Planning Committee 10-19-22

001foreign all right do we have any uh emails or correspondence to report tonight do not have any correspondence in no audience there okay well then we're going to get right into the fun I'm assuming that everyone who is here is from dacco there's no one from the general public because we're here to address the planning committee okay um so then I think we start with introductions um maybe they know me we know each other well this is The Deco leadership team and I'm really really appreciative that uh they're here is that that goes uh headquarters last week they had a really really well done presentation on on electric bus opportunities um so I saw everybody last week yeah I'm Andrew I'm the martelly I'm the um chair of the planning committee and I'm the Board

002of Education I'm also the town's Economic Development coordinator so I think I've met someone you before in that capacity on barkers we did I did a presentation I had this role before yeah that's that's right I'm all in yeah and then Donald Trump I guess I'll start I'm Don De Vivo I'm the president uh one of the owners of datco hello hello you missed nothing we were just getting started um introduced myself I'm I'm Don daviva on the president of one of the owners um along with my two sons one of which is to my right uh Kevin and I'll let him uh self-introducing yeah I'm captain Vivo um he said his son um future owner um I uh kind of run our I'm the general manager of dacco Bus Sales so I run our

003dealership operations here a little bit about today um so kind of a diversified organization whereas you know most other people here represent the school bus fleet that serves in Chester so to my left is Scott bravant he's a treasure resident and also our CFO so you wanna yeah Scott Brady and I've been with dacco now just over a year as Don said I've been a Cheshire resident now for 21 years I had three sons all went through the Cheshire high school system and wrote Deco buses all throughout so most of my career has been in banking so transportation is new but uh had a quick study and and learned on the job at really exciting part of this family business I'm the VPN School Bus not a permanent Cheshire resident sorry now for about a

004month longer than just got probably in transportation there was another school running buses public transit in the UK and then across some various coach Feats across the U.S now as well as local Trans in the US and school bus in foreign I work for a international company called Stagecoach and they wanted me to come over here and set up a new company called Megabus so I came in 2006 and that's where I first met dako because they were a customer yeah morning [Music] so that's us great thank you yeah and I think you know we miss Joyce all right Tim probably one of the main we like to call him Abigail foreign 's very passionate about you know all our Alternative Energy options not just on vehicles but um we talked about our last planning

005committee I'll just give you a little preview and then I'll turn it over to Kevin that you know our our relationship with dacco is long-standing uh it's a couple of decades and um we have a contract that expires in June of 2024 you know and part of the discussion that we have with the planning committee on our last meeting was that we know that the state is requiring that we be zero emission by 2040 and um that gives us a lot of time you would think to plan but a lot has to happen you know and zero mission right now means electric whether or not there's a hydrogen path in that future remains to be seen but you know we still have a few years I guess to decide um but this is a good

006time for us to start planning you know talking about what we want to do come June of 2024 you know as far as starting to move in the direction of alternative Vehicles we don't we certainly wouldn't want to make a cut over on you know January 1st you know 2040. we want to be ready and you know there's certainly interest on the planning committee and the board you know to start moving towards um you know Energy Efficiency in any way that we can um and then the other thing that I'll mention is that you know I know the daco teams know that our bus depot is currently being transferred from State Property to town property we have about another 0.84 Acres that we can develop so that we can accommodate whether it's propane tank or

007electric charging stations or you know you know other things but that's not exactly a lot of space but at least it gives us some flexibility so you know kind of having a direction on what type of alternative vehicle we want to move to helps us decide what we want to do as we develop that property so that's the backdrop and I'll turn it over to you Kevin okay one question on the property because the public is Washington work yeah um have you ever had been have you had any discussions with this state I mean their property goes beyond the three or four acres that we have that's Woods there have you mentioned that to him at all have you gotten any reaction or or it's not not even discussion at all yet about taking more

008space yeah yeah no okay okay I've not had that discussion and it's not an on unreasonable idea at all right in the state you know that that portion of the property is the end of the correctional facility they don't use a property that's behind us right now I don't know what their plans are right we do have that 10 acres yeah right yeah pretty much favorite behind that too it's not adjacent though there is a there's a split between anyone I mean my general thinking is it's the prison and they might have concerns but we haven't asked them and already gotten poo poo and said no that's the end of the line for you so there could be more yeah yeah all right with that and I don't I don't know how much space you

009need uh so I I'll start off by saying you know I there's some answers that I don't have unfortunately and certainly you know exactly how much space is needed for you know electric vehicles uh is something that we will have to become more on a Consulting phase if that's the direction that we're gonna go so here pretty good yeah you know uh so again let me shows over here um that's fine I can't I can do that too no that's fine I'll move about um so again my name is Kevin devivo I'm the general manager of dacco Bus Sales um as you'll see in a second you know we both are a bus fleet and a bus dealership um so I manage the the bus dealership um so in that capacity I have a little

010bit more information at this point because uh you know we're actively out there selling uh propane and electric vehicles you know it's important that we understand these products and so therefore I'm in a better situation to pass that information out to you so just a quick preview of what we're going to be talking about today um uh just get a quick overview of datco Inc again talk about the dealership and the fleet uh the regulatory landscape that is the reason that we are here today that's going to prompt this discussion um then we'll talk about that so Cheshire briefly um the available products between vehicles and infrastructure um that you know partners that we're working with um you know are vehicle manufacturers are charging station manufacturers that we work with we'll talk about budget um

011because I think the planning committee correct me from Rome probably is worried about the environment environmental considerations here but ultimately you need to make a good fiscal decision for for the town um so spent some time on that and then we'll talk about next steps you know which you know that's more of a you know a consultative you can you tell me we talk about it uh how we can move forward to to help you guys act so that go Inc um so we're a third generation family owned and Connecticut based business um you know as I already alluded to we're fairly well Diversified in the transportation industry and focusing here on bus but we you know we also have a Thermo King dealership we do uh repairs to do trucks we sell capacity trucks

012um so we are also in the truck industry but we got our start um when my grandpa who's Lou and my Uncle Ed um first uh purchased the school bus in 1949 to operate in Berlin Public Schools um so that's how we started operating and maintaining school buses in 1962 we decided we wanted to expand that we wanted to start operating and maintaining transit buses and motor coaches so we purchased a company called Masco which we conveniently use to say that we have been in business since 1924 which gives us a little more Prestige because they had been operating since 1924. um and then we decided we wanted to fabricate and modify buses so we started our own body shops in the late 80s and then my dad was critical in starting the headache that

013I have now inherited which is the bus dealership where we sell buses bus Parts bus service and you know obviously the the company has only expanded from that can I ask where the name comes from yeah that's a great question I should probably should have put that on there it's De Vivo and talamea transportation company so I did neglect uh my grandfather and great uncle's cousin um I'm sorry I don't Mike Mike Tom that who started with him but was bought out uh pretty early on as I meant to point out uh the DMT Transportation was originally because it was De Vivo and telemeda transportation company and [Laughter] that's my brother who he's most active on our Motor Coach side but he does sales and business development on the fleet side so he's kind of

014got a fleet side covered for the time being um and I uh handle the dealership uh I never thought to ask that question about whether that come from yeah I've seen it for years oh yeah it's a little history get it yeah uh so possibly in dealership I talked about it a little bit you know kind of the expertise on all fronts here you know we are New England bus fleet we operate school buses 27 school districts 1200 Vehicles operated through Connecticut Rhode Island we operate motor coaches um and we have locations in Connecticut Massachusetts and Transit shuttle and then we are also new in bus dealer um see uh some of the lines that we have for school bus um that's what we were talking about today we'll talk a little bit more about

015IC Bus and Collins we also sell commercial buses bands and then service of parts in Massachusetts but with an aor an area of responsibility throughout New England uh so leadership and Innovation so uh we've kind of always tried to be on the Forefront of these types of things that we're we're talking about um you know this guy likes to be first um and you know paved the way and you know be a leader because there's certainly advantages to being market leader a market leader in these uh types of things we were the first to install underfloor wheelchair lifts and motor coaches in the US we had the first hybrid electric school buses in New England we had the first electric school bus in Connecticut which you can see the one of the headlines in school

016bus fleet for that um that is operating in Middletown Connecticut it's a type a school bus um manufactured Shields and filtration devices for buses during the pandemic and soon we will have the largest Fleet of electric school buses in New England at 11. and we'll try to stay on top there um so that's kind of continued with with electric and alternative fuels another one that'll come there for you um and so on the flip side we already talked about the electric bus in Middletown uh we just received last year uh Connecticut Volkswagen uh oxides of nitrogen uh mitigation Grant through Connecticut deep so we'll be procuring 10 well we already Advocate uh 10 electric type c buses um they're on on the ground we'll talk a little bit about difficulties with infrastructure that are associated

017with that um yeah yeah sorry great question I would I will get to that but uh so a type A type A so there's a Type A you don't need to worry about type B so don't don't worry your brain about it it's actually happening right yeah yeah sure yeah well actually let me just let me just bounce forward there you go back up there you go uh so type A it's on an automotive chassis 29 I think is the largest Chevy four chassis so if you see it with an automotive chassis you know as Scott said probably go up to about 29 passengers okay um and then the larger buses which is all but two I believe in Cheshire for the larger buses that have the dog nose in the front that's a type

018c and then a type D the door will actually be forward of the front wheels is how it's definitely have a flat nose yeah Transit style Transit style so and a b just for your you know edification is they don't really make them anymore but you actually have one that when they were making them in Cheshire it's just a giant one of the A's it's like a 35 passenger but it looks it looks identical it's just a bigger tvw yeah oh yeah so the mainland people you know is the type C yes yeah yeah that's okay conventional yeah okay yeah and then so just again type A Automotive chassis type c is really the only one you'd have to worry about that looks like this and then a type D is a flat nose and

019it can either have the engine in the front or in the rear the ones in Chester have rear edges and just to make things really complicated they also call a type c a type one yes type type c and type one is exactly the same thing a type one is C and D A type two is A and B got it don't ask me so type it and type two if you swear so type one upper left type one type two and then that's how I yeah or STV yeah same thing so these type ones One Tattoo St type 1 and type two you see in all of the contracts in in Connecticut um elsewhere they're called ABC yeah interesting um well yeah and STV student transportation vehicle or a van it's essentially a a

020non-school bus used for transporting uh this could be a car too yeah um anything so it should be nine passengers or less um is an stb elsewhere they're called Massachusetts they're called 7D Vans after the legislation yeah overseas them all right and please do just jump in with with any questions as we go here you don't have to cover that engage talk about uh the Italian electric uh do we have a little bit more um some of the issues that we're at just to give you the preview on that we have the buses we have the Chargers um the switch gear that's required to uh to upgrade the the uh the service um is back ordered was back ordered when we ordered it by 52 weeks a year so it's still back ordered by many

