effort from BED and an efficiency effort from Vermont gas. That being said as I think you're all very well familiar with with the new renewable heating ordinance there's going to be a number of buildings that we know are coming that are going to be looking to have a primary heating system that may be electric and in that case some of the other improvements to the building relative to weatherization things that might traditionally be in Vermont gas's court would be in ours and so this may be even more relevant going forward than it's been in the past. When you're at the cocktail party and somebody says okay you're saving energy what kind? Mike you can share that with Chris. Yeah and if we wanted to Commissioner Heron Dean would it be amenable to you to set up a quick call because I wouldn't want your request to get lost in translation at all and it may be helpful. Are you game for that? Sure. Great thanks. Any other comments from commissioners? Thank you Mike. Okay hearing none if someone would like to make a motion to adjourn. So moved. Second. Second. Hi Bob. Commissioner Heron Dean. Hi. Commissioner Moody. Hi. Commissioner Stevens. Hi. Commissioner Whitaker. Hi. Thank you we adjourned at 7.02. Thanks everybody. Thank you. Thank you.


first episode of the state of the state of Hawaii. We are going to be talking about ThinkTech going to 3.0 and we have ThinkTech's CEO here to help us with this discussion. So welcome Jay Fiedel, the CEO of ThinkTech. No Stephanie, Stephanie Dalton, Stephanie, so nice to see you here. So important. You guys don't know this, but I know Stephanie since 1965. We were both 12 years old, wasn't it? Oh, I thought we were kindergarten then, and then on the jungle gym. Yes, it's been a while. So Jay, you're a good friend. I'll know. Absolutely. Yeah, so it's been really good to see you again and to now work a little bit together. We haven't worked that hard together over the years, been mostly play, but this is a place to discuss ThinkTech Hawaii's upgrade. And I know that the upgrade is aligned with the mission statement for ThinkTech, which is to be a leading digital media platform. But I don't really know exactly what that means, how it works, what you had to do to get this here speedily over the holidays and assume that others may not know enough about it either. So you are the perfect person to bring us all to speak. I'm glad that you would have me on your show to discuss these things, because I think it's important that we make the public aware of what we're doing. So in the first roughly 10 years of our existence, ThinkTech was organized in the year 2000, 2001 like that. We had a talk show on white public radio 88.1 FM. Most of that decade, let's call that ThinkTech 1.0, where we had a weekly show called ThinkTech Hawaii Surprise. And we went to video in around 2010. And now we've had almost a decade in 2.0. That is our video experience. But we thought, well, let's go to 3.0 now. Let's go to one level beyond that. And what's the difference? We've had a green screen studio for several years now in Pioneer Plaza. And now we're in 1164 Bishop Street. That is the Finance Factors Center. And we've changed our technology. Instead of having a green screen, we have a big television as the television behind you, Stephanie. And that's our background. And we get great chroma key on that. We get great color on that.   So we can see your face. All of us can see your face directly, which we'll know more about you this way. I don't want to embarrass you, but gee whiz. I'd rather see you full face, Stephanie. It could also see me full face. I'm a remote guest. And I'm actually not far away, but I am remote. I'm on a laptop. And the laptop could be here in the Finance Factors Building. It could be in the Pioneer Building. It could be anywhere in the world, actually. And we do have shows. We've been doing remote shows for some time. We do have shows where we connect with people everywhere in the world. And we've connected with people in Europe, in India, in Japan, in China. There's very few continents we haven't touched already. And we do this with a laptop that somebody connects up to the internet. And with decent broadband, we can use our VMIX call technology, which is kind of like Skype, to reach them and have a conversation, the kind of conversation that you see right in front of you. Now, full face.  It's almost intimate, Jimmy. Well, very conversational. Comfortably conversational. I appreciate all those gains that you have made. And hopefully you've seen those already today in the broadcasting. But what about challenges and impediments in going through the upgrade to 3.4? What kinds of challenges did you have to face over the vacation when you worked so hard to make this happen? Oh, yeah. Well, we spent three hard weeks doing it. A number of us worked on it. And we had to move all the equipment that we've accumulated in Pioneer Plaza. We had to move that up here to 1164. And because it's the smaller space, we have a smaller space in 1164, more compact, more efficient. We had to get rid of some of the equipment that we haven't used, that we've accumulated but not used recently. So that meant we had to pick what we wanted. We had to deal with the items we didn't want and organize everything into a more compact