[Robert Paine]: Okay, welcome to the October 2nd meeting of the Medford Energy and Environment Committee. I'll do a roll call of the members that I see on the Zoom link. I see Loretta James, Kathleen McKenna, Luke McNeely, Gary Ingber, Jessica Parks, Benji Hiller, Bob Payne, Dan Papo, Lois Grossman, Sara Singh, and Then I have for municipal staff, Alicia Hunt, Brenda Pike. Have I missed anyone? Okay. I don't see any guests at this time, other than those that I mentioned, and you can see everyone who is a participant. So we have 10 committee members and two municipal staff members participating. May I only go over the minutes from the review of the minutes from the September 11th, 2023 meeting. I sent out the minutes that were, thank you Brenda for compiling these minutes. Does anyone have any discussion before we entertain a motion to accept the minutes as sent out? If none, I entertain, or I invite a motion to accept the minutes. Lois is raising her hand. I will second. Okay. All right. I'm going to do a quick roll call to see, say yes if you accept the minutes, Loretta.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Abstain, I didn't read them.
[Robert Paine]: Okay, sorry. Kathleen?
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_12]: Abstaining.
[Robert Paine]: Okay.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_12]: I'm abstaining. Sorry, the star six is a little wacky.
[Robert Paine]: That's fine. I don't think you were at the meeting anyway. Luke?
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: I have to admit, I have not received them or I could not find them, so I cannot. I'm sorry, okay.
[Robert Paine]: All right, I'm sorry, I thought I sent them out Wednesday issue. I'm sure you did. I'm just not sure that I got them. Okay, dear. Well, I'll send them out again. Barry, let's go to Barry. I got them. I read them. Yes. Jessica. Yes. Benji.
[Barry Ingber]: Benji, you were muted.
[Robert Paine]: I missed that meeting, I have to abstain. Okay, thank you. Bob, I'll accept. Let's see. Dan? Yes. Lois? Yes. Sarah?
[MCM00000770_SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[Robert Paine]: All right. Well, we have I guess we don't have any no votes, and so I guess the yes votes carry. So I guess we will accept them. They are posted, I believe, on... Where are they actually, Brenda or Alicia?
[Alicia Hunt]: Periodically, we'll have somebody add the minutes and agendas to the Energy and Environment Committee page on the Go Green Method website. Usually, we end up doing them in batches. I don't know if I've asked anybody to do it. Maybe, Brenda, you could ask Jackie or Margot to update them.
[Brenda Pike]: Yep, I think the minutes and today's agenda are both up on the Go Green Medford website.
[Robert Paine]: Okay, well, that's another avenue, but I'll try to... I'll resend them after this meeting. Okay, we're up to the point of administrative updates. Either Alicia or Brenda.
[Alicia Hunt]: I will just let you know that I am actually going to leave at 745 tonight to go speak to a Medford Girl Scout troop about environmental projects that they could potentially do for their silver award. This is something we sometimes do. If anybody does become aware, members of my office will periodically meet with troops. This one happens to be interested in stuff I already know about. And we also will occasionally meet with the Boy Scouts or the boys working on their Eagle Scout. In Medford, there is one Boy Scout troop, and their leaders know that our office is available as a resource, so they just know to reach out to us. The Girl Scouts are really a lot more spread out than that, so I'm kind of mentioning it in case y'all become aware of somebody. Usually these kinds of projects are big, like the loop path around Wright's Pond, that's a Boy Scout Eagle Scout project. And they did the bog bridges, the bench around the tree at the dog park was a Boy Scout project to protect the roots of the trees from the dogs. So just mentioning in case it should come up, you're welcome to direct people to our office for that type of help. And DCR does it too, by the way. We can help connect people with the right people at DCR. DCR in the Middlesex Fells has been the home to several Eagle Scout projects in particular, and actually my daughter's silver award project.
[Robert Paine]: So. Okay, anything else, Alicia?
[Brenda Pike]: I would just double check with folks. Is the email list now working for everybody? I think it was some of the new folks that were added, including me, that were having problems. And it's working for me now.
[Robert Paine]: I just sent out one or a couple in the last half hour about the Zoom connection. So who did not? Of course, the people who weren't on the call can't say. Did everyone get that one?
[Barry Ingber]: What I'm not sure of is whether I can email to the list. Yeah, that's still uncertain.
[Alicia Hunt]: One of the things that we found out was that the IT department had to set the settings so that people off the list could email to it, and then set the settings so that it always redistributed as email, because I was under the impression that was the default. It was a little unclear. They've changed those settings, but then Bob sent and three people bounced. And we have been working with the IT department on that. And then Barry sent a message and different people bounced for Barry's message. Has everybody gotten at least something from either Bob or Barry through the email list who's on here?
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_12]: I have on previous days, but Bob, did you say you sent something out today? I did. Okay, I didn't receive anything today, but I did get the agenda and the minutes from the previous meeting.
[Robert Paine]: Okay, did you check your email in the last half hour?
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_12]: Yeah, I've got it up. I'm looking through it. I'll see if it went to spam or something, but I haven't seen anything.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: It says 19 minutes ago.
[Alicia Hunt]: Bob, you sent mail to Go Green Medford at Google Groups, not
[Robert Paine]: Yeah, I know. I sent the same email to MEEC as well.
[Alicia Hunt]: Oh, you did. OK, yep.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: I made sure I flashed it. Then it looks like I only got it through Go Green because I don't, yeah. I don't see the MEEC list on this email.
[Alicia Hunt]: It's frustrating.
[Jessica Parks]: I got the MEEC one.
[Alicia Hunt]: What's frustrating is I was saying about the reason I was switching this was because with the Medford energy list, a lot of people bounced consistently, particularly when Loretta or Bob sent to it. If people bounce too many times and too short of a time, the system was automatically unsubscribing them. Then there would be people who were removed from the list and I would not know that they had been removed from the list. That was a problem.
[Barry Ingber]: I don't see it on my email. I don't think I got it because I realized that Bob copied me individually and I only got one copy and not two.
[Alicia Hunt]: We do know that Bob is having trouble. He got bounces from you, Nicole, and one other person.
[Lois Grossman]: I only got the go green. I didn't get the regular one.
[Alicia Hunt]: Let me see if Lois, let me make sure Lois is on there. We realized when we sent the errors to our IT department, the answer is that it's on AECOM's end, the three errors that he got. And so now he's checking with that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me manage team.
[Lois Grossman]: I got the ones you sent earlier with the minutes and everything, Bob. But of the two you sent tonight, I only got the green. It's weird.
[Robert Paine]: Interesting. Yeah, weird.
[Alicia Hunt]: It is conceivable to me that things are slow. Sorry about the cat tail. It's hard to talk with him. Cat tails are a bonus of having Zoom meetings. This cat wants my attention.
[Lois Grossman]: We noticed.
[Alicia Hunt]: He's like a toddler. Mom, you're on a call.
[Robert Paine]: I can always, of course, add all 14 members in the CC list with their actual emails to make sure they all get them.
[Alicia Hunt]: I was trying to avoid having to just do that all the time because it's hard for people to remember and to make sure you get everybody. And then I'm always afraid that somebody is going to get forgotten and left off accidentally, which is the rationale for having a mailing list.
[Robert Paine]: Well, what I would do is the mailing list, and then I would add them all anyway, and they might get it twice. Who knows?
[Barry Ingber]: But Bob, when you do that, then we don't know if the mailing list is working. I know.
[Alicia Hunt]: But right now, Barry, we know it's not going to work from Bob to you until he gets a response from AECOM.
[Robert Paine]: Yeah. Any more on that issue? I invited the Tufts Energy Group to introduce themselves and what I have gotten from them. Let's see. There's a person now who's the president is Izzy Antilla. That's A-N-T-I-L-L-A. interested in the webinar that we'll talk about later, the November 1 webinar. And I think they're going to be at the Harvest Trinity Festival. And I tried to connect Izzy to Loretta. So we will see them there. And also, they'll be co-hosting the November 1 webinar on flooding potential. But they're not here tonight, so they're not going to say what they're doing. They typically have a late winter Tufts Energy Conference, although last year it was hard for me to attend because I think it was during the week, et cetera. But they usually have an energy conference in the late winter. I think that's all on the Tufts Energy Group for now. I'm going to now, we finished our administrative stuff pretty early, so I'm going to let Loretta, and I don't know if Rachel is, I guess Rachel's not on, so Loretta, you're going to take over the show here for the Harvester Energy Festival. I've looked at the long-range forecast, by the way. They have a, whether you believe this or not, because it's, you know, 11 days, 12 days away, they have like a rain on Friday and clearing by Saturday. We'll see. So you got to worry about the water, the water control, possibly if it rains the day before. So I just wanted to let you know. That's the current forecast.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Right. Oh. Two weeks. Look, two weeks. That's good. So we have about, excuse me, I have a little cold coming on. Can everyone hear me? Yes. Okay. So we have about 48 exhibitors and several raffle items. But as we had said, we changed the procedures for that. So many of the exhibitors are bringing the raffle items and will hold the raffle for their items that are donated right at their exhibit table. But we'll have about five items that the exhibitors won't be there. So we'll have to decide. Maybe we'll want those on the Medford Energy and Environment Committee table and have one big raffle pot for exhibitors to enter their raffle tickets, which they will get free, of course, at the entrance tables when they enter the festival. So that's something that we can decide on. We have Blue Bikes is also donating two-hour adventure passes to be picked up at the day of the festival. Those will be at the check-in tables for attendees. Wegmans has donated a snack, which will be determined. We did ask for the apples, but it depends. The apple season was devastated this year because of the rain, so it will be some other snack. I'll find that out probably in a few days what it will be. That's 500 count, that will also be at the check-in tables for attendees to get, plus some reusable shopping bags. What else can I tell you? I guess there's a couple of interesting things. Invasive plant of Medford Facebook group has grown to over 350 members and I think, One of the members, Alex, is on the agenda. I don't know if she's coming tonight. But Dan Bender, who some of you may know, is going to have an exhibit table and represent several different groups, including our group and a couple of others. So that's interesting. And also, one of his raffle items that he's donating is a private tour of the Fells. So I thought that was really nice of him to donate that. And the biggest change, which Alicia can talk more about, and I think you got my emails that I sent out a few days ago or last Friday, it's Monday already, time's flying. Did everyone get my email?