021weeks and haven't gotten much of that day so that's kind of a just an early lesson on the importance of you know especially with the supply chain being what it is today being absolutely on top of uh you know things like infrastructure infrastructure especially um and having it ready to go be planning everybody's thinking about the bus but the real key is in the infrastructure yeah um and not to get too into the weeds but yeah the the switch gear is back ordered but you still have the utility that needs to come in and provide enough power that's true right so there's that's another so just yeah just to kind of give you a little bit of so when we ordered the buses you know we knew we had to order the Chargers and we

022kind of notified eversource that we're getting these buses and didn't know to ask the next question so the switching gear is what essentially connects the pole on the street to the charger because you've got to have you know basically like a Transformer like you have maybe in your neighborhood same kind of thing so you're connecting the the service to the charging unit and so we went you know we actually got the buses in early we got the Chargers in we called eversource and they're like well okay we have to order the switch gear it's gonna be 52 weeks and we're like wait what yeah was this in the past year yeah this is ongoing luckily we've got six other chargers that we already had um but the Chargers that we actually ordered for those buses

023are still sitting in the warehouse because we can't hook them out um so we're able you saw the charge we've got in the building now but yeah we were able to we were able to yeah because we had power in the building at our corporate office we were able to hook Chargers up to that building directly without the switching gear but it's a process and it's this is why we're doing this and why we wanted to be out front because we didn't know we didn't know right and now we're learning what we don't know yeah I could be losing my or something they gave the impression that if we wanted to do this they ought to be able to make it happen from the road to bus within a few months now things change if

024you've got the equipment so I mean you just said 52 weeks just to order the stuff now you get it in order maybe you're done in one week okay that's the last yeah that's the impression I got too is if because we've got as I said six other chargers that are hooked up right to our building in New Britain um and that was no problem at all because we didn't need whatever the Transformer is yeah exactly it's how much service you have and and you know what kind of charger and I think Kevin will probably get into the different levels of chargers it's the switch gear though that's Europe that's on our side of the line I wish I'd put the diagram that's on the connect or the EPA clean School Bus program that shows

025like what's on the Utility side of the line which isn't covered by that particular Grant and what's on our side of the line you know a switch gear and so we're using our one now put all of these electric Partners uh together you know we are using one of our electrical service contractors to order from Electrical Wholesalers the the distributor um I think it's actually Square D is who manufactures it got Square Deal or G there it's G Equipment um all right so back well part of tonight was really to kind of get everybody on the same page that's a little knowledge base yeah that's why I know but that's great this is important I appreciate you sharing it yeah yeah for sure um and we'll get into that even more uh in a little

026bit because those lessons are very important um so there's also 74 propane buses uh operating in our Fleet um I already know that to 100 yeah 100 it's 100 of our new Canon Fleet um East Hartford has some yeah we've got six in these parts yeah um on the dealership side uh we are selling our first electric bus for a non-deco customer um to be delivered soon the only problem infrastructure um so that is on site now hopefully to be delivered to uh RSU 13 in Maine um we've applied for 140 electric buses for customers across our New England ALR under the EPA Cleveland School Bus program uh we have a dedicated electric Specialists on staff as my dad noted we have a six DC fast Chargers that are installed at our dealership location um

027they'll be accompanied by seven and seven because some of them are dual Port um to support our 10 electric buses um and you know as I already started to allude to assembly full line of electric Partners to you know work with us where where we have holes so everything from vehicle manufacturers we are a vehicle distributor uh to the utilities uh you need to have site developers which luckily we have our own site development team in-house through accelerated Property Management uh Electro electrical equipment distributors um should have said electrical equipment manufacturers where dge financing electrical service contractors contractor charging station manufacturers start charging station Distributors Network integrators the software that that connects the buses to the Chargers and you to the Chargers and what's what's happening with them so as you can see a lot

028of stuff that goes into this ecosystem you know it's not so different from uh the ecosystem that has already existed around like around around diesel uh for example it's just you know everybody's been used to that everybody has a diesel tank you know everybody has their fuel distributor everybody has their their Vehicle Manufacturer where they go for service all of that stuff now has to grow up around electric yes Tim when I look at this list here what I might take away from it is you are hoping or planning to be the general contractor yes that is my point is that believes fandom some of the stress is trying to organize this stuff yeah right that's that's exactly right yeah we as you'll see it's it's complex you're exactly right we want to be the

029general contractor you know we want to we won't be in control of what of what's going on you know and have understanding of what's happening to be able to protect our customers be able to protect ourselves um as you'll see though everybody is trying to be a lot of different things uh simultaneously so it's not cut and dry at all of like who's running this thing and that is something that you run into of you know okay who's doing the engineering drawings is it is it the the electrical equipment distributor is it the installer is it the the manufacturer is it the charging station distributor we've run into that already um and so UH responsibilities are not always clear but yes we do want to you know kind of have a full idea of the

030big picture and be the one bringing in all these Partners can I just yeah that going back to the I guess the people who bought the buses prior to discovering the infrastructure issue isn't that well luckily it was us [Laughter] um yeah oh yeah so wouldn't that be in the initial planning stages prior to purchasing yep but again absolutely so one of the things that's happening is that people are deciding that they want a vehicle so it is also what happened with with our bus which is there are supply chain issues that if I ordered a regular bus today I wouldn't get it for just about a year but I see bus really would like to get to increase their market share on electric buses so they're they're turning around these buses in a much

031quicker timeline than we expect so our buses rolled off about two and a half months after we ordered them which is you know as you can about eight months earlier than we were expecting them and it's getting that right especially in you know the supply chain that we're in of you know okay do I wait to order it when am I going to get it if I wait when am I going to get the bus if I wait to order that well and the other thing to answer your question what's driving a lot of this too at least the initial stage is when grant money is available everyone wants to jump on the Grant and you don't want to miss the grant opportunity so like in the in the case of Maine they had grant

032money available they said well we've got this grant money we've got to spend it we've got to buy a bus okay we've got the bus and the bus came in before we expected all right yeah now we got to figure out where to plug it in you know so for the horse yeah it's well and it's it's a function of things are moving very fast right you know especially with funding it's just and when the funding's there you're not going to say well yeah you know I'll call you next year when I'm ready it's that people are taking the opportunity to get it I just worry about yeah we need more funding to fix yeah yeah plan ahead right yeah absolutely um and then I'll add just because we want to be the general contractor

033our real job is as a bus dealer is to sell the bus so we've got the bus you know if they want us to help with whatever we're willing to help with with anything but if they ask us they order us a bus we're going to get them the bus to be clear against the people at home and I think I know the answer you own our school buses right correct okay and the employees work for danco correctly not judging Public Schools that's right we already have we already have a great deal of trust built into this relationship yeah yeah yeah yeah and and you know it's different with our Fleet of course because there we do we do own the deal we can decide who which Partners we're bringing you know we don't own

034the deal necessarily when it's a customer who's just buying a bus from us all right uh so we've already talked about it a little bit but our experience with electric to date so just want to get some lessons out there um of what we've seen and make sure that you guys understand the lessons from that so our type A Electric bus is unreliable and service is lacking um support on the type C however has been better so far our lesson from that is that especially early on well always because hopefully the brands will be established by the time we we have to buy you know a type a bus but use established brands that can back back their products like IC Bus I see buses is owned by uh Trading Group or Volkswagen um they

035you know there's a lot of backing that's ironic there's a lot of uh backing that's that's going into this you know there's a lot of money what are they manufactured uh Tulsa Oklahoma um so yeah Trading Group which is Volkswagen owns Navistar which is based in Chicago which owns IC Bus so I see Buster saying is a is an established leader it's the old Navistar absolutely how many do you know how many electric bosses they've actually put out because I thought it was like only a thousand I don't have that statistic what I will tell you is that icbus has been behind you know it was upset we like to be leaders we haven't been able to because companies like lion and bluebird uh and Thomas beat us beat IC Bus to the market um

036I'd like to thank and it seems to be bearing itself out that they didn't want to rush into the market they wanted to make sure they got it right before it's before entering um but I don't know the answer of how many exactly these electric buses are on it's definitely increasing a lot their large deployments have been in British Columbia and California in a few different areas in California uh so we're rewarded 65 Grant coverage for Middletown New Britain uh that's huge as you'll see in a bit that puts us pretty close to you know the similar cost profile to diesel when you can get a 65 on your vehicle and your infrastructure um so you know there's money out there to fund these projects it's necessary it's vital um and it's not always going

037to be there so take advantage of it um uh we're waiting on Switching gear for both sides I think we talked about that one uh enough but be ahead of the game on infrastructure um should be replaced before the buses are ordered think about that way more than you think about the vehicle but as much make sure you think about it install DC fast charge at the dealership location about four weeks so we talked about how much easier that was we had 480 volt three-phase power at our dealership location which we don't have at our Middletown and and New Britain Fleet locations so if you don't need a service upgrade that can be very helpful then I think you're saying what that there is one school at the bus depot yeah but Highland School does

038have 480 volt three-phase guess why was built in 71 and we had electric heat in terms of in terms of order evil does that have any impact on the time it takes to charge of us just curious like so the the DC fast charges that we use only work with with 480 volts so that it'd have to be stepped up um if you only had 208 or 240. um DC fast charges require More Voltage if you have more if you have 480 volts you can get a more powerful DC fast charger um and then it will will uh charge much faster in terms of how how long it takes to charge it's a relatively simple in theory uh equation there the batteries are measured in kilowatt hours so the Max uh kilowatt hours that we

039have in IC Buses is 315 kilowatt hours so you take that you divide it by the number of kilowatts that the the charger can output so if you have a 60 kilowatt charger 300 kilowatt hours divided by 60 kilowatts should take five hours to charge now that's theoretically you want to put a little fluff in there because the the system's not always going to want to give 100 um it's going to want to trickle charge when it can um and you know it's it's an intelligent system that's learning so that's the capability that it has but it doesn't necessarily mean that it'll charge that fast so you know that comes out five hours maybe say six hours to get from zero to 100 miles is it got on the charge uh the so we have

040a 210 and a 315 kilowatt hour uh bus um the 210 goes 135 miles the 315 goes about 200 miles um we actually took one of our buses our it's a three-string uh 315 kilowatt hour buses to Cape Cod for a an industry event that bus traveled 191 miles um without a charge so which is the best in the industry but they were nervous to how to push the bus I was I heard this story I was very very nervous I wasn't really happy we charge it up at a charge point in America charge please or charging station for 40 bucks two hours so what's it typical what's our average root length here in Cheshire for about 80 miles a day I I built in eight miles yeah when we go into the okay you

041have this okay so 80 miles would be the three morning routes and the three afternoon yeah yes that's right yeah both all three two years full now let's make things a little bit more complicated you know Kevin gave you the formula for charging the boss the interesting thing is it's not a linear line yeah so for whatever reason I'm not an electrical engineer but the bus goes the bus will charge from zero to eighty percent a lot quicker than the last 20 percent the last 20 takes the longest time the impression I've gotten from somebody somewhere is as you're getting more is it so electricity is electrons and it has real Mass but yeah so so I mean to answer your question I've never heard that yeah I can't say that's true I have no