space. Right now, after three weeks of wiring and computer settings and configurations and broadband settings and configurations and the like, we used dozens and dozens of software programs and probably a dozen computers to get this done. We had to set them all up. Now we've set them all up. And I'm here to tell you that we have achieved whatever we wanted, all the goals in terms of computer software and hardware. And it's working today. Today, our first day, back to the broadcast schedule, all the things, all the tasks we wanted to do, we have done. And that's really something because it was, you know, it was hard. It was seven days a week. But we somehow slid into home plate on this. Well, congratulations. That's really good news. And I think it's good news for the state of Hawaii and all of its islands. Is that correct? You're able to reach out to all of those places. Is that the case now? Yeah. Well, if we can reach Varanasi, India, which is near the Tibetan border, hopefully we can reach Maui. Although I'm not sure which one has the better broadband, if you want to ask. So the outreach is major. That's very far away, Jay. So we can actually connect now in intimate conversation, as you described it, with colleagues or experts at those venues. Is that, that's the case? China? Yeah, yeah. Okay. The world is flat. The world is flat and it's a smaller place. And the national news should mean more to us in Hawaii than it did before. And certainly other things that are happening international should mean more to us. And, you know, the media refills should follow those things. Of course, you need to have local news, but you also need to have national and international news. And this new technology that we're using, this 3.0 technology actually lets us expand our platform to reach people everywhere. So in a time when we need to go national, where we need to talk to, as you call them, experts and newsmakers everywhere, including people we don't know yet, you know, including people we find, we find the newspapers we find on the internet, and we just call them up and include them, and we get news just like a network would. So this is the time when citizen journalism can expand. And with this technology, we think our platform will expand to cover timely, topical subjects in a very rapidly changing world, a difficult world, if you will, to inform not only the people of Hawaii, but anyone who listens to us, which is actually global too. Because we, you know, we broadcast on the stream. We're on the internet through our website, thinktechway.com. That's our, that's our television box, so to speak. And it can be viewed anywhere in the world. Well, so it's like just great. Yeah, it sounds like thinktech is, is accomplishing a 3.0 platform. But what about all these citizen journalists out there? Is that one area of impedimentia that might need some extra attention? In other words, is everyone receptive to this when they're invited? And when they're invited, can they figure out how to do it with their own equipment? I mean, not only on the mainland, but what about more distant than that? I mean, seriously, getting to a person in China or India or Australia, what, what do you expect to find out when that? Well, Okay, first, if citizen journalism starts out with you, Stephanie, you are the journalist.    You figure your viewers want to know about something, in this case, 3.0, because I think 3.0 is newsworthy. And then you call on people who can answer your questions, like me. And I could be here or anywhere. And all I need really is a laptop computer, which has a camera. And a mic, internal mic, a decent broadband and a Chrome browser. That's really all I need, wherever I am in the world. And then you can take that, you can talk to me like you are now. And our staff can broadcast it without special technology anywhere in the world. And we can do, you know, serious journalism that way. We have something like 50 hosts, they cover various walks of life and areas of coverage. And so in the years to come, under 3.0, we want to have our hosts be, you know, not only citizen journalists, but serious citizen journalists. So they can read the paper, they can get ahead of the curve, they can find out what's important, what's happening. And they can find guests and experts, as you said, anywhere and everywhere will help them and us understand that subject. That's what we're about. Well, it sounds like the costs may be of interest here. So have you found that 3.0 has, or 3.0, has that reduced or increased your budget needs? Or has it made it more efficient? I mean, with everybody contributing equipment, but still what about here at ThinkTech itself? Well, our underwriters keep us in busy, keep us in business.   