[Unidentified]: I don't think I did.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Okay, well, I got it.
[Lois Grossman]: I got it.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Okay, so the biggest change is the electronics recycling is being handled by Mass Save Green Team and Green Team Junk Removal, and they'll bring their own crew to accept items for recycling, which helps us a lot, and several trucks, and also they'll collect any fees that are due for recycling. And the website has been updated. So if you go to gogreenmedford.org festival, maybe somebody can put the link in or Alicia or Brenda. There's a whole festival website page that lists all the exhibitors that's up to date and sponsors and most of the raffle items, a few of them are not on there. What else can I tell you, we will have paper shredding by a one day to shred on site limited three boxes per banker boxes per person, or until the truck fills up. We will need a couple of volunteers to help people take their things out of their cars maybe or bring them to the truck and break the boxes down. If people have boxes, we need to break them down flat. The DPW will assist at the end of the day and take those boxes over to the DPW yard where there's a compactor machine. I'm trying to think if there's anything else. There is one thing on my mind, which I didn't tell me it might rain Friday, but I'll think good thoughts. Usually that Friday before I'll go like last year, I went there. So I need a volunteer. I have a couple of people in mind that will meet me at Riverbend Park at about 3.15 or 3.30 for about an hour and a half because I mark the grounds with stakes, a little flag marker, so I need an assistant since I'll measure out the table spaces and put markers up. Are there any questions?
[MCM00000770_SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I can help with that.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: That would be great. It goes really quickly. I have a lot of the flag markers at home and I'll get some more. And so just save the Friday the 13th to meet me there at say three, after school, maybe 3.30, it depends how dark it gets. We need at least an hour and a half.
[MCM00000770_SPEAKER_02]: What was the name of the park again?
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: It's at the McGlynn School. Think of it off the river.
[Alicia Hunt]: If you put Medford Wind Turbine into your GPS or Google Maps, it will get you to the right location, because that'll actually take you behind the school where the event will be.
[MCM00000770_SPEAKER_02]: Gotcha.
[Alicia Hunt]: Yes. I put Medford Wind Turbine in Google. It's been wonderful.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Thanks, Sarah.
[Alicia Hunt]: And I will meet you there, Loretta.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Oh, you will?
[Alicia Hunt]: Yeah.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Because usually DPW comes before that, you know, like Tim McGiven said he'd make the appointment to meet us there before, so he knows what he needs to bring. But last year it was just Teresa and me.
[Alicia Hunt]: Putting out the stakes. I used to do it in the morning on Thursday, Friday morning. I had some conflict last year.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: What we found is that people who are visiting the park and kids take out the flags. So we did it late. They think they're toys or whatever they think.
[Alicia Hunt]: Are you sure I didn't meet you last year? I feel like I got there and it was mostly done.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: You met me later because we had trouble with the food truck. It was pitch black, but maybe you did later on. But Teresa and I ran around and did it pretty quickly with the map.
[Lois Grossman]: Loretta, if you send out a memo that morning or the day before saying I still need a couple of volunteers tomorrow, such and such a time, I might be able to come and make plant steaks also. You may get other people also at the last minute that have the time that day and we'll do it.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Right. It really has to be like two people with the map so that we can concentrate on the spacing between the tables. It could be three, but if it's muddy, then it was muddy last year. It was very difficult. The other thing I might need is the Wegmans order might be very large. I won't know that till towards the end of the week, what they're donating for the food snacks and all the other things. So I might, if there's somebody with the truck, that might be available next week, like Thursday of next week, I could use a volunteer to help pick up the order when it's ready. It could be picked up at night too. It doesn't have to be during the day. So I'll just put that out there. But moving along, are there any questions? And then I'll give it the floor to Alicia because she has some things to add. Any questions?
[Robert Paine]: When will we decide inside versus outside?
[Alicia Hunt]: I have a very strong preference to keep it outside if at all humanly possible this year, between the recycling and the beer garden. That's right. Going inside would really be an issue. One of the things that I've really noticed is that things have been getting canceled and then the weather hasn't been that bad. I'm going to be very, very reluctant to say we got to move inside this year. I've waited until Friday night, the night before. I feel like there were even times we did it the morning of.
[Lois Grossman]: Why not? It's not like we have to pack things up and move them or that many things and move them. Right. Heads up at nine o'clock in the morning, not an outdoor event, we'll come early and move.
[Alicia Hunt]: Right. And that's, it's the reality is it's not like we're switching dates and people have to reschedule everything. You're just, you're setting up inside or you're setting up outside, so.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: And we do have a layout for inside, although
[Alicia Hunt]: It'll be super tight. I have that diagram somewhere, Loretta. We're not going inside. Not happening.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: All right. The weather will be good.
[Adam Hurtubise]: I mean, I have that document someplace because I made the document, so I have it.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: I have it too, but you know what? You try to fit everyone. I'm just concentrating on the outside plan. If we have to go in, it'll be very different. We'll figure it out. Yeah, I'm concerned about, I'll just move the food vendors closer to the entrances, concerned about the beer garden. So I'm just praying it doesn't rain because that's further out.
[Alicia Hunt]: The beer garden's not allowed to go inside.
[Lois Grossman]: Don't they have a tent anyway? Aren't they gonna have a tent? I've never seen a beer garden that didn't have a tent.
[Alicia Hunt]: I will say that they usually do have tents over their tables. They always have two 10 by 10s. They always do at the farmer's market. It's not weather dependent, but they don't have tents up for the people who are drinking.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: Right. That's okay.
[Alicia Hunt]: At least I haven't seen Winter Hill. People who are drinking don't care that much.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: It'll be okay.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Okay. That's what I want to hear. Everybody has their own opinion. So you can bring your umbrellas to hand out. And the tables, Alicia and I have ordered, almost ordered.
[Alicia Hunt]: I saw an email, it said reservation. Say yes, whatever it says, say yes.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: I mentioned to later the staff, it was before three though, one on the tables, an updated quote, and one on, oh, the shuttle. Oh, yeah. Because we're concerned, we're trying to get, the main concern is to get more people to come. So I've been posting on Facebook when I can, and the interns are posting on Facebook. But when we looked at the count, this is important. And that's why I sent you also an email to the members, is to share it on your social media. I'm also emailing the exhibitors to ask them to share it a lot. And it still said like 138 on the invite. earlier today were interested. In other, you'll see like 600 people or 1,000 people interested. It doesn't, they don't always say if they're going, but we'd like to see that number, you know, in the 500s or not. Oh, and Alicia ordered lawn signs, so she can talk about that. I haven't seen, well, I saw the diagram, but I didn't see them out. So we do wanna get more people, to come to the festival. So the shuttle where would the people park if they have to if they're all parking in the same place the drop that whole area that we normally have the recycling will be filled with recycling paper shredding and help see material will be in that parking lot closest to the pay plate pit playground, excuse me, and exhibitors can drop off there, but then they have to leave and guests and park either at the Andrews from after one o'clock or Homel Stadium or the parking lot in front of the school. So we were concerned about extra parking. So very late, you know, I thought maybe I could get a company to offer a shuttle service with just a couple of stops. So we did have one that offered. It's a small shuttle. It's eight passenger plus passengers can stand in a two-minute handicap accessible. That's the other email I sent to Alicia. I replied to your reply. this afternoon to continue with that conversation. So if we do use them, they were generous to volunteer and sponsor the festival by offering one shuttle, they might have two, and we'd pick two pickup places, like maybe in front of City Hall and at the Senior Center, because that is a long walk. Even if you're at Riverside Ave and Freedom Y, that could be a long walk for some people. But we recommend people take carpools or bike or take the shuttle. That's not completely a done deal yet. You have some things to work out with the shuttle. but there's also a chance, you know, Murphy's Law. As soon as I finished getting an email from them the other night, I didn't even tell Alicia this. Old Town Trolley Choice of Boston sent me a text at night, and I went, who's this? I didn't know who it was. The person who schedules events and gets quotes out was texting me on my telephone, because they were waiting for a funeral or whatever, and so they're gonna get back to me. So there's a slight chance we might have that too, which would be really exciting.
[Alicia Hunt]: Would that be too much though? Like I'm having a hard time picturing getting people to realize that they should park at city hall and take a shuttle over or believe it or, right? Like, I feel like people are gonna be skeptical if they even hear about it.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Well, I didn't even think about the parking thing. I thought they would be walking there for people who don't have cars or they might take a bus.
[Alicia Hunt]: I wasn't thinking- Or they could just go to city hall and get a ride over.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Right, I wasn't thinking of them parking it. Plus there's Sarah Fulton Day up until 12 something or 1130, close to there, I think. That's another event. But I wasn't really thinking about them parking. I was thinking of getting ride for people who, you know, wanted to, do not normally go to the festival.
[Lois Grossman]: I mean if you stop at the senior center and it's advertised in the senior center, the bus will stop here, you're going to get a lot of people who wouldn't otherwise go.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: That's what I was thinking, Lois. Yeah.
[Adam Hurtubise]: The other thing is, the Sarah Fulton thing is in Medford Square, right at the old burial ground. And if you had somebody handing out like some kind of a flyer about the shuttle going to the other, because that event will end. And when that event ends, our event will just be beginning. So they could just take a shuttle from there to our event. That might work out pretty well.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: If someone's there to do that, right. That could be a possibility. Remember, it's only eight passengers and a few can stand in the bus too.