042idea but I can tell you when you plug the bus in it's not like filling a gas tank that you know you fill your gas tank kind of linear it'll go from zero to eighty percent fairly quickly and then that last 20 percent takes a lot longer and so the advantage in the school bus operation is you know we've got time between runs that we could plug the bus in so if you don't need the full hundred percent to complete your route you're okay and well I don't know if we get into it later but the Chargers they're called smart Chargers in that you can do all kinds of things when you when you have a bunch of vehicle Chargers strung together including charging them at night when the power is cheaper or you could

043say you know there's four buses I need you know that bus to be a hundred percent but I only need that one to be 80 so you know charge that one first and then that one and so you're not drawing all the power at the same time there's a lot of I mean and and also when you plug that bus in it's also talking back to IC which can monitor the status of the bus and the batteries okay so it's it's a lot the one thing just to add to this conversation time to go and that's going to this in depth at all but what you're talking about I think also it reminds me of the concept of vehicle to grid which basically for people who are watching uh vehicles are great basically is saying

044buses are not simply a cost but it's a potential Revenue Source or a cost offset to the school buses because electricity is based on yeah we're not quite there yet but yeah I mean no no no it's one of the things that for example IC talked about is let's say you had you know the the electric bus could be a emergency power source for example let's say we had a you know natural disaster you can take a couple buses and run your fire station on yeah you bring them there and run the power the other way um but we're not we're not there yet but yeah yeah it's very very quickly yep there's a lot of things that could be uh could happen like that in the future that is not really something that we

045see immediately on the horizon of software isn't ready on these particular buses and also it would take a large investment by eversource and they might not might not even be willing to do it to have the switching mechanism because they'd have to make sure that you know power can flow in the opposite direction which you know has big implications for the grid so there's a lot of stuff uh there's a there's a lot there um that really makes that complicated and you know you have to approve it every time every time you know it's used you know usually in the summer about five times a year um and there are questions of how much there's a lot of promises that are being made on on you know oh this will this will make everything fine

046this will make all the all the dollars and cents add up um we haven't seen good evidence of that so yeah uh but it is something that could be uh a factor in the future the vehicle to vehicle to building might even be more convincing um the future so using your your vehicles to to power your building or solar to power the Plus uh so I talked already about the one-time upfront I accidentally the one-time upfront cost is big for infrastructure but it's one time so if you're buying one bus it's big for that one bus you know as and we'll talk about a little bit more if you replace all 35 buses all 35 type c buses in Cheshire um you know then you're spreading that infrastructure out over a much larger uh base

047their economies of scale said differently uh so we'll talk about the regulatory landscape why we're here um so uh there are mandates and incentives uh being put out there I mean the big one is the kind of the Clean Air Act um but you know Carriage sticks uh there are goals and mandates uh the federal land State levels that are driving us toward lower emissions uh levels and on-road vehicles again we'll talk about the Connecticut Clean Air Act EPA clean trucks is a another one but they're also helping us out to get there providing grant funding Federal uh EPA feeding School Bus uh Connecticut clean School Bus uh which is kind of ties in with uh kind of A Clean Air Act um and then Volkswagen Knox mitigation program the grant that we received and

048then diesel emissions reduction act to go along with many others that aren't mentioned does this also include I'm just trying to think of your standard maybe yearly or I don't know maintenance fees like right now do you have maintenance costs for our bus so the prices that we give to Cheshire Public Schools it's on a vehicle basis so per day um so we provide this bus per day 180 days no we're 180 180 um 180 days um I believe that the cost per type c or type 1 bus in Cheshire is 349 dollars per day yeah um so that's what the and it includes the maintenance okay yeah so that's all that's everything that's all you need you're getting a bus for yeah we provide the bus y but we pay for fuel that's right

049so I remember that there's an advantage to that budgeting yes we purchased the field we don't pay tax on it thank you but there's also a risk of the fuel right I just didn't know if we delineated the maintenance yeah in anticipation of no no we we have to put everything into that one number right so it it you know as our costs go up of course you know the it goes into that number you know it's reflected in in the price yeah and the big I mean obviously is to purchase the bus in addition to maintaining it and that Fleet is relatively new and Panthers provided 18 new buses yeah hopefully there's about that for 2021 and 2022 models in chapter um any changes in the safety features of the buses now that they

050got an electric and each reason so uh oh seat belts obviously no not because you're the only weird one electric so the bus actually has a speaker to make noise because you can't hear it coming [Music] there's a story right there they did have I don't know where but an ice cream truck sound and they decided that that was a bad idea because what do kids do when they hear the ice cream truck yeah yeah but it actually yeah you have to we have speakers that make noise because the bus is front and back too quiet so they've got some like promotional things that are on there as telematics come standard on on these buses so you can track the bus and always know what fault codes are on it um there's also what's called

051Khajiit Wi-Fi uh comes standard as a kind of a promotional package on them so there's Wi-Fi for the students on board um but as for the safety features they're the same safety features that exist on other buses are available yeah so do you have 10 you have 10 of the type C's on the road on the ground we're working through ways to get them uh out on the road yeah uh so the Mandate that is kind of prompted this uh trying to get clean air Air Act sp4 Senate bill 4. um uh a few parts of this five uh that I'm mentioning here relative to school buses 100 zero emissions school buses and environmental justice communities by 2030. Cheshire is not an environmental justice Community um so not relevant to this discussion but what is

052relevant is these two items 100 zero emissions or alternative uh fuel school buses in all school districts by 2035 so if it's not electric it's got to be propane um at least for the options that we have other options are biofuel for alternative fuels biofuels CNG um uh that's all I can think of actually at this moment but other uh alternative fuel options apply but we don't have it it's as we'll see in a second diesel gasoline propane or electric uh 100 zero emissions uh school buses so you know zero emissions read Electric uh zero missions my eyes is a misnomer um because there is always a source of the emissions if it's not a renewable energy uh but electric um school buses uh by 2040. school contracts uh can be 10 years if providing

053at least one zero emission School Bus um and uh the commissioner's instructor set up a grant funds program to support the federal funds that are coming through the clean School Bus program which we'll see in a second has the EPA announced the first round of the recipients they said they said in October so I was just curious if they were going to warn anybody outside of the environmental justice communities I know that Ben is probably not but it is highly unlikely there's um about so they had originally 500 million they increased it to just about uh one billion um for funding there were four billion dollars applied for and I believe it's at 75 percent was electric um so either electric or or in priority uh communities um so non-prioritized communities are unlikely to get

054how does one get categorized in the environmental justice uh so they're uh so for can it's different between federal and state levels in Connecticut um you can go look to see all of them but there are about 10 different metrics that they use to decide if it essentially comes down to Poverty yeah rankings yeah and it's the same it's the same with Federal but they use different different metrics to arrive at that the the average turnover of a school bus fleet is 10 years pretty much yeah um so with regard to those deadlines of 2035 and 2040. what's your initial thought on even moving toward an alternative fuel you're thinking you're thinking what what I'm thinking um which is that I mean the alternative if you want these buses to be you know we're just

055going to be playing a shell game at that point if we don't start by 2025 you know putting alternative but even if the scrap buses that just you know for less than 10 years old yes I just want I just want to say to make sure I'm thinking this clearly so the alternative fuels you would have to start by 2025 or in 20 almost in 2023 right now so you have to in these buses don't have to but these buses well I mean to do this in a straightforward transition where you would just be rotating your Fleet in a normal process yep you'd be starting in 2025. let's put this way anything new you buy after 25 you'd have to give strong consideration to buying diesel after 25. if you're yeah I'm saying if you're

056going to buy a bus after 2025 you really want to think about why you want to buy a diesel bus right oh yeah my point is because then by 2030 you're looking at doing the I'm thinking you would be thinking about doing the infrastructure for the electric anyway yeah so you only have a five year window where you're buying these alternative fuels so and you you own the school buses not us that's right okay yeah so my thinking makes sense it really it's there's a certain yeah right so it would help Cheshire you know because from our perspective we own the school buses right it would help Cheshire to be you know be thinking about this before you know because otherwise again we talked about the infrastructure our costs get passed on to you that's

057just the way the way of the world so if we have buses that we can no longer use we'd scrap them and so that represents a much higher cost to up and and then hard cut put in alternative fuels or electric and get rid of those other buses that represents a higher cost that will then be passed on to to Chester but we as a community would have to provide the actual charging infrastructure to that point that's going to be by the fuel now all right that's right yeah logic would dictate that it's it's the big thing is it's your property so it was your property probably your infrastructure but these grants are complicated in that you know they're going to give us the the grant for the bus and the accompanying it will be

058a grant for the for the infrastructure so and the thing it's very possible that we you know pass that on yeah and say okay have you seen any grants you cover the rest of that so do you see any grants just for the infrastructure yes yeah so like because what I'm hearing here is that the problem that you're having is you're getting the bus is not the infrastructure doesn't go anywhere so yeah it would behoove us to start playing yeah and I I will say that um the last the last deer around was specifically for municipalities and school districts we as a contractor weren't didn't apply for it just for uh infrastructure um from municipants yeah for municipalities for for public entities essentially but you would access consultancy or we do this in a joint

059venture yeah if you if if you tell us that that's the way you want to do we'll make sure we're scouring for for these these grants you know if it might be that you who has to apply for them it might be us to us so here's the other piece to your equation of timing right that without a grant right now electric doesn't make sense because so you may need to go propane as a bridge because the cost is so much cheaper I mean you're what 110 000 right now for a propane bus yeah I've got a hundred thousand a hundred thousand okay a hundred thousand four thousand dollars more of them yeah so so 100 000 for a for a propane bus or a um an electric is 340. so I can buy three

060propane buses more than a Diesel's 90. so so it's a small it's yeah so you can you know you could convert your Fleet I mean in theory if you just look at the math you could almost convert your you know based on those years you could convert your Fleet to propane and then throw them away and still be cheaper than buying electric without the grant so it's you know you're gonna and I don't think it's going to be in my opinion it's not going to be one solution it's not like okay we're going 100 electric I mean I think there's going to be a a combination and you know down the road there may be a hydrogen fuel cell or another alternative that even takes over for electric so I would so there's nothing on

061the horizon for hydrogen that yeah that's completely speculative um I would add that on the electric side be very opportunistic you know yes you might be putting propane but if the grants are available and you can get them go get grants now I will also add that I think there is somewhat of a game of chicken going on here with with this mandate we want to start moving in this direction do I think that actually 100 of zero emission or alternative fuel school buses will be in all school districts will be in all school districts by 2035 we're talking operational like operating every bus I don't know how many are in Connecticut there are 500 000 um across the United States um do I think that 100 will be electric by by 2040. I'm fairly

062confident our electric grid would be shattered but by this so there's a slight game of chicken going on here where you know if there's a mandate in place is everybody going to to follow the Mandate um we want to start working in that direction but it's going to be very difficult for for this to happen across the board yeah just one more piece on the infrastructure and how that plays out uh my understanding is I mean that could go in a number of different ways and one thing that comes to mind for me and correct me if I'm wrong on this but my understanding is that there are players out there who are saying we'll pay for the infrastructure you give it to us the idea being you pay 14 cents per kilowatt hour will

