[Robert Paine]: Hi, this is Bob Payne. I'm the chair of the Medford Energy and Environment Commissioner Committee, however you like to state that. I'm gonna read an announcement about how we can have a remote meeting under the current Massachusetts laws. On February 12th, 2022, Governor Baker signed into law a supplement of COVID-19 fiscal appropriations and an extension through July 15, 2022, of certain authorizations relating to public meetings. This new law extends the remote meeting provisions of the governor's March 12, 2020, executive order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law. In accordance with the 2020 executive order, this meeting The City of Medford Energy and Environment Committee is being conducted totally via remote participation using Zoom including committee members and the public. The use of Zoom complies with the law's requirement to provide live adequate alternative means of public access to the deliberations of the public body instead of holding meetings in a public place that is open and physically accessible to the public. Persons who would like to listen to or view this meeting while in progress may do so by using the link that was included on the meeting agenda posted on the city of Medford website. If despite our best efforts, we are not able to provide for real-time access, we will post a record of this meeting on the city's website in the near future at the link provided in the meeting agenda. Okay, I'm gonna do a roll call of committee members and then we'll introduce guests. Let's see, somebody is on a phone number here. 617-504-8481. Is that a member?
[Alicia Hunt]: Why don't you do a roll call of the members? Because guests don't have to introduce themselves if they don't want to.
[Robert Paine]: Okay. I thought that might be a member though. So, okay. So let's see, Bob Payne, I'm the chair. We have Luke McNeely. Here. New guest on, Gary. Uh, I don't see.
[Gaston Fiore]: Yes, I'm here. Sorry.
[Robert Paine]: Okay. Thank you. Let's see. We've got Barry. We've got Loretta James here. Dave Hampton here. Benji Hiller here. Any committee member I have missed. None yet, okay. We have seven, which is technically half and can be considered a quorum. We have guests, let's see, Matthew? Can you just introduce yourself, if you don't mind?
[MCM00000549_SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, Matthew, I live at West Medford, thank you.
[Robert Paine]: Okay, do we need, Alicia, do we need any more than that? Okay, fine.
[Alicia Hunt]: And it's, if you're having a public hearing and you're requesting public comment, then you need people to identify themselves. Otherwise people can just watch.
[Robert Paine]: All right. That's fine. Okay. And we have the Medford community media also in, in the, as a guest in public broadcasting. Okay. We have, that I guess we're going to consider this a quorum for purposes of discussion at this point. Therefore, let's review the minutes of the April 4th meeting and see if there's any comments or discussion on those minutes, which I sent out over the weekend. Any committee members have any comments on the April 4th, 2022 meeting minutes? If not, I will entertain a, oh, Kathleen McKenna is also joining. So that's eight members, certainly a majority plus, certainly a quorum for sure. All right, Kathleen, are you, you're now online. We're going to have a, we're discussing the minutes of the April 4th meeting. And I'm, if you have no comments, no one has any comments so far, we're going to entertain a motion to accept the minutes.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: I will throw in the motion to accept the minutes.
[Robert Paine]: Was that a comment from Loretta? Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-K What was that, Barry? Abstain, I wasn't there. Okay, sorry. Loretta? Yes. Okay, if you weren't at the meeting, I guess you could abstain. Kathleen?
[MCM00000549_SPEAKER_03]: Yes.
[Robert Paine]: And Dave?
[MCM00000549_SPEAKER_03]: Abstain, I was not present.
[Robert Paine]: Benji? Yes. Okay, have I missed any members? Okay, I think we have a, there are no nos, and so they're accepted as posted. We're going to have just a, another vote to just to clarify what a quorum is. Alicia had mentioned that it may be a little bit undefined, but we, we have, since we have a 14 in our membership and therefore it's a little bit uncertain as whether it's seven or eight, I would entertain a, a a policy that we make seven a quorum, but I entertain any discussion on that before we have a motion. Any negatives to that policy of using exactly half as a quorum?
[Barry Ingber]: Are we sure that the ordinance is written vaguely enough that we are allowed to do that?
[Alicia Hunt]: There is no ordinance. This committee is created ad hoc, so it can set its own rules.
[Barry Ingber]: And we have no bylaws there for it, right? Right. Okay.
[Robert Paine]: Sounds good to me. All right. So I'll entertain a motion to make quorum seven for a committee size of 14. And I guess basically the rule is if it's an even number of committee members, it's exactly half as a quorum. And if it's odd, it would have to be For example, if we're 15, it would have to be eight. So you round, you have to have a, you know, if divided by two, you have to have a, you know.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: A whole person. A whole person, yeah.
[Barry Ingber]: You have to have at least 50%.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: I agree with that. So moved. Agreed.
[Robert Paine]: All right, we'll call the roll and say yes, if you agree to that definition of a quorum. Luke. Yes. Bob, yes. Gaston?
[Gaston Fiore]: Yes.
[Robert Paine]: Barry?
[Gaston Fiore]: Yes.
[Robert Paine]: Loretta? Yes. Okay. Kathleen? Yes. Dave? Yes. Benji? Yes. Okay. So enacted. All right. We are now to the point of administrative updates from Alicia.
[Gaston Fiore]: Sorry, but can I ask a question to Alicia? So Alicia, what's the official definition of an ad hoc committee? It's the ones where the members don't get paid or there's another definition?
[Alicia Hunt]: No, it's that the committee is created, that the mayor decides to create a committee and forms a committee without there being an ordinance or legislative act. So many, many of the committees and boards that are formed by the, that the city has are actually created by state legislative act. And then many of them are adopted and created by the city. And some of which, some are both the city adopts an act of the legislature. like the planning board, the zoning board, historic, many of those actually have some state guidelines. There are several that the city created ordinances to create. The garden commission is the one I can think of that is a city ordinance that is not created by state act. And then off the top of my head, I know that the bicycle commission and this committee were both created because the mayor wanted them. And so those are ad hoc tasks or ad hoc committees. The mayor also has the ability to create ad hoc task forces. So a committee is typically refers to something that's longstanding. It's created, but it's not a fixed duration. It's to serve an ongoing purpose. I will tell you there's been debate over the years whether or not to have an ordinance created and it, It's gone back and forth, and a lot of the feeling was that it would create unnecessary red tape that would not necessarily give the committee any additional powers. It would just put more rules on it. There are, and actually that's a great segue to, I don't know if this is an administrative update or an announcement, but there are ad hoc task forces that the mayor creates, and those are typically created for a specific purpose, and usually for some limited time duration. An example of those would be the parking task force that occurred that made recommendations around the parking committee. So you could see one that served its full length. It was given a charge. It did its charge. There was actually one about fire stations as well. The mayor announced today a solid waste task force. So that's actually my announcement. Um, so this one is, again, a limited duration with a specific charge to look at the solid waste practices in the city and make recommendations to the mayor, because our Our waste hauler contract is expiring at the end of next fiscal year. And so we're going to be putting it out to bid. And so we're going to be writing a scope of what should be included in that contract. And the mayor would like recommendations from this committee. as to what should change for solid waste. So if anybody is particularly interested in that, you should apply. There's an announcement, it went out. I don't think I sent it to the, I'll forward it to this committee. It went out today. You apply through the mayor's website. If any of you feel like, you're welcome to tell me. I'm part of the, so then there are a couple of staff that are sort of the, I might think of it as clients of it, right? So the DPW commissioner and I will be working with the mayor and finance to actually draft the scope for the garbage, for the waste contract. And actually I have just hired a summer fellow. She's being actually paid for by Harvard who will be doing some work on waste and best practices. So the task force will be looking more at Medford and the fellows role will be seeing what other communities are doing, what the market is like, bringing in some outside information for the committee. So I'll be sort of working as one of the clients, I guess, for the committee to help with that. So that's a big new announcement today.
[Gaston Fiore]: Okay, so just a quick comment on that. So there was discussion about adult committees at the bicycle commission last week. And it seems on the city's website, then the information is incorrect because our committee is under the city commission established by ordinance and the bicycle one. correctly under the other committee's exclamations. I'll post a link.
[Alicia Hunt]: Yeah, that means somebody rearranged them again and they were confused and they didn't talk to me because I've had to. The problem is I don't know why somebody along the way decided to separate them, committed, established by ordinances versus ad hoc. And I don't know why. I don't understand what benefit that provides to the community to have them separated. Why you don't just have them all together? Why do you need to make this distinction? And then whoever was doing it must've said, oh, that couldn't possibly be an ad hoc committee, but it is. And it used to be in that section. So somebody must've decided that it was a mistake and didn't ask me. I'll tell Lisa that she moved it again. Honestly, I don't know what the value is to the public of having the distinction on the website. Oh, Gaston, I see you're actually listed on the Bicycle Commission website already. So she must have just done that update. And I bet that's when she moved it.
[Robert Paine]: Alicia, there was also a discussion via email about having to refresh certain training or for open meeting.