[Adam Hurtubise]: I think the cycle time is pretty short though. It'd probably take them 10 minutes to do full circle, so people might wait 10 minutes.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Right. Well, originally we estimated when I was talking to them, that it might be timed pickups, like 10 of 12, 12, 15, or 12, 30, and 1, and then 1, 30, and 2. Not running back and forth for one person, you know, but waiting till there's a group. But I have to get in touch with them again to work out the details with Alicia's approval and suggestions.
[Alicia Hunt]: Um, so should we I know we have other things on the agenda tonight. Um, we should, I should brief you guys briefly on the changes to the recycling, because it's not small. It hopefully should be less work for us, but I don't promise that. But hold on, rather than speaking off the cuff and getting things wrong, I just hit send on an email to all of you that is designed so that you can just forward it to other people. So like, it looks like I'm inviting you to the Energy Festival. You guys are all recruited as volunteers. That email was drafted so you could just hit forward and send it to everybody you know. Attached to that is the new recycling drive information and pricing, which is a flyer that we put together and we're sending out. So there's this group, this company, Go Green Team Junk. And they do recycling drives. And thank you, sweetie. And so there is charges for stuff, but they will take the electronics recycling. They will take batteries. They have a car. They charge by the car load for most for a lot of things. And then they have additional fees. So it's $20 a car. And then that includes computer equipment, cell phones, gaming systems, batteries. Car batteries are $5 each on top of your car fee. Air conditioners are additional $5, microwaves $8, TVs and monitors $20. They'll take up to two pieces of household furniture in reusable clean condition. Because they recycle, reuse, they donate all of this stuff. They'll take mattresses and box springs, water heaters, tires, $15 a tire. They'll take bags of styrofoam, $10 a bag. They'll take white goods, dishwashers, etc., snowblowers, lawnmowers, gardening tools, exercise equipment. And the key is they're sending multiple trucks. They're sending a bunch of staff and they will collect the money. they will organize it and they will manage all of it. The idea that we've come up with after meeting with them and meeting with the mayor about this is that we are going to close the parking lot between the McGlynn and the Andrews schools. The one where we have people driving for electronics recycling, we'll still figure out with them, John, whether we're going to have you and a volunteer, but I think it's mostly going to be them at that driveway. If you're coming in to donate stuff, you come in and then they figure out what you're paying, they charge you, you come in, you drop off your stuff, you drive through, and then you either go over to the Andrews to park or you go over to the McGlynn to park to come back into the festival. But while you're driving through, you see the festival, the music, the vendors, the beer garden, the big toys from the Medford Family Network. So you see that this is an event worth parking your car and walking over to. So we will need people to sort of like a little bit of showing like, oh yeah, no, you can park there. That kind of thing might be good. We might want to send somebody over to Hormel. Are there any parking spots left? OK, yeah, send people to Hormel. And in fact, the city has some standing rental with Regis College for Hormel Stadium. And the mayor said to Recreation, can you cancel that? And they said yes. So they canceled the reservation at Hormel Stadium for us. So the way people are going to know about this is the flyers that we're sending out, but also they partner with MassSave, and it's part of the MassSave program for dehumidifier recycling. So if you show up with a dehumidifier, there will be MassSave people there to help you fill out the form, and then they give you a $30 gift card for bringing the dehumidifier. And MassSave, sorry, I can't stop this cat. MassSave is mailing out, in fact, it should have gone in the mail today, a postcard to every National Grid customer in Medford about this. And they're going to do an email a couple of days before the event to everybody in National Grid customers that they have emailed for. So that's how people know about it.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: Yeah.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Sorry. Did the company that we usually use, they're not coming? Is that something?
[Alicia Hunt]: We canceled Northeast Material Handling. Yeah.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Oh, okay.
[Alicia Hunt]: Which we like them, but this is going to be so much more than we could do normally. Okay. The flyer also talks about textiles. So the textiles will go to HelpSee, who picks up from the curb for us.
[Lois Grossman]: That's free, right? There's no fee for that.
[Alicia Hunt]: There's no fee. If all you have is textiles, there's no fee. They also take food donations. The way they have been connecting with communities around the state is through the state representatives. So the way I found out about this was, this is relevant, so I'm getting there, is that Representative Garbally reached out to the mayor to set up a meeting about this. And when she realized what they were talking about, and they wanted to do it on October 7th, she texted me and had me get on the Zoom call. And so I basically said, you cannot hold this event in Medford the week before our Energy Festival, but you could hold it at our Energy Festival. And they were perfectly happy to pivot. So you'll see the mailer that goes out from Mass Save has Sean Garbley, Pat Jalen, Christine Barber and Paul Donato across the bottom on it as sponsors. He basically gives them the goodwill of the referrals and getting him the foot in the door, but then the city gets this, the event is for free for us. If we weren't having another festival that day, we wouldn't even really have to send staff. They would just run it in Medford. And then he said you can bring food donations. And he asks the state representatives who got him in where they want the food to go. So I talked to Representative Garbley, who's either gonna say send it all to the Mystic Community Market, or maybe can we divide it between a bunch of food pantries in Medford, sort of depending how much it is and what the hassle is in doing that, so.
[Adam Hurtubise]: So now the big thing for the public, I think, that's changed is it was free, and now it's $20 a carload.
[Alicia Hunt]: Yes, and we used to charge for some things. It is a big change, and so we're trying to be really clear. So I sent this flyer around, and the flyer that MassScape sends, both will be very clear that there are charges involved. This even has on it examples of how the money would work. that basically these are questions that Loretta asked the gentleman who runs the company and his answers and then Teresa took and made it look pretty on a flyer so it would be super clear to people.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: It does look like in green at the bottom, there are two cases where if you bring in an old dehumidifier and if you're recycling only clothing or textiles, that the $20 vehicle fee is waived. Is that?
[Alicia Hunt]: Yes. And to be clear, it's like if you bring clothing and textiles and electronics, it doesn't waive the fee for the electronics. It's if you only bring clothing. And what we didn't put on here is the paper shredding. And so the one thing that we have talked to them is that if somebody shows up drives in with paper shredding, they will be, if all they have is paper shredding, they can also drive in, drive through, unload the paper shredding, but that nobody will be allowed to park in that area in order to have the trucks and keep things moving.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Any questions?
[Adam Hurtubise]: Yeah, the one thing that's troubling me is that I would say about a quarter, and Kathleen might be able to refresh my memory on this, but I think that like about a quarter of the people have one item. So they'll have like an air conditioner, they'll have a single monitor, they'll have, so they're gonna pay $20 for a single item. That might be a little bit of a sticker shock for them.
[Alicia Hunt]: They'll need to make a decision whether this is the right time and place to recycle it, if that's all they have. And if that's all they have, we do sometimes, we still continue to have other organizations running electronics recycling in the city. We just, there were some over the summer. So if somebody was like that too steep, I would say, wait, hold on to it till the spring and some of the student groups will do electronics recycling events.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're gonna have to pay $40 for a monitor.
[Alicia Hunt]: Right, right.
[Lois Grossman]: How much would the city charge to pick it up? Waste management.
[Alicia Hunt]: I think it's either $25 or $30. It's somewhere in that ballpark. So that's the other thing. One of the things that happened last year was when we said no white goods, it actually raised awareness that you could buy a sticker from the city and they would come pick it up. So that still exists as an option that you can buy a sticker from the city. Let me see if I can get the exact. information for you.
[Robert Paine]: I think it's $25 for the sticker.
[Alicia Hunt]: Yeah.
[Robert Paine]: My neighbor had to do it recently. But yeah, the nice thing is you don't have to take it anywhere. You just put it up on the sidewalk.
[Alicia Hunt]: Right. And that's That is an option and people can do that. We're more trying to provide options for people who don't have other options. You can get bulky items picked up for free, but it's periodically. It's like every two weeks on your recycling day, you have to call and do it in advance. And I was just, here we go. Electronics, bulk goods, appliances. They'll be picked up by reservation on your recycling day. $26 sticker.
[Adam Hurtubise]: So now people who bring monitors, it's $40 a monitor and a $20 truckload fee or carload fee? It's $20 for the monitor. So if you pay $20 for the carload and then $20 per monitor. So now if you bring just a monitor, is it just 20 bucks?
[Alicia Hunt]: It's the 40.
[Jessica Parks]: So it's $20 for a car and then $20 for each monitor. So if you have two monitors, it's $60.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Right, right. But if you have a single monitor, it's $40. So having run the parking, not that I'm going to do it this time if they have it all figured out, but it seems to me you're going to have to have an exit ramp for people who are like, wait, what?
[Alicia Hunt]: So, right, there'll be people they'll come in and they'll turn around and come back out and I don't know if he's going to. How exactly he wants to to manage that, but I've been out there, Loretta and I went out there with him and he'll need to just figure that out.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Yeah. I'm wondering if we could maybe stop them from going in, like somehow let them know what's going on before they enter the, because there's only one way in and one way out, like same way. If we could take the people who aren't going to, who say, wait a minute, I'm not going to do that. If we could get them out before they even enter the parking lot, that might be the way to go.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: That might be one of the things that our committee and our volunteers can help with. Just like last year, you had a couple of the high schoolers kind of upfront as the cars were coming in, kind of asking questions and getting them aligned.
[Alicia Hunt]: We might want to have signs, recycling only, parking this way. Like you'll want to have a few people who can stand there and say, yes, go in front of the building and you can park. Go over to that school and you can park.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: So we certainly need people to direct the traffic and, excuse me, I see your points about getting in and out of that circle.