063sell it to users for 16 cents per kilowatt hour so you have a charging station out of school got somebody Parks up there they're 16 cents they pick up the two cents to pay for the infrastructure over the course of 10 or 20 years or something like that yep so there are leasing models it's the same as exists with you know putting solar panels on your house there are tons of companies that will come they'll say hey we'll put them on these solar panels on for free and then they take all the benefits of of the electric that speaks all of that and that probably would not be I I find it hard to Envision how that would work well at the bus depot but if we did have charging stations in schools then something

064like that could happen which are open to the public yeah and my point is simply that this could play out a million different ways there's lots of people who realize that there's money here yeah and they can make money off of it yeah right yeah it's and so I had um on the you know I called him a financing partner Highland electric is a big partner um that we can bring it on there they've been very aggressive with financing these projects um because they they do have ways of of monetizing those and and you know they'll own the equipment buy it back at the end with the expectation that you're just going to buy buy more and more because howling the one that the county that's right yep yeah so literally what they did is

065they said we're just gonna pay for your Fleet in entire County and then they're going to make the money over the course of like 10 years or something yeah yeah so people went to jail over that field all right yeah um but yes um yeah they are very aggressive with their uh at least right now with the money that they'll put up up front to own that infrastructure um and they believe that they're going to be able to monetize it later so that is that is certainly an option um let's talk they're all you know as we've seen we can always find money you know my inflation might go through the roof but you know we can always rent money I'm talking about can the grid yeah support support this and the answer obviously right

066now is no um you know we have to build that up you know how much does do Renewables you know at locations you know do we have all have to have our own that's that's not in the presentation but we all have to have our own uh uh micro grids on site in order to power uh what for would be 42 buses I believe for for Cheshire um that's if you go to Martha's Vineyard um the transit authority there they're awesome but they have their own microgrid to support their electric buses they have solar panels um you know backup generators to to provide electricity if the power is out um so I'm not saying everybody's not going to do that but if if we were going to get to to this I think that those

067types of things would be would be necessary so we'll see what happens over the next 18 years all right a little behind on time I assume um so EPA Community Truck Line I'm just going to skip over this but uh they're regulating away diesel engines anyway so um they have two options that they might be going to option one um would follow the card standards uh the California standards which are much more rigorous um for Knox so they're debating if they're going to go to that you have to have 0.035 and step one 2027 to 2030 by uh or for oxides and nitrogen grams for uh horsepower hour um unattainable um for diesel engine manufacturers um at least if you listen to that I guess that's what they would say is next but um diesel

068is getting regulated out anyway um so we're looking at that by 2027 or or 2030 um most likely unless they go to option two which is still going to be difficult for uh diesel engine manufacturers to me uh EPA clean School Bus program we talked about a little bit um five billion available 2022 application period ended August 19th should be coming out in October for awards um different levels if you're prioritized or non-prioritized and prioritize gets selected first again Cheshire is not prioritized so we actually for dacco unfortunately did not have any prioritized districts um that that we we serve um any questions on this should any of your districts apply even though they're not priority hey you know I don't know do you yeah um so Cheshire 250 000 for electric vehicle um and

069thirteen thousand dollars would go towards infrastructure per bus if we move to an alternative fuel would it do you have any recommendation on CNG versus propane can't do CNG okay oh there okay it'll be propane yeah and I'll tell you why uh CNG is available in in um in transit buses the problem with CNG is the fueling station's over a million dollars so well and and so and that's exactly what the bus the school bus manufacturers said they said you know I can I can basically put a propane tank on my ground up the the propane dealers do it for free and and they looked at the market and said you know what we're not going to spend the money developing a CNG school bus because nobody's going to buy it unless you're maybe in

070Texas you know so so they they only Supply the propane on the school bus side [Music] so I talked about the Volkswagen Grant um we got 65 Grant coverage that's really big as close to the neutral with diesel uh Dira already talked about a little bit typically the Dira Awards have been far less than the 65 for example uh so dacco Chester just uh you know late in the game give you the overview of your Fleet 35 type 1 school buses 15 type 2 school buses um seven stvs I hope these numbers are right I just went in our operation systems to get them um don't check me okay it's 100 diesel in gas and here's the facility I believe then this is the area yeah we're talking about so I mean expanding that direction

071and then we talked about possibly expand that way again I don't I can't speak to I all I can say is that won't work for electric I know that for sure it barely works will this work I I don't know um uh that would be would get in charge who's our main uh electric partner with IC in here they could do a free consultation um talk to you about you know what we can do with this facility what other facilities are options um to just talk through that um I think I cover that there's not enough power there for uh electric DC fast charging not yet but you know to your point earlier it would work for propane that's all I have to do is drop a propane tank and you're done so one question

072on the DC fast charging we have a fleet of 35 big buses yep regular school buses um I just wonder how many of those do we actually uh need fast charging for because I imagine some of our school buses are doing a morning route and afternoon they're not doing sports and they're not doing sports at night so we just went you know with a level two charger 240. yeah I would that suffice for I mean it's a portion of our Fleet yeah so every discharge overnight the highest level for uh level two would be a 19.2 kilowatt um so not up to 20. so it would take 10 hours uh in best case to to charge the lower battery um it's a long time so there's not much there's not a lot of margin margin

073for error there and we like to keep a lot of Parker fair so so is it positive but is there a margin of error built into the actual kilowatt hours in the bus because I thought we had we were saying that the buses have more capacity than we would actually use in a day to drive that Miles so that that's true okay so in terms of in terms of Simply diversifying our bus fleet and the energy uh required for it that would be a possibility of an electric bus with a level two not 35 type 1 buses so maybe a few of them yeah yeah all I can tell you is that our in charge especially in this region you have to think about this region yeah when it gets cold it you know perfect

074is far from what happens when it's cold when a battery is cold um the flow of electrons is far slower so that 19.2 kilowatts just dropped in half so now you're 20 hours to with with a 19.2 to charge 200 kilowatt hours so but even then I mean so when you look at just pure math the cost is in the charger what the cost is not in the charger well it's not in the charger itself but it is in the but we could put a level yeah you could put a level two right now yeah oh I see what you're saying yeah without the service right right right and I'm really speaking to the idea before you were talking about diversifying our sleep yeah and it's used to be a small step yeah and it

075as we progress I think it's something that should be on our minds sure I my preference as it has been in New Britain and Middletown is let's overdo it first and then we can scale back from there um because we don't want to not have enough power and I've said this to multiple different customers you know we're working with Boston Public Schools um it's important to get these things right to start because you you not only lose your you don't not only lose the public but you lose your drivers you you lose uh your operation staff but if these things go wrong so you want to give them too much not not too little to to get the buy-in up front my kids are in first and third grade I may not know what happens

076in the classroom but I know what goes on in the school bus fair enough uh all right so we've already talked a little bit about the product type one also called type c sorry for the late on that uh that's IC Bus type 2 also called type a um that's that's Collins all right um so I see bus offers diesel gasoline propane and electric um uh diesel these are common size B gasoline PSI 8.8 liter coming soon will be the Cummins ISB 6.7 octane um they're going to squeeze the last bit they can out of a heavy duty gas engine um the PSI has already signaled that they're leaving this Market because of most of the things that we've already talked about um it's just getting harder for that to work um propane is a

077PSI 8.8 liter VA and the electric and I'm talking about the motor here obviously most of the cost in the batteries so that's not where really the money is but it's a Dana TM for sumo uh and then Collins um the gas are electric um I'll just focus on electric uh they used to be motive that's that used to be who so it's a it's a automotive chassis in this case a Ford gets sent to an electric upfitter they take out all of the uh what they call that when they take out all the guts the cabins anyway yeah yeah the manufacturers have a word for it but uh and you know putting all the electric stuff you know so an internal combustion engine comes out batteries electric motor going um and that's what we're

078dealing with there so lightning is a little bit more established than motive is and was um but I'm gonna wait and see mode on on this well and believe it or not one of the biggest problems they have is not well besides cost but it's the weight because you got when you add so much weight in the batteries to that chassis it can't handle it anymore so they're limited you know everyone's saying well why can't you spawn batteries in well because the the chassis just can't carry all that um so I'm just gonna limit our conversation a little bit to um diesel propane uh electric for the IC Bus uh the type one or type c um I'll just fly through this do you guys could read this later but you know advantages to diesel

079you know it is the highest power it's a lower cost up front um higher higher operating costs these days due to maintenance of the emission system but that's mostly offset by long federally mandated warranty periods on those uh emission systems uh so we have the lowest fuel consumption by miles per gallon but a higher price um so ultimately it's the highest cost uh of the three options that we're going to talk about diesel propane electric for fuel cost environmentally the highest knocks output of all options but surprisingly it's actually lower on all other emissions measures than propane or gas because of all of the emissions technology that's gone into these you know diesel particulate filters diesel exhaust fluid selective catalytic reductions there's a whole it's like the whole alphabet of stuff that they use to

080reduce knocks reduce particulate matter coming out the exhaust reduce hydrocarbons so you know I don't want to hear this but this is about 50 times cleaner than a diesel engine was maybe 15 15 years ago um it's it does run very clean um comparatively but still ice knocks out but that's a big emphasis because that's both the pollutant um Nitro oxygens of nitrite of nitrogen nitrogen dioxide which is a pollutant bad for your lungs and nitrous oxide which is a greenhouse gas it's also laughing gas so big emphasis to reduce that by the federal government uh reliability um more there's been more breakdowns there's more componentry has been added you know more things to break with those after treatment systems uh it's a high flash point in diesel so safety makes it probably the safest

081dual option a driver faster Comfort not very good because it's loud a lot of hybrid a lot of vibration it takes a long time to heat up uh and then range that's good because it can go a long way on a single fill and then there's diesel stations wherever you you want to go on field trips so just for application these are the best equipped for on Highway use so these engines want to go hot and fast um so they want to go down that way I'll try to speed it up uh but propane uh PSI 8.8 liter um I'll just let you guys read through this at your leisure um and then electric you know obviously we're talking about much higher costs um the vehicle maintenance costs are down uh lowest cost of fuel

082because it's such an efficient method of transferring energy um you know once the energy is actually there um little energy lost their heat environment zero emissions when driving I will say true impact depends on the source of the energy you know is it natural gas or renewable energy probably 53 percent of our grid in Connecticut is nuclear energy most of the remainder is made up by natural gas so if you thought you were you know carbon neutral by doing this not so much really but as a factor if environment is your concern reliability uh to be determined but there's high expectations um and I will uh we already talked about 210 kilowatt hours or 315 kilowatt hours 135 miles or 200 miles of range um it's also very costly to replace these batteries by the

083way uh and then here we go we're always late on these things but electric infrastructure um we have level one level two and DC fast charge so these are both AC level one AC this makes 120 volt AC um you know it's you're your level two is like your dryer Outlet 240 volts or 280. um what's the standard charge out there now for electric cars that you see yeah so the you know if it's if it's just an electric car I don't know the kilowatt hours that are in those batteries but it's far less than a bus so you probably have a level two charger okay yeah um it's it's just fine to have a level one in your home if you're not if you don't have super high demands on your of your vehicle