[Alicia Hunt]: So many of you may remember that we've done conflict of interest training. It's a website that we send out and you answer the questions. Usually people are asked to do it every two years. Gaston was asking about it because he was just appointed to the bike commission and they asked him to do that. And he had never been asked to do it for this committee. So if people haven't done it for this committee, we're happy to recirculate that link again. Usually, at this point, Teresa in my office usually collects the responses and just lets the HR office know who's done it and who isn't. As staff, we're expected to do it every two years. So, but some years people remember to ask us and some years they don't.
[Robert Paine]: Okay. So it's not a critical shortcoming.
[Alicia Hunt]: No.
[Robert Paine]: Very good.
[Alicia Hunt]: But if anybody ever wonders about conflict of interest things, that's the training is interesting. I learned stuff from it, so.
[Robert Paine]: How would we, if someone wanted to do that, how would they?
[Alicia Hunt]: I can just circulate the, I think Guesto and Teresa sent you the link.
[Gaston Fiore]: I'll be happy to do it since I got the email with the link. I'll send it to everyone. Yeah.
[Alicia Hunt]: I'll just, I'm going to drop it in the chat here, but.
[Robert Paine]: Okay. Any other administrative updates?
[Alicia Hunt]: Wait, there was something else. Oh, it's more of an announcement. I sent it, you guys all an email, but I hope everybody saw the release that the climate action plan is final. And honestly, I apologize, I haven't had a chance to update the Go Green Medford website with it, but the city website has the new version on there. I am in the process, actually, I'm gonna give another job offer to another grad student today, maybe tomorrow. We are feeling very short staffed in the office. So I have three graduate students lined up to start this summer. one of whom is going to work on the solid waste stuff. She's just for the summer. She's being paid by a Rappaport fellowship through Harvard. We have a student who's going to do general land use planning stuff with us. She is a Tisch fellowship from Tufts is paying her for the summer. Um, but she will be staying on during the school year. There is a third graduate student who we're going to be using funds from the gaming commission to be working on mobility and traffic bicycle plan. Um, she's going to be working with my office and the trap department of traffic and transportation, um, on updating that my bicycle master plan and other things that. cross between our two offices. And so I have not, I've re-advertised for an energy festival in turn. In the meantime, Teresa has started some of the early things for that work. And I'm gonna give an offer to another graduate student who we would actually just pay out of city budget funds to do work with our office. We could really use somebody to help with the Community Preservation Act stuff and general office projects, grants that pop up. And we'll keep advertising for an energy festival in turn. I think that's all the administrative type announcements and updates.
[Robert Paine]: Okay, thank you. I want to get closer to scheduling a summer meeting. Now, we were thinking that maybe the mayor could attend the summer meeting, but you probably don't know her schedule, do you? At least you'll have to ask.
[Alicia Hunt]: It would be, she may be able to do the summer meeting because the difficulty is that the school committee meets the first and third Mondays of every month and we meet the first Mondays. And so this conflicts directly in this meeting. The other alternative is that this meeting used to start at six. And sometimes we would have the mayor come for like 15 or 20 minutes at the very beginning of our meeting before she went to school committee. And that I think would be something that she would be open to. So I also put that out there as an alternative option that I haven't run by her, but as long as they don't have a committee of the whole for them before their meeting.
[Robert Paine]: These meetings happen during the summer for school committee.
[Alicia Hunt]: School committee will stop during the summer.
[Robert Paine]: Okay, so she's gonna be available unless she's away.
[Kathleen McKenna]: Yes.
[Robert Paine]: So maybe you could ask her. Now we want you to be at the meeting too, if you can. So we're negotiating between mid-July and mid-August, those weeks.
[Alicia Hunt]: Oh, we were talking about doing this in person, right?
[Robert Paine]: In person, yes.
[Alicia Hunt]: That was also the problem with me. I can't do the meeting if I'm at the Jersey Shore, whether I happily Zoom in or not.
[Robert Paine]: Yeah, right, right, right. We want to actually be able to see each other. So yeah, let me know, everybody on the committee, yours, I sent you an email. It was sort of buried in the email, but it's basically starting the week of July 17th. And then the next three weeks after that, I'm giving a window, pick one of those four. And it doesn't have to be Monday either. It could be, Tuesday, Wednesday, I wouldn't do it Friday night, but I would consider, you know, Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday night. So, but we can try Monday night as a first option, but just let me know your availability during that period of time, those four weeks starting on July 17th and Monday through Thursday, and we'll try to pick the one, but I guess key things would be, it would be nice if the mayor could come. And it would be nice if Alicia could come. So let me know. Yes. I'm away the week of July 18th is the Monday, right?
[Alicia Hunt]: No, the week of the July 25th. I'm away the week of July 25th. And I might be away through like Wednesday, the week after that.
[Robert Paine]: Noted. I'll just gather everyone's information and try to, but if you could Alicia, if you could ask the mayor for that same period of time, if she's available just to come over to our backyard and she knows where it is, of course, she's been there before.
[Alicia Hunt]: Okay. Just to be clear, we will have to, even though it's in your yard, we would still have to post it.
[Robert Paine]: And it would have to be a public meeting. That's right.
[Alicia Hunt]: I just want to be clear.
[Robert Paine]: People can bring their family members, there's things to do, sandbox, river, boating, whatever, that type of thing.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Hey, Bob, I sent you a message through the chat.
[Robert Paine]: Oh, I'm sorry.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: I sent you a message through the chat for a question, if you could review the open meeting laws.
[Robert Paine]: You know, I will. Okay, let's see, there was a question, I think we decided, I know that I'm aware that if you have less than a quorum, you could have emails discussing things. Now we've defined quorum is now seven. So we have to have, it has to be up to six people can talk about anything they want, I guess, pretty much via email. I know we can't make decisions, you know, certainly can't make decisions outside a meeting, but you can have discussions, heated discussions or whatever. Okay.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Um, so this is a good point then to me, for me to understand. So if you invite us and we have a meeting at someone's house, we have to post it.
[Alicia Hunt]: If it is a meeting of this committee and it is a public meeting, then therefore it is a public meeting and he can, and it has to be posted and open to the public.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: But if it's a private meeting, what about a subcommittee meeting?
[Alicia Hunt]: A subcommittee meeting would not, if it's less in quorum, you wouldn't need to post it. And Barry has a comment on that.
[Barry Ingber]: Yeah, a subcommittee of the Human Rights Commission discovered otherwise, according to materials written by the Attorney General. An officially designated subcommittee of an official committee is itself an official public body. And so if you have a subcommittee of three members, It is not a quorum of the whole committee, but two of those three members would constitute a quorum of the subcommittee. Those meetings have to be posted and those discussions are subject to open meeting law. You can have informal work groups, I believe, but once you create an actual subcommittee, you have created another public body.
[Alicia Hunt]: know.
[Barry Ingber]: Or maybe it's bad to know. Maybe I just should have kept my mouth shut and we could have.
[Robert Paine]: Matthew had a question on chat. He said that what can you do below a quorum? I think you can discuss things. You can't vote on anything, but I think you can discuss.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: I still find this a little confusing. So I If you invite the energy and environment committee to your house, me or you or anybody, that's considered a public meeting, even though we might not be talking about energy and environment related, you know, agenda items.
[Alicia Hunt]: Not in this case. He's actually suggesting that he would have the meeting.
[Robert Paine]: It would be an official meeting.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Oh, I didn't realize that. Okay.
[Robert Paine]: Our summer meeting will be in person.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Okay.
[Robert Paine]: Since we don't even know, because July 15th is the current expiration of the remote meeting law, we don't know if it's going to be renewed. So we're going to make sure we're adhering to whatever law it is by having it in person.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: I see.
[Robert Paine]: Thank you. And who knows after that, we might have to meet in person again.
[Alicia Hunt]: I will tell you that I did reach out to all the members of our legislative delegation about the desire to continue to have remote and hybrid meetings. And they are in favor of it. They all wrote back to me. And in fact, actually, Paul Donato said he was working with the state's legal counsel to draft something to allow, at the very least, hybrid remote meetings, members to participate remotely. if not fully remote meetings. And actually gave me the example himself that the, our state, the legislature, the house had an in-person meeting and then six members of the house got COVID right afterwards. So they are kind of inclined to pass this allowance to continue remote meetings.
[Robert Paine]: Sounds good. Just one more before we get into the circle of square, Any updates on the Harvester Energy Festival, Alicia?
[Alicia Hunt]: I had asked Loretta, Loretta, sorry, Teresa to book us a shredding truck and an electronics recycling truck so that those would be taken care of up front and confirm the dates with the school and the mayor. That's basically the update.
[Robert Paine]: Okay, third Saturday of October.
[Alicia Hunt]: Yeah.
[Robert Paine]: Okay.
[Alicia Hunt]: and Gaston raised his hand.