[Alicia Hunt]: But here's my feeling, this guy does like 40 of these a year. So having people show up and be like, wait, I have to pay that much is an experience he's had before. Like he knows how to do that and how to help those customers.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Actually, he said he did a hundred this year.
[Alicia Hunt]: He's signed up to do a hundred this year. But he's done, yeah, a lot.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: I think their people that they bring will help with that. The other thing is Massave is going to be setting up their tables close to that area. And they will give out to Medford residents only if they bring in a dehumidifier, the rebate form for $30 visa rebate, which they said is very quick to do.
[Robert Paine]: I had a question on the actual events during the three hours? Is there a special presentation? I think there's fairly continuous tours of the wind turbine.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Right. There is a schedule.
[Robert Paine]: A schedule on the website?
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: No. Usually, we work that out. But at 12 o'clock, the festival starts. What's the name? Matt Heaton in the auditoriums will start approximately 12 to 1. Then we have a little bit of a break. Usually the mayor will come in to give a speech or a small talk. And then Alicia usually will say something between 1 and 1.30. And then we have Trail Mix Music Group coming in at 1.30 till the end, 3 o'clock. In between at 12 start the Wind Turbine Tour, or Peak Inside Windy, and Green Energy Consumer Alliance will help assist Bob with that. And they have very brief scheduled timed talks that they'll give. I think they're going to do three of them. I'll send that out, or Rachel will send that out to you in the next week. and then all the other activities. Knuckle Bones will be there. Medford Family Network is sponsoring that. They'll have children's activities on that lawn. And Knuckle Bones is a company that provides gross motor play areas with large toys and equipment. So that'll be going on plus the food. But that's about it for like timed things that I can think of.
[Robert Paine]: Okay, all right.
[Lois Grossman]: Bob, I have something I'd like to put out here. It might take five minutes. Is that okay? You're muted, Bob, I can't hear you.
[Robert Paine]: Is it related to the festival?
[Lois Grossman]: Yes, it is. Go ahead. I was at the Tufts Community Day which was held yesterday up on the Tufts Quad. I was with Trees Medford. And we were sitting near the food stand and very close to three barrels. One said trash, one said recycling, one said organics, without any more explanation than that. and it was chaos and everything was cross-contaminated. It was a disgrace. There was nobody there to tell people what to throw where, what could be recycled, what couldn't be recycled, if it was compostable, not compostable. And I just, I would like our event to make it really clear what is trash, what is recyclable and with appropriate signage, which I'm happy to make. I mean, they didn't say that paper plates are compostable. Put the plates with the food. They didn't say that. The people were throwing plates with their plastic on it, throwing plates in with the plastic cups. So I don't know. The vendors, of course, are going to give things out, but we're the ones that are going to be responsible for cleaning it up. I want us to do it in an educational and responsible way, unlike what they did at Tufts. I had to write a letter to the Office of Sustainability to bring it to their attention. I don't want anybody to write us a letter and say, you didn't do it right.
[Alicia Hunt]: So I will tell you that I had been told by Tufts that they only do, they usually have eco reps, and they have people who stand there by those who are supposed to be sorting them out. And if they didn't have them this year, that's very surprising, because that's always been their policies, that they would have students who stand there and tell you, that's trash, that's recycling, that's composting. They didn't have them there. Definitely not there.
[Lois Grossman]: Wow. I was at the very center and right next to the food. And there were only three small containers and they didn't empty them frequently. There was no monitoring.
[Alicia Hunt]: That's very surprising. It's very unlike them. But I will tell you that that is why we haven't done composting at the event before, is because you need enough volunteers to stand next to your trash can and tell people what to do. And it's the only way to safely compost at a public event.
[Lois Grossman]: So are we going to try to compost or it's all going to be trash.
[Alicia Hunt]: I had not been planning to because it's too much work. If we don't have to staff the electronics recycling. And there are people who want to monitor trash cans. Then we can do that, but I don't know that if we've even because we talked to garbage to garden about it last year, and they said they could not send enough staff to monitor the trash cans to be willing to take compost from the event.
[MCM00000770_SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I just wanted to mention, I recall reading some research. There were experiments in behavioral science where a city would nudge public behavior or improve the way the public behaves by, for example, having sidewalk art with footsteps leading to the trash can and a different color leading to recycling. Or perhaps you can install a mirror And that causes people to have to look at themselves in the mirror as they're doing that action. And maybe they'll pause and reconsider. And also they have employed artwork that kind of calls out this behavior in a playful way. So that's an alternative to someone standing there. You could experiment with a certain kind of art, public art, to nudge behavior.
[Alicia Hunt]: Do you think that that works at an event, or is that in a permanent installation?
[MCM00000770_SPEAKER_02]: I think it could work at both. And it could be something as semi-permanent, a sidewalk art, sidewalk chalk.
[Alicia Hunt]: But there's a lot of ways to go about it. I will tell you that at the Energy Festival, the attendance is usually too high and crowded for people to really notice what's on the sidewalk. It's not like in a big open space where it's obvious. I would expect too many people to be on top of it to see it.
[Lois Grossman]: No, I think a sign right at the barrel, but just a clear sign the way they do at Whole Foods. you know, put plastic here, put paper there. I'm not saying we have to do this, okay? I just want us to be aware that we're a model for how to do things right with the energy and the environment. And I just want us to be responsible about it. If it's all gonna go in the trash, that's fine. It should just say trash everything here except water bottles or, you know.
[Alicia Hunt]: I do want us, we will have proper recycling. And one of the things that I was at Oktoberfest, I guess that was only yesterday. And I was really horrified by all the beer cans going into the garbage can. And we have portable recycling stations. that we could set up right in the beer garden that are clear plastic bags where you put the recycle. Thing is, I do think that whoever we have volunteering at the beer garden needs to say to people, before you throw it out, pour the rest out on the grass there. Okay, now put your empty can in there. Because you should never put liquid into the recycling for so many reasons. But we need somebody to stand there, tell people that's recycling, that's trash. I'm not convinced we should try composting, but I think we should set that example with it. We've always had recycling toters out at the Energy Festival, but we don't usually have that much for people to recycle. It's usually the vendors and the cardboard. Um, but this year, we'll, we'll have cans from the beer garden.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: Looks like Dan's got his hand up.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_12]: Yeah, but really quick thing to mention on the I heard you mentioned that. not convinced that we should do composting. One thought I had on that, so I spent the last couple of weeks on the West Coast for work, and there's compost everywhere, basically, or composting bins. I wouldn't let the perfect get in the way of the good here. I think one of the issues that we might have, and maybe to Lois, your point, and some other points that were brought up, is that people just aren't used to it. I think it makes a lot of sense. It would be great if we could just have compost, have the bins, if it's not 100% perfect, you know, at least people are seeing it and trying to learn the rules. That's my thought.
[Adam Hurtubise]: And the event is all about education. So I think that that does fit into the education part of the event is if it doesn't, if it gets contaminated, we've still educated a lot of people.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: I agree. And I wanted to offer. So first, a question. Do we know roughly how much trash we generated in the past years? I mean, is it is it like many, many barrels full? Or is it like 10 barrels of something? I am certainly willing to dig through whatever compost barrels there are and pull out recyclables and trash and separate those. If all else fails, the compost becomes trash. You know, if it's absolutely unmanageable, then by all means, we can just trash it. But, you know, if there's five compost bins and there's a bit of trash in them, it's not the end of the world to dig it out and throw it in the trash and have some compostable waste.
[Lois Grossman]: That's exactly what I wound up doing. I spent quite a bit of time doing what I could and then I just got so dirty I gave up.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: Well, yeah, I would be ashamed for it to be a waste, literally. But I think I agree with the sentiment. If there can be some education, if we can have a few volunteers that are kind of making the rounds, it would be a great thing to have some high schoolers be doing rotations on. I think it's worth trying.
[Alicia Hunt]: And the high school, I have found with students that if you get their attention too early, they forget. So we're actually sending the request for volunteers to students is going out to students tomorrow. Because that's about a good if it's like two weeks in advance, it's early enough for them. Because if they're going to have something that's more important to them than this, then it doesn't matter how early we tell them. So I'm thinking this is a good enough, they'll sign up this week and then next week we remind them and they'll show up. And they usually get service for this. We actually, it was the middle school honors students who were really helpful last year. I was just realizing that I should figure out who that, it was the honors teacher reached out to me. and asked, because it didn't go to everybody. It went only to the National Honor Society students in the middle school.
[Lois Grossman]: Can we get organics composted if they are pretty pure? Who would do it?
[Alicia Hunt]: So Garbage to Garden is coming, but they're not planning to take any composting with them.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: They only bring one.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: Yeah, that's a good point. So if we do end up with a whole lot of compostable material, what happens to it?
[Alicia Hunt]: Right. We don't have a plan for that.
[Lois Grossman]: We could ask Garbage to Garden if they would take it.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: They can't. It's one person. He comes in a car and he goes home after.
[Alicia Hunt]: Right. They're not sending a composting truck.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: Right. I mean, between me and a couple of my neighbors, I can pull some compost bins together to add to the compost that we're already doing. But I don't know how much we can actually handle.
[Lois Grossman]: Maybe we can do this. I think it was you that said it, John, as an educational model. Even if we don't compost it, just showing people that food waste goes in one place and paper goods go in another place and glass and cans go in a third place, just even if we wind up trashing that, we don't have to tell them what we're gonna do with it, but we can say food does not go in here, it goes in here. This can be composted.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: And then say we can take those of us who are composting can take some whatever we can fit in our own compost bin. But yeah.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_12]: Does anyone know if there's room or if there's a compost pile at the any of the community gardens in Medford?
[Alicia Hunt]: They're not because we so we can't encourage outdoor composting because of the rat issues. And so you certainly could never put compost that you collected at a festival like this at an outdoor event because it's going to be full of grease and meat. It has to go in commercial composting.