084um but for a bus you really need a DC fast charger um or some people call them level Crews [Music] uh so the Chargers we worked in charge of the continues and ABB company um they're the main partner of icbus they're kind of the exclusive partner right now because their software is the only one that's been seriously tested uh with IC Bus so we kind of need to use them or they have their own brand Chargers which you can see or they have ABV Chargers so our dealership units are the six are ABB uh Chargers 24 kilowatt um whereas we have three 120 kilowatts coming from for uh New Britain those are going to be doing crack so they're going to be longer routes so they're going to be 315 kilowatt hour batteries so if

085you want more charging faster charging and 60 kilowatts for uh four Chargers in Middletown as you can see as you get up don't be fooled that's that's dual connectors not actually dual Port I can't have two buses uh connected there um it's a CCS on one side which is what goes into our bus and then chat mouth um which is the like you're the European style um so not a not a dual part this one can be a dual board so our chargers can you know have the two arms so one charger charges two buses that's my question yep all right finally here guys budget considerations let's talk money all right so I'm going to break it down for you into uh vehicle cost infrastructure cost fuel cost and maintenance costs and we're only talking

086about variable costs for maintenance so not the garage so vehicle cost um you know these are estimated numbers but it gets you in the ballpark um ninety thousand dollars for diesel about ten thousand dollars more for propane and uh 375 000 for electric now if you get a 65 VW Grant then all of a sudden you know you're down at 131 getting pretty close to uh propane there um you do it all out I've got you know the scrap value in the formula what's the useful life um cost Capital obviously you can play with all of these parameters you know as interest rates go up this only goes up um so daily cost comes out to as you can see 57 63 197 and 64. and you know that that's why that's so close to

087that because we have a longer useful life on electric bus um but daily cost is kind of the most important thing because we can kind of put it next to the 349 dollars per day that you guys pay and okay how much does it go up from there any questions on infrastructure cost obviously that's only electric um so you know really what we're looking at here is okay what does it change if we go from one bus to 35 buses you know as we spread it out over more buses what does it change as we get the the VW grants um so you know you'd see that it just goes down you know if I get one bus you know I can I'm only spreading it out over one bus if I have 35 buses

088then you know yeah I'm paying for a lot more charging stations but I only have to do my service upgrade once um I only have to do my sight work once it might be a little bit more uh installation might be a little bit more but ultimately it's going to be a lot less um so increasing economies of scale is the point and then fuel cost um I used the retail prices for diesel and propane I don't know what you guys pay for diesel and what you would pay for it it's less than five a gallon right today yeah yeah it's probably it's probably less than this so with the propane V2 yeah yeah and it's likely that you know I have this you know this comes out to just a little bit less than

089diesel it's very likely that you'd be able to acquire propane at you know significantly lower costs than that [Music] um and you can see that you know Electric's cheapest propane next diesel highest and then maintenance cost so again we're talking about variable cost only so I'm only talking about uh you know the consumables that we're putting on so I'm going to pay for the technicians anyway and I'm going to pay for my garage anyway so one of my what are the consumables that I'm putting on tires brakes fluids on scheduled repairs Tires and Brakes are going to go down because we have regenerative braking on on these systems so rather than the brakes and and working and then causing greater tire wear by them skidding on the on the roads uh the regenerative braking is

090charging the batteries while slowing the vehicle so if it's on a hill it can break the you know break that vehicle while uh charging the battery and there are different levels of regenerative brick so that brings down Tires and Brakes and that is pretty amazing the way it works yeah did you go for a ride when you I did go up for a ride it's like a golf cart if you've ever driven on a golf cart as you ease up on on the accelerator it slows it down well the the bus that we took a ride on at three different levels of regeneration so at level three that slowed the bus down the most it also gave more energy back to the batteries so it was pretty incredible and the person that was driving the

091bus Frank I think his name was was you know very good and you know you get used to it it takes a while yeah you know what he was doing but um you know at some points as we were riding it did actually help the longevity of how far you could go with the bus and it wasn't uncomfortable as he would take off his foot off the gas so to speak even though so I guess because he knew what he was doing but it really does help and I know Frank said that gee I'm not sure we'll ever go through a set of brake pads that's because you don't touch the Testament right because he doesn't touch the break so one of the point just the board member and as a parent for you is

092that the bus was quieter yes and the bus driver was talking about how that has a direct positive impact the atmosphere within the bus because oftentimes what happens is noisy engine leads to yelling which leads to sort of deteriorating kids bus drivers yelling that the bus driver gets in trouble because oh you yelled my kids well you can't hero the answers anyway the point being with a quieter boss yeah there is I feel probably a real possibility for improved uh yeah an improved atmosphere for the kids it's absolutely the case you know and and we see that I'll also note with Propane and Gas as comparison of the added benefit of they heat up much faster than Diesel and that's the same for electric although it has the negative side of that there's a big

093drop in uh the charge but driver Comfort passenger comfort you know the feeling the bus you know with all three of those fuel types gas propane and uh and electric significantly improved yeah absolutely awesome um so here we're just talking about maintenance costs uh so we talked about Tires and Brakes fluids and filters obviously are now non-electric um much reduced goes a little bit back to the after treatment system also you need to put a lot more oil in a in a diesel engine than a propane engine um and unscheduled repairs per mile I'll admit that these are somewhat uh fudgy numbers to uh figure it out but what we can say was pretty pretty good confidence is that would have the lowest maintenance propane next and then diesel and battery replacement costs we have

094that I did not put that in there just because I had enough slides already um okay but yeah so battery replacement costs you know if you wanted to replace all of the batteries so there's an eight year warranty eight year hundred thousand hundred thousand mile warranty on the batteries so if I want to get my bus to 15 years then let's probably think that we're going to replace those batteries um halfway through you know at some point uh they always seem to get those those warranties just right so a hundred thousand dollars now will battery prices come down I don't know I don't know I'm not gonna Bet On It um but we also don't know if there's a secondary market for the battery yeah which is the secondary Market is coming into play I

095saw a Nissan Leaf uh retired battery power plant that's operational California yeah and also you can't predict the future but battery prices have dropped dramatically the last year or two inflation out of it over the past 10 years they have dropped dramatically yeah absolutely so yeah so we just it's technology and Technology like computers it gets better and less expensive generally speaking much like a television you know but uh he went out and bought a television in that size 10 years ago you paid 10 grand and now you can go to Costco and buy it well maybe not that size but close for a thousand dollars yeah you know so I mean yeah aside from the inflation that driving with technology and costs yeah and the battery is more about technology I think that is

096absolutely true yeah the software that backs it up is a huge piece of it um you know and it's telling too that I'm told that we can it's a 375 000 bus and I can replace the batteries for a hundred thousand dollars well there's 275 000 still in there what's it from you know it's the technology mostly um that has been put into it and all the capital but they've expanded to make this happen so yeah is that 375 000 for the bus is that like is that a real actual fabrication and construction cost of the Busters it's just so inflated because of all the federal Minds out there well I wish I knew I mean I'm just thinking like I mean obviously you know that you know these the vehicles you've seen them I

097mean is it is it really three times the cost if you looked at the bus you would not tell a difference right so it's not isn't really three times the cost to me I know I can I can I can certainly say no it's just not now how much does it cost I'm sure it's a lot yeah um but how much are they advertising engineering they've put so much engineering into this so you know it's that's just the way of the world you know obviously they're trying to recoup the costs of all of the engineering that's that's happened and at a certain point hopefully they'll reach a point where it'll come down and now we can but it you know that's also how inflation Works you're right right there's so much money going into it

098if you know people are gonna get 375 000 well guess what the price is not going to be any less than 375 000 yeah it's crazy I I am a big Advocate buses but safety is also a real concern and you know people around Connecticut including here in Chester many people saw plus that the city Boston blew up in one hand them as they blew up my understanding is it was a fire the picture it burned for a long time electrical fires last a while yeah it looked terrible at the end my understanding is that what happens with this is It's the fire starts it gets put out then it starts again and it gets worse every time it gets put out again yeah it's not as though a group of people on board nobody

099when nobody was actually like yeah that bus was inside of the garage at the time that it caught fire so they had plenty of time to disable the brake on it and push it outside of the of the garage so it's not like it would like just something unbearable yeah but in terms of safety I'm just wondering we don't want that to happen either way but but hang out so so some of the and I talked to actually uh one of the executives from one of the battery management battery manufacturers followed that particular fire and what he explained to me is there's there's huge differences in the ways batteries are constructed and the and and according to him and again you know I'm just relaying what was told to me the way the batteries were

100constructed in that particular bus they were essentially like large plastic bags that were inside this plastic shell um and um so that once that well once the one bag caught on fire it just spread to the other ones because there wasn't any divider between the you know the actual batteries themselves in the in the newer technology batteries that are you know that ic's using there's individual cylinders so the theory is that it would not be able to spread from one cell to the next because they've got them isolated and you wouldn't have the tremendous heat that was you know I mean I guess the way to describe it is if you had you know in you've really got an engine you've got individual cylinders that have basically explosions in them happening right well if you

101set off the fuel tank you can have a totally different type explosion so that's why it's isolated from the rest of the vehicle so in this situation when you've got these big bags that were filled with whatever chemical that is um they just kind of fed each other whereas in the newer batteries they've got these things in in cylinders so there's more of an isolation that won't lead to that that's saying it wouldn't happen but the computer has the ability to isolate individual cells and there are many thousands of cells that make up you know just like they call it a three string battery it's the largest battery but that's actually nine rectangles nine packs with you know hundreds of of individual cells in them you know and that's just how batteries that are in

102series work um but ultimately to your question we only we don't get to see inside the batteries you know so we can't and there have been a ton of buses on the road so it is a situation where we the only way we'll know is you know 10 years from now when when we know um you know we can only repeat what is told that is told to us but that it's a concern you know to not know um it's an unknown and nobody likes unknowns but it is something that you're following and you're already saying there's special Technologies out there absolutely knowledgeable people can reasonably say this is mitigating that risk this is safer than what that was yeah technology is improving yeah and I I would hope that a a large company like

103Volkswagen that's already been in uh a scandal um you know when they're putting batteries in in buses that are transporting school children would have a pretty good economic incentive to make that yeah battery as safe as possible and I have no reason to believe that they are not safe um but as we've already said the proves to the point I have let's do a few questions the cost for and I'm just thinking of a home electricity costs in that there's a service fee a delivery fee that's not part of the the whole electric cost um so you're talking about an electric bus yes would there be an extra fee yeah uh answer is no if if we'd have to figure out what the situation was and I I guess I don't want to speak for

104for our school bus team but so stop me when I when I'm wrong if there are extra costs to us then we put them I don't have the price 349 what are you talking about the cost of delivering the electricity yeah so let me let yeah so so that's going to be really between you and eversource right but as I said earlier there's there's things that are built into the the Chargers that we can hopefully help manage your electricity costs for example again I don't know how this works but I'm told that if you charge bus at night it can be cheaper than charging the bus during Peak so you know we may want to have a situation where we say to eversource okay you're going to charge us X dollars if we charge this