[Gaston Fiore]: Yeah, so just the last comment on the open meeting law. So should someone in the committee, so I just did a quick search and then there are even like webinars that you can do from Massachusetts and this kind of the same as we would do related to the conflict of interest. So should at least one person go through one of this and then be the point of contact relating to open meeting though, or is that a bad idea? I'm just trying to make sure that we are efficient, but at the same time that we don't do anything that we shouldn't be doing because we didn't know about it.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: Agreed. I would just add, when we started, or when I started, I recall that a number of us, if not the whole committee, went through a number of trainings, including open meeting law and conflict of interest. And I am still not clear if open meeting law has changed significantly since then. But it has been and still kind of continues to be my assumption that discussions, as Matthew has pointed out in his comments, discussions related to our committee needs to be kind of offline or needs to be between a couple of people is not a big deal. But as long as once we put a group together of any size, we can can't be discussing the workings of the committee without posting it as an actual meeting. Anyway, but I agree. I think somebody should kind of check and make sure that we are current on the open meeting law.
[Robert Paine]: Yeah, this Bob, I did do some, I went through a webinar, it may have been last year. I don't know if I vaguely, I thought it was pretty clear that if you had less than a quorum, you had a lot more discretion to have a discussion than if you had at least a quorum. But I guess we should check on that.
[Alicia Hunt]: I want to really point out that a lot of this is around bodies that pass laws, issue permits, hold public hearings. Those things are very serious and should be done in daylight. When you're just debating the merits of solar panels and trees, and you want to have that debate among a couple of people before you come back to the committee, that's sort of like on a whole different level, right? It's like having an intellectual discussion about whether or not we want to do this or do that.
[Barry Ingber]: Alicia, I completely agree with your point, except that's not the way the law is written. The law clearly includes volunteer committees of public bodies. And, you know, you're right, that's the way it should be. It's interesting that the legislature created this law that encumbers us, but does not include themselves. But That's still the law.
[Alicia Hunt]: It's a tendency because the people who write the laws are not familiar with the actual details of the work and don't understand all the consequences of the details. Like they don't always understand all the language they're using or what all the case studies are. We run into it all the time.
[Gaston Fiore]: So I volunteer. So given that when I joined this committee, I was completely perplexed that I couldn't discuss things by email. I volunteer to take a look at this and then either push out an email with all the information or talk briefly about it and then we can go on from there. So I'll go through a training, I'll take a look at all the official documents and then we can see what to do.
[Alicia Hunt]: So part of the difficulty is that people will say, well, only a lawyer should interpret things. On the other hand, if you ask a lawyer, they'll say, well, watch it, read the law yourself, watch the webinar. Well, what if I then write something up for my committee members? Well, you shouldn't do that, Alicia, because you're not a lawyer, right? But you can't expect the lawyer to come to every board and committee and answer every single detailed question we have. that would not be a great use of our resources. It's a big, big catch 22. So, but we did, we can circulate again, the open meeting law training and stuff that they have through the attorney general and all.
[Robert Paine]: I was under the impression you could dispense, like I dispense information on the meeting agenda and informational things without,
[Alicia Hunt]: Pushing information out is fine. That is absolutely. Materials get shared to members of the city council, the school community. Sharing materials to people is 100% fine. The difference is when you then debate and discuss the materials. So like a lot of our boards and commissions, somebody will BCC everybody so that you don't accidentally reply all. Replying to one person is not a violation. Sharing a document to the committee is fine. It's the discussion of it that is the problem.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Right. That's why I asked Bob, because I know with a lot of the new members, the emails were getting a little long and almost discussion-like. And I was like, I don't think we can do this. a subcommittee meeting. So we need, definitely need clarification on that.
[Robert Paine]: All right, we can, it looks like we have a blank here from Gaston and we can have a brief summary of it next meeting. I'd like to get into now the circle of square planning. That's Saturday, I think it's three to 7 p.m. It's a Saturday, hopefully good weather. And we're gonna have a, table and it's our chance for to prepare some informational um whether it's handouts or posters or whatever uh Paul Teslivi who's I guess not able to be here tonight suggested a number of areas which I put on the agenda um one is uh and a lot of these are okay Members of the public want to know, what do I do about solar energy? Or what do I do about heat pumps? Or building energy audits? What are my opportunities? Do you have any advice? How should I go about this? There's the tree urban canopy benefits. A lot of these are also items on our climate change. The new document focuses on these areas because these areas affect our greenhouse gas emissions. Being transportation issues, transportation, residential buildings, those are the biggest sectors actually. in Massachusetts and Medford for greenhouse gases. And trees are actually a very important resource to sequester the carbon dioxide. So that's a very important issue. And to also help the cool, you know, during the heat of the summer, help the cooling issues. So I've listed four areas that I like, and the four others, subcommittee areas. And of course the entire event is sort of like a subcommittee on public outreach. So if I could have the various subcommittees think about how they would prepare. Okay, let's go through one at a time. Solar energy options might be, and I know Barry's on that subcommittee for sure, There are references. You can just go to Framingham, for example. I put in a link. Some of the other towns and cities have their own references. You can just cite those and say, well, this is what Framingham is telling you what to do. I think there's EnergySage that is another resource. So we can just provide links to resources on things like that. But I'd like to have something prepared for discussion next month as to how would we present to the public areas for information, how to gather information. Obviously we cannot point to certain contractors or we cannot sell any services, but we can point to the resources. Um, certainly the tree and canopy urban benefits. I think there was a presentation some months ago and I would invite that committee to decide how you'd like, what would you like to say about trees or urban canopy benefits? Certainly the heat pumps, Alicia, you brought up the question about heat pumps and maybe you want to then elaborate on, uh, what are the questions being asked about that issue?
[Alicia Hunt]: So, the two questions that I've gotten that I feel like are a little are messier one is, can you recommend any good companies that I can talk to. And as a city, I can't. We would have to do a selection process to do that. It may actually be difficult for the board to do that for this committee to do that as well as official representatives. There is a Medford resident who mentioned recently that he had heat pumps installed and he'd be happy to make recommendations to other residents. And so I have actually sent a couple of people his way. The other type of question is, I got a proposal to do this, like whole house, but I'm concerned that I only heat some rooms. I'd love to consult with somebody who isn't the salesperson to figure out if what I'm being advised to do makes sense. And that may be that we, among us, is there a resource out there to send people who wanna like, make sure they're not being sold a bill of goods. And actually I will tell you that I get the exact same two questions for solar panels pretty regularly is, can you recommend a good reliable company? And can you tell me if what I'm being proposed is a reasonable proposal? Is this a good thing? on the solar panel side. Obviously, there's a need for this third party advisor to homeowners.
[Barry Ingber]: Since EnergySage, I think, is a nonprofit, are you allowed to refer people to EnergySage?
[Alicia Hunt]: I usually point people to the Malden EnergySAGE page, not Malden, Melrose, and say that Melrose did this outreach and I trust my peer in Melrose who did this work, and they can look at that information. Because for solar, I like EnergySAGE and I like the MassSave site that talks about what are the rebates. I do not think that every single municipality should be keeping its own track of what are the current rebates and programs and stuff. there should be centralized state pages that we can send everybody to, because the rebates are no different between here and Worcester and Melrose and Salem.
[Barry Ingber]: So why should we each maintain our own set of- We can also kind of boost our aggregation program by referring people to Green Energy Consumers Alliance, because they also contract with or have some kind of arrangement with EnergySage.
[Alicia Hunt]: Oh, for solar. Yeah. I had not actually realized that I do send people to the aggregation for green energy. on that I can do, but I hadn't thought of it. And I send people to Green Energy Consumer Alliance for electric vehicles and advice on rebates and information on electric vehicles, because that's another one that people want local advice, but again, it's the same anywhere in the state. So it's nice when there are some of these more central aggregators that we can refer people to.
[Barry Ingber]: Yeah, so the Consumers Alliance works with EnergySage. Okay.
[Alicia Hunt]: I'm wondering then, do they already have some handouts in pamphlets that the committee could use that wouldn't be reinventing everything? Yeah.
[Robert Paine]: So I'd like to see if we can borrow from what's already been invented rather than reinvent the wheel. And I don't know if Alicia, you are the central resource on this, but you, you, you have definitely a lot of information that you should probably dispense to the various subcommittees as soon as you can. And then we can pick up the ball and run with that. And then prepare. for next month, a discussion of what we would, what can we do, both of the Circle of the Square event and the Harvester Energy Festival at any time in between to provide links, resource information, that type of thing.
[MCM00000549_SPEAKER_03]: Bob, what's the day of the Circle of the Square event?
[Robert Paine]: June 18th, it's a Saturday, it's three to 7 p.m. Thank you. Obviously, I don't know what size of a table we'll have, but we would like to have, you know, I'm sure we'll want people to be there from the committee. Not that everybody has to be there at once, but just keep that date open and we'll, next month we'll, at our meeting on June 6th, we will nail down some, it ought to be, we'll have to have a long discussion about preparation for that meeting during the June 6th meeting.
