I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and God with liberty and justice for all.

If there's anyone in the room with you, and if you can hear us.

Here.

See, you have these here.

One, two, three.

You have nine present, correct?

Yeah.

Thank you.

And I'm sorry, and six.

I did hear from Alderman Clemens.

He uh is with his wife who's got some medical issues.

And Alderman Greg was not feeling well and will not be joining us this evening.

Also joining us this evening, excuse me, is Mayor Jim Donchus.

Communications.

From Laura Wilshire, President Board of Alderman.

In regards to calling a special board of Alderman meeting to present, discuss rates, increases with community power.

There being no objection, I'll accept the communication and place it on file.

Discussions andor presentations.

Community power?

I'm good.

Mayor Donchus.

Thank you, Madam President.

So the reason we're here tonight is to discuss the coming rate period beginning on February 1 of the Nashville Community Power because the rates are going to be, and you will hear this from Community Power, considerably higher than the Eversource rates for that six-month rate period.

I just want to go back and say that during the first 18 months or so that community power was in effect here in Nashua.

Since then the rates have been roughly equivalent.

And now community power is proposing a rate that's higher for reasons that they will describe.

But I'd also like to emphasize before I turn it over to Doria and company that under the provisions of Nashua Community Power, anyone can opt out of community power and return to Eversource simply by going on the website or I think by calling community power.

And anyone who wishes to save money in that way is free to opt in, and then if they wish later on, they can opt back to community power.

There's no restriction on uh the number of times you want to go back and forth.

Um so with that I will uh just call on uh Ms.

Brown, who is our energy manager and who has um uh been working on this project good evening, and thank you for having me here tonight to talk more about community power.

I appreciate all of your time and willingness to continue having this conversation.

Um I have here the community power coalition representatives, um Henry Herndon, who is currently the acting general manager, and I have Jackson Caspari here, who is our um I would say our community liaison or director.

Um I definitely botch his title a little bit, so I apologize, Jackson.

Um I am gonna hand it off to them now.

If I could have the clicker to advance the presentation, that would be really helpful.

Everybody's here, here it is.

Yep, thank you so much.

I think I saw it here, right?

Uh very good, thank you, Doria.

Uh, thank you, Madam President, uh, Mr.

Mayor, and uh good evening to the board of aldermen.

My name is Henry Herndon.

I am the acting general manager of the community power coalition of New Hampshire, and I will be leading the presentation and then um handing off some portions to Jackson Caspari, our director of member services.

Um just by way of introduction, I'll note um I was appointed to this role in spring of this past year uh in an interim position, and uh prior to that I was the second employee hired by the organization.

I was a consultant prior to that, uh, participating with the city of Nashua and some of the other founding cities and towns to incorporate this nonprofit power company and stand up the organization.

So it's a little bit about my history, and um I'll be speaking today about um the upcoming rates and um providing information on the status and outlook of community power coalition of New Hampshire's um finances, reserves, and uh competitiveness in the market.

Uh and just to start, I'll do a little bit of a recap of the history.

I understand you know, some of this um body uh have been participants throughout that history um and involved since the incorporation, uh Nashville was a leader in that process uh since 2019.

Nashua was a leader in that process since 2019.

But for some of the board, I'll just provide a brief summary of the context.

So Nashua has and continues to play a key leadership role in transforming New Hampshire's energy market towards local control and community interests.

Was originally one of four founding members of the group alongside the city of Lebanon, the town of Hanover, and Cheshire County in coming together to, once the legislation was enacted in 2019, explore national best uh practices for these types of markets, and then implement this statewide joint powers agency by which cities and towns have control over a nonprofit agent to manage their electricity portfolio in their interests.

So Nashua participated from the very beginning of that, was a key leader in some legislative initiatives in 2021 to improve the legislative framework alongside other communities, and then in April of 2023, um helped launch the first wave of community power programs at considerable savings and discount to the customers participating.

That sort of kicked off a movement where we saw a series of waves of launches where other communities followed suit over the following two year period, and throughout that time, Nashua has been an active leader in the governance, the board, the committees of our nonprofit throughout its scaling to a 100 million dollar annual revenue enterprise.

And again, our organization we are an extension of municipal governments.

We are subject to the same public meeting and right to know right to know laws as you.

So we our meetings are open, notice just as your meetings are.

Our minutes and materials are all available to the public and to expect inspection by the public and the members.

So transparency and local accountability are really built into our structure.