Hi, I'm Tony Royceman, the chairman of the Utility Commission, and probably already another member, Sarah, and we're just delighted to see you all here. And you've talked to us about anything except something that's pending. As you know, we can't discuss any of those items. You should know that before I had this job, I was the president of the Hanover Consumer Co-op. So I'm a co-op believer. So you understand some of us. You know what capital credits are. We have slide just on that. That's right. That's right. I know your problems. Anyway, the purpose of this is for you to give us insights into things that you would like us to know about, how you operate, how that interfaces with how we operate things that we're doing that you think we could do in ways that would be more helpful to you, and if there are any things that we're doing that you like. And also, I see observations about things that are happening newly that we may not even be aware of that are actually good news or difficult news. Particularly from a co-op perspective. You're grouped together because you're both co-ops. Is there something in the co-op world that we should know about? Like, you found a new way to deliver broadband to, you know, it's the craze across the nation or something. Very co-op oriented. So with that, we probably should go around the room with introductions. Yeah, sure. I'm Tom Nower with the PUC. I'm Rebecca Town currently in Vermont Gas and soon to be in Vermont. We're glad you could join us. Thank you. Well, we're delighted to have you. I'm Vicki Brown. I'm General Counsel and interim CEO for just two more weeks before I hand that on to Rebecca. I'm Mike Brasov, the CFO for Vermont Electric. I'm Andrea Cohn. I do government affairs and member relations for Vermont Electric. I'm Richard Rubin. I'm a board member at WET. I'm Patty Richards. I'm the general manager at Washington Electric Board. I'm Roger Fox, Vice President of the Board and a rare opportunity to upstage my good colleagues here in your very burnt state living callous. And I'm President of the Board. And I'm Steve Knowlton. I'm also a board member of Washington Electric. Also my neighbor. So we'll go in the back. I'm Kyle Landis-Marinello, General Counsel at the Commission. I'm Victor Veve, Director of Development for Green Lantern. And Bishop. I'm also with the Commission staff. We're being filmed. Okay. I'm trying to smile. So who'd like to start? We would have watched her like to co-op. Just to apologize. I'm going to have to leave about a quarter after 11 because I've got a wedding in New York City. I just wanted to hand these out one for each of you. This is our newest co-op current. I don't know if you guys did this at home. I get it at home, but we also get it sent to the office as well. Yes. Okay. I thought I had one more, but you get one there, Steve. I get one at home. There you go. I've got it. Okay. I mean, I handed that out because of what we're doing, but it also has a dialogue between Patty and I about the co-op difference and this particular months issue. I've been a co-op member for almost five decades, as has Roger and Richie. Our board, we have nine people on our board. The age range is from 35 to 75. It's a wide, everybody has to be a member, obviously. We have a co-op board to get elected. It ranges. We have a farmer. We have a retired post-office person. We have a former Senate Senator and former head of the Senate Finance Committee. We have another lustrous attorney down at the end of the table. We have a couple of former professors. We have a consultant for small businesses and co-ops. It's a diverse group of people. We've all been pretty committed. I think I want to just briefly mention about the co-op difference. Our co-op has gone through a lot of changes since the 70s, and it's been driven by our members. After the oil embargo, 73, a number of us got involved in our co-op because we wanted to see the direction change. We were pushing for more energy efficiency and conservation in the 70s in our co-op. In the 80s, we were pushing for us to get out of nuclear power. Our co-op did not go through bankruptcy as our sister co-op and our new Hampshire co-op did, but we were instrumental in getting the lawsuit to go to the Supreme Court, which they invalidated the municipal and co-op contracts through Mwec in order because they said boards could not identify, could not cause future boards to enter into black hole contracts. In 1990, when the majority of the board changed, we were instrumental in starting the first energy efficiency and conservation program in the United States, working with the people, Blair Hamilton, best sacks, including fuel switching off of electric heat, because many of our members had that and it was sold as too cheap to a meter. In 2000, we got out of Yankee. We were the first and only electric utility in the state to actually call for the shutdown of Yankee and not a renewal of the contract. We built the Coventry landfill to electric, methane to electric plant because we wanted our portfolio not only to be reliable and economic and close to home, but we wanted to end up with a renewable portfolio. We were the first utility in the state and I think possibly one of the first in the country unless they were getting hydro power out west could be 100% renewable. We've been committed to trying to lower our carbon footprint for almost three decades. So a lot of the goals that have been passed in legislation through the legislature, we were already there and that's why we do have exemptions and some things. And we think it's important as a democratically controlled co-op for you to recognize that we are different. We've been a leader, we've been a yardstick in measuring against both green mount power and CB central Vermont public service over decades. Even though the IOU in the state has come more to the consumer concentric model than they were before, there's still a profit-motivated utility. We return our profits, Tony, as you know, back to our members and we've given $6.7 million back to our members in capital credit returns. We started that program in 1998. We hold public meetings, not only our annual meeting but community meetings. We had a meeting on Wednesday night to talk about our potential rate design, redesign to get members in port. It's not something we're required to do because it comes before you. You'll have your public hearings, but it makes a difference for us to communicate and hear from our members. Our board, our members, we all have to, we have both high users and low users, we have to be thinking about what's best for our membership. So with that, I'll turn it over to Patty, but that co-op difference means a lot to us. Many of us on the board have dedicated decades to being involved in our co-op. I was involved in the beginning of the Hunter Mountain of the food co-op movement in the state. Actually, I was playing field at the time, as many of us have been. So we're very committed to the co-op way and the co-op difference. And I think you as regulators, hopefully can understand that and realize one decision doesn't fit all people. So I'll turn it over to Patty. Before you do that, let me ask you a couple of questions. Because this experience with the food co-op and Hanover, one of the issues that was frustrating to me was that's a 20,000 member co-op. In a highly contested election, which was at the time when I got elected, they had an employment problem that was very disturbing. 2,000 people voted. That was the highest total participation they've ever had. They have various rules about you have to go to the members. I think if they want to make an investment over a certain dollar number, they have to have member approval to do that. Participation rates very, very low. How are your participation rates? What percentage of your members are actively involved like when you get elected to the board? What percentage are you seeing voting in those elections? Okay, first of all, we have about 11,000 member owners. In the last few elections, it's gone from 8% to 9% to 10% of our membership. Let me just point out this, that in the hay day when we wanted to change the direction of the co-op, we had, because we were raising issues that were important, we had a third of our membership voting in a number of elections. And we were able to start in 1985, and I again reiterate, some of us got involved in 1974. In fact, one of our former board presidents who was part of our group, Bob O'Brien was one of the first, he helped get the handover co-op started when they first began. When people feel that we're not doing the right thing, they will show up. They have showed up, they will show up. I can't tell you how many personal conversations I have in our food co-op, and I'm a member of three co-ops, but Hunger Mountain Plainfield, where people will stop and say, I've read your co-op currents, we have a good readership. People know we're there. I have people, during storms, I have people calling at 12 o'clock at night, and then we say, that's what I'm