[Robert Paine]: I'm going to have to wrap this up and go on to the next agenda item, but we'll obviously Loretta and Rachel will let us know if there's any last minute updates, but we all have our assignments to show up and we'll just take orders from whoever is going to give orders.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Right, I just, Bob, I just want, is the decision about the raffle items, is it okay? Who's ever running the MedFed Energy Committee exhibitor table? Do we agree? I won't be at that table. They have the raffle, some of the items at that table. Whoever's going to stand there.
[Robert Paine]: What do we have to make a decision about?
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: We have some raffle items that are donated by exhibitors that are not attended. There aren't that many, maybe five. A lot of them are envelopes or gift cards. So they need to be presented at one table with a raffle basket that attendees can put their raffle tickets in for the drawing. And that table would host that raffle and pick winners.
[Robert Paine]: So it can be assigned to that?
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: The energy committee, you know, they're pretty responsible and they have an exhibitor table reserved for them. So, I just wanted to make sure that that's okay with the members.
[Robert Paine]: I guess people are, I guess, perfectly willing to be assigned to whatever. Okay, you can take care of that. Rachel can take care of that.
[MCM00000770_SPEAKER_02]: I can take care of that because I signed up to help out as needed and that role sounds just fine so I can commit to that for the day.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Yeah, we usually have the hours split, you know, not the whole three hours for one person to stay in one place. And the only other thing is we will need an adult, one or two shifts to me and the beer garden to make sure no one leaves with a drink. They have to stay within the space that's confined.
[MCM00000770_SPEAKER_02]: And so a chaperone and some adults.
[Alicia Hunt]: Okay. And that's actually the position that I'm hoping will monitor the recycling, right? So you can be like, really, I'm here to talk about recycling. Oh, but don't leave with that. You need to pour it out and recycle it.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: So that is an energy committee responsibility, not a beer garden staff responsibility.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: People have their own, you know, they have to check in people, check their IDs, give them a recipient. You can't leave that space.
[Alicia Hunt]: They don't do wristbands.
[Lois Grossman]: How happy we'll be with gallons of beer on the lawn.
[Robert Paine]: Okay, we have to move on. Thanks for all that interesting discussion. I'm sure it'll be a wonderful event, let's hope.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Bob, I have to leave too.
[Robert Paine]: Let's see, Brenda, I can give you most of the rest of the meeting. There's only one miscellaneous item. So I'm going to hand it over to Brenda to talk about things that she's up to.
[Brenda Pike]: Okay, just a couple of quick updates and then I want to dive into a little bit more detail about the. I'm going to go back to the decarbonization outreach campaign, but just update on the specialized code. The specialized energy code was approved in the first reading at city council unanimously. Almost essentially formalities, right?
[Alicia Hunt]: So they're not legally formalities, but our practice in the city of Medford is that they have them formalities. So when we are passing an ordinance. Which this counts as it. Gets voted on once by the city council and then it has to get advertised in the paper for a week. And then it can be voted on again by the city council. And the terminology is that's called three readings. The first reading is the first vote. The second reading is the advertisement. And the third reading is the second vote. So that is the process is basically started once the city council votes on it like they did, then the clerk advertises it. So we don't have any responsibility for that. And then he puts it back on the agenda when it's eligible for its third reading. Or one of the Councilors in this case, Councilor bears has been shepherding this through. So he'll know when it's eligible for its third reading and he will take it off the table and they'll vote on it. In our experience, when something comes through and they discuss it, they understand it and it's not, there's no debate over it really like there was no, they passed it unanimously. They'll advertise it. it'll come back, they'll just vote for it again. It is always good to thank them. If you feel like reaching out to the Councilors and saying, I saw that you voted for this, I appreciate it, thank you very much. I look forward to it becoming official. That doesn't hurt, is a nice good thing. But it's not that it needs a concerted campaign to get it passed at this point.
[Brenda Pike]: What was the ordinance again, Brenda? This is the specialized energy code, so kind of going sort of above and beyond the stretch energy code that Medford already has.
[Alicia Hunt]: Yeah. So, yeah, I think that made Medford the 20th community. I don't know if we're counting it by, like, it's final official versus. They took the vote, like, once they've. It would be odd for them to go back on it.
[Brenda Pike]: I'm waiting until it's actually official to celebrate it far and wide, but it sounds like it's good to go at this point. And so that will be effective July 1st. Um, another thing that I just wanted to mention to you, um, so the city receives some, uh, grants to install charging stations, um, at Roberts Elementary, uh, the DPW and the police station parking lots, um, and so we're working right now on contracts for them and for, um, for other charging stations that we received grants for in the past that have been delayed because of, um, utility work. But one of the things I'm really interested in talking with you about is we're interested in doing some curbside charging attached to telephone poles, for instance. And so I've been talking, I've talked with National Grid about this. And as we get into it a little bit more and start identifying potential poles that might be good locations, I'd love to do some outreach to residents nearby those locations to gauge interest. It sounds like in Melrose, who installed a couple of these, they started out with 60 locations that they'd identified as good possibilities. And then when they started doing outreach to residents, they narrowed it down, narrowed it down, and they finally installed two of them. So it sounds like the resident outreach is a really important part of this, and I'd love to enlist your help in doing that.
[Robert Paine]: Why did they have to narrow it down? People didn't want it?
[Brenda Pike]: That was part of it, yeah. I think part of it was just seeing in what areas had the most interest in having a curbside charger. But there were also people who said that they didn't want to because they saw it as losing a parking space. But I'll reach back out to you guys when we're into that a little bit more and we have maybe some potential locations that we can start doing outreach about. But what I really want to spend some time on today is this decarbonization outreach campaign. Other towns have called Electrify Cambridge, Electrify Melrose, what have you. We can talk about what we want the name to be, but How I'm viewing this is as something that is really a full decarbonization campaign from energy efficiency to electrification of heating systems, hot water, appliances, electric vehicles, to solar. So wherever a person is on this path, that's where we want to meet them. And then and work with them all the way through right they might start out just doing energy efficiency and we can work with them all the way through to solar if they want to or if they just want to do one or two things that's that's absolutely great too. So I'm putting together a proposal for a mass clean energy center grant called the empower grants and. What I'm thinking of as I'm putting this together is we want to do community-wide messaging, but also very targeted outreach to priority communities. That's how they reference this, is we're identifying these priority communities, and this is where their funding is supposed to go. And so the communities that we've identified are Haitian Creole, Brazilian Portuguese, Latin American Spanish, Arabic, and Mandarin Chinese speaking communities. environmental justice census block groups in South Medford, Hillside, West Medford, and some Glenwood neighborhoods. And this is according to the Massachusetts environmental justice map viewer. Areas that are currently or will be impacted by environmental hazards like extreme heat and flooding. So these also include West Medford, Hillside, South Medford, and Medford Square. and then some really focused outreach to renters and landlords, because that's a very tough nut to crack. So what we're looking to do is to have some energy ambassadors, some of whom will be paid through this empower grant. And their requirements is that these ambassadors would need to be members of the priority groups that they are serving, as well as volunteer ambassadors who can be doing more generalized outreach to other members of their communities within Benford. And then some technical partners for each decarbonization solution. So MassSave is the major partner for energy efficiency, right? So we'll be sort of doing a sort of soft handoff to MassSave. For solar, we could, I'm not sure we want to pick a single installer, but maybe point people towards energy stage where they can be comparing quotes of multiple installers. Electric vehicles, we can be pointing them towards Green Energy Consumers Alliance and the work that they do. Not just identifying potential vehicles and comparison shopping and things like that, but also they have people who can actually speak to residents and answer their questions. And then for something like heat pumps, which is more complicated than a lot of these things, we can use this Empower funding to hire a company like Abode to do some deeper technical assistance. And this We could pay a boat to do this for these priority groups, but we could also have them work with other groups in Medford and just in charge of fee, right? So right now I think their fee is $150 to do a consultation where they will sort of do a comparison between multiple quotes that you get from contractors, and they also have a list of contractors available that that people can. That can be a good starting point for people who are wanting to reach out to contractors about this work. And then ABODE also offers some courses for the local ambassadors to actually talk them through the ins and outs of heat pumps. So as they're talking to people, they'll have more knowledge and can actually dive into some of these details if that's something that they're interested in. I know some of the ambassadors will probably want to work at a slightly higher level, but others might be really passionate about diving into it, and those would be great candidates for this deeper course. And then with this Empower Grant, we can use up to $75,000 of it to provide actual incentives to residents who are doing this work. The way I was thinking of it was we could do, we could say a max of $3,000, say, per household for, you know, the balance of, things that are not covered by other incentives right so MassAve might cover a portion of the of the cost of it and and we they can use this additional incentive sort of stacked on top of those other incentives. And this would have to be specifically for income-eligible residents or landlords with income-eligible tenants who agree to pass along those savings. And we'd have to really make sure that we're very particular about agreements with these landlords to make sure that this is something that they are actually going to do. So the process that I'm envisioning someone would go on to go green Medford they would sign up or the their ambassador would wouldn't as they're talking with them would would actually sign them up on the on the website. The ambassadors. would actually could either through Zoom or in person in their home could do an initial consultation with residents about what they're actually interested in, give them an overview of the possibilities and get some characteristics of their homes and things. and then provide them with a decarbonization plan with referrals to these different partners that we're talking about doing the soft handoff to. And then the ambassadors continue to follow up with residents over time and assist them until the end of the program. You know, it's not just to get the sign up and then give them the information and then move on. It's actually, do they need someone to be there with them while a Mass Save audit is happening in their home, especially if translation is needed or something. So just that sort of handholding, whatever the resident needs. And then also, you know, Following up with technical partners on their behalf, I think sometimes municipalities can get more attention for residents than residents themselves can get. And then if ambassadors run into issues that are more complicated than they're comfortable with, then I can follow up with the residents directly. And so I think it's going to be really important to have local partners to get the word out in general, but also to ask to be actual energy ambassadors here. And so I was thinking members of the Energy Committee, the Climate Equity Council that we're putting together, 350 Mothers Out Front. Alicia, I know that Grace Church has been very involved. I've heard that West Medford Community Center is a really great resource. So if you have ideas about other local partners that would be good for us to work with, definitely let me know. And so, yeah, so this is what I'm envisioning with the empower funding in particular. So, 25% of it, that's the max that we can use unfortunately for direct grants, but 25% would be these direct grants. And then we can pay for. have your partners to do outreach, although I'm not sure that there are good options for that right now. So we might be doing a lot of this outreach ourselves, but technical consultation definitely with someone like ABODE for these priority communities. Staffing for a part-time employee to focus on this program, that will obviously be me, at least for the time that I'm here. But my employment here is a one-year grant, so this would extend that for a period of time. Then education for those ambassadors and a stipend for the ambassadors from priority communities. So I think that's it. I'd love to get your input on this and especially in terms of what you think residents would actually be successful with residents, what partners would be good partners for us to work with. If you're interested in being a volunteer ambassador, love to hear it.
