Policy Sep 09 2025

Unknown: Good evening and welcome to the policy committee and special board meeting of September 9,

SPEAKER_01: 2025. For members of the public attending this meeting virtually who wish to provide

SPEAKER_01: verbal comments during the committee meeting, you may do so by raising your hand in the Zoom

SPEAKER_01: feature. Technical support staff will enable your audio for you when your name is announced

SPEAKER_01: during the public comment period. You can also submit your public comments by emailing them to

SPEAKER_01: publiccomment at SMUD.org. Written comments will not be read into the record but will be provided

SPEAKER_01: to the board electronically and placed into the record of the meeting if received within two hours

SPEAKER_01: after the meeting ends. Deputy General Counsel, please conduct the roll call. Director Herber?

SPEAKER_06: Here. Director Kerf? Chair Sanborn? Here. Director Herber and Chair Sanborn, your president,

SPEAKER_06: giving us a quorum. Also, president of directors Rose, Tomalayo and President Fischman. Thank you

SPEAKER_01: very much. Item number one is going to be a short meeting. On tonight's agenda is board monitoring

SPEAKER_01: of the board staff linkage BL12 delegation to the CEO with respect to transmission, energy, fuel,

SPEAKER_01: environmental attributes, BL13, which is delegation to the CEO with respect to grants, and BL14,

SPEAKER_01: delegation to the CEO with respect to product services and programs. And we decided to have

SPEAKER_01: this meeting tonight and just kind of get it out of the way. It's very short. I looked at through

SPEAKER_01: the comments and high compliance scores on all three of these. So I don't want to go read them

SPEAKER_01: all. But if there was one comment here on BL13 on the grants, which is we don't want to overly

SPEAKER_01: limit partnerships with growing high potential companies. So I don't know if anybody wanted to

SPEAKER_01: speak to that comment. When you looked at the language of this and they're like the competitive

SPEAKER_03: advantage and the viability of grant partners, right, the language was somewhat constricting,

SPEAKER_03: where they have to you get the feeling like they really need to be a really well-established company.

SPEAKER_03: And so you certainly don't want us to miss out on the opportunities to get into local startups early

SPEAKER_03: who are going places, right, and that we can help the debt that this policy might be overly limiting

SPEAKER_03: from. And that's why I wrote the comment that I was reading through the language.

SPEAKER_03: Did you have suggested change? I don't know. I'd have to look at it. It's hard and it's sort of

SPEAKER_03: chopped up on the slides here between multiple slides. But like, right, this is only what we

SPEAKER_03: have on here is only part of the actual BL13 language. So that's actually pull up the language

SPEAKER_03: to look at it. But I don't mean something like if you were to ask our economic development and like

SPEAKER_03: Langan Franklin, who spends his time with the clean tech folks, right, it would be an open-ended

SPEAKER_03: question, right, are they seeing opportunities that we should be taking more advantage of,

SPEAKER_03: but because of the policy we might not be. I think that would be my open-ended question. I just want

SPEAKER_03: to make sure we're not putting ourselves in some sort of situations, right. We certainly don't want

Unknown: to partner with companies who don't have good reputations, but that's like no talking about.

SPEAKER_03: Well, if we want to change the policy, the helpful thing is to provide some at least idea of the

SPEAKER_01: language change. If you're suggesting maybe just the staff, you know, talk the directors, the

SPEAKER_01: executives talk to the staff and make sure that there's nothing limiting about this policy,

SPEAKER_01: we could certainly ask staff. Yeah, Lauren, we chief zero carbon officer at SMUD right now for the

SPEAKER_00: grant partnerships. I think we're fine operating within the rules as is. I haven't seen anything

SPEAKER_00: that limits our ability to establish good grant applications. I think bill 19, is it 19 or 14?

SPEAKER_00: Bill 14 gives us some flexibility as well. So I think it's good as is. Do you have any other

SPEAKER_01: comments, Director Rose? Yeah, I'm fine with that. I just wanted to point those out as I was reading it.

SPEAKER_03: Okay. So we can keep going in the direction. There's no comments on BL 13 on this part. So BL 14,

SPEAKER_01: delegation, again, no comments and high compliance scores by all seven of us. So unless somebody

SPEAKER_01: brings something up, I did not feel like, I mean, again, we had gone through all these policies

SPEAKER_01: pretty in depth a couple years ago. So unless there's some comments there, we can just consider

SPEAKER_01: them accepted. Okay, great. And then we can take public comment if there is any. There is none.