We're always broadcasting something. So if you looked at us at two o'clock in the morning, we're broadcasting something. So that costs money. All our software hardware costs money. Now in terms of moving to 3.0, we save money on on space paying less rent. We save money to some extent on staff. And of course, we had to we had to renew our equipment. We had to go current, get up to the edge of the envelope. We had to get some new stuff. That costs plenty of money. And thankfully, we're through that now mostly. And we've got it all in place. So the answer to your question is, in some ways, we're going to save money in 3.0. In other ways, it's going to cost us more money in 3.0. Bottom line is we will be more efficient. As you say, we'll have greater reach. Our content will be better. Quality of our journalism will be better in 3.0. So you mix it all together was certainly worthwhile the effort. And it is worthwhile the effort. And it will increasingly be worth the effort going forward. You know, we say in think tech, we say every day better. We mean it every day is better than yesterday. And then we've been building it that way for almost 20 years. I think too, as you described the 1.0 platform, then moving to the 2.0. Now we're at the 3.0. So this is all probably geometrically increasing the needs to produce the program. So with your underwriters, is there anything in particular you think they should know about the demands on your resources as the work of technology continues to produce more and more ways to go about doing it better? Well, we remain ambitious. And ambitious means we want to do more better, every day better. And so we still need our underwriters to help us. We need more underwriters if we can find them locally or nationally. And we have some of both. We have a number of local underwriters. We greatly appreciate their support. And we have some national underwriters as well. All that considered, you know, it's in a good balance right now. But I look forward to expanding our operations, expanding our reach, expanding our coverage, and also expanding our budget. But that to expand our budget requires additional contributions, mostly from underwriters. Now we also have twice a year, we do a fundraiser. We do an on think tech. We've done it a couple of times in the past 2019. And it's been successful, we raise money, both in the spring and the fall, using our systems and asking people in our programs, asking people if they would contribute. Of course, the amount they contribute is a lot less than our corporate underwriters, but it really helps us. It helps us rough out the edges, smooth out the edges. It helps us, you know, keep going.  You have to get more to pay the costs of doing more. You don't make it up in volume. You have to seek additional funding for volume. Right. Well, how does all of this 3.0 and underwriter support and how does this affect your aspirations for this business operation, this entity? Really, where are you going? What would you like to go do? What is the fantasy? Yeah, we have bi-annual, I think that's semi-annual corporate meetings, director meetings, and the management, mostly Carol Monalie and me, she's executive vice president. We're on the same page about moving the needle ahead of being better and more and, you know, not only continuing our efforts, but improving our efforts. And I think everybody's on the same page to do that. Now, where does that go? Where does it take us? Well, you know, in a time, as I mentioned, where the news comes faster, where a lot of news media in this country are going out of business, you know, thousands of journalists are leaving journalism or losing their jobs. Media is consolidating and in radio, that's a little scary because they're all consolidating on the conservative side. And same, same to a certain extent, you know, there's lots of consolidation in television. And there's only like, you know, three or four major newspapers in the country that are printing original news. So we like original news. And like Civil Beat, we like to go out there and try to get it. We like to talk to the people who are the news makers or who have, you know, personal involvement and knowledge of these news events. We'd like to take our cameras out into the field and talk to people, cover events, cover, you know, the episodes and issues that are going on in our community, talk to the community. But also talk to people overseas and in this country about the news that happens. And I think if you ask me, the one aspiration that I have that rides over everything else is, of course, the technology. You want the technology to be better and better. We believe that with a fairly modest budget, we can achieve production values that are really good and that can be distributed, disseminated around the world. And that's really a thrill. Imagine a small company in a small studio in Honolulu, Hawaii, thousands of miles from the mainland, from any big continent, we can do this. It's a statement about Hawaii.  But the other thing is, you know, we aspire to actually cover these national stories and these global stories with local news makers, local experts to show the world to demonstrate that Hawaii has the talent. We have the knowledge. We have the people. And that our platform can allow them to express themselves and show the world that Hawaii is a player. It's a player in science and technology. It's a player on climate change. It's a player on energy. It's a player on a number of social issues and social phenomenon in Hawaii. We have great advantages, and we can actually help the world by allowing them to understand our dynamic. So that's part of think there. We don't have enough broadcast of those facets of what's going on here in these islands. You know, you talk about reaching out and finding out what people want to hear about and