here for. You know, luckily I don't put it bed late. Too early, I mean. So yes, we'd always like to have more presentations. When we've had our community meetings, we'll have 100, 150 people show up at a community dinner. That's a lot during busy time. And what sort of your activities that relate to us do the members have to get directly involved in? For instance, if you want to add a resource to your energy generation, or you want to implement a new energy efficiency program, or develop some renewable resource that you don't have developed, are those the kinds of questions that go to the membership, or are they left in the hands of the board? Well, some of them are left in the hands of the board, but Patty will address that. We do have a requirement for longer-term contracts or investments. And I just will say with a commentary, which was when we brought that to the Public Utility Commission, we also didn't extensive work with our membership in order to get support for that. But at that point, we were actually bringing in a proposal to build a plant that was actually higher than the market. Because at that point in 2003, the market was around three cents a kilowatt hour, we were projecting four and a half cents a kilowatt hour. It was above market, but our members supported us having renewable energy, stable long-term energy. We weren't looking for the buck. We were looking to make sure we had a long-term future. And we're driven, as you know, by just different motives. So I feel like when people want to, they're there. Patty, you can address that too further. I hope we can have this as a conversation versus just, you know, I don't want to, to the next hour, talk into a little louder. Well, we want to make sure. I'll see you get a chance too. Thank you. I have an alarm. I think we wanted some to be a conversation. Yeah, thank you. It's a very, it's covered a lot of ground. Obviously, you've raised a really big question about kind of that touch of membership and how much do they get involved with things. The big decisions we asked for both, the Sheffield wind contract, we had a very robust turnout to the Sheffield wind contract. Controversial issue. The Coventry plant, I don't know what the percentage was back then, but more people were voting back then because it's a big decision to make. Things like tier three programs. The membership is like tier three, what is that? They looked at this for the nine members to set the stage and direction of WAC. It really, it's the default to the nine members and directors to set policy in where we're going to go. One of the things that we differentiated ourselves for tier three this year, this past year, was weatherization. I think we're the only utility that said that's our bedrock in terms of the tier three program. And I want to personally thank you all for supporting our claim for savings through the capstone program. That's, to me, the tier three program really needs to rest with weatherization as we get through the murkiness of renewable energy standard and kind of come out the other side in a few years and get more efficient at it. It's important that we had the commission support in that ruling. So I just want to personally thank you for that order that you sent out about a month ago. Barry touched on the cooperative process in that the difference with a cooperative is there's two big differences. One is not only we're not for profit, but to the extent this differentiates us from the municipals is that if we do overcollect in any given year, we give all that money back. So there's a process with capital credits. It's an allocation process and then a retirement. I don't want to get into the weeds on this, but the essence of us making a financial mistake, so to speak, of overcollecting means the membership gets their money back in bigger capital credits. So there's no mistakes, so to speak. It's a self-correcting mechanism that I am used to obviously don't have that model and the municipals are not for profit, but they don't get the money back in the year that it's over-earned. It's set for use for a later date. So the cooperative difference in that structure leads us to ask you as a public utility commission to look at us as a little bit differently. As Barry said, the board sets the policy. They set the stage of what we do. They set the direction of what we do. To the extent they're out of touch with a membership, they're going to get voted off the board. I mean, that's the essence of kind of the coordination with our membership and the cooperative as an entity and as a utility. If the members really hate what we're doing, they are going to come out and vote and they're going to change the seats on the board and they'll all change and they'll fire me and have a whole different group. This is a democratic process. When you set regulation and make decisions as part of WAC, we want you to keep that in mind because that differentiates us from the other utility models we have in the state. Again, you guys chimed in for missing anything. I don't want to be a one-person talking show here. I think that's in terms of the co-op organizational structure that we really want to plant that seed. I also want to just touch a little bit about if you look across the nation in terms of the U.S. in terms of how electricity is delivered, we've had many different models between big companies running the show, retail choice spinning off, and you have many aggregation services coming into play. I look at WAC in the co-op model. I'm not speaking for VEC, but I'm looking at WAC as we're essentially lake and aggregator. I look at us as if people don't like the choices that we're making as a utility, they have a voice. Yes, we're still the monopoly utility, but they have the voice to come in and speak to the board of directors. They can come into any of our monthly meetings. Ultimately, people can rally and campaign to get on the board and change the direct policy and philosophy. But essentially, I look at it as the membership really has a voice in what we do. So to the extent that we're steering the ship wrong and we're going the wrong direction, we're going to hear that from members. We certainly, they're very vocal at annual meetings. We have people writing into us. They tell us when we're off base. In our newsletter, it sounds a little hokey that we're talking about a newsletter, but the surveys that we've put out, we have 75% readership of that newsletter. It's amazing what people read in the newsletter. I'll get calls and I'll ask the questions about something really deep in the newsletter in our Swerve report. I'm like, oh my God, someone's actually reading that? It's a great communication piece and one of the things that we're committed to is communicating to the membership. There's a lot of, we're trying to be completely transparent about everything that we do and get that message out to the community, the communities we serve. It's been a very effective tool for us. I'll say something about it. I'll breathe. I think it's your guys' responsibility to keep us healthy and the Munis and Burlington. We used to have CV and Green Mountain Power. I think as some of you may know, CV and Proctor Marvel elected Republican governors, they get together to decide who'd be the governor and that went on for 40 years. They control the political process and energy distribution in many other ways. We don't have that here. So as you make decisions, we should be, it should be really paramount that co-ops have to be healthy and supported by this board. And there are a number of ways to do that in terms of reducing the regulatory burden on us or being really more sensitive, I think, to the effect of the transfer of costs in net metering programs and how that drives our rates. So I just want to make a philosophical point about who we are. But what we do for the state as a whole, we don't try to elect governors and have big lobbying organizations that drive conversation in broad economic and taxation issues in the state. So that's what I have to say about that. And board members, how many employees are there? 