[MCM00000549_SPEAKER_03]: One suggestion for the top question sounds like they're around heat pumps and solar panels. Luke and his colleague did a really great presentation three meetings ago, which is a good resource to draw on. And it sounds like while the committee cannot recommend particular contractors, And sounds like people are looking for consultation. We can create the space. And maybe literally, you have half a dozen chairs and you go, all right, whatever, 4 o'clock, we're going to make a space for folks to talk about whatever, top questions, the quotes they're getting, the concerns that they have, and have available some boilerplate materials from whoever, especially Mass Save. on systems. So you don't have to get into the specifics of contractors to recommend. So the committee is not making recommendations. They're creating a forum to discuss public concerns and questions.
[Robert Paine]: Okay, well, definitely between now and the, June 6th meeting, we'll have to have communications, email communications discussing this, maybe less than seven people to plan on what to do for our table on June 18th. And then we'll have the various, there's four areas here in the agenda. See what we can actually come up with. We're a real plan to either show poster, hand out something, and then we'll have basically almost two weeks to finalize those materials. In terms of the tree and urban canopy benefits, I don't know whether that committee would like to create a poster or some sort of information on the proposed ordinance or just the benefits of trees and urban canopies. There was a nice presentation in 2020 fall on that, I think. That subcommittee can decide how they'd like to rise to that challenge. But yeah, definitely the heat pumps will be the residential building energy management. That's the key thing on buildings is besides of course, mass save energy audits, which I think we should definitely, that's part of the heat pump issue. Anyway, you have to make your home heat efficient as possible, so you don't have to oversize the system. But then what are the options depending on your, how you heat your home now, and there's many things. I think we wanna have just maybe see what other towns are doing, but we would offer some advice. Same with solar. Transportation, obviously there's,
[Alicia Hunt]: It was something about- Bob, did that committee actually want to weigh in? You didn't actually give them a chance to answer if they had ideas already.
[Robert Paine]: I'm sorry, go ahead. Which one? The tree one. The tree one. I'm going to give you- Bob gave all his opinions and nobody else. I'm going to give you some time, Anne, between 8 and 8.30, but if you want to go ahead. And I think we have time before the 7.30. Okay, so yeah.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: There's a lot we can add to that and benefit of trees. And we can probably, trying to think maybe we can bring a laptop or an iPad and show them the website under the city so they can look up all these things and they're aware of it. So I think, is it into GoGreen? gogreenmedford.org. And if you click on that in the Energy Committee, there's different tabs. And there's one about stormwater and trees. And so that's one thing. But yeah, we can work on that.
[Robert Paine]: Yeah, I'm sorry if I ran off without letting you come in on these ideas.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: There's also so many things from the Abadie Foundation. We can print those for children as handouts, LEAF ID. and the benefits of trees. And I have permission from the Appaday Foundation to print a lot of their activity pages and other things on their website that we can distribute. But, you know, I have to speak to Alicia about that too, to see if we want to do that. It's one table. So it's almost like for this committee, we could use three tables. There's so much information.
[Alicia Hunt]: You figure out what you need and then you can work with Teresa to print stuff through our office.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: I think that would be good for children.
[Robert Paine]: Okay. And, you know, and Barry, we can talk about solar. Maybe Alicia has some ideas to the building subcommittee can maybe you can talk amongst yourselves. and see what you'd like to say about heat pumps and other energy audits. Next month, we'll definitely want to see what your ideas are and what to present at the Circularly Square event. Before I get to transportation, anything more from solar trees or residential buildings? Transportation, Martha isn't here, Gaston is here, and obviously biking and walking, they have their own groups, and you might bring some forth some ideas there. If there's rebates on electric vehicles, we can make that, you know, make information about that aware to the public. But I'll also engage with the transportation subcommittee to see what they would like to mention as well. Any other discussion on preparing for this event? We'll definitely want to come back next month, June 6th. and see what we've got prepared. But don't wait till then, start thinking about it now.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: And... Bob, I just thought of something, you know, we should, since this is the June, if we could have the little flyer from the Office of Energy and Environment about the Harvester Energy Festival. We used to print like three and a page and we cut them and have them there to give people, to inform them about the festival coming up.
[Robert Paine]: or QR code, something that's provides information about that, that would be good.
[Gaston Fiore]: I'll make a note. Okay. So related to transportation, Alicia sent out a link related to bus rerouting. I don't know where it would be too late for people to give their insight by June 18th, but it could be a great opportunity to let the public know about it. so they can have the input.
[Alicia Hunt]: The public MBTA presentation is on May 19th. I can put it in the chat and I can put it in the minutes. It'll take me a little bit to find that. But I strongly recommend that people who even might take the bus, if the bus was convenient, see the presentation or see the materials afterwards. And if you do take public transportation, you definitely want to weigh in because they are proposing significant changes to the bus system in the greater Boston area. There are a lot of good changes, but there are certainly people who will not be happy with some of them, so. But if you're saying to post that stuff at June 19 at Circle the Square as well, it'll still be there taking comments for at least three months. So it'll still be available. I think that was your point, sorry. I was trying to take notes at the same time.
[Robert Paine]: Thank you, Alicia, for taking notes. Let's move on to any other discussion on the Circle the Square event. Well, I want to move on, since we know that Dan Koretz, who's joined, is a time limitation. Now Paul Tesliby went to a meeting last week about this issue with leaf blowers. We've talked about leaf blowers before. Before we get Dan to join, I just want to make sure we summarize what was this, if anyone was at the meeting, I don't know, Felicia, you know, at the meeting last week or the meetings, meetings of the whole or meeting subcommittee meetings for the city council.
[Alicia Hunt]: I was not able to attend that one.
[Robert Paine]: So I'd hope Paul would be present to do that, but I guess he couldn't make it. But I believe the issue is there's concern about noise and air pollution from gas powered leaf blowers.
[Alicia Hunt]: Is that what our guest is here for? Bob, I don't know what you see on your screen. Dan Kurtz joined us. Is that the topic that he joined us for?
[Robert Paine]: That's correct. Is that okay? Okay. He is, he's from Lexington and he Lexington adopted, um, uh, I don't know if it's an ordinance or it was a town meeting law. Maybe Dan, you can go ahead and introduce yourself and explain what Lexington has done.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure. Uh, I am the chair of the, uh, of a committee that advises our, excuse me, our select board on noise issues and, um, After about three and a half years of discussion, we brought forward an article to town meeting this past fall, part of which was fairly conventional, part of which was not. There are a number of towns in this area, Newton, Cambridge, Brookline, Lincoln, some others, that have already put in place some form of restriction on the use of gasoline blowers because of the noise and the the really remarkable level of emissions and the toxicity of emissions. Most of those, the most common thing is to simply ban them in the summer, where there's really no reason for them. What's called in the trade, mow and blow, where people walk behind lawnmowers and blow off the grass clippings. Some have other restrictions. Arlington, for example, limits the number that can be used on a lot at any one time, requires a certain amount of time off out of every hour But the standard thing in the area has been seasonal limitations. We decided to try for the whole ball of wax, and we included in ours a three and a half year phase out, which is common outside of this region, but it's not common, but there are quite a number of cities, for instance, in California that have done this, Washington DC did it, passed it three years ago, but nobody had done it in New England. So we included a three and a half year phase out at the end of which there could be no commercial use of backpack blowers at all. The sole exception was the large wheeled blowers, which you sometimes see on large properties, which are extraordinarily noisy, but they're four stroke engines. So they're much cleaner. Our bylaw allows those only on lots of an acre or more. it gives residents an extra year to phase out the use of theirs. Town meeting, flood court did not support it. Town meeting passed it by an overwhelming margin, 85% in favor. Within 12 hours, landscapers had filed a petition for a referendum to try to overturn the bylaw. That was resolved in March, where the town upheld the bylaw by a margin of 10%, 55 to 45%. So at this point, it turns out there are a number of people in a number of towns who are watching Lexington to see what would happen. I think sensibly enough thinking if this failed in Lexington, they might not want to try it yet in their own towns. a vote at town meeting in Arlington, either tonight or Wednesday, depending on how quickly they move on a similar proposal that has exactly the same phase out. There will be a vote in Brookline on a phase out at the end of May or early June, depending on how quickly they move. And there may be one in Belmont. And there are a number of other towns like Winchester, where people have motions in play to impose less extreme restrictions, you know, with no phase out, but with seasonal limitations and hourly limitations and so on. So it's spreading. I was actually looking, I'm at the wrong computer. I have a map of where these things have been proposed or enacted. And it's a large chunk of the Boston area now. Boston has hearings on a bill that would be actually more extreme than some of the town ones. So anyway, that's where things stand. I think we'll know more within two months about whether this is, you know, a one-off in Lexington or whether it's the beginning of a trend. I'll just give you one other piece of background. When Washington DC passed this about three years ago, their ban actually went into, the phase-out is over, the ban went into effect this calendar year. It did start a trickle of similar laws in surrounding towns. So we'll see, I think, in another month or two, whether that's the case here, whether Lexington is, you know, a fluke. Anyway, that's the short story. If you have other questions, of course, I'd be happy to answer them.