what they'll join you in doing. But do you have, you do have feedback coming in all of the time about the programs. Can you give us a sense of what the feedback, how the feedback helps you develop think tank Hawaii? In other words, is there criticism that's constructive or you've got anger coming in or really good suggestions for how to improve and maybe expand the portfolio of topics or whatever? Once in a while, we do surveys among our constituents, our viewers, and ask them specific questions of what they like, what kind of subjects, the kind of coverage, what shows they like best, what hours they like to watch them. And that's always interesting. We also, as I said, we post everything on YouTube, and YouTube allows for comments, and we allow them, people in general, the viewers to make comments. And those comments are instructive. But I would have to say that in the world of the internet, where you can leave comments on an anonymous basis, really find out about humanity.  They'll tell you to change your technique this way or that way. They're trying to be helpful. They want better. And it's okay, we want that. And we abide by that. We listen to that, consider every comment. But I have to say that there are also people on the internet who leave comments anonymously on YouTube who are not quite in that category. They are incomprehensible. Sometimes they're very angry. Sometimes they reveal a huge level of ignorance. Sometimes they're abusive. And we have that too. We can't learn much from that, except we learn about humanity. We learn about the humanity that pops up on the internet. And that's what we have. That's the world. That's the world of the internet. Ever since the 90s, you know, this sort of thing has been developing around the world. And we are an internet company. We do have exposure locally, nationally, both as a video producer and publisher, and as somebody who gets comments. And so we're in that mix. We're in the waves, so to speak, on both ends of that. And so we are in touch. And we are in touch with that. We also have social media coming and going.  And we have comments coming in on social media. So all of this, it's a matter of being connected, but also realizing that the connection has to be moderated. That the connection has to be, you have to take some of it anyway with a grain of salt. Well, if you can figure out how to handle and manage that incoming and be able to sift it for what's useful to you, that that's quite an accomplishment. I mean, sounds like that you're learning to do that and doing it. My other question had to do with how do you decide on the content of the shows and the episodes? Do you look to that feedback? Perhaps it's coming some in there? Or is it a matter of the news media paying attention to it and picking up and following them? Or do you try to lead that? So what what ways do you think about expanding your portfolio of content? That's a great question, Stephanie. Thank you for that question. Well, you know, there are some media that are interested in weather sports, crime and accidents. And that's not us. We're probably not going to cover much of that at all. We're going to end.  Because, you know, the reality is, a lot of people in the community, this community and many other communities, their, their education stopped in school or in high school or college. And they didn't do anything much after that.  They get a lot of it. They get a lot of their daily intellectual material from television, from network television. And that's, you know, in our view, we want to supplement that. We want to give them things that we think they ought to know about. We want to give them a view of the community, a view of life on this planet that we think they ought to know about. And that is not necessarily, you can understand, that's not necessarily what they would like to, they think they would like to know about. We want to take them to another level. We want to make them think further. I'm wearing my math pin. M-A-T-H, you know, that's what Andrew Yang wears when he goes to these debates. I'm not necessarily supporting Andrew Yang. I just love my math pin. And math does not stand for mathematics. Math stands for make America think harder. That's what we want to do. We want to make America think harder. So we're going to offer them things we think they should know about. And that's, you know, the, the gratification for us, that's our aspiration. That's where we want to go, more and more. So it's not just news, it's news that takes them to another level, that educates them about things that they should know. Yeah, I think that you mentioned supplement. I think that's important too, because it looks like from some of the data, and I can't cite the source at this moment, but I can give it if anybody's curious, but that there is data that shows the young people, the younger people, are preferring now to get their information from reading about it. So, you know, we've moved over to the visual mode and having it come across television and, and perhaps in, in this, but now it looks like the, the young people are, are looking to the written information again because of the issue of time. And so the analysis was that people want to be able to control their time and get the information at the rate they would