37. And of those, 27 are technical out in the field. There's 10 of us responding to workshops. There's one of us that responds a lot. We're pretty light in terms of staff. But that doesn't mean we don't have a... Obviously we have a voice. We show up and participate. Hopefully the things we say are useful. One of the things I do want to applaud is the EPUC setup. That's really allowed a whole bunch of efficiencies in streamlining and no more stacks, piles inside of the paper. I want to give credit where credit is due. A lot of credit goes to Andy Shaw. She just spearheaded this effort. Thank you. We had a team working on it. It was a great leader. It's exciting to orchestrate the process. You find you have to count on mutual aid a lot because of the 27? You don't have that many people in the field. There's a storm. Big storms, yes. But the problem is when it's a big storm, everybody needs their own staff. If we could magically make mutual aid appear during these widespread storms, and obviously the 100-year storm is instead of having it once every 10 years, it's really a probability event. It doesn't mean we're going to have one in 100 years. It's a percentage probability. But we're having these low probability events happen more and more often. And just in the last... I think about the week-long outage restoration process and staying at the office for a week. There's several events that we've had in my five years at Washington Orchid Co-op. Reliability is really paramount to all the members. First and foremost, if you ask any of the members, any customer in the state, actually, what's the most significant thing that you want from your electricity? And they'll say to keep it on reliable. So the storm issue has been... It has been an issue for us. Our response to that is increasing right-of-way clearing. And one of the things that we're filing in our rate increases is more money in the right-of-way budget. We won't talk about that further. I do have one other question, which is, do you worry, and I'm going to ask, come up to cyber? How much time do you spend worrying about cyber attacks? So... We had Neil with the great cyber attack. We need to go into executive session. So the beautiful thing about WAC is, because we're a little bit low-tech, is we're not a threat, or we're not perceived as a high-value target for those that are doing bad things. The threat risk to us is more of somebody financially trying to send in, hey, Patty Richards sending a note to the CFO to withdraw a million dollars out of our bank account. We have that risk. There's no doubt that that risk is implied. We have our checks and balances internally on the finances, and we talk about that quite a bit. Every audit cycle, financial audit cycle, we talk about that issue internally. But in terms of the actual reliability aspect, our SCADA system is not hard-wired. We can't control from the office to our substations. So we can monitor, but we can't control. So the target for us, even if somebody broke in, they can't do anything, because that feature is turned off. And because we're so far downstream on the system, think about we go from Velco to GMP to WAC to get up through there. To use us as a conduit to build up through is very difficult, and because our SCADA system is not accessible by computer to go upstream, we're just not physically a potential threat. Could somebody try? Certainly. But our real risk profile, somebody hacking in through malware, trying to steal money from banks, maybe try to get customer data. Thank you. That said, we have an IT person that's very much in his failure with you to monitor all that stuff. To say also our National Rural Electric Co-op Association, which is about 1,000 co-ops, I'm on the National Board, is spending a lot of time and effort to be supportive to the local co-ops and cyber attacks. So one of the things that we did want to just kind of plant a seed on in terms of regulation, we want to make an ask of you, in addition to us being a show and tell, we've got some handouts to give you kind of who WAC is, I'm not going to go through all that, but you can just page through and take a look at what WAC is. But we also want to make an ask. And one of our asks, and this relates to the rate regulation workshops that we had about a year ago. Again, understanding the co-op model in terms of who we are and the process of going through for rate recovery, there was some discussion relative to rate regulation is could we do it different for the not-for-profit? And I'm speaking on behalf of WAC and not the whole not-for-profit world, but the process of known and measurable for a co-op is I'm questioning whether that really makes sense and there may be a better method to use rather than a known and measurable model. And I'd like to propose, have you think about, instead of us using that metric or that structure for rate, when we file for rate increase and rate changes, as we look at a budget process versus creating this known and measurable effect. And the beauty of a budget is this is what the Board of Directors votes on. They vote on a budget every year and to the extent we match what the Board of Directors votes on in terms of what we're going to do for the next year, our plan for the next year versus going in and filing for a rate change that's based on a known and measurable, it separates this Board from what we're actually filing and recovering in rates. There's always a differential and what happens is we recover less than what our budget says. We're always squirming each year to kind of make up for what we've planned to do relative to a budget and then what we have in our rate base. We're always behind the scene. We're always playing catch-up. We plan to see that the co-op, the not-for-profit model acts a little differently and we did speak about this way back when we were doing those workshops but kind of a take away from the workshops and action plan. I'd like to have us think about that in terms of the regulatory paradigm. Could we change that? It would make us a whole lot more efficient in what we do internally. We can sync up our rate structure with a budget structure cycle every year versus decoupling the two. You might have a budget that's a calendar year within a rate year. It can be July to July kind of thing.  There's a lot of synergies and value add if we could do that a little differently. Pause and see if there's questions on that. Let me just kind of make sure I understand. Are you saying your budget is like your roadmap and that is what drives everything you do as opposed to known and measurable, I guess. I don't know if you're comparing the two. So let's say we have a plan to clear a whole lot more trees next year. I have to look at a last year, a test year, an actual year of costs that are at least a year separate. There's usually six months in it. We're looking at a prior year's expenditures and then I got to defend everything that I change. Spend a whole lot of time justifying why I want to spend more money on right away when my average of the last five years is less and I have to fight for this every time. But I want to clear more trees so we have less outages. There's a break in between what we'd like to do in terms of the money we collect in terms of budget and what we're getting, the process of what we're getting recovering in rates. There's a disconnect between the two. And if I understand what you're suggesting is that because the budget goes through a process you have to get your board approval and then you have to come up with a plan that the board has to say, yes, that means what we want. That that is a substitute for the known and measurable process so that to the extent that we want to know how much is really needed for next year instead of asking as we would to GMP to give us a projection based upon last year's shows where it's higher or lower. What you're saying is our budget process is an internal check and we'd like you to rely on that rather than make us go through the known and measurable. Is that basically it? Absolutely. And again, our budget sets up the plan for the next year how we spend our money and how we allocate that. The budget, do you have members vote on the budget or is it just the board? It's the board of directors. The membership looks to the board to manage that and direct that. It's the next of this year. Thank goodness. Oh my God. We build that budget based on known and measurable but we take into account what's going to be the reality for the year that we're going to be operating the budget. Sorry. You mentioned that efficiency is one of the things that goes by the wayside through this process. Is it also your ability to be innovative in plan? For example, I need to clear more trees because of the trends I'm seeing that I can't because last year is tying my hands as to the number that I can put forward. Right. So we'll have a budget and our board will say go forth and trim $850,000 worth of trees. In rates, we're only recovering, let's say, $800,000. So does that ties your hand in terms of planning? At the end of the year, we scramble to say where's all our money coming from? So we recover less than what our budget lays out. We're always in this squishy gray area. Because of the co-op model, we have nine members and four monitoring what we do and they answer to the membership directly in terms of the rates. So I feel that the accountability rests.  