[Robert Paine]: Go ahead, anyone else? Okay, Gaston, you had a question.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're muted, Gaston.
[Robert Paine]: I thought you're muted.
[Gaston Fiore]: Sorry about that. Yeah, no, thank you for the presentation was very interesting. I have tons of questions. Um, so the first one is, um, why only leaf blowers and not other? Um, I mean, I don't grow grass, so I'm not very familiar with them. But I know about lawnmowers, like the streamers and things like that, when my neighbors do that. is extremely noisy, smelly, and kind of the same things are extreme with leaf blowers. So why just leaf blowers and not other lawn tools, machinery?
[SPEAKER_00]: There have been places that have passed much more, much broader rules. And in fact, the state of California has passed a law that is still waiting for regulatory action that would ban the sale of all gas-powered lawn scaping equipment statewide. We went after leaf blowers for two reasons. The primary one, and there's a legal reason why this was the primary one, is simply the noise. They are extraordinarily noisy. I mean, the commercial grade leaf blower, a single one, and in our town, we often see four or five at a time on a lot. A single one is 100 decibels at the ear of the operator. To give you an idea how bad that is, National Institute on Occupational Safety and Health sets a recommended exposure limit of 15 minutes per eight hour day. I mean, it's extraordinarily noisy. When you get a bunch of them together, I've measured 93 decibels in my neighborhood at a property line on several occasions. And to give you an idea what that means, a low altitude flyover of an F-35 is 94 decibels. I mean, it's extraordinarily noisy. So that was the primary reason. The other reason that had a big impact, I think, on the town vote, but it was not central politically, and I'll tell you why, is that there are very few pieces of equipment that use two-stroke engines. It's basically virtually all leaf blowers, chainsaws, and some string trimmers. The reason they use them is that the power to weight ratio is very high. but they are extraordinarily dirty machines. It's hard to overestimate or overstate how dirty they are. California Resources Board estimated that using one, a gas leaf blower for an hour, which is about a third of the typical usage to clear a lawn in Lexington, generates as much ozone producing emissions as driving a Toyota Camry 1,100 miles. And it's worse than that because the stuff that's emitted is highly toxic. It's PM 2.5, extremely small particulate emissions. A lot of volatile organic compounds that are highly toxic. Some are carcinogens like benzene. They're extraordinarily dangerous. That wasn't as central politically because there's some argument about whether towns have the prerogative to impose environmental restrictions on their own. So I think it had a big influence on how people voted, but in terms of our proposal, it was secondary. It was, however, I think this made a big difference politically. It was the reason why, or one of two reasons why, our Board of Health voted unanimously to support this bylaw. and they were unwilling to take a stand about residents because they said there just aren't good data about exposure levels, but they issued a statement saying that both the emissions and the noise pose a clear health risk for workers. So we figured we'll take on the one that is, in a sense, I don't wanna say politically easier because it was not politically easy, but it was less politically difficult than dealing with lawnmowers, for example. And it was the most offensive of the machines that are currently used and the most dangerous of the machines that were used. We did, I should say, there was a misunderstanding about an earlier version of the motion that led people to think that it would ban lawnmowers. And there was a firestorm of protests. I mean, it really generated an enormous fuss.
[Robert Paine]: Dan, this is Bob Payne. What are the arguments on the side of the operators or the commercial vendors to oppose such an ordinance?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, they had several and some were valid. Some, I think, were not. I mean, for instance, one of the big things that they pushed toward the end was that They pointed out accurately enough that lithium mining is in most cases environmentally destructive. But I mean, the extraction of petroleum is environmentally destructive. That's not really the issue. But it's a serious disruption to their business for two reasons. One is that the electric machines are less powerful. And they would argue that it's not feasible to use them. That's simply untrue. Landscape companies that have been using electric blowers for a decade and making a profit, but you have to work differently because machines are less powerful. So for example, the person who does my yard, who has never owned it, it's been in business eight years and has never owned a gas blower, said that a large lot, his crews bring the leaves into smaller piles and collect from that rather than blowing across an entire property. So it means a change in how they work. It does mean for large, heavily treed properties, an increase in costs. The best estimates we were able to get from people with experience is that it's not uncommon for people with large properties to have a 10 or 20% increase in the cost of clearing leaves. The landscapers here claimed that it would triple costs, but the landscapers who were actually doing it with electric equipment said that's absolute garbage, it's nonsense. The other argument which really carried a lot of weight is that when you use gas leaf blowers, you spread costs fairly evenly over time. The blowers are not terribly expensive. The maintenance is fairly expensive and the fuel is expensive, but that's all spread out over time. The economic model with electric lawn equipment is very different. You pay a lot up front, particularly because of batteries, and you pay much less over time because the energy costs are lower and there's virtually no maintenance, except in unusual circumstances. So they face a substantial upfront cost. They often presented that as if there were, in fact, they invariably presented it as if there were no offsetting long-term costs, savings. They would simply say, oh, look, we have to spend all this money for batteries. And they would simply neglect to mention that their costs over three or four or five years were actually fairly similar. So we went to an organization. If you embark on this, you may find them useful. There's an organization, it's a for-profit company called AGZA, the American Green Zone Alliance, which makes its money helping jurisdictions and institutions like universities convert from gas to electric landscaping equipment, not just leaf blowers. It's run by a guy who started his career running a gas-powered leaf landscaping company. They have a lot of data that's from California, which we were unwilling to use because the leaf loads are much lighter in California, but they more recently have been generating data in the northern Midwest where leaf loads are heavy. So we persuaded them to give us estimates of four year costs of transitioning a three blower crew. They gave us quite a range. It depends on how much you use them, how often you replace them, what kind of oil you use. That actually makes a big difference. But their estimate of the four-year cost for crew ranged from $0 to $1,250 a year. And the $1,250 sounds like a lot, but if you divide that by the 500 or 600 jobs a crew does over the course of a cleanup, it's $2 or $3 a job. So in terms of operating expenses long-term, it's not a big deal, but it does mean they have to lay out money up front to buy the equipment. So our response to that was two things. First, we said, tell us, we said to landscapers, tell us how long you actually use the equipment. And it varies, but most of them keep lowers two to four years, right? So we said, let's make a three and a half year transition. You can gradually buy these machines as your old machines are run down. There were a lot of residents who were very displeased, who said, I don't want to listen to this stuff for three and a half more years. But that was our compromise. There are also efforts underway to cushion it. There is a bill before the House in Beacon Hill that would let towns set up programs to provide support for the initial purchase. There's actually an effort by Catherine's Clark's office to get an appropriation for that for her district. And there is a lot of interest in, and I think this is what will probably fly in long-term, bulk purchasing arrangements. When we started calling, my committee started calling commercial vendors and just off the top, they would say, all right, we'll give you 15%. But I think if you got three or four towns together, which would be three towns would probably be 60, 70 landscapers, you could probably negotiate a really substantial bulk discount. But for now, anyway, those are the big arguments. The total costs, which they exaggerated, the initial costs, which I think were a real concern. They also made a strong pitch in Lexington, which I think was a mistake on their part to cast this as an issue of property rights. And the immediate response to that was, what about the rights of the property owners next door? You know, who really don't want to listen to 90 decibels. But I think that was the big, big arguments were. And if you go ahead, I have a pile of their materials, which I'd be happy to send on if you decide to go ahead. Because from what the people in Arlington have told me, it's exactly the same arguments there that we had.
[Robert Paine]: Barry, you have your hand up. And yes, so I think Luke had his up before. I'm sorry. Okay. I'm sorry. Luke, you can go ahead.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: Thank you. No, that's fine. Thank you. Um, so I, forgive me. I have two questions. One is, uh, uh, is the ban a gas ban or is it a two stroke engine ban? Um, so in the end are, uh, is it requiring an electric system or is it requiring just a quieter system?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a superb question because a lot of jurisdictions have tried not banning gas leaf blowers entirely and trying to control what kind of leaf blowers are used. Our conversations with the people in jurisdictions that have tried that suggest that it just doesn't work. First of all, the four-stroke gas-powered leaf blowers tend to be less powerful because of the unfavorable power to weight ratio. So it's not what they want anyway. What a lot of towns around here have done, Newton has done at Cambridge, I think Brookline, is to impose a 65 decibel sound limit. The problem with that is you have to have somebody go and measure it, right? And so what some landscapers admitted, frankly, is that when they're working in Cambridge, if they see somebody they're worried about, they throttle down for a minute, and then when they leave, they just go back to work. But our thing about this was really shaped a lot by our conversation with our chief of police, who in this town is the person who's going to have to enforce this. And he said, it's got to be simple. He said, if I get a call that somebody's doing house construction at 630 in the morning, which is illegal, it's simple. I send somebody out. They say, it's 630. Here's your ticket. And he said, if you can make it that simple, we can do it. But he said, they're not going to go out with anti-certified meters and measure 50 feet and so on. So we decided the only thing that made it enforceable is to just ban them entirely. We spoke to people in some towns that said they actually no longer try to enforce the other limits because it just is such a headache.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: But banning what? Banning leaf blowers, period, or?