like to do so. And when you have the media to deal with or to take it off the internet or watch a movie, whatever you've still got, that time you have to get through, you are not controlling the amount of time that it takes you to get the information you have to go with the time that the item is presented in. So if, if that is a trend, I mean that's something that builds up your supplemental service, if not, and not thinking about it in other ways. That's another great question, Stephanie. Thank you for that. You know, when Ben Franklin walked out of Liberty Hall in Philadelphia and whatever it was, 1817, 1889, I guess, when they were writing the Constitution, they were developing a new form of government, a woman stopped it and said, Dr. Franklin, Dr. Franklin, what kind of a government are we going to have? Because it was a big secrecy. And he said, we're going to have a republic, madam, comma, if you can keep it. And so that, that really tells us the whole story about the obligations of the citizen, the obligations of the citizen to participate and to be, to be educated, to educate himself or herself about what is going on in the community and to participate in the civil process. And unfortunately, I think in recent years, we haven't done that as much as we should have. Maybe that's an educational failure. I hope you cover that on your show going forward. You know, do we have good citizens in the country or have we slipped and slipped down the slope on that? We need to have, we need to have educated citizens who care about it, who vote about it, and who educate themselves. So I think it's, it's critical for, in this country, for us to all be good citizens. And that means we have, we have to stay educated on the news of the day and the sea changes of the day to use that term. Okay. And so the other thing is, you were asking about what we want to do in terms of those, those things. And the answer is we want, we want to make sure that everyone is a good citizen. We want to make sure that they all follow the news. You spoke of the speed at which our world moves. It's obviously moving faster than it ever did in the world, largely because of the amount of information that's thrown at us and the disinformation that's thrown at us. And we all have an obligation as citizens to make sure we don't read trash, to make sure we use our critical skills, critical thinking skills to discard, disregard the bad information, the disinformation, those who would, those who would, you know, manipulate the public, the demographs, the demography in our country to divide us. So we all have to be on guard about that. It's a, it's a duty of the citizen. And that's where we want to go. So if you open up Twitter, and Twitter has an outrageous article right there in the top, you say to yourself, this is impossible. This is not really happening. This is suckering me again. You have a duty to use your brains and say, no, I'm not going to listen to that. I'm going to go to other sources before I believe it. So you have to have multiple sources.  Really important, Jay, that way of thinking about it and encouraging people to find out what is their strong, their strength for getting at the information they need. You want it from the newspaper, you want it from the mags, or you want it from social media or from something, an entity like this, this kind of service is just so important to be in that potpourri of options. People need to learn how to use them well so they are constructive and informed citizens. I think that we, we have discussed a lot about how the, the think tech is going to accomplish its aspirations and to be a leading digital media platform for Hawaii and other places that you want to reach. And I think there's much more to discuss on this and to bring in other perspectives on how it is consumed by the public. And maybe there's more of that available in the data of the feedback, which is, is a, is very rough. But I think that think, think tank will have accomplishments and will be making the public more aware as it intends to do and, and brings these citizens into the, the, the responsibilities that they have to help us keep our democracy or republic as Ben Franklin was addressing. So I thank you so much, Jay, for being so informative and sharing out of your background, your wealth of knowledge. I know we could go on and on and maybe we will again. So, I look forward to it and thank you. Thank you, Stephanie. Enjoy the talk to you. This has been really interesting. Thank you.


The emo state governor, Hopo Zadimah, has condoned with families of slain soldiers at the 34 artillery brigade Nigerian Army of Binze. The governor said this when he visited the brigade as part of activities marking the 2021 Nigerian Army Day celebration. This is contained in a statement by the brigade's public relations officer Babatunde Zuberu in Oweri on Friday. Zuberu said the slain soldiers lost their lives during a series of attacks by suspected members of the indigenous people of Biafra and the eastern security network. Zadimah commended the soldiers, officers and men of the brigade for their sacrifices in ensuring peace in the state, describing the soldiers as national heroes. Hello, hope you enjoyed the news. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.