These guys have to account for the rates in terms of the budget they pass. And it's no cakewalking through these guys. I'll assure you. And the other check and balance to this is in the event we over-collect, we don't spend the money, then it goes back to the consumer. It goes back to the membership at the end of the year. So if we need to collect $14 million in terms of running the business and these guys pass the budget for $15 million, we have a million dollars left over at the end of the year, it goes back to the membership. So there's a really good check and balance in the system and the structure we have is set up as a co-op that, to me, the budget process is a workable mechanism because of the model we have. You could try it for three years or something. That's true. Have you ever done an alternative regulation plan? So the alternative regulation plan doesn't fit and not for profit because it's characteristics. Because you would give us an incentive to come under on certain budget items. So I don't know what incentive you'd give us. In the investor end util, you increase the rate of return. And then the stick is if you over-spent in that area, then you decrease the rate of return. You don't have a rate of return. Sounds like Vicki's agreed with that. Yeah, I agree. It just doesn't fit. The budget model, to me, makes the most sense because that's what these guys say, go forth and go, plan, build, you know, manage your system, manage the power supply portfolio based on $14 million and it's our charge to go do that. Can I just respond to this because we have closely aligned our budget process with our rate process. Every year when we're doing our budget, we're looking at a test year that just is a six-month leg from actual, we're looking at the year before and then we're looking at the next year. And so we're doing all that. Every year we come in with the idea, okay, what's our budget going to be, what rates do we need to support this budget? Fortunately, we've been able to stay out for the last four years. And I think our average rate increase for the past let nine. Less than 1%. But that's the approach we took several years ago and it's worked really well for us. But there's still a disconnect between the rate year and the actual financial fiscal year you're in. Between the test year? Yes. The test year, sorry. You're right. I don't know. We have not had a problem with that. I don't think this is an issue for us. It's fine if you're not in a rate pressure scenario, whereas we're in a rate pressure scenario every year because of transmission cost, capacity cost, and you've been able to do some creative things on your end on the power supply side. And we don't have those rabbits in our hat to pull out. So we're in a continual cycle of pressure, rate pressure. When you're in that, that's when the disconnect between the test year and the future year becomes an issue. I don't think we have rabbits that we pull out of our hat. I think it's a different strategy. And that's an issue for WEC. I don't think we have the same issue. If I understand what the message, at least that I'm hearing from all of you, from the WEC side at least, and then we want to hear from the VEC side is, in the typical utility, there are two parties of interest. They're shareholders and they're rate payers. And in order to make sure that the rate payers get a fair shake, the department and then ultimately the PDC protects against the shareholders who legitimately say, we want to make more money. We invested, we want to get more back. And what I hear you saying is that in the co-op model, the rate payer and the shareholder are the same. And therefore there isn't the same need to have an outside interest come in and protect that rate payer. The rate payer is in charge to the extent and that's why I was asking questions about member participation and so forth. So if you suddenly came into us and said, well we want to double our rates this year, you'd have to figure out, what's my membership going to say if we wanted to double our rates? If GMP were to do that, the shareholders would say, wow, that's great. And then it would have to be the PUC and the department stepping in to say, oh no, you can't go that far. So you're asking us to take that into account when we are regulating the rates. Is that a fair? That's well said. So our alt-reg, the structure using a budget would make more sense than doing the classic GMP alt-reg. Just an example, we went 11 years without any rate increase. We then got hit with the rec market going down. We rely on rec revenue. And we ended up with a 19.7% increase. Our members came back and said, we really would appreciate if you could do smaller, more frequent rate increases rather than something all at once. We didn't have a choice then because it just, everything dropped. That's the message we tried to do. But we did get feedback and we responded to it. I think you captured that very well. I used to represent investor-owned utilities and it's a fine utility model for years. But I saw management struggle with that. Who are our loyalties to? The shareholders or our rate payers? And since I joined the co-op, it's been clear. I mean, our constituents are the same as yours. We're all looking for the rate payer and there's nobody who hates a rate increase more than our CFO. It's very hard to... Our budget process is brutal. If you're coming in and asking for something that is higher than you have now, you're going to have to justify that. It has upward pressure on rates because there are so many external upward pressure on rates in the form of net metering costs, transmission costs, what am I missing? Power costs. Those things are not always within our control. So where we can control costs, we're expected to control costs. I did have a presentation and I was going to walk through it, but I think we'll just riff on some of the stuff that Weka said. Can we add one more thing? Okay. We have three minutes. Can we take three more minutes? Sure. On net metering? Just want to chime in on net metering. Weka's in full support of the net metering structure. We think that metering is a great thing to do. We still think the rates are too high. We applaud the PC for bringing the batters down a little bit, but in order to make net metering continue in a successful way, if we can get the rates that are paid more aligned with the value that the utility is receiving in terms of reduced power supply expense, then we will avoid this cost shift issue. Our big concern is shifting costs from one group that wants to net meter to other consumers that either can't afford to pay their bill, like a grandma down the street. I don't want her to be having higher bills as a result of paying for the expensive power that could have been done cheaper and could still be solar and done cheaper. I still think we have a great realignment that needs to happen on net metering. WAC is up to just over four megawatts. It's a 16 megawatt utility. About 25% of our peak with installed and pending systems in terms of CPGs in line. The numbers are big. When you say that are you just net metering, no bigger projects, it's just net metering. 16 megawatt utility, 4 megawatts of net metered solar. 26%. And the large net metering projects are the ones that take up the vast majority of that capacity. Our statistics is over 60% of that 26% is large 500 catering projects. Can you say that one more time? 60%. We'll give you that slide. That's 10 members that participate in those large projects. It's in the slide. Yeah, it's in here. Yeah. WAC's data is in the slide package as well. I'm going to show it off and transfer over to you. You want to just give them the slides? Sure. That's good. Thank you. What did they used to do before there were slides? I don't know. Do you want me to give us a stab? They had a whiteboard. Yeah, right. Can I just give you a stab first? Do I have a name? Minneagram. Is there an extra? With that nice aroma. Thank you. Richard and I, we go back far enough. Not quite quill. Oh, jeez. Five copy carvings. Right. Yes. I think these guys covered a lot of ground here in terms of understanding the value that a co-op brings to the state and to the energy industry. What I'd like you to understand is, you know, we've been serving rural mayor, rural Vermont for 80 years. Now we have our 80th anniversary this past May. And I think there's an impression of co-ops as being stodgy and old fashioned and kind of out of it. And I'd like to dispel that. We have been really successful in hiring talented staff. We are an employer of choice in the Memorial County. We pay well. We get good benefits. We're a union shop and that kind of drives that. But as a result, we've been able to attract really good employees, including a very talented CEO. We have a great management team. We were lucky enough to get in here a couple years ago. And I think in doing that, we're able to look at things creatively, innovatively. We are really dependent on technology. Unlike what we are fully automated. So we do have cyber concerns that we pay close attention to those. We have a whole team looking at cyber. And what we're finding is our biggest weakness is the human beings, of course. So we're doing a lot of cyber testing. And they use the CEO's identity to, oh, it actually was when I was doing HR, they sent around an attachment saying, pay attention. There's a new policy on social media that you'd have to read from our general counsel. So of course everybody clicked on that to find out who got in trouble. And it was fishing. Yeah. So yeah, we do cyber testing. So there's a lot. We do exercises of Homeland Security. And with DOE, we do spend a lot of time on cybersecurity. And how big is your organization? How many employees? 