105bus between you know midnight and four in the morning and you're going to charge us you know why dollars or X Plus dollars if we charge it at three o'clock in the afternoon when your all your air conditioners are running and everything's peaked out but would that be ideal given the time that we need to use it well I mean again I'm just picking I'm picking random times but yes I mean I think you would be probably running the bus during the peak time and charging the bus but we've got to manage that right so that you're charging the boss in the in the off-peak time but that's one of the things that we can do with this charging system this was part of the presentation that was at the meeting I went to a

106tackle so you know not knowing the details of how our electric grid works but if we delay the charges we could plug in the bus at four but have the software start charging the bus at seven correct so we don't physically have to be there correct then it'll charge during this off-peak period to reduce the cost that we pay I do know just because I had a meeting on a different topic last week trying to get actually electricity pricing have a contract expires in December that you know electricity can be charged in five minute increments um we don't do it that way currently but that is the way electricity is priced so if we can find a vendor an eversource allows for it we might be able to take advantage of some of those things

107and it's kind of early stage to be able to talk about that beyond what I just said that I think it's possible but I don't know you know if we wouldn't have to do that directly through eversource right now we're talking to a third party that would manage that for us on an hourly basis right and they've deregulated that market so you can buy your electricity from other than ever which we have in a few years from a regulatory perspective I think it was two years ago [Music] basically never mind got the corrupt and deep to really look at the entire system and so there's a lot changing but it will take years to get this stuff to change yeah that not through not through anybody slow walking anything but just to do it safely

108and reliably right and then the other big opportunity which we touched on is you know if we can install you know solar whatever solo farms solar carports you know that we'd have to pay for that but theoretically it should reduce our cost from just buying it on the grid you know which is the way that we're doing it now pretty much there are ways to to make that you know cost neutral over a period of years of course too if you're willing to put up the money and then you know as Tim mentioned there's also companies that will do that for you yeah too uh you know they'll come in they'll give it to you for free and then they get all the benefit from it um most of the benefits well I mean and

109listen we're not you know we're wrapped up in a school bus world right but there's there's a lot of other things that are going to be happening at the same time and a lot of other other draws on that great equipment I mean you've got for example I mean you got bizutos right across the street from us you know they got how many trucks and you know electricity demands and refrigerators and you know cooling units for trailers and so I mean just just that alone is going to be a a draw on that grid so you know the profile in Cheshire might be different than the profile somewhere else because of what the demands are in the local grid so it there's there's a lot that you know you know well there's there's a lot

110of interconnectivity here yeah there is there is that's why we're trying to set up a scenario where we could be as flexible as possible um the other question I had if you know or not is is there a hybrid option out there we do not have one um yeah there's not a hybrid option no no yeah and discussion it's really weird and I don't know why but even in the cars they've gone away from hybrid I assume that's the way that Roger I know the disorders yeah it's it's it's one or the other now it's you don't have a from my perspective it makes I it doesn't make any sense to me to own a hybrid car because the maintenance long term when it gets out to like 10 years you have two different two

111different major systems and I'm just kind of thinking of hypotheticals in my head so what would be your suggested hypothetical in the phase in because you're you're you mentioned before that propane might be the first round yeah I mean listen we can do propane right now without any Grant scenario I mean we've done it in New Canaan they're 100 propane they like it um but I think that the answer to your question is going to be within the next you know next year two years what are the grant opportunities because that's going to drive your your decision right and and yeah we need your feedback too on you know what what is your appetite for large large expenditures in short medium long-term you know yeah actually just quoted my slides but you know we need

112to we need to know what you say uh before we can kind of provide Our advice based off of that so yeah what are your priorities um and what what do you want to see from us help us to start to create that plan for you and then right ultimately it's going to be about flexibility I agree with you what are the option we're trying to Hedgehog yes yes this propane this propane makes sense economically on a fight your window I think so yeah so and the reason I ask is because if I if I recall correctly from our slides 10 years is only allowed with at least one electric School Bus 10 years yeah and listen I I you know let me talk about a 10-year contract I I'm I'm a little skeptical about

113the 10-year contract only because I I don't think I'm smart enough to price it I I really don't know I mean I don't know I don't I'm not sure what prices are gonna be next year you know so I'm not so sure how we give you a fixed price contract for 10 years from now and how you decide it's a good deal or not one percent Renewables that may be great but I just don't know so I wouldn't I wouldn't worry about the 10-year contract I don't I mean we're going to amortize the bus over 10 years anyway but you think the propane could be propane it's economical in a five-year window oh yeah we're doing five we do a five-year contract with with uh with uh New Canaan I mean right now very frankly

114I mean I know you've got you've got new buses in your Fleet but very honestly right now there's other places I can put them so if you said to me hey you know we've got a contract coming up in 10 years or in two years you know we want to be at least a hundred percent propane and then we'll fill in with electric we take the buses that you've got there and put them somewhere else and and give you the propane that you want um or we can phase it in a different way so we're very flexible as far as especially in the early stages now there's other places to move that equipment as you get closer to 2040 it's going to be a little tighter you know to to make those moves but right

115now I mean I think what makes the most sense is to have a transition plan how do we Bridge ourselves over the next thing and I will tell you that you guys are are at the Forefront of the curve right now because there's a lot of districts that aren't even this isn't even on their radar screen you know they they don't have any concept of so you're I mean and kudos to you I mean you're you're so far ahead of everybody else right now even having this discussion right it you know so Kevin yeah better not retire I got it I got pushed around a lot in terms of garbage discussion but in terms of the program my mind is first of all space literal acreage and then second of all um cost the cost

116in relation to is it were you saying that it's basically free the propane guys will drop a tank and they don't care about it so whether we do if we did one propane School Bus for 35 school buses it makes no difference because there's no jobs and even if you wanted even if you wanted to buy the tank the cost of it I mean every every hardware store essentially has this basically the same tank that you're going to have in your bus yard fuel gas grills tomorrow okay yeah all right [Music] so it could it could happen so if we just have a transition plan and our next buses are going to come up I think the we should get a plan in place for propane and we should pretty much stick to that you

117know of and then pretty much say as the opportunities come up for electric we pull the propane out to head somewhere else no but we have to have to have the facility figured out there's a lot of steps before that that are there but yeah propane is pretty doable in the short term in the last 20 years that we as I don't use propane at home in the last 20 years have we hit any uh moments in time when literally propane was not available and I think back years ago somebody you know the The Gas Pipe won we didn't have a problem here but like from Texas to Virginia the gas pipeline was blown up and we were you know we've not had a problem yeah okay so propane available these are very stable has

118a very stable price uh as compared to Diesel and and uh Octane and where's the program come from is it U.S coming through Houston Texas yeah so propane is actually a bypro a byproduct of the fraction process so okay propane is a lot most of it's made so I'm not a big I'm not a big fan of fracking in our environmental problems but given the choice between you know our own Pennsylvania fracking and Putin yeah I think I want to I think most propane is gas which is propane and butane actually um and it's a it's a byproduct of the process by which they collect natural gas which oftentimes or it's it's collected in that process of fracking when they expel the uh the natural gas from the Shale that looks the propane is in

119a gaseous state right it sounds like yeah no it's gas yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah under pressure in the cold temperatures though it becomes how it becomes a liquid I don't get how it's so pressurized or so cold or whatever when it's the gas it's not gonna I think it's traveling at least natural gas is traveling pipelines it's not you don't I don't think you take a freighter and go across oceans with gaseous I don't think gas so it's most likely uh North American caps propane yeah I mean ours gets delivered by truck so I yeah who knows how I got that up all right anything else thank you guys thank you thank you I need to digest it yeah thank you very much yeah yeah it's gonna be a process it's not it's not

120a bathroom renovation this is a big thing yeah well I don't know how many other vehicles you guys operate but you know you want to think about that too thousand oh yeah no that's definitely going to be on our radar as well you know the the Board of Ed owned Vehicles yeah right you know we're going to have to transition those as well and I mean I can tell you just from our own so we we did we looked at um the new Ford um Transit um van for our parts delivery and so we we were like that'd be cool you know we're doing all this electric stuff let's get a you know let's get an electric fan for for our parts delivery truck well we talked to the dealership and they're they're stated range

121on the van unloaded was a 126 miles and unloaded they had a demo at Tasca Ford in Berlin and we talked to the sales manager and he's like we're getting about 65 or 70 miles a day on this vein and we said I can't do a whole lot of it I can't really we couldn't we couldn't make it work you know so I mean so some of the technology just isn't I mean and that's one of the things too that we would hope that the Battery Technology improves so that you can you know maybe with a two battery system get yeah I mean so I guess my point was if you've got a you know cafeteria van that's working six hours a day it's not going to work it's not gonna work because you're gonna

122he's gonna have to you know stop halfway through your day and yeah a lot of this is just not practical yet but it will be it will be yeah so if you were to buy a propane van and you had propane at the bus terminal yeah you can go over and fill it up and you're good you know and so about transition if you know we determined that the transition plan we start transitioning to propane that it makes the decision we make you know with that bus provider right we do the same thing with our our vehicle that was my point yeah so Ben is there anything else that we can provide you for next steps to like help with that plan or or do you want to kind of digest this and then come

123back well you know we'll talk to the planning committee but I certainly think and you know we're going to do a little bit more Discovery right there's a lot a lot to learn here um I know that when we were at your shop last week that the group that you were you introduced us to they would do a whole analysis of electric for us you know including you know site review on your planning and all that I'm not sure that we're ready for that but I know that that's something we could take advantage of so now if you just send us the presentation yeah and obviously we're going to continue to talk yeah we mean monthly so I'll get up and I might need it these two got a chance to you know trap around

124I haven't gone either yeah we need the full emergency experience oh yeah we can add that as a next step if you've got any other events planned certainly let me know absolutely yeah no we can I mean if you want to even bring one down to show the full board we're going down okay I think that'd be great yeah all right he hates me absolutely oh that's yeah that's easy that's easy I just think each of those just because again my concerned about quieter boss that could be yeah we could put it next to a diesel if you want yeah I would like that just do but give us time when that works for you yeah all right thank you guys more agenda items together yeah well you guys have to stay yeah all right

125guys no it's good this was I saddled them with a prop we've got this new grand opportunity I just need some some items to prove okay does anybody know the score of the game yeah it was 1-1 but hang on a look right now for you all right I'm taking a scoring break wants to get it up on the computer it's still 1-1 bottom third all right thank you good night guys thank you very much okay okay all right so I you ready Mike back okay um item agenda item number four HVAC projects uh with possible action to follow for newly available grant funding Ben thank you so I will um walk you through this pretty quickly the state had announced a few months back that there are going to be HVAC grants available for