[MCM00000770_SPEAKER_02]: Hi, Brenda. This was a great proposal. And my main question is, who are you envisioning or what kinds of people were you thinking of for ambassadors, like Tufts College and grad students, or moms and dads with mortgages? And of course, yeah, you mentioned they need to be from those target communities, but what age were you thinking? I could definitely help recruit ambassadors from Tufts if you were thinking of young people.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, I mean, honestly, I'm thinking of across the entire spectrum, right? Because I think the most successful ones will be folks who are speaking to their peers, essentially, right? So if it's, you know, students who are signing up that we're talking to about this and want help with talking to their landlords, it might be great to have another student who is the ambassador talking to them. Same just sort of across the spectrum.
[Robert Paine]: This is Bob Payne. What's the time commitment and vision for ambassadors?
[Brenda Pike]: That's a good question, because I can see how this could get out of hand really quickly. So I think we'd have to be really careful about sort of limiting the number of people that each ambassador is working with at a time, so that the commitment isn't more than, what, eight to 10 hours a month, hopefully.
[Robert Paine]: Would it be during the day? And some people have full-time jobs. You know, they've opted out because they can't be doing it while there's a mass save audit or, you know, that type of thing. Or they have to be retired or, you know, what kind of. I mean, realistically, that's how we are unable to recruit coaches. They call them coaches in other communities because people don't have the time to do it. So we have to be careful about, is it really feasible?
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, definitely. Again, I think this is something that ideally would be across the spectrum, right? So, you know, if there are people who are at home during the week, and that's when residents are interested, then we'll match them up that way. You know, if they can only do it on weekends, then we'll match them up with residents that are appropriate for that. I mean, MassAve, for instance, does do weekend audits. So it might take a little bit longer to get yours scheduled if you do that, but it's definitely possible.
[Robert Paine]: And what was the funding level that you are going to propose for this grant?
[Brenda Pike]: So the max for this grant is $300,000. And so we can only use 25% of that for incentives that go directly to residents. So I'm going to try to max out that budget so we can get as many incentives available to residents as possible.
[Robert Paine]: And what's the likelihood of us getting the 300,000, do you think?
[Brenda Pike]: Oh, very good. I got an Empower grant for Boston to do the Solarize East Boston project. I've been speaking with the folks at MassCC about this. So I think it's really good.
[Robert Paine]: And what's the timing of all this again? Maybe I missed that.
[Brenda Pike]: So I'm submitting the proposal mid to late October. I forget the exact date, but I think it's the 18th or 20th. And then we should hear back from them in December. And so I think we should probably plan to start the campaign at some point in February. And this is supposed to last at least two years. They're actually requiring that because their previous campaigns like this that have gone for one year, they found that that's not quite enough time to get the word out there and get people moving along. And you burn out the volunteers because they're just trying to put so much into a short period of time.
[Robert Paine]: You know, some of the stuff I sent you in that presentation is somewhat aligned with this campaign. So you can obviously take whatever you want and provide some posters for our Harvester Energy Festival accordingly. So that'll be good. But if you want a hint about an electrified Medford, I mean, why not?
[Brenda Pike]: Sounds great. Yeah. Luke, did you have something?
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: Yes, thank you. I did just want to say I would be happy to help as kind of a technical staff backup to ambassadors and support them however that might be helpful. I think this looks great. I guess one of the other thoughts that I just wanted to ask is what is the likely time frame for this? When would it likely be able to go into effect and for what period would it likely last?
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, so I think based on the grant time frame, February of 2024 would be the start and then run for at least two years.
[Robert Paine]: Great.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: OK.
[Robert Paine]: Thanks. So if that happens, we ought to have quite a bit of education and outreach, you would think.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: Barry has his hands up too.
[Robert Paine]: I'm sorry. Go ahead, Barry.
[Barry Ingber]: Yeah, I have a question about the ambassadors is what are how high are the stipends that you're planning? That's part A. And a second thing is, well, I think that the idea of Having some tough students is good because they are a significant portion of the renters in the city. I think that it's also important to not have It's important to primarily rely on folks who are more deeply embedded in the community. I mean, you might have a great Brazilian speaking student, but they're not going to connect to the Brazilian community in Medford in the way that you want. So just because they speak the language. So I think you need to give that primary consideration.
[Brenda Pike]: That makes sense. I'm planning to work through our Medford connectors for a lot of the language portions of this in particular. We have one person for each of those languages that they do translations for us as well as do outreach into their communities. Yeah, I think, I'm hoping that they will help out and maybe even be ambassadors for this, but if not, then they can definitely connect us with people who would be good, you know, folks who are embedded in those communities. And in terms of the stipends, I don't have that off the top of my head, but the, For the grant, they do require a living wage. And so they refer people to MIT's living wage calculator to set that.
[Unidentified]: OK, thank you.
[Robert Paine]: Any other questions for Brenda? Looks like a very exciting. I think this is what we hope would eventually happen somehow. And fortunately, with the hiring of Brenda, this is made possible. So that's great.
[Brenda Pike]: Great. And are folks interested in speaking up and volunteering for this at all right now? If you are. and want to do any of the coaching sessions, I know that, well, we don't have any set up with Abode yet. They are doing some sort of with Rewiring America. And so you could even sign up for sessions ahead of time if you're interested.
[Robert Paine]: Why don't you send an email to the group and spell out exactly what's involved, time commitments, what kind of education would be offered in the timing of that, how many sessions, and then they can get back to you individually. Sounds like a great project. Anything else, Brenda? Obviously, every month we're going to have you give your updates on all these things. I mean, this is obviously a major grant. I don't know if there was any other grants that you were aware of or Alicia, you know, Alicia's gone because she had to go to the other Girl Scouts thing. Are you aware of any other grants that we're pursuing? Or is that enough?
[Brenda Pike]: I don't know if we're pursuing any other grants. right now, especially for this. I know that, for instance, the Mass Save Community Partnerships, that's something that's sort of on hold right now, where they're doing primarily educational campaigns with nonprofits in the community, not with municipalities directly right now, or at least this new round was that, and it was a much smaller amount. So that's not something that we're doing right now, but it's a possibility for the future.
[Robert Paine]: Okay. Well, 300,000 sounds like a very good working amount to play with, so. All right, why don't we go on then? The one miscellaneous item I have is that I've been working, I sent an email to the group just in the last, you know, just before the meeting started. Julie Wormser of the Mystic River Watershed Association has a presentation planned for, and we worked out various dates. Brenda was available on Wednesdays. November 1 happens to be the one that works. And the title was a little catchy here. I got to get my email back here. But it was something to the effect of, let's see. Okay. The tide is rising and so are we. Colon, hope in hard times. And there have been several flooding events that were not expected, especially just last weekend in New York City. Why wouldn't we be subject to an eight inch rain in a few hours in Medford? It could happen. So the question is, okay, what do we have to be aware of that could happen and what can we do about it? Julie is a senior policy advisor and founder of the Resilient Mystic Collaborative. And this collaborative includes 20 municipalities. I'm sure Medford is one of them. to pursue regional climate preparedness projects. And she's also an executive director of the Boston Harbor Association. So she's working with Boston's need to prepare for coastal flooding. I don't know if we are, obviously the coastal flooding aspect would be if the Amelia Earhart Dam was breached somehow, and that's a possibility. But they're all could also could be like the horn pond dam could fail or there could be mystic river issues, and I'm sure that that'll be covered or just we if we just get a tremendous amount of rain. and it just can't go anywhere, what could happen? So I think that's what we're going to be facing. And it's probably, in terms of infrastructure vulnerabilities, I think flooding is the key thing that we have to be worried about. So this is, and we're going to be cooperating with the Tufts Energy Group. What we have to work out Brenda, you can talk to Alicia about this is, what is the Zoom? And we haven't exceeded 200 people in the past, and if Medford Zoom can accommodate that, we can use that. I think we've used Tufts before, but you can work with Alicia to figure out how do we publicize this? This will be like a 7 p.m. to maybe 8.30. There'll be an opening usually an opening introduction to what is the Medford Energy Environment Committee and what is the Tufts Energy Group, you know, five minutes each. And then we go into the actual presentation and then question and answer. So that's that. And we've done this for three years in a row. And this will be the fourth one. We usually do this in November or so. But we have to just nail down the logistics about the Zoom connection and then some publicity about this. We can even have a little poster or a QR code or whatever at our Harvester Energy Festival about this too, this one event coming up. So, any questions about this?