107 employees. And how many of those are field people as opposed to in-house? What do we have? 75 in the field? I would say 75. Yeah. Depends what you call field. But there's about 75 union members in most of them work in some fashion in the field. And how many members? We have about 40,000 leaders and about 34,000 members. We have some folks with multiple locations. What I think too makes our co-op interesting is that when you compare us even on a national basis, about half of our sole KWH are commercial accounts, which is unusual for a co-op. I think WEC is close to 96% residential. We're about half. So we have a lot of involvement with commercial businesses. They're very important to us. We have some challenges with being rural. We have about 14 customers per mile. In a lot of our businesses, we hear from frequently that rates is extremely important to maintaining their jobs here in Vermont. And our rate design is very competitive on the industrial front. We have the second lowest rates. I mean, GMP has global foundries. So you can imagine that they're able to offer a very attractive rate. But we're second. So we have some very large commercial accounts. Let me just interrupt from that. One of our commercial industrial customers biggest challenge is with the efficiency charge because that's a huge number on their bill. And we have worked with people, customers who would like to be part of the self-managed efficiency group of companies. So that's something we will be exploring with some of our larger customers. This particular organization spends $600,000 a year on the efficiency charge. We send about $5 million a year to the efficiency charge from our whole co-op and the larger commercial folks are very active in the legislation and are looking forward. You know, everything's evolving, right? We've got the low-hanging fruit with a lot of the initial efficiency work. So we're really looking for... Excuse me. I have to leave to make a wedding. Have a good wedding coming. Have a good one. Have a good one. Thanks. And related to the efficiency charge, that's in here as one of our challenges. And Patty had an ask. One of the things that we're looking to do is to get some support to change our partnership with efficiency Vermont so that we can move their mission to help us, especially given the load constraints in the SHI where we really, really need some load, to help us with beneficial electrification to see if we can change fossil uses to electric use. Use that clean electric supply that we have to reduce carbon. And I think efficiency Vermont has a lot of resources. They have a lot of talented people. They have connections within supply chains that could help us. And we've been talking to them about expanding our partnership and expanding their role. It may take some legislative or regulatory changes, which I know you're looking at in the generic proceeding. So that's something we're quite excited about. So Vicki, would that be outside of what their appointment is? Public appointment. But we might need some... Within their budget, though. We started saying we're not interested in trying to collect more money, but rather shifting and evolving. We really want the mission accomplished on a lot of efficiency work. It's been wonderful. But now we've got to think about carbon efficiency and reducing carbon. So they're very excited about continuing this conversation. So are we? And I think our members would appreciate keeping the charge flat going forward using it in other ways. What else did I jot down? Do you want to talk about some of our demographics? We just finished a member survey that had some surprising... Or maybe not so surprising. And also we want to mention Community Solar, I think, if we can. But demographics, we have a pretty old and aging demographic. I think close to 50% of those survey don't kind of work regular full-time jobs. 41% are on fixed incomes. The other ones are underemployed or unemployed. So it's pretty... It speaks to us pretty strongly about keeping those rates as steady as we can. So just to understand we're very motivated by that because of who our members are. Our towns, I think eight of the top poorest towns, lowest income towns in the state or in our service territory. Most of the three out of the five pound deeds were the highest property. So pretty low income, pretty fixed income. Very sensitive to that issue. So every program we do, we're always thinking about not cost-shifting. That really motivated a lot of our net metering positions. If we're going to end up shifting costs to members who are at least able to afford increases, we're going to step up and say, let's figure out another way how to do that. And we have actually on solar, I'm not sure if you're aware of our Community Solar program. We have a little handout on that. We know that we want to bring cost-effective local renewable energy into our system. And we were able to do this in a way that was very market-based. Very competitive market-based rates. We have three projects. You know, because you approve them. Five megawatts in Grand Isle, one megawatt in Heinsberg and one in Albert. And this Community Solar program, we're so proud of because we're bringing cost-effective renewable energy folks who maybe don't have a good location, the roof is not suitable, or frankly just don't want to commit to a long-term hosting renewable energy on their site can sponsor panels. And, you know, we're really proud of that. It's a really great way to bring it. So they could sponsor a panel like your name on the brick and the walk? Yeah, they don't actually get a specific panel. People are like, where's my panel? But we have capacity, say, in the Albert, we have 3,996 panels and you, and we have a whole tariff that you approved as well, rate structure, so, you know, cost $100, you know, for a panel. And what happens is you pay or you finance.   And it could be over 10 years or 20 years, depending on how many panels and what deal you want. And the beautiful thing about this program is you can leave any time and you get a prerated shareback of your payments. And there's no subsidy by the other members. No, completely free of cost. No subsidy, no cost shift.   You know, so it's a really nice, you know, very co-op way to bring local renewable cost-effective energy into the system. What's the participation in this? We have sponsored almost all of Alberg, so that's almost 4,000 panels. How many members? Under 200, maybe. Just under 200 members. I'm not mistaken. Let me ask you both a question because this is something that it eats at me. Ultimately, we have to pass on disconnects of people who have medical letters. But, you know, there are also lots of disconnects that go on. If there's not a medical letter involved, we don't even get involved. What policies do each of you have regarding disconnecting, given that the person you're disconnecting is obviously a member of your organization, not just a customer. What do you do at VEC? I mean, we follow the state rule. There's a very specific rule related to disconnects, and we follow it to the letter. It's heartbreaking. We sit with our member services people all day, and they're hearing really sad stories. It's very difficult. And we haven't had the ability to create a low-income program because, again, there's so many willing for this. But what do you mean? As you know, the state has a variety of programs which are always running out of money. And, obviously, we know who to talk to about that, but we can't get them to listen. So what do you have to help when you see the bill? And you realize this person's in trouble. They missed a $100 payment last month. Now they're $2.59 pretty soon. It's $500. Do you have an outreach program to help guide either, to help them figure out that they're wasting energy and, therefore, spending money they shouldn't have to spend at all, or that they're failing to go and get help from somebody either? Anything like that? It's very custom, very... All day our member service team is on the phone with folks and our meter techs are on the field talking to folks because they go to do the discount. By the time we're in that situation or a few months behind, because you don't get built after you use the energy. Right. And then you've got so many days so we're ready, two or three months behind. We work out payment arrangements. We send folks, depending on where they live to local... We know who can help locally. We have churches who will help out. We know that churches don't have funds available. So we have lists of what, depending on where people live where we might be able to direct them. And we will send them to the efficiency of Vermont frequently. Because we have the smart hubs we can see hourly usage. So we'll talk to them on the phone and be like, what were you doing last week? We can look and say... Sometimes it's