126schools I'm going to make the announcement many months ago unfortunately the state did not make a determination on any of the Grant application process until September 30th was the first review we received an information on how to apply for a grant and where to apply for the grant which was determined to be through the office of school construction and Grant review just like we're going through that for the tune of schools yes it's the same Department of administrative Services Group the Grant application deadline is December 1st so again September 15th to December 1st right so it's very short window the good news is though that I believe we have six projects that Capital funding has approved which is a requirement that our HVAC that are for our schools that will qualify for this grant does

127any of the previously funded projects like is there was is any of the funding go back to like beginning of covert like 2019 possibly okay so this I've got nine grants to present you okay six are projects that are in process that I think will certainly qualify three of completed projects that I'm asking for approval of the ad specs so that we apply for the grant and if they don't qualify they don't qualify but it doesn't cost us anything okay so so why not why not exactly okay now is there okay go ahead I was going to say good the process that we have to go through in order to apply for the grant I need just a few things one and this is you know based on what the state's requirements one the money

128has to be appropriated all nine projects the money was previously appropriated through the capital budget process by the Town Council two we need to have educational specifications for each of these projects approved by the board of education so I'm going to present these tonight and if you're so inclined you would make a motion that you recommend that it's approved by the board of education at tomorrow night's meeting so we'll go right to the meeting tomorrow night correct got it okay let's go the third thing is that we need the three resolutions that the Town Council would have to approve to appoint a building committee to go to schematic design and to authorize the superintendent to apply for the grant because the money is appropriated and this is only upside I believe that the Board of

129Ed and the Town Council certainly should and and would approve it so this is really going through the steps to enable us to apply for a grant okay so I put these in in order the first one um I'll take you through detail on the first one which should be the HVAC improvements for the Highland Elementary School oil replacement this is a six hundred thousand dollar project that's what was approved this Project's completed we completed it for 330 000. um so we'd be going in for 3 30 for this correct okay the reimbursement amount our standard reimbursement rate is now 50 but of eligible cost I don't know how much of this would be eligible and this grant program for these HVAC it's the same type it follows our reimbursement through our CGR yes okay

130so it's not like 100 50 okay is that 50 is that associated with what the legislation of Liz did yes like it's coincidental that this is happening at this moment yeah right theoretically for this because it's a renovation type project it would have been 46 I believe anyway so it's an incremental pickup but it's not gigantic okay so the all nine of these specs follow the same format really the um so dad's same yep the only thing that's different each of these is on page two where it shows the site the building right so it's Highland Elementary School it's a one level structure the project summary is what's different in all the specs so this particular one was to improve the efficiency and quality of heating provided to our staff and students by replacing the

131boilers okay so that's one there's two ways to go with this there's a motion we could go through all nine and you make one motion to recommend all nine to be approved for the board or you can know them one at a time I mean I don't I don't see a downside too I mean it has a safe and specific as to how much money each district can apply for okay so then I don't see I mean we might as well shoot for the stars and see these are basically projects that are done or in the works uh six are in the works so this one's done and they've all been vetted you know the specs are very straightforward we're just stating what the project is are we all okay if we just go through

132all of them and then we make one motion if you're so inclined to do so okay the second one I'm sorry one set I think Andrew asked it and maybe so if we do hypothetically get the funding it does not go back into the operating budget no no it would go back to the town right because the these are capital Appropriations they're not from our operating budget okay this is from the separate you know capital budget but it also hopefully would free up us next year's capital budget to do additional right carryover in a sense we we can ask the Town Council if they would appropriate any money coming from these grants towards other places but like putting air conditioning in yeah I do a little school and that's not we've we've asked them the

133council has approved that before for example with school security Grant we got school security grant money we asked them to appropriate it back for the school security projects I didn't want to just do all this leg work and not reap the benefits for the other projects come here right and you know the greater good is it comes back to the town you know that theoretically it helps the town and the taxpayer but we would rather it help the schools the second one is the Dodd Middle School replacement of rooftop units it was a hundred thousand dollars appropriated this project is also complete we we use a whole hundred thousand dollars okay so that would be fifty thousand HVAC improvements the Doolittle Elementary School boiler replacement this was this was completed yeah we saw that it's

134a six hundred thousand dollar appropriation that was completed for 511 000. uh the next one so this is the first that's InDesign it's HVAC improvements at Cheshire High School this is to replace the unit ventilators across Cheshire High School the appropriation is 410 000 this Project's assigned to the public building commission it's in the works I certainly think this falls under the criteria for which this grant is being provided just quick on this one um this is designed and construction is back to happen like next summer it's in design it's assigned to the public building commission we would like to get it done for next summer and the only thing I'll add is that um this is part of a long-term strategy to replace all the unit ventilators at Cheshire high school so 410 000

135was appropriated but in future years it's not been appropriated we've asked for eight hundred thousand dollars more to go toward this project so back to you know same point that if some of this money from the grant gets reapplied we could continue to extend and it has to be appropriate the projects have to have been already appropriate by the municipality in order to apply well the if the Town Council can appropriate money between now and December one we could have more but but that's not likely to happen public building as a damn Arrow yes the next one is HVAC Cheshire High School energy recovery ventilator installation that's InDesign it's actually ready to go to bid this is one that we we certainly want to do next summer um this basically improves the there's about 10

136000 square feet of high school space that doesn't have proper ventilation this was uncovered when we hired Collier's project leaders to do a review of the HVAC systems in all our schools during the pandemic so you know this is definitely qualifies the mechanic the next one is Cheshire High School mechanical tunnel improvements that's a hundred thousand dollar appropriation that project has not yet started there's a few components to this but the original portion of Cheshire high school has these underground utility tunnels that have heat pipes domestic water supply the sewage pipes that run through them we have endeavored to keep these spaces not only clean but dry in Prior years you know going back a decade if water would accumulate in the tunnels it would cause mold growth unfortunately which you know adversely affected indoor

137air quality so we believe this would qualify for the grant but that often lays up to the state to decide but there is an HVAC components to this so that's why we included it the next one is the Dodd Middle School um this is systematic phase-in of cooling improvements so there's 120 000 that's appropriated this was just appropriated in June so this project has not been started yet it would have to go through Design This is design money uh no it's designed and actual start of work and this would be to start replacing the outdated rooftop units at Dot now this money is appropriated we did request we don't have some major HVAC we we have quotes that we received for the to do a full HVAC Improvement and cool to school because right now

138you know we have Windows we know yep so that it's about a six million dollar project um and then kind of going back to your question if that money were appropriated by the Town Council we could include it in this grant I will say that I'm not sure that this grant won't be extended right right now we have to apply by December 1st I think the idea of improving HVAC in schools is probably going to be I would hope an ongoing commitment from the state um and along the same lines we requested an engineering study for Doolittle what would it cost to um basically completely cool Doolittle it's between 6.4 and 6.9 million dollars and does that include the roofing does not include a new roof it would be you know engineered and it could

139be the difference in prices the difference between doing full traditional HVAC what you know Ducks installed and the ceilings versus those because any split units like this that's our last elementary school if modernization passes do little be our last Elementary School it doesn't have any AC so the good news is we have the pricing now we would include it in our capital budget request in a future Years anyway when we were doing that I actually relatively soon but since that money is not appropriated we cannot include that in this grant okay all right next one is uh same idea systematic phase and of cooling improvements but this is at Cheshire High School 225 000 just appropriated this past June um it's not started so we'll include that in the grant so you have it at

140120 though oh no hold on I have never mind can I ask who the CHS is 225 where is this for um like the commons is this very specific portion of the building or is that um well we would as we go through the design we would determine where we would prioritize okay and again this is another one where it's a long-term project 225 is appropriated we asked for another 800 000. and then the last one um is was also appropriated in June it's three hundred thousand dollars now this one is to do unipendulated Replacements at two schools it's Dodd and do a little okay um it's not again it's not yet started so we we would have to go into design so those are the nine request to the planning committee now is to

141determine if you want to recommend that they go for approval and by the Board of Education I would like to make a motion move this the planning committee recommends the educational specifications for the nine products as presented by VIN for approval by the Cheshire Board of Education so I have a second second discussion um Can Can we modify this given that and Vinnie I'm gonna put you in pressure here but if we do have more opportunities is there a need for again going through this process to make another motion or can we just give you the kind of the authority to just submit as you see fit the board would have to approve the ad specs now there's no other projects I went through all the HVAC projects that we have money appropriated for this

142is it oh there's nothing else that's like that's almost like Windows [Applause] what window s we do have some window projects approved currently right but that doesn't fall under this HVAC all right well if we don't have hbas okay I guess why not I mean some of this is you know the actual heating right now everything that we have right now and yeah even if let's say even if the we could get the council to approve you know six million dollars for you know air conditioning at Doolittle yeah even if they could do that it still would have to go to referendum yeah right and then no according to the grant well they don't even have the time at this point they would not be able to do it the referendum has to be held

143by February by the end of February of 23 so but I mean they just couldn't do it it does open it up for depending on what happens with modernization that next year we can go to the voters and say hey we can do AC half of which will be paid for by the state of Connecticut at Doolittle now all of our elementary school supply grants available and that's what I'm hoping for I think what what it says to me if you're talking 6 million for DOT and 6 million for Doolittle what that does is it uh probably come probably becomes a priority for our extended school modernization plan right really regardless of whether it passes it referendum uh because we're still talking about school modernization and now this would be Renovations instead of new schools

144I mean that's where we landed in the first round phase one right but I think this is probably just something that is on Jeff's plate front and center uh and as well as Tony and Tim Slocum when they're talking about next phase next steps right phase two yeah yeah because I mean 12 million dollars six million if we got six million grant money sometime in the next 12 months but that's a big deal yeah phase two of AC doing AC and Dot and Doolittle that would be huge right but but that would really be a question is that what we is that what is that what we want to do right yeah yeah that's a good point right yeah okay um okay so there's the motion second uh all in favor all right all right

145all right all right okay very good thank you thank you can be hearing more about this tomorrow night are you gonna do this presentation tonight yes okay yes just preparing I won't wear a hoodie okay let's I'm sorry um so let's move on to item number five the RFP RFP for space needs due to Elementary enrollment growth okay then I will um I will make this kind of quick at least to give you a notebook view so we did Issue an RFP for proposals to take a look at the Four elementary schools and what would we need to do in order to be able to accommodate additional classrooms you know between now and three years from now when our schools our new schools are built assuming the referendum passes if we had to and the

146reason that we are doing this is because there is a concern that the way enrollment is growing even above the projections we're going to run out of room probably at Highland first if we had a guess based on the development that we know is already in progress um and others may follow you know do a little it's probably the next likeliest candidate so we issue the RFP we did have [Music] um for firms that were represented at the non-mandatory walkthrough that we held a few weeks back and then we did the proposal openings on October 17th this week and we did get four proposals from firms that were interested I provided a a spreadsheet just to give the planning committee members a quick summary fire architecture Silva petroselling Associates antonazzi Associates Russell and Dawson you