SPEAKER_06: There is none. That is not a great surprise. Okay, well, then we'll go ahead and move on to

SPEAKER_01: item number two, which is the work plan. And we'll turn it over to President Fishman. All right,

SPEAKER_04: thank you. So we have finance and audit and ERCS next week. We're getting a zero carbon

SPEAKER_04: plan update. So Laura is going to be busy. And that's the only thing on the ERCS agenda.

SPEAKER_04: Finance and audit is actually there's a lot of stuff on there that we need to look at.

SPEAKER_04: We've got a federal legislative update coming up in early October. Some more policy monitoring.

Unknown: Finance and audit in October is also looks like it's busy. So that's the 14th of October.

SPEAKER_04: And we get a nuclear industry update in ERCS on the 15th. That will be interesting to see, you know,

SPEAKER_04: what's happening there. We have a closed session on public employment on the 16th for the board

SPEAKER_04: meeting to follow the main board meeting. Strategic development in November is EV charging

SPEAKER_04: strategy. And then that's all I have on the work plan in the parking lot. We have two things,

SPEAKER_04: the need for local generation for reliability purposes and memo challenges and opportunities

SPEAKER_04: with interconnecting large loads. Those are almost the same thing. So I will leave it up to staff to

SPEAKER_04: decide if you want to put those two together somehow, I'd be fine with that. No need to

SPEAKER_04: separate them if the opportunity presents itself to put them together. Anybody have anything they

SPEAKER_04: want to add to the parking lot? Maybe I'm just missing it on here. We've been doing sort of a

SPEAKER_03: pre-budget meeting a couple months ahead of the November budget meeting. I thought I saw that on

SPEAKER_03: here. Oh, a budget preview on the 14th for finance and audit. There it is. Okay.

Unknown: And then were we going to move the budget? Looks like we did, we have. We were going to move the

SPEAKER_03: budget meetings to just the regular, our regular scheduled committee meeting dates, I think. Because

SPEAKER_03: we used to do the two special ones. Okay. That's good. Okay. If you're happy, Brandon, I'm happy.

SPEAKER_04: Anybody have anything for the parking lot? At some point, I'd like to have another fusion update,

SPEAKER_03: but probably like a year from now kind of thing. Fusion? Yeah. Okay. Because it's been three years

SPEAKER_03: since we had them come last. So maybe, but I don't know if we need to put it on here now,

SPEAKER_03: but something to think about. So, yeah. In the parking lot, the challenges and opportunities

SPEAKER_05: with interconnecting large loads, I thought that when we brought that up, we were interested in

SPEAKER_05: how data center works. Not a memo, but an actual discussion. Because it presents a lot of different

SPEAKER_05: issues. That's fine. I mean, can we, but again, I think, I don't want to gloss over anything,

SPEAKER_04: but can we put that together with the need for local generation for reliability and do a

SPEAKER_04: presentation at some point? If it's before the end of the year grade, if it's early in the next

SPEAKER_04: year, that's fine too. I'd kind of like to leave that up to staff as to how joined it, the hits,

SPEAKER_05: those two things are, because I think they're really a lot of different concepts.

Unknown: Thank you, Frank. Yes. Frankie. Yeah. Frankie McJermitt, Chief Operating Officer. And I think

SPEAKER_02: Laura was jumping in as well. We should probably bring that back to Paul. Okay. And talk to him

SPEAKER_02: about this because we had split it and I forget the logic why we had split it. You're right. And he

SPEAKER_02: had mentioned he spoke to several of you and that was your desire, but we're happy to change that

SPEAKER_02: back. So why don't I take that as an action I'm to bring to him tomorrow and just clarify. And if

SPEAKER_02: you'd like it separated or together, it doesn't matter to us. I think we should probably, as Dave

SPEAKER_04: said, leave it up to you guys to decide what's the best way to approach it. Okay. If it's two,

SPEAKER_04: it's two. If it's one, put it together, that's fine. Talk to Paul. Okay. Okay.

Unknown: Awesome. Okay. Well, do we have any online comments? Okay. Wonderful. And do we have any

SPEAKER_01: comments on things that are not on the agenda? Not. Okay. Well, then if we receive any written

SPEAKER_01: comments received on items on the agenda, they will be included in the record. If received,

SPEAKER_01: then two hours at the end of the meeting and that is the last item on the agenda. So we can go ahead

SPEAKER_01: and close out the meeting. Have a good night.