like, oh, my family was visiting. Okay, well, that's why. We can really dissect what's going on with them. Sometimes we'll find there's a pump running that they don't even know that's broken and it's just... So we can help them. One thing that would help is because we have the smart meters, we have the ability to remotely disconnect. But there is a regulatory requirement that we do a physical visit. Usually we're leaving a door hanger and not talking to people. And what has happened is some people have come to rely on that. So they won't pay. They'll write the check when the person shows up to disconnect them. And then they're hit with a disconnect fee and a reconnect fee or they barely avoid the reconnect fee. So it has created some perverse incentives on a part of our customers. What about WAC? What do you guys do? So at WAC we... First thing we try to do is get them on a budget plan. So a 12-year cycle, let's get you set up to manage the funds or manage your usage and whatever you've occurred in a bill. So a budget plan is really big. And then if they're receptive to having somebody come out and take a look at what they're using, we try to do as much diagnosis on the phone just as you folks, as E.C. does, for do as much diagnosis on the phone. But we'll send out Bill Powell. We'll do home energy audits. And for those that are receptive to having somebody come out in their home, not everybody is. If they don't want to work with us, we'll also refer them to efficient C. Vermont. But there's a fair number of people that they just... they don't want the help and the use of a lot of electrons. And when they get... when they get in arrears too large, it's really difficult to dig out. We've had some people from last winter that were using 1,500 kilowatt hours a month, 2,000 kilowatt hours a month. I know it's electric heat. It's difficult to get them out of those kind of bills, but we'll set them up on a budget plan, turn them over to financial assistance organizations, or put them in touch with financial assistance organizations and try to get them to pay off the back stuff, try to work with them going forward on education and what they can do differently. It's those that are welcome to the help. We can make a difference. Those that just don't welcome the help. It's difficult. You can't disconnect in the winter, so if you're strapped, you don't pay your electric bill.  That causes a real problem. We start seeing more of it right about this time of year because utilities realize that they're about to go into a period where they can't do a disconnect. And we've got an investigation going on. We're trying to find out how to deal with it. Some of the stories are very sad, and sometimes you look at them and you say, these people are not doing what they could be doing, and somebody has to be tough parent. I believe that investigation is not a contested case. Right. I want to pick up on something that Richard said, which is we agree that the best thing you can do is to help to support a co-op's financial help.  Was that 10 years ago? 2009? Yeah, we came in with a 10-year... we were pushed by the department, actually, frankly. A 10-year capital improvement plan. And in order to support that, the Public Service Board then agreed to give us a higher tier, and a tier is our return on investment, basically, a rate of return. And that has been incredibly beneficial for VEC. Over the course of that period, you can see and hear our reliability has gotten much better. It's coming through the slide. The orange in the middle. So we're exceeding our SQRP goals and reliability indices, and our member satisfaction, which is another slide in, has gone up as well. The other thing is that our bond rating has improved as a result of the higher tier. We're A-plus rating from Standard & Poor's with a stable outlook. We've been at that for a couple of years. Do you want to speak more about that? What it's done also has opened up a lot of opportunities for us to have a very diversified power portfolio. Right in the past when we were having financial challenges, it was difficult to get anyone to return our calls, and we're in a position now where we're a very strongly rated co-op and we're able to diversify our power portfolio. So we don't have a lot of eggs in one basket. We are really well diversified and it allows us to weather some significant changes. We generally hedge pretty heavily going into any rate proceeding, and even when we're not in rates, what we're trying to do is constantly be in the market. So we're not going to win the lottery, but what we're going to do is provide very steady, consistent numbers. And I think you can see that from our rates. We mentioned that over the last nine years. Our average increase is 0.8%. So we think we've been very successful in that area. And it's an area that we've had some public policies that have certainly challenged that. We talked a little bit between WEC and us about net metering and how the larger scale projects have had a significant impact on us. And I think from a public policy standpoint, the perception was to do siting maybe based on what would be best aesthetically without considering the grid. And that's what's really hurt the VEC, especially in our Shiai, the Sheffield Highgate export interface. That area represents about three-quarters of our substations. So almost every substation in the VEC territory is having issues from renewables being put in the wrong spot. Now, Andrea mentioned about the community solar, how that has played very well with the members. It's very cost-effective. We can do it much cheaper than what the members would pay for a large 500kW net metering project. We can do it almost in half of what that rate is. But what really helps us is we can stick it in a spot where the grid can handle it. That is a key difference, and it's a part that the public policy never considered. And right now we're dealing with some of the consequences of that, where we have a lot of constrained areas that also kind of ties back to what Andrea was talking about with the energy-efficient utility in Vicki as well, where if you put more efficiency measures into the Shiai, it actually makes the problem worse. And I think that's difficult for some people to grasp. It doesn't necessarily make sense, but what it's doing is renewables are bumping other renewables in that area because there's not enough load. So that's why we're advocating or certainly supporting the idea that maybe we can take some of those funds and actually add load into the Shiai to help this problem as opposed to herd it. So those are some of the key areas that we've been focused on. One other thing I wanted you to touch on, Mike, you asked about the difference for the co-op. Patty mentioned storms, but we should mention our success with FEMA over the years. I have that on my list if we had time, but... Just this thing about adding load, I know people sometimes go, the same's wasteful. The point is we're energy-shifting. We're going from carbon-producing fuels to cleaner fuels, not just we want it to sell more electricity. People sometimes, you get that, but adding load means load-shifting to cleaner fuels. As far as FEMA goes, we had one storm back in December of 2013 where the cost of that storm was $6.2 million. The most we've ever earned in any given year is $4 million. So that gives you an idea of a seven-day period we lost basically the entire amount that we would earn in about a year and a half. And what's worked well for us is we're very active with FEMA. We cover 84 towns, eight counties, so you have to actually get every single county approved. Sometimes we get all eight, sometimes we get one. It really varies, but if you look back at our history of working with the state of Vermont and FEMA, we've actually taken in more than $13 million from FEMA over the years to help us. With the storm expenses. And in this last storm, October of 2017, what we did is we applied, we had had some success previously for what we call hazard mitigation. It's actually doing projects that may not be cost-effective to do, but they will harden ourselves so that when we have a storm come in, we won't incur those significant amount of outages. And with FEMA's help, we're sponsoring about 75% of the cost of doing some of these projects. So where it wasn't economic before, it now becomes economic. And we actually got awarded five hazard mitigation projects in this last round of storms. So not only are they helping us out historically, they're also contributing to our ability to handle these events in the future. So that's been a really nice advantage that we have. Mike, can I ask a question about that? These hazard mitigation projects that you're able to do, do any of them involve relocating lines to roads? That's usually what they do. Yeah, a lot of times, the one that we've done about three years ago was a Gillette pond in the Richmond-Heinsberg area. That had a line that ran along the hill, right? So the hill was shaped like this. The line was up above. What