[SPEAKER_00]: We just ban all gas-powered leaf blowers. You can still use electric. You will face, if you do this, by the way, a small but vocal group of people who want all blowers banned.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can imagine.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: Electric blowers also make plenty of noise, too.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, they make a huge amount less, but they do damage overwintering pollinators, which became an issue here. What I said to the other people in the, we had some people in our referendum campaign who were concerned about that, some who weren't. And what I suggested is forget about it. I actually am concerned about it, but we're not gonna win this referendum if we tell people they can't use any blowers. It's just not politically feasible now. But in terms of noise, there's a huge difference. We created some charts. We had the advantage of having an acoustical consultant from MIT working with us. So we were able to generate numbers pretty quickly. But one of our charts, which he created, compared four commercial grade electric leaf blower battery powered backpack leaf blowers to one standard commercial grade gas leaf power blower. And the answer is the single gas leaf powered blower generated twice the noise of four electric blowers. But the other thing, and tell me if I'm getting into things that are too technical, all of these other numbers you will encounter use what is called the A-weighted decibel scale. And this is a scale that's weighted to emphasize the frequencies that are most noticeable in human hearing. What that scale does not emphasize is low frequencies. And the real difference apart from overall noise levels between gas-powered leaf blowers and electric blowers is gas-powered leaf blowers produce a lot of low-frequency noise. And the impact of that is twofold. One is it travels much further, and the other is it penetrates surfaces much better. So when you have somebody two doors down from you doing this and you close the windows and it's still annoying, that's why it's the low-frequency noise. So, I mean, our acoustical experts said he thought all of the numbers we were using understated the problem because they were using the wrong scale.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: Well, and you answered in part my second question, but I do just want to get it out there. And that is in terms of enforcement. So this will be enforced by the police department and basically a neighbor can report and see what.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes. The other towns that have done this have done all sorts of things. I mean, in our case, it's partly because we're small enough that we don't have some of the agencies that, say, Cambridge has. So legally, we have four agencies that have authority to enforce noise ordinances. It's the building commissioner, who's clearly not going to do this, the fire department, which is clearly not going to do this, the police, and the health department. So in practice, what this boils down to is that when there is persistent noise, that can be measured. So from ongoing breaking of rock and construction, for example, the health department takes it because they actually have staff who can go out with ANSI certified meters and take the measurements that are required under state law for the standard state standard, which is a 10 decibel increment. But they have no way of going out there when the landscaper is next door to me for 45 minutes. It had to be the police. Thank you.
[Robert Paine]: OK, let's see. Let's go to Barry. Your questions.
[Barry Ingber]: Yeah, mine's simpler. Can you attach numbers to the cost? What does a typical electric leaf blower cost up front? And how does that compare to, say, monthly revenues for a single crew, which I imagine a crew would have one leaf blower, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, no. Around here, the crews often have three to five.
[Barry Ingber]: Oh, so there's a whole bunch of people in the crew, and each one has a leaf blower.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I don't have those numbers off the top of my head. I'd be happy to get them to you. Email me, and I'll send you a page that has them. It's a low entry barrier field, right? So the way most of this works is people go in and finance equipment. I mean, leaf blowers are not their expensive equipment. The expensive equipment are their trucks, their trailers, right? So would some of them have to finance purchases? Probably. Probably so.
[Barry Ingber]: OK, that's what I'm getting at. It just seems like, you know, amounts of money that might sound like it's an expensive piece of equipment compared to the overall cost of running the business might be inconsequential or it might not be. I mean, that's why I'm asking for the numbers.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, it actually is. The real cost of of clearing leaves are two things. I mean, the great bulk of the cost is labor. And tipping fees. In most of this area, it costs a lot of money to dump the leaves. And the equipment costs, even the expensive equipment costs, when you average it over lots and lots of jobs, things like big trucks, are not what most of the bill is. There was a landscaper in Lexington, he actually quit Lexington when this bill passed, who used to provide bills that broke it down. And one of our select board members used his service, and close to half of the bill was tipping fees. So this is not a major portion of their expense, but it is a major outlay initially. I mean, and it's not, again, it's not the blowers for the most part. There's one company where that's an exception. It's the batteries. You need a lot of batteries to get through a day. So the most experienced electric landscaper in this area, this guy in Concord, who said he sends out a crew with three blowers with 24 batteries. And he said when he converted, when he purchased the equipment, he said the bulk of his expense, other than things like trucks, was batteries, wasn't chargers. It wasn't blowers, it was batteries. There are some people, not here, but in the Washington DC area, there are some landscapers who handle this differently and put in their contracts with customers that they can charge batteries at a customer's house for the next job. which costs the customer virtually nothing. So I asked George Kuret, the fellow here, why he doesn't do that. And he said, I don't want my crews encumbered. He said, I'd rather lay the money out. I don't have to worry about weather. I don't have to worry about going to house that doesn't have outdoor outlets. I just know when I send the crew out, they can work all day and come back. So it's the, you know, when you're buying eight batteries per blower, that's the money. Somebody asked about whether residents are fined. That portion of our bylaw was written by our town council, not by us, but us being the committee, but we actually agreed with him. The punishments can be applied to either the contractor or the resident. And that was done partly to be consistent with other parts of our town bylaw, but it was done partly because some of the landscapers, not the big established companies, would be hard to find. I mean, three guys in a truck come up, they do the job, they're gone, and you get there and it's too late. So the idea was that if it's impossible to find the landscaper, you can find the homeowner who will then stop hiring a landscaper who does that. The fines aren't terribly large. I think ours are, I think they top out after repeated violations at $200, but when you're charging somebody $600 to clean the yard, a $200 fine is a real disincentive.
[Robert Paine]: Let's see, we have just a few minutes to, with Dan.
[Gaston Fiore]: Yeah, I have a few points still discussed by someone else that hasn't asked yet, wants to ask something, I'm happy to let them go first.
[Robert Paine]: I think, go ahead and take another two.
[Alicia Hunt]: I had one question for Dan. One of the things that I haven't, like you really have been focusing on the leaf blowers to blow leaves. And I feel like here in Medford, sorry my video keeps cutting out, we have a lot of people who seem to use leaf blowers to move a little bit of grass clippings off the sidewalk. Has anybody said, what about using brooms? And we have much smaller yards. Nobody has an acre in Medford. I don't think there are any private properties that large. They're probably industrial or business properties, but no homeowners on that site.
[Barry Ingber]: I've seen leaf blowers used to blow construction waste, which is like,
[Alicia Hunt]: I guess, did any of that come up in your discussion? It's sort of inappropriate use of- Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_00]: And by the way, I saw people using it rather than brooms to get rid of sand from brickwork. That's the rationale behind the seasonal restrictions, basically saying, because the landscapers, it's actually kind of interesting. The landscapers here really did not fight seasonal restrictions. They argued about what they should be, what the terminal date should be. But some of them in our public meetings, as he did in those meetings, were actually said, you know, we don't really need these things outside of fall and spring cleanup. So that's, I think, politically easy to impose a seasonal restriction where basically you let them use it where it's most helpful to them, which is really fall cleanup, and ban it in the summer, which is what Newton has done, for example. They ban it only, I think it's Memorial Day to Labor Day, something like that. I think that's politically much easier. That's what chair of our select board wanted me to do. And she referred to, she said that that would be less controversial and it would keep the core of the proposal. I said, no, the core of the problem is the fall. That's when people are most upset because it's, I think Medford is probably not as heavily treated as Lexington, but it's, you know, you have a lot of trees and it's just endless hour after hour after hour. Whereas in the summer, you know, somebody comes and mows the lawn and they do this for a little bit and they go. So we decided to, you know, bite the bullet and try the whole thing. But I think politically, there are already five or six towns in this area that have banned them outside of fall and spring cleanups. And I just don't think that would be that hard to do. I mean, I don't understand actually watching them in the summer, why it makes economic sense because they've got these huge blowers And they're blowing stuff back and forth, basically. It'd be quicker. I really think it'd be quicker to take a push broom. But anyway, I think we just decided that we didn't want to stick with that because it wasn't the core of the complaints we got from residents. I mean, what residents were really upset about was the fall.
[Robert Paine]: Let's see, Dan, I think you have to leave at eight o'clock.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have to leave pretty quickly. I would be happy to come back to another meeting. I apologize. I have. That's all right. I got was emailed that I had this is actually in the middle of something else I have scheduled. But I would be happy to come back when you've thought about this.
[Alicia Hunt]: And I think we might want to try and see if we can get our city council to have you talk with them because they're the ones who are actually discussing the ordinance right now. And I think it would be very helpful to have them hear directly from you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd be happy to do that. I mean, just, you know, give me, let me know in advance so we can work out scheduling, but I'd be happy to do that. So I am going to have to run, I apologize.
[Robert Paine]: Thank you very much.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you very much. Very, very much. I have people waiting on another zoom, so I have to run back to that.