[Brenda Pike]: Yes, do we want to ask the city engineer or someone from the traffic department to be present in order to answer questions that might come up for them?
[Robert Paine]: Sounds like a good idea. What is being planned? I mean, at least you might know. What is our, yeah, do we have any planning for this? Are we doing any mitigation planning? So that would be good, yeah. Sounds like a good idea.
[Brenda Pike]: Okay, I can reach out to them.
[Robert Paine]: Okay, great, okay. Any other questions or comments?
[Brenda Pike]: Okay, I think logistically, I think what I heard was that. We, I don't remember what the Max was, but we have some sort of Max on our zoom account. So I think the, the toughs. Zoom had been used in the past because of that, but I can double check with that.
[Robert Paine]: That'd be great. Okay. We have exhausted our miscellaneous names because Alex, what's her name? His name, her name. Alex can't be on the call tonight. This is on an invasive plant Facebook group, which, who was talking about that before? Was it Loretta?
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Yeah, I don't think she knew to be here tonight.
[Robert Paine]: So she knows, but she has this chronic fatigue issue, and she's fatigued. So she can't do it. OK. All right. You might want to check if she'll be at the Harvard Trinity Festival in some fashion. Because I know we don't have an invasive plant table, or do we?
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: No, we do. That's what I was saying at the beginning. Maybe I wasn't clear. So the invasive... Invasive Plants, MedFit Facebook group has over 300 members. Alex is the administrator. And Dan Bender is very experienced. We'll be hosting that table and representing two other groups too, which I don't have my spreadsheet in front of me to remember the other groups. But I think one is the Fells, or friends of the Fells. And he's also going to have a presentation on EarthWise Aware. and show invasive plant species. And he's the one that's also donating the raffle item for the private tour of the fells for up to five people.
[Robert Paine]: OK. I was hoping that this group could make a somewhat short, well, a presentation at one of our meetings and maybe at the Harvest Renewal Festival, connect, extend an invitation. Right. OK. All right, we actually have 12 minutes left. If there's any items that I haven't covered that you want to bring up, I'm opening the floor. If not, you can have your time back.
[MCM00000770_SPEAKER_02]: Um, I'll just quickly say that I think I can be useful to the committee, primarily through advertising and promotions. So I'll focus on that for the Medford Energy Festival, and also the one that you introduced, Bob. And so I'll focus on Instagram, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, and Facebook.
[Robert Paine]: Yeah, the bread and Alicia on the November one event. Because we have to obviously have the zoom connection worked out. That type of thing that would be wonderful. Thank you, sir.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Sarah, thank you. You're talking about the festival to write.
[MCM00000770_SPEAKER_02]: Right, including that. So I think now is a good time to start outreach. And then, like just to get into people's awareness, but then everybody needs a reminder in the days before that Saturday, because students especially tend to be flaky.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Okay, so I will email you probably not tonight, but I'll email you tomorrow with all the links to our pages and so you have all that. Thank you.
[Robert Paine]: Any other issues that you want to bring up before we entertain a motion to adjourn?
[Adam Hurtubise]: I do have one question about the curbside vehicle parking. Are you looking for people to maybe kind of endorse a telephone pole? Is that what, like you say, you have people who are resistant. I'm wondering, you know, how, what kind of, what do we need to make that happen?
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, so I'm thinking that what we'll be looking for is just to see if there are people who are particularly interested in having 1. In their neighborhood, um, or and just kind of get the word out. So, if people are particularly resistant to it, then. You know, maybe we look elsewhere for it. But we don't have information together about that yet to share. But when we do, then, yeah, we'll want to start doing outreach on that.
[Barry Ingber]: I just want to confirm, Brenda, that you're staying on with Luke and me after we adjourn. Yes, I am.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, so for instance, John, I have an electric vehicle. I don't have a driveway, so I park on the street. And I would absolutely love it if there were a curbside charger in my neighborhood. So I imagine there must be other people like me out there who would be particularly interested.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Yeah, I know of another person. What neighborhood do you live in?
[Brenda Pike]: Oh, I'm in Somerville, actually.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Oh, OK. Which, are you on the Medford side of Somerville?
[Brenda Pike]: I'm near Union Square.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Okay. No, I'm just thinking because I know somebody who's in like South Medford that could use a curbside charging and that's kind of a little far away from you, but yeah, I thought if you could have two people, then that would be good.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, yeah, definitely. Send their information along if you want to.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_12]: Just to confirm here, these would be chargers that anyone could use, wouldn't have to pay for, or these are a designated spot on the street for someone who lives at that address to have an electric charger?
[Brenda Pike]: Anyone could use them, they would have to pay for them. Like any other level 2 charging station that's publicly accessible, you generally have to pay for them.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_12]: Okay, thanks. And it means that then they can only be used by an electric car, an EV charging, right? Yeah. Okay, thanks.
[Adam Hurtubise]: And they can only be used while it's charging too, right? Like in other words, you couldn't park your EV there overnight, charge and let it sit there overnight. You'd have to only have it parked there while you're charging. Does that sound right?
[Brenda Pike]: It depends, especially in neighborhoods, I think. It might make sense for someone to plug in and leave their car charging overnight and then leave again in the morning. Yeah, maybe I can dig into this in a little more detail at the next meeting so that we can we can talk about some of these. Get some feedback on them.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_12]: Great. I was asking because I used to live in Philadelphia and there was a big problem with people putting in chargers because you got a designated spot on the street. So they would put in chargers, get a permit, and then they didn't even have an electric car. So just from that issue, I'm always interested in the details of the implementation, let's say.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, definitely. That's interesting.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_12]: That is.
[Robert Paine]: I was going to say that some potential areas would be where around parks where there's not houses. You could have charges, people go to parks and they park there. You wouldn't be stealing a spot in front of someone's home because it's next to a municipal park. Those are potential areas where you're not stealing somebody's parking place in front of their house. So there's a number of possibilities there. Any other issues? I'll entertain a motion to adjourn then. Still moved. I'll second it. And is anyone opposed? Speak up now. I hear nothing. Good luck. We'll see you most hopefully most of you on the 14th and hope for good weather.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: What's the plan?
[Robert Paine]: All right, we're going to, most of us are going to leave this meeting. See you then. Thank you. Bye.
[MCM00000770_SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
[Robert Paine]: Bye.
[MCM00000770_SPEAKER_02]: Good night.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Hello.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: And hello.
[Brenda Pike]: I'm sorry that Alicia couldn't stay. And in fact, if I'd known that would be the case, I would have set a time for us to talk like in the past week.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: No, that is all right. And we figured it might be good to have a powwow with you first anyway, so. Yeah.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, happy to chat anytime. I definitely have more time available on my calendar than Alicia does. Great.
[Barry Ingber]: Luke and I have not talked about how this should go, so we're gonna do it on the fly. Should I give background on where we are?
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, that would be great.
[Barry Ingber]: Okay, so many years ago, when The Wegmans was built, that shopping center was redeveloped from a strip mall into, well actually it wasn't a strip mall, it was an actual indoor mall, into a big box store that's basically three stores. It was leveled and rebuilt from scratch. And I was just astounded that there was all of this roof space, probably several acres, that was just sitting there doing nothing. And a couple years later, a plan came down the pike to build this, I don't know what its status is, but a large primarily residential project on the corner of Harvard and Mystic Ave. And it was going to be, if I remember correctly, something like four acres of roof space. And I was adamant that if that gets done or anything else big gets done, it's got to have solar on it. Um, was this the origin of the solar origin of solar ordinance and poked around and found out that right almost next door in Watertown that they had one, um, and copied it. Um, and Oh, and we got it passed. We're only the fourth community east of the Rockies to do that. So it's, you know, it's an accomplishment that it's worthwhile in and of itself. But it was not my vision, because my vision was really that that solar should benefit the community and in particular, the low income segment of the community. That I didn't know how to go about doing, didn't have any model for it, and was certainly going to be politically a lot more difficult than the ordinance that we passed. And I have a little bit of expertise and Luke has more. But Luke was busy and I was overwhelmed by the idea of pursuing this even though I'm retired. Because I have enough years in managing nonprofits to know what a huge task setting up something to do that would be. and I have enough experience with the electric grid to know how complex and arcane it is and how nobody understands it and how that compounds the difficulty of trying to develop a non-profit around that, around something that nobody understands. I just like I just kind of sit on it. And every once in a while, Luke and I have a conversation. And Luke finally decided that he maybe has some time to do this.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: Well, just that it needs to happen. And the time isn't going to get better.
[Barry Ingber]: It's not getting better. So we started. talking about it. We've talked to the Green Energy Consumers Alliance, and that is quite a boost because they're willing to be a significant part of that. My background is I was Larry Cretion's predecessor at the Green Energy Consumers Alliance. I'm the person who set up the green energy product that is now the the big thing in Massachusetts. When I set it up, it was tiny. I kind of gave birth to it and he nurtured it through its infancy and adolescence. But I have a connection to it. So there's kind of Tell me, Luke, when I should stop and you want to... I'd be happy to jump in at this point.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: I think that was a great start. And I would just add that I am also in touch with Isaac Baker of Resonant Energy, a regular developer of community solar and with a focus on low-income and disadvantaged communities.