happened is you can cut your right-of-way, right, 25 feet on each side. But a lot of our lines run through the hills, and really 25 feet is not nearly enough. So with their funding, we were able to take that line, take it out of there, put it underground next to the road. And we haven't had an outage there since. So it worked. And people paid about 75% of them? They did, yes. Mike actually has a similar, we have a similar story, similar to the ECs on that. We got hazard mitigation as well. We actually need these in co-ops. Yes, DIOUs don't qualify for this. So it is one of our unique advantages. But we've taken, so when you look at our historical storm costs, for example, when we come in for rate-making purposes, that $6 million storm is in our, let's say, it's in our test year, like Patty was talking about. And we've had several of them that have been very expensive. But what we do when we come in, I like to say we're on the same side, right? We don't have the investors that conflict with our goals. And what we've done is we've taken the FEMA funding and mitigated that so that when we come in asking for a raise, we essentially are saying, you know, the balance, the risk for us left over, at least historically, was this amount. So we only asked for the difference. We're not asking for the $6 million from that. So it allows us really, I think, a clear advantage. But at the same time, it does give us some additional risk, right? So like Patty was talking about, the test year and the known immeasurable, well, storms are very difficult to know what known immeasurable is. So our rates do have risk in them because we've taken the FEMA money and brought them down to represent a lower net cost to us. So it is a little riskier, but at the same time on the positive side, we get help. Huge benefit. One other thing that we haven't hit on is what we're doing in the area of storage. And I think you should take that one too, since you had up our storage team. So in the storage area, we, of course, I can't talk specifics because it's before you right now. There is. But we do have a one megawatt, four megawatt hour project in our Heinsberg area that we are looking to utilize to help us with some of these grid items. We're also looking at, we have a relationship with packetized energy. I'm not sure if you've heard about them. They're kind of a up and coming company and they have water heater controls and we've had a number of our members sign up for that program and we were able to use that during that, the recent peak event in August. And we also would like to get involved with the residential storage programs. We're working very hard. One of the constraints is that Tesla has minimum order quantities. So when you're GMP, you're able to maybe meet those a little easier than someone like Vermont Electric or WEC. So those do pose some challenges. We really support GMP in having this as a beneficial electrification. We'd like to see that happen. But as far as I'm going to go with that, you'll see that those are public comments that we are supporting them in having that count as tier three. We think it's a very good opportunity to take some of these peaking units off line when they're needed during those times. I think one of the key considerations with batteries is that the utility needs to be in charge of where they're placed and when they're called on. If they're going to be used to offset peak and save transmission costs. And I think one of the challenges now is to get a control interface that a lot can be done by automation. And that's what we're doing with packet ties. We're testing out their control. I know there are other ones out there, but there hasn't been an industry standard paid upon that I'm aware of. Can you elaborate on that a little bit when you say placement of batteries? At what scale are you talking about? Are you talking about the megawatt scale storage system? Or are you talking about individual residential? I think our biggest concern with residential is really just we don't want to cost shift that. We're worried like what we saw maybe when that meaner rang, that maybe some people want that for outage prevention. And that's fine, but we don't want other members paying for that. But we're having anybody who wants, like residential scale, we are not worried about that. So you're confused by the word placement? Yeah, we're talking about the larger ones. Larger ones, yeah. Utilities scale. So we have some small commercial applications. MicroStrain is one where we have a battery there. But really what's key with this is if we can put it in places where the grid and it is larger, larger scale. The economics on batteries really aren't that great for the smaller size at this point. We can make the economics work with the larger scale ones. We're still some years away from the smaller size ones. And what we found with the larger ones is there we do better at partnering with somebody because they have access to additional value streams in the form of different markets that they can use the battery in. That we just don't play in. So we were happy to do a PPA type arrangement for battery access. And Kyle, you correct me if I'm starting to stray, all right? Boy, we have our general manager. He keeps a tight leash on me. Are you suggesting that when we look at battery projects, these big ones, that we should be forcing a consideration of alternate sites that focuses on the utility in whose territory the battery is coming. I assume it's a merchant. They're showing up. They want to put in a battery. That the utility should be part of the conversation and giving and saying the alternate site where this should go, not because of aesthetics, but because of where our load is. It needs to be over there, not in this town, but in that town. Yes, absolutely. For the circuit, it's more circuit-based. The big deal with batteries is they're generators as well as load users. So they can have huge impacts on particular circuits. It's an area that we're looking at very closely. Siting solar is a challenge, but batteries could be even worse because they can do both. I mean, if they were willing to be proposed by people not related to the utility as to where the need is. We wouldn't want them charging at peak periods, for example. That would exacerbate the problem. I think it's a practical matter, though. They're motivated to work with utilities because one of the revenue streams is money that we can save in transmission costs by shading peaks. So stacking those benefits is what makes batteries attractive to developers. I heard one thing that was really impressive to me. The community solar costs the rate pairs of VEC half of what a commercial 500kW plant costs. So that tells me that your rate design, rate structure for net metering was way too high. There's nothing pending now. And it did not dive deep enough into the actual rate of return to investors in large-scale solar, which I believe is in the range of after-tax close to 20%.  But I don't think that change or even a 25% reduction from that would significantly reduce the rollout of solar, which we support. It's not the speed program. The standard offer is the best measure of what it's costing to put that stuff in. And I didn't understand what you did. It didn't make any sense to me the rates that you set for the goals that we all share. But that's my perspective. I just felt like the research that was done in-house about really what it's costing developers to put that stuff in was inadequate. Let me tell you a puzzle that I have because we've heard the same story. We've heard it from GMP, hearing it from you guys. And that is that there's a much cheaper way. And the means? The much cheaper way to put in solar. So why don't you do it? We have done it. If you soak up all the, whether it's the community solar, whatever it is, if you're doing it and your product is half the price of the other product in a competitive market situation, no one will want to buy that. There's nothing to prevent someone from putting those systems. The consumers get a better deal with the net meter. Ours is a system-wide... Right, but it's co-ops. Your consumers are the same. They don't feel it as directly as... If a merchant goes to and says, I have a great deal for you for net metering and you can save a lot of money. So if you're just looking at you, yeah, you can get a better deal if you go net metering than with our community solar. But when you look at the whole community and say the whole system cost is less, but for an individual, there's winners and losers with net metering. Right. If the wax... Well, I was just going to say that I'm a net meter myself, so I manage a group net metering system. But for co-ops, co-ops are located in areas of the state that are geographically challenged. We heard about the number of members per mile. And historically, that's one of the reasons why co-ops serve these areas. And so when you have a net metering tariff, which is based on... So co-ops essentially have higher rates because they're