[Gaston Fiore]: The three points I went to make, I think they applied to Medford. So, um, hello? Go ahead. Oh, sorry. Yeah, so the first one is that I'm still not sure that given the size of yards that we have met for compared to Lexington, that it would be, maybe I'm too naive, that it would be too much more of an issue or a pushback to go for a ban on non-human powered leaf moving versus a gas-powered one. I mean, I've used a rake in my life, and I'm not positive that I'm a lot slower, if any slower, using a rake to just like collect leaves than what the guys do with the leaf blower. So given the size of our yard in Medford, if we can go for like a ban on non-human powered leaf blowing, I would totally favor it over a ban on gas power. So then we avoid having all these electric issues with the flow. So that's the first one. The second one is that we definitely need a lot of data. So because a lot of people are going to be affected by this, and I heavily support a data-driven approach to all of this, the concerns of the of the, you know, landscaping companies, the resident concerns and stuff. It seems that Dan had, they did actually a great job on collecting data. So that was great to hear. And then the last point is that I also personally agree that the way to do this would be through a referendum. So we need to spend a lot of effort in education and, you know, showing to people how this is bad for health of the workers and of the residents of the ones getting the job done on the neighbors of those getting the job done. Because I just feel that at the end of the day, it is kind of a referendum thing where, you know, let people choose what they want to do. So we do have an education subcommittee, and I think we need to invest a lot of time trying to show, you know, a lot of the stuff that Dan has talked about, and other things to sort of, you know, convince people to try and find out why it is a bad idea to use a leaf blower in the first place. I mean, I would just not blow any leaves. And B, in particular, if you're gonna, you know, just move leaves around, use a gas-powered leaf blower. Thank you.
[Robert Paine]: Are you on a comment?
[Barry Ingber]: Yeah, I would like to make a motion. I would actually like to make a twin motion. One, I would like to move that the committee endorses a ban or phased out ban on gas powered leaf mowers. And a second and that we as a committee send a letter to the mayor asking for her support on an ordinance to ban or phase out gas powered leaf blowers.
[MCM00000549_SPEAKER_03]: I would second that motion.
[Robert Paine]: Discussion, maybe we need to have something in writing. Before we actually
[Alicia Hunt]: Do you mean the whole letter or just the idea? Because I was trying to get down, get your motion down. I'd like to, having watched many people take minutes for meetings, I'd like to make sure that I have the motion down correctly and read it back to you before you vote on it, because there was a lot of words in that.
[Robert Paine]: That's a good idea, Alicia.
[Alicia Hunt]: that the committee endorse a ban on phased out gas-powered leaf blowers and ask the mayor to support the ban as well?
[Barry Ingber]: A ban or phase out of gas-powered leaf blowers.
[Alicia Hunt]: Oh, thank you. I typed on instead of or, or a ban or phase out gas-powered leaf blowers.
[Barry Ingber]: And ask the mayor for her support of such an ordinance to do so.
[Robert Paine]: Now in this type of motion is, do we entertain discussions on wording?
[Barry Ingber]: I'm open to friendly amendment.
[Robert Paine]: Anybody, anybody want to. Yeah.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: I'd say, you know, a lot of good points over me that all leaf blowers are damaging to the environment. You know, he did talk pretty fast. I'm wondering if the other town being mentioned being to all of them, which is gas powered. And then he also mentioned there's a house bill to help municipalities for contractors. I don't know. I think it needs a little more thought. So I'm sort of on the fence.
[Gaston Fiore]: Yeah, I agree. And we have small yards. I still maintain that we have very small yards. see why in Medford this cannot be done with a rake if people decide to still blow their leaves or whatever it's called. Because I agree that yes, it's not productive to do that.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Right. And here's the other thing too. I mean, I know a lot of people, tons of residents need landscaping services and we have them all the time in the summer. So, you know, if we got away from leaf blowers and the landscaping companies could still rake. I mean, it could be sort of like what the Gaston, what you had set up for the app for our snow shovelers. We can, maybe we could do something for, you know, lawn care volunteers or, you know, residents to help other people kind of thing.
[Alicia Hunt]: So I would actually like to point out, I'm all in favor of your motion. I'm all in favor of this ban. But I feel like if the committee was gonna focus on an education committee, it ought to be on the leave the leaves and how removing the leaves at all over the winter is really impacting pollinators, butterflies. My favorite is the winky light ones.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Fireflies?
[Alicia Hunt]: Fireflies. Do you know that fireflies lay their eggs in dead leaves? And that when you rake up your leaves, you're raking away the firefly eggs. And that's why there are no fireflies in the spring anymore because of this push to clean up the leaves all the time.
[Barry Ingber]: Alicia, I have an all natural backyard. I completely agree with you. I don't even rake until the spring and I don't do a very good job in the spring. But I think that what we're, and so we could have an educational campaign, but I think it's a different issue. I think what we're talking about right now is that there is an ordinance working its way through the city council And I want that ordinance to pass. And I hope that others here want that ordinance to pass. I believe it will pass either four to three or five to two. If it passes four to three, I want the mayor to not veto it. And so that's, you know, that's completely where I'm coming from right now is that I wanted an ordinance. I'm putting a motion in favor of that ordinance and asking for the mayor's support.
[Alicia Hunt]: So there is a motion on the table. Was there a second for the motion?
[MCM00000549_SPEAKER_03]: I seconded it.
[Alicia Hunt]: Fran seconded it. Sorry, Benji seconded it.
[Robert Paine]: Okay. Okay. Any other discussion before we call the roll?
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: something done is better than nothing done. So yes, I'm in support.
[Robert Paine]: All right. Say yes, if you support the motion, as Alicia read. Luke? Yes. Bob? Yes. Gaston? Yes. Barry? Yes. Of course, you'd better. Loretta? Yes. Kathleen? Yes. Dave? Yes. Benji? Yes. Have I missed anyone? I don't think so. Okay, unanimously approved.
[Gaston Fiore]: Thank you, Barry, for- I still think we should, in the education subcommittee, if we are gonna put emphasis on something, we should put emphasis on this. And by this, I mean exactly what Loreta said, related to not raking and actually the sort of, I don't know how to call it, but the pretty sort of yard landscaping try to change a little bit, again, through showing why that's not the best thing that you can do to try to convince people to go in some other direction.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Okay. I agree.
[Robert Paine]: Could be another subcommittee.
[Alicia Hunt]: Can I make a suggestion?
[Robert Paine]: Go ahead.
[Alicia Hunt]: that if the committee was so inclined, they could also entertain a motion to ask the mayor to ban gas powered leaf blowers on city property, because that would basically mean don't hire. And that is completely in her authority when she puts that. I will say there's a contract out right now, that's an open contract. So it would have to be a phase in with the new contract, but that would be within her authority.
[Robert Paine]: So this last week we approved was not specific to city.
[Alicia Hunt]: It would be about the ordinance and the ordinance would apply to municipal. But if the ordinance were to not pass, the mayor could also, or if there was a phase that the mayor could unilaterally make a decision for municipally owned properties.
[Gaston Fiore]: I like the idea.
[MCM00000549_SPEAKER_03]: And that could be within the same letter. Within the same letter. Yeah, I agree.
[Barry Ingber]: Yes.
[MCM00000549_SPEAKER_03]: That's great.
[Barry Ingber]: So that's in it. Somebody should make an additional motion, right?
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: I will make a motion to amend Barry's letter to include municipal work, municipal properties, whether or not the current ordinance passes.
[Barry Ingber]: I'll second that.
[Robert Paine]: Any discussion before we vote? All right, say yes if you approve this additional language. Luke. Bob, yes. Gaston?
[Kathleen McKenna]: Yes.
[Robert Paine]: Mary?
[Kathleen McKenna]: Yes.
[Robert Paine]: Loretta? Yes. Kathleen?
[Kathleen McKenna]: Yes, sir.
[Robert Paine]: Dave? Yes. Benji? Yes. So passed. Are we done with leaf blowers for now?
[Alicia Hunt]: I'll just clarify administratively that I guess, Bob, you and I will work on a letter unless somebody else wants to draft it. And then Bob will sign it on behalf of the committee. Is that anybody itching to write this letter? All right.
[Robert Paine]: It would be, I don't know what exactly the wording of the city council ordinance is. Maybe I could get Paul to help out. Cause he actually went to the meeting and I was not able to attend.
[Barry Ingber]: So Nicole is a member of our committee and a member of, and I believe, well, she's the president of the council and she might be the chair of the committee that's working on the ordinance. So, okay.