147know we were open-ended about how they would like to be paid for their services so prior architecture the way that they would um the way that they proposed they would charge an hourly rate plus expenses not to eat exceed five thousand dollars for each of the four elementary schools so if you did that math it would be a maximum of twenty thousand but if we decided to pick one school or two schools and not do the rest it's five thousand per School Silver Petrocelli they took a slightly different approach they were 11 000 per School however if we and that's 44 000 if they were to do all four schools then instead of forty four thousand the cost is reduced to forty one thousand eight hundred and tenazi Associates um they provided one proposal all

148four of schools eighteen thousand five hundred dollars and then Russell and Dawson they also provided one proposal seventy two thousand dollars and there was no breakdown of on a bicycle basis so and I provided some additional detail here over to the right though the important one is that all the Farms indicate that they could start in mid-november um they did have varying lengths of time as to when they could complete so fire architecture would complete in March of 23. silver Petro Sally in January of 23 antonazi also on March of 23 and Russell and Dawson although they didn't give us a start date they said that they would complete the project in seven weeks none of those windows are unreasonable you know yeah although then this is not that time sensitive a project but we

149do you know want to plan and be ahead of it so that's the brief update I you know let me ask the email you copies of the proposals that are extensive um I certainly as I sit here today couldn't point to one of these and say this is the one you should go with I think that you know certainly three out of the four just based on pricing should be considered the proposal at 72 000 that is I'm not sure how they they came up with that proposal number but that let me ask a question the the Silver Purchase Ellie um do we need enrollment study in civil engineering like is there a reason why that's being included no I put those hourly rates just to give the the committee members a sense of what

150they would charge on an hourly basis it doesn't even really apply the way so the Petrocelli proposed it but the 11th so the 11th or the ten thousand four fifty so to speak as if we did all four schools does that 10-4 include engineering and enrollment oh yes if we need it if we need it yeah but that's so if we don't need it are they more in the 20 000 range no what they were trying to tell us there is that they're not going to do directly the you know what I apologize that doesn't even belong there okay that carried over from the previous RFP all right okay no no that's fine scratch that um because I was I was gonna say like I think we have a handle on yeah it's being updated

151okay yeah so that's right because I copied this from a prior RFP um summary I mean I've worked with Friar before I they're a reputable of good firm um yeah we've done two projects with fryer we've done work with Silva Petrocelli um they've done fine work antonazi um we've not done any work you know with them that I know of I don't know if the town side did but they're certainly reputable Russell and Dawson is the only firm I didn't know of um and you know the proposal looks fine it's just the proposal price is very high and in the antonazi associates there's no per that's kind of a lump sum fee correct depending on what we need all of these because of the way it was done it's a request for proposals we could

152talk to each of the firms we could ask them to um modify their proposal if we say you know what we absolutely want you to give us price per school or we are only going to do two schools we're permitted to do that it wasn't an invitation to bid this was proposal so you know we can talk to them ask them to you know negotiate their pricing based on you know whatever parameters we want we could change scope increase or reduce scope and ask for different pricing is the idea to have somebody under contract with the caveat dependent on the passing of the referendum now or is it or is that a fact-finding mission and then we have so if this doesn't pass in November we would then enter into contract with them so we

153don't even need to make a decision tonight or is it you don't need to make a decision tonight the decision tonight can simply be we're interested in getting more information from these firms or will you can arrange to have them interviewed by the planning committee you can ask me to do that uh we the the decision tonight should not be to select one okay because I was going to say like you know I'm happy with moving forward with prior but also you know antonazi is also cheaper so I mean I but very not well yeah the prices are fairly close right one of the thoughts that just goes through my mind is if the referendum doesn't pass and even if it does do we have any concerns with Darcy because we're only talking Four elementary

154schools here so that might just change that could be the difference between eighteen five and twenty thousand and those two and how they approach that yeah I mean and honestly I mean with the price fifteen hundred dollars is a lot of money to me uh but the the the service the qualifications they offer make a difference too right so I yeah I would say Russell and Dustin is out I think the silver Petrocelli it's quite a bit more but the other two are in the same ballpark and I I would go on recommendations of anyone with it well I guess so is it is it that if we'll ask you two questions first is do we need to hire this firm even if the referendum passes we're gonna need to come up with because we're

155three years away from you know having new schools built and you know the concern is that we don't have sufficient capacity and so let's plan and if the planning you know the simplest example is we would need to put portable classrooms at Highland right let's have a plan for that because there is going to be a fair amount of work to determine where to cite it then how many do we need and then what's the lead time to order those and what do we need you know so so do we want to say let's have two of these firms come in and do a presentation to us with our next planning committee meeting I would like to I mean you are familiar with at least one you know would that be fair yeah okay so

156why don't we why don't we do that why don't we have so we'll just have Friar and antonazi come in and discuss their proposal with us at the next planning committee why into Nazi though um I was just going with the two lowest priced firms but if you if you do we want to have silver silicon into I have all three of them I just you know just from looking at it and I know you clarified it then but just not providing information is kind of a red flag for me and and at no I guess it's not their fault based on how the rfps we left it open-ended yeah yeah so they chose to do it that way but would that just be a simple clarification and them too itemize the expenditures for us

157I mean I I would ask them if we're going to invite them in I would ask them please be prepared to talk a little bit more in detail about um would you be willing and how would you break down the cost on a per school basis right I think I mean if we're doing if we're going to bring in two I don't see a difference of bringing in three yeah and we just give them 20 minutes each and they have to be on yeah I mean this was a lot more free-ranging tonight I felt there are contractor and we're trying to figure out how to move forward this is selecting a contractor yeah that's reasonable so we'll bring in three 20-minute interviews to be scheduled yeah okay I've got you guys get it all right

158well I mean we'll we'll know where we're going to at our next oh yes yeah you know fingers crossed figure out a date and then not the day after that yeah okay um all right so item number six quick updates School Field improvements if I could just start off by saying I work that was done at Doolittle and Highland and things look remarkably good so if you want to talk about that yeah so there was quite a bit of work done as Andrew said by the town staff at Doolittle and Highland and also um kind of a joint effort at dual at Dodd we are sodding the softball field and going to do some work on the infield so that and we're shutting down that field actually have to decide what which is going in

159in the next um a couple of weeks that field will be closed off so that in the spring it'll be ready to play to be played you know the the responsibility of being of maintaining those fields and grooming the fields and scheduling the fields is always rested with the park and rec and public works department they will not you know supported by the town by the school staff you know so they've always looked at kind of like the way you looked at bartlum Park or the way you looked at McNamara they kind of it didn't go well for the last few years for whatever reason but there is an increased uh demand for additional Fields even Beyond Highland Doolittle and Dodd now there's a there's a group um that's been talking to John Golic the

160director of Park and Recs and there's an email chain that they would really like to see Chapman um kind of brought back to life and not getting involved in those details directly you know if that's if that's the need which I can't assess because again we don't do the schedule of any of the non-school activities um that also may be in the works but yeah they definitely did a great job there's really no need to hire a separate contractor right now the there is a contractor that's hired to do the work at dot it is that Championship yeah um so we're in much better shape today than we were at the last planning meeting I think more work and dialogue has to occur and um you know I'm not I'm not sure what else we

161need to do long term to improve the fields but if there are things that need to be included in the capital budget you know he's between Jeff and Sean and myself and John Golic will determine whose capital budget it should go into yeah if I could just I just want to add that you know um I think that because I work on a couple houses down that it was really nice to see that you know we had the parks and DPW really stepped up Boe stepped up and everyone kind of worked together to kind of solve this problem that's kind of a glaring issue at some of our school to create field space and so I think that the work that has been done and then work that's talked about to be done in the

162future we're going to solve the bartland park project and also make the school facilities look a lot nicer and have good fields for the kids so I guess and we just spent a ton of money doing it either so for Clarity on it is it the the athletic director basically runs the high school fields and then everything else dot Elementary School sort of sort of defaults to park and rec the high school is clearly run by the athletic director or maintained by our staff yeah Dodd the softball field is used by dot so they don't have sports what we don't do on the school side is schedule any of the adult or the youth leagues to use any of the fields outside of Cheshire high school so park and rec basically just knows we're not

163going to schedule anything use it use the Dot Fields ever before 5 PM because there could be Sports going on there I mean maybe in the summer it's different but that's just we're just not going to do that and then we can do stuff after the fact and there's really never been a any sort of big conflict that mattered so it just kind of happened yeah okay exactly that's exactly right okay okay and now there's gonna be more of like an effort to make you know responsibilities laid out yeah in order to make sure that all the fields are available for play by the people you know like as we're one down we have only so much land yeah let's make sure that it's playable and we have the field space because we have a

164field space it's just who's gonna maintain it and when it's just scheduling if I recall correctly we met last time you said that they were like in some of the ball fields there were you know like old fence posts that were kind of not in great places where kids could get hurt so what you were aware of with that those are gone that was all taken care of yeah you end up taking stuff out if you there's a before and after of Highlands fields and others it's amazing what they were able to do and I think the user satisfaction they are good that's great so and kind of the deal we've always had is that the you know the board staff would always mow the fields and the town staff would take care of the

165in infield and you know put out the bases and again maintain the schedule and coordinate to make sure that fields are you know not double booked or anything like that which is a big big part of what needs to happen so we don't get involved on that side of it on the board side okay so that's the update there you want me to do pending z-rex I mean we're in it let's go all right next next agenda item pending Xerox so I had a call earlier this week with energy resources who um spearheaded the effort that got the two solo part four um the Rex approved that Doolittle and Highland School we never went forward with it just because the cost of you know installing those total carports was was cost prohibitive however a couple

166of things well one thing specifically changed you know based on uh the discussion I had earlier this week and that is now there is a 30 percent tax credit available it doesn't we're not a tax organization so it would come in the form of direct pay so that changes some of the math as it relates to the cost so they energy resources and I I know that you know Morgan from energy resources he's he left apparently oh Morgan left yeah oh that's too bad the new guy is Bob multi okay um so he was on the call and he's leading the the effort on these types of projects at energy resources they're going to go um basically back to the green Bank get some pricing and come back to us with what a power purchase

167agreement would look like so and then I think it's really easy because then they give us the per kilowatt hour rate and we know what we pay eversource we have a choice Aesthetics all sorts of other stuff but yeah you get that for us you know we'll we'll make a determination the thing that would have to happen would have to happen is that you know this expires April 1st of 23. but um the gentleman from energy resources represented that we can ask for an extension and they think we would get it oh from eversource yeah okay but they said there's no point in doing that now let's see ours expires April 1st April 1st of 23. the one that we okay got it so that's the update there we just selected Highland on the other

168schools being considered for we we narrowed it down to Doolittle in Highland because those are the places that you know made the most sense um and there was a whole survey done and there were some other options considered including roofs and you know taking down a lot of trees at church or high school sam yeah do you have that presentation just so you could take a look at it before yeah because yeah it really I think it I mean my recollection is it just goes back to school modernization and that's the priority right and the likelihood of Highland and Doolittle having major changes in their Footprints was pretty low but the other ones were just big question marks so yeah that's it all right uh anything else motion to adjourn favorite all right but thank

169you thank you no sorry