geographically and historically challenged. And so they have higher rates. And so when a net metering tariff remunerates the PD owner, like myself, based on the cost of the service that this has to do with the rates, the retail rate, it discriminates against the co-op as a whole because there's cost shifting that goes on and because the compensation is based on an inflated rate for co-ops compared to a... compared to let's say the IOU, you're essentially rewarding the co-op PD user at a greater... to a greater extent. And therefore the cost shifting which goes on goes on to a greater extent than a co-op. Not because we're co-ops, but because of who we serve. So what I hear from all of you is your view of what the rate should be for net metering is what Richard suggested. Go to the standard offer, which is basically avoid your costs. Yeah, let the little ones go. But when you're putting big ones in, did you have to buy? And really it's not necessarily avoided costs. It's what the market... I think if you look at it avoided costs, that's a different number than what the market will bear. And then standard offer, you do the auction process. It has the market pressure. One of the things that would be helpful is if that net metering program was 15kw or less. Because we are very confident that we can get a better deal for our members with systems that have any size to them. And you know, anything over 15, it's likely not serving a single residential home. Unless they got an awful lot of electric appliances. Really that's when you start getting into a lot larger. In some cases commercial accounts or a lot of the... Those are really hard to administer is those groups. Those are challenging. And we're also hearing from the communities that when we did this recently, just getting very complex, the billing from your end. It's a nightmare. What it serves us to is that we bring these comments forward. We think we're being anti-renewable. It's like no, no, no, we support the renewable goals. We just could do it so much more positively. We could get the same renewable product for... So much less. So much less. Oh no, it's not a caution. I just have a question. I should know this. What's the range of the fixed costs that you're recovering for say a 500kw system if it's a group residential system? Is it just the number of members times $12? If it's one town, are you collecting any fixed charge for that or is everything being emutered? So the way that program works now is a non-bipassable portion. So a customer charge still is collected by anybody that's in a group. So if you've got a 500kw system, let's say there's 100 customers attached to that. They still have to pay their efficiency Vermont charge. They still have to pay the customer charge. So those are non-bipassable, but they can bypass their energy consumption. So at some point during the night, they're using electricity. They're using the grid. And if they're using over the course of a month more than what they're buying from the 500kw system, they'll pay a little bit of energy. And what if it's one commercial customer or one school or one town? One customer charge. And that's what a lot of them are, is the larger accounts. So the customer charge is a whole other interesting issue, which we don't need to get into here, but it certainly does not cover our fixed costs. I wanted to throw one more point out for utility like WEC. We're not only 100% renewable, but we're 100% renewable for the next 20 years or long power. So to the extent that we're having to force to purchase and pile on more stuff, it's competing with an underlying portfolio that we've already made investments for on behalf of the utility. So it's as if... So WEC has put up a community solar. I don't have a need to put up any more resources because I can't justify that need. So we've already gone out and procured, not just solar, but we've procured Coventry landfill, we've procured Sheffield Wind, we've built a hydro plant. We've done investments on behalf of our members that are already renewable. So anything that we pile on top is just extra cost. And if it's above market, it adds to the rate of pressure. I just want to throw that piece out because we're a little bit unique in that space. Can I offer Rebecca a chance to speak? Do you have anything you want to share with us? You have a lot to learn. Yes, I can. Yes, Rebecca. Well, coming from an IOU environment, this has been interesting. So it's been great to kind of hear a lot of which I knew and some of which has been helpful to hear. And so I think... I think... The only thing that I would add that I think hasn't been said yet is just that not just the ruralness and the kind of cost sensitivities of the measures members, but I think also just the pure size of the cooperatives can make it challenging to operate nimbly in this kind of fast-moving energy environment. And so I think just... I'm not sure there's an ask here beyond just I think one of the... When I interviewed and chatted with the board, one of the things I heard is that they want to be innovative and have creative solutions to some of these challenges. And it's really hard to do and it's really difficult to kind of pilot and build some momentum for those with kind of the limited resources and funding available. So it's just one of the tensions that I see inside the co-op model and also just the smaller utility model. And before we close, can you give me, like I asked, how much does your membership actively participate in your activities? We have an annual meeting every year. What do we get? 250 people out of 30,000 some members. It's challenging. I agree that when you're raising rates you have a controversial wind project. People pay attention. I know our board of directors would like to have more member engagement. They want us to be out in the community. We schedule events and maybe a couple people show up. So it is a challenge but it also is... maybe it's a good sign that we don't have an activist membership right now because it means they're not unhappy with their utility bill every month. We do an annual member survey. We get a lot of feedback that way. It's really helpful. What percentage of your membership is responding? It's statistically significant. We have like 350 residential and about 100 or 150 commercials. About 500. Do you do it electronically or in paper or both? Both. It's a phone and electronic. Right. Frankly these days with social media we get a lot of feedback in a lot of different ways. Also we get feedback through member service cards, you know, if they are doing service and we get interesting things beyond service sometimes on those cards, you know, people. Sure. Yeah. I don't know what else to say about that. We get under 10% of people vote in the elections and again to Vicki's point that was controversial. When we built the KC community we had a lot of people. We had a lot of people show up. Right. In Vermont Yankee we had some discussions about Vermont Yankee. I think Patty mentioned this is that when folks care about it I'm sure. And if they choose to be engaged or very engaged like our open rates we have different ways we get information out through our co-op life and other things. We get like 50% open rates on our emails and that's kind of unheard of in the industry. So when we're partnering with efficiency Vermont we'll do an email because people open our emails our members actually open our emails. So the trick is to figure out how to get people interested in good news. Right. Newspapers struggle with that. Because I've noticed your interest in the participation issue in democracy I wanted to point out VEC has a district arrangement for elected directors. How many districts do you have now? How many do we have 10? 12. They have three times as many members as we do. We have an at large system and there's pros and cons to each of those. But they more frequently than Washington Electric have contested elections in one or more of their districts. We have a hybrid. We have districts and then we have two at large. Right. But although there's still districts, they're east and west. Yes. And it seems to me that the turnout in those districts is higher than 10% when there's a hotly contested election. Right. But I think for more for us, I think for them but certainly for both of us, the challenge is trying to recruit or inspire qualified and engaged members who are willing to serve on the board and can make a contribution. But that's not just co-ops that have that problem. Same problem we had in Manhattan. Yeah. So you know the drill. Pick out a very popular employee and fireman and really offensive person. Or two. Two. I flatter myself to think that there are at least some members who are just glad that somebody semi-competitive is willing to serve on the board and dive into all of these issues so that the members can ignore us. Well, thank you. Thank you for taking the time. Can we hope you enjoy hearing each other as well? We do meet from time to time and share ideas. Yes, thank you.