[Robert Paine]: All right. Um, maybe I'll contact those two to get better understanding of what we're dealing with. Okay. We can work together, Alicia, that with Nicole and Paul. What we have time left is 15 minutes for any residual subcommittee business. I'm going to go through each. I think the three subcommittee wanted to talk about things.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Yeah, I'd like to just give the update. Friday was Arbor Day I attended and the mayor gave her proclamation. We are a tree city USA from the Arbor Day 20, I think 23 years. So that was at the Medford high school trees method was there. The mayor gave her address, um, Aggie tootin, the tree warden and the students, um, from the high school for CCSR group. Um, so that was really, um, very nice. And, uh, I also got to talk to the mayor. So I'm going to go through some of the things we've been working on, uh, Senate bill, uh, S 5 0 4. Excuse me. So we had asked the mayor if she would support the Senate bill S-504, which is an act to reforest the municipalities. And she did, and specifically for her to contact the other mayors, which are part of the mayor's climate. Alicia knows the name. but there's a network of mayors that have signed on to be climate proactive and ask for their support, but also to inform them. So they also contact the state means committee that will be reviewing the bill. And there is no exact calendar date on that, but that would be good if, you know, people and delegates write in and call for support of the bill. So she responded that she would support the bill, but she wants to check with Alicia. And that's the way government works, just to make sure. And she also, when I saw her actually in Arbor Day, she also wanted to check with MAPC. I'm not sure why. But anyways, I did give her some brief highlights of the bill and she was surprised because if it passes, it does include equipment and funds for volunteer groups and all kinds of great things. So I know that there's a lot of things going on at City Hall and if she hasn't talked to Alicia yet about it, She just wants to check in with them first, and then she'd be happy to probably write the letter. And I gave her all the excerpts that they can copy and paste to create a letter to make it easier for them. So I don't know, Felicia.
[Alicia Hunt]: Loretta, could you send that to me? She did send me email, and I apologize. I've been applying for grants and responding to, like, I had to do a zoning thing by today, up the wazoo that I haven't really had a chance to look at it. In my experience with state bills, it is best to state specifically what in the bill you are supportive of, because it is rare that a bill gets passed exactly as is. And so if you can tell your legislators in this bill, I these A, B and C are very important to me. These are the most important things. Then that gives them something for when they're negotiating. What are the things they should hold on to? And so it would be really helpful. And honestly, I don't know if the mayor forwarded me everything you sent her, but if you could, if they were attachments, they might not have. Can you forward me that material so that we can put something together? Because what I'd like to do is have something that doesn't just say we blanketly support this bill, but rather here are the things in the bill that are very important to the city of Medford. I didn't say we support it,
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: But, okay, yeah, and I gave her like the highlights I'll be happy to send that to you. So it'd be simple, but it was for her to write to the other mayors, so that a whole bunch of mayors understand it and how beneficial it is, and that they can also contact their delegates to write.
[Alicia Hunt]: I think she might've wanted to contact, to reach out to MAPC. Often they organize letters like this for the mayors. On many topics, they'll actually have their staff draft a letter and then they will circulate it. So like Metro Mayors is probably the one you're talking about. Metro Mayors is convened by the MAPC. So they're not in charge, but they schedule all the meetings and they set all the agendas. So they would actually help reach out to the other mayors.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: That makes sense. I wasn't sure. I thought she was looking for maybe approval or... Well, anyways, yes, I will send that to you. So that's interesting. And let's see, what else? The tree... Ordinance by Therese Medford. I did talk with Therese Medford a little bit on average day. And they told me that it's at the process where they're trying to figure out, or they're in the process of figuring out the cost to implement the program, something like that, which we thought was sort of sad because I guess that's one of the questions they have to answer to the city councils, what would be the cost? So we talked a little bit about that and, you know, I did recommend that we might go with a temporary tree preservation ordinance, a title like that, which they seem to like until if at all, you know, a tree ordinance is passed so that they have some protection. And so I think that's what they're working on. And I talked to Aggie and she may, Aggie Tootin is our tree warden, she might be able to come to the June meeting just to give an update, informational update on what's going on with the forestry department. But I have to check back with her. This has been a very busy month. That's about it.
[Robert Paine]: Well, thank you very much, Loretta. Welcome. Any other subcommittee wants to provide any updates? I guess there'll be lots of work for them to do to prepare for circle the square, but I'll wait to see if anyone wants to say anything.
[Gaston Fiore]: I can give a quick update on the transportation subcommittee.
[Robert Paine]: Okay.
[Gaston Fiore]: Yep. So I've been trying to sort of engage with the city engineer and the Blake with the transportation engineer or related on trying to embark, met for, to become a Vision Zero community. So Cambridge, Somerville and Boston already are. And in that process to get the different groups that are related to transportation, in particular human power transportation to work together better. That's like what meant for MBAC, which I'm currently now a member of and us. And also to get one of us as a member in the Complete Street Committee that actually works hand in hand with the city engineer to sort of implement streets in Medford that are more suitable, not only to cars, but also to bikes and pedestrians. So I hope to have more updates on this in the coming meetings, but if anyone wants to collaborate, please feel free to reach out to me. Martha is getting involved in this.
[Robert Paine]: Okay. And certainly the input on walking and biking for our informational exchange at circle the square would be good to have. I don't know if they're going to have their own tables or not. Maybe you can find out just all.
[Gaston Fiore]: Yeah, I don't think MBAC is going to be there at least wasn't mentioned, but I will find out specifically about this.
[Robert Paine]: Now, the other thing is with the opening of the Green Line Extension summer, maybe, will there be any new things happening? I know that obviously, how do you get from Medford Square to that station safely? Quickly and safely will be an interesting thing.
[Gaston Fiore]: Yeah, so there was a presentation about that, not in the past, PB, David Ensign — He-Him, He-Him. He-Him. He-Him. which is an area that I think later on, Alicia, maybe we can talk about this, will get addressed because that intersection of road is just, everyone complains about it.
[Alicia Hunt]: The traffic commission approved bike lanes, basically from essentially in front of the police station going towards Tops. Along there, at that exact spot going towards Tufts, it would be shared with a bus drop-off zone. There are several places where it will be shared with bus drop-off zones. Down Main Street, turn right on George, left on College, up the hill. There are a few places where it gets a little bit narrow and it becomes sharrows. And in the opposite direction from Tufts to Medford Square, it's almost all sharrows, not bike lanes, but it cuts out almost no part. Like it doesn't lose any existing legal parking, except for one, there's one real spot that's at a narrow spot. And then in front of Tufts actually, cause it actually goes up up the the hill through that crazy intersection and then there continues the bike lane to meet the one coming out of Somerville. I apologize. Is that Boston College? I can't remember which road that is there. What's the name? Maybe the one that's in front of the steep hill of Tufts, which is actually where so it goes down. So the Tufts fields are on your right. And there were two handicapped spots technically in front of Tufts there that are, there's no building on that side of the street. It's at the formal entrance to the long hill up of Up Tufts, there were two handicapped spots, parking spots, and Tufts basically said to the city, nobody ever uses those spots. We would be much more comfortable having a bike lane through there than spots that are not in front of a building and don't serve anybody and are almost never used. They basically pointed out that they have a parking garage with elevators in it, that would get one to the top of that hill, and there is no accessible ramp up that hill. So anyhow, that is to say there will be sharrows coming towards Medford and bike lanes going towards the green line.
[Robert Paine]: That could be part of the informational exchange on transportation, because I think it's a timely issue for the circle of square because I don't know if there's a date for this station to open, you know, Alicia.
[Alicia Hunt]: We keep saying things like the summer.
[Robert Paine]: Okay. It's getting closer. All right, I think any other subcommittee issues, because I think we're near the end of our meeting time. I'll be reminding you throughout the next four weeks about the preparations and materials for the circle square event.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: I had a question. Yes. Did we follow up with the endorsement to support the electric car charging station from last month.
[Robert Paine]: Good question. I don't know if Alicia you did something had to be submitted to somebody.
[Alicia Hunt]: So I will tell you that actually I have been checking with the city clerk to find out when that was going to be on the clerk on the city council agenda so that I could. I basically said, I want to get you a letter of support from the energy committee before it shows up there. And he's like, oh, the council agenda has been busy. I haven't gotten it on there yet. So I honestly haven't done the letter, but they also haven't gotten it on the agenda yet. So I will definitely get it to them. We watched the agenda pretty closely. Yeah, I apologize. Over the last month, by the end of this week, I will have applied for more than $5 million worth of grants, which is, it is rare that my office has brought in a million dollars worth of grants in a year. So it's been sort of a stunning period of time.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: That's great. I just didn't find a way to get them.
[Robert Paine]: You just cloned yourself, Alicia, yes.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Yeah, congratulations.
[Alicia Hunt]: Well, that's why I have a lot of staff. And that's not including the grants that we've helped the Traffic and Transportation, Engineering, and Police and Fire apply for. And a little bit of that was we had applied for grants, and then we were given follow-up materials we needed to submit. as our grants moved on to second rounds. So it's looking good. I'm looking good that we'll do some construction on Carr Park next year based on where these grants stand now. I'm trying to get all $7 million together for next year, and that's been taking a bit of a Herculean effort.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: That is incredible.
[Robert Paine]: Okay, I think we're at the end of our agenda. So I thank you for all attending, look forward to. Thank you.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: Thank you. Thank you.
[Gaston Fiore]: Have a good night.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: Thank you all.