[Brenda Pike]: I just spoke with Madeline from Resident Energy Network actually.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: All right. Well, then there may be some synergy conversations going on. I have a call with Isaac on Friday and I just spoke with him on last Friday at the Northeastern Energy Conference. I think what I was hoping our conversation with Resident might lead to, Barry and I have been reviewing webinars and resources regarding community solar and the many different You know, there's a lot of. Organizational setups that may be possible to make it work for various. Different, you know, to distribute benefits. mechanism for Medford, but our general feeling is, and Barry, correct me if I get this wrong, but, you know, some is better than none. And so whatever we can figure out for our first effort will be better than nothing. And hopefully we can move it from there. But ideally, we want to have an organization, perhaps like Green Energy Consumers Alliance, to help shepherd and manage things, partnering with perhaps another developer like Resonant, and perhaps the utility to help distribute benefits. That's part of the issue and the question as to how the real benefits of the solar might be distributed. But then, you know, there's also the big question, where are these arrays going? And that gets back to our solar ordinance. We would like to be able to have an organization in place that is advertising to these developers that, hey, you can meet the requirements of this ordinance and you can benefit this community simply by signing here and just community solar organization will carry the ball forward for you. make this solar happen and make it benefit this group, local beneficiaries.
[Barry Ingber]: I mean, one of the philosophical underpinnings of what we're thinking, or at least what I'm thinking, I think what we're both thinking is, to put the community back in community solar. The way that community solar works across the country is it's based on a subscription model, which to me is American individualistic capitalism at its worst. There's no logic to the subscription model from a big-picture point of view. I mean, it's kind of the way things are structured, and it's going to be complicated to try to get around it. But from a big-picture point of view, all it adds is the complication of marketing, and it turns what should be a benefit for the whole community into a lottery. And that's the way that we kind of operate everything from instead of making universities affordable, we give scholarships to whoever can happen to get the scholarship. I mean, everything, you know, instead of making sure that people have adequate incomes, we have lotteries so that poor people buy lottery tickets and hope that they score. It makes no sense. Then there's a whole maintaining the subscriber base effort that has to be put in and a loss of resources to that. Wanting to try to figure out how to get away from that. Have you talked to ABCD at all? We're aware of the model in Newton. Which kind of gets us to where the ordinance is at. Ideally, but we don't know if it's legal, and we're working on this. Ideally, we would just like to require, along with requiring the solar, require that it be made part of this pot of community solar. We don't know that we can do that. It might need to be done by persuasion. But we also see three different kind of buckets of projects. One is like the Newton project. Anything that's going to be is to have arrays on city facilities. That's easy, right? I mean, it doesn't even require an ordinance. You can do what Newton did and put a canopy over the DPW yard with solar and decide that the city gets a portion of the electricity and the other parts given to ABCD to distribute to their customer base in the city. I'm sure it's more complex than I just put it out, but it's been done, which makes it easier anyway. It doesn't really require an ordinance. All it requires is a decision to do it. That could happen with the new fire station. If there's excess electricity besides what's going to go to the fire station, it can happen in any number of city facilities. The third bucket is the private development and whether there's a way to force it. or whether it just becomes part of the negotiations between the developer and the city with maybe some incentives thrown in. The in-between bucket is whatever happens with city-owned land that is being leased or sold to private developers. That of course, the city could easily put in its contracts, could require something of this sort. That's where we've gotten so far.
[Brenda Pike]: I have a couple of thoughts.
[Barry Ingber]: Okay.
[Brenda Pike]: I think, I think it's really interesting to idea to try to get developers of large properties to sign to do this. And so I think site plan review is a really great opportunity to ask them for it. I don't think this is necessarily something that we can require this particular, using this particular, model or organization or whatever it is you'll be setting up, but we could highly recommend it during site plan review and have, you know, that's a time in which developers are doing a lot of things to try to show community benefits. And so this would be a great opportunity for them to try to get more goodwill in the community by adding something like this. I think there might also be opportunities if there are new buildings like the library that might potentially generate more energy than it uses. It did this summer. I'm not sure if over time it's going to end up doing that. We hope so. We hope the model is for it to be net zero and hopefully generate even more than it uses. But it hasn't been in operation for a year yet, so we'll see. But in a case like that, where it's generating more than it uses, then there might be excess that can be contributed to something like this. The city owned land being leased or I think it's leased to private developers. My understanding is that the goal for that is for it to be for affordable housing, at least a significant portion for affordable housing. And so I think in a case like that, if they're installing solar on the roof, which they have to with the ordinance, it might make more sense for them to be to be using that to offset the cost to the folks in the building.
[Barry Ingber]: Well, that's fine because that's distributing it to the very community we want to target. We've also talked about targeting to the low-income community is ideal, but targeting to the community is the next best thing, which if the city is using the electricity itself, That's a benefit to the community. The idea that Okay, so let's say Wegmans was being built now and they were forced to put solar on their roofs, from which they would make money anyway. But the way they would do it without any pressure or requirement is they would bring in a private developer who would develop the solar on the roof, and market it in the most profitable way they could, which might mean going door-to-door, it might mean a community solar project, it might mean selling to the grid, it might mean selling the RECs. It could mean any number of approaches for the developer, but it would be for their own benefit.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: Benefiting them.
[Barry Ingber]: The profits would basically be going to them. We want to see the profits be going to the community.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, that's why I was saying that I think that site plan review would be a good opportunity for that, because that's where we are able to sort of extract the most community benefits from these large developers.
[Barry Ingber]: But doing that without an ordinance relies on. I mean, as long as Alicia is in her position. If that direction is, she'll do that. If she has the avenue to do that, she'll do that. But personnel change and having it be institutionalized rather than the city's preference of the moment is, I think, important.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: I would just note that I think it's always going to come down to a certain degree to people being, A, being aware and B, knowing what steps need to take place. Having, you know, it's like the energy committee. During every new administration, there's a bit of a question as to how, you know, where do we fit in and how are we going to do what we do? Even though we are semi-institutionalized, you know, there's always a shift in the way things are done and the way we move forward. And each new chair is a different kind of aspect of that. That will be true for whatever system we may put in place here. But I agree with you, laying the foundation and making it clear as to what is the organization, what are its goals and mission and process, and having that kind of organization in place so that Alicia or whoever is in Alicia's position going forward can turn to them and say, You know, here is this ready made approach that developers can use to meet these requirements and and support the community. I think that's the that's the I guess I'm just hoping that we can put in place enough structure that there is something for everybody to lean on when they're not sure.
[Brenda Pike]: That makes sense. And it does sound like it's something that has to come from outside the city, like you're saying, like a nonprofit organization or something that is put together in order to do this. At least that's what, from my brief conversation with Alicia about it, that's what it sounds like.
[Barry Ingber]: That is how we've been thinking about it. But just now it's coming to mind that Well, I mean, it could be a. a function of the city. I'm not sure why we've thrown that out. Maybe we threw it out for a reason that I'm not remembering.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: Well, again, that will change with administrations, right?
[Barry Ingber]: Right.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: Hey, if the next administration doesn't care about that, then poof, it's gone. It's true for our committee as well. Again, yes, exactly. Whereas, for example, Green Newton is an independent organization Like trees Medford or like whatever, and they pressure developers into doing better sustainable more energy efficient buildings, if they want to have green Newton's support in front of them. Newton and Newton's residents and councils, you know, they Green Newton will get behind a developer who commits to going passive house and adding solar and doing doing the things that Green Newton requests.
[Barry Ingber]: But the Newton project with ABCD is a city project. So right.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: That's a separate situation. Yeah. But I wouldn't be surprised if Green Newton had some, you know, the people who are make up Green Newton are, you know, the directors of Mass CEC and other organizations that are very keyed in to what should happen and how it could happen.
[Barry Ingber]: Joe Kreisberg?
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: Yeah. And Bev Craig is and The environmental coordinator of Newton is a former colleague of mine and like is focused on pushing everything. It's like, yeah, so Newton is very keyed in, but I think it does help to have an outside influence that regardless of the political winds can exert some pressure. And I would say Go Green Medford is the start of that community. I mean, there's already a good community around Go Green Medford that is doing that. I'm just throwing that out there. You know, there is an established brand, so to speak. It isn't a committee. It isn't an organization of individuals. It's not like they're necessarily Green Newton equivalent.
[Barry Ingber]: It's a city-controlled listserv.
[Brenda Pike]: I would say that like 350 or mothers out front might be more on that sort of like advocacy side of things. And I talked to the folks who are heading those up in Medford recently, and they're both really interested in becoming more active.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: I would say it would, 350 would be a good resource. Mothers Upfront might also be, I wonder though if it should be, those are kind of national organizations as well, of which Medford's branches, so to speak, exist. I would hope that this would be a Medford-centric, that could then replicate elsewhere, but that it would, be specific to Medford. I mean, that's how you'd, I don't know, that would be my hope in that.
[Barry Ingber]: The Medford chapter of 350, which I was involved in from its beginning until about a year ago, is really quite weak. So, I mean, that's just the reality.
[Brenda Pike]: But for this, like you said, Luke, there would have to be something set up that's existing that we could be pointing these developers to or that the city could be using if they want to use excess generation for city buildings, for instance.
[Barry Ingber]: I would want it to be not just an environmental group, but a social justice. group as well. I mean, that to me is like, I don't work on anything unless it has a positive value to low income people. That is my life.
[Brenda Pike]: So, what are next steps here? I mean, I can chat with Alicia about this and especially the ideas of like the. You know, it's like, it's like plan review at, you know, city on buildings that are generating more and exactly what is being contemplated for that city on land to being leased out just sort of confirming if what I think is true there. So I can get more information there. Um.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: Yeah, I think the challenge is that you and Alicia and the city site plan review process, you need to have something to point to. You can certainly say, we would like to encourage you to provide community solar on your building. But what that means, it means different things to different people. And as Barry was saying, currently the norm is that means you put out a subscription model and it is a major process. And basically only the people who are informed and generally wealthy are the people who participate. And so that's not the community solar we're trying to encourage. So we have a bit more work to do. We were hesitant to have this meeting with you before we had a real plan as to what we were going to even propose. So this is still early stages, I'd say. We're not ready for the city to be saying, go do community solar and go talk to Luke and Barry about it. But we would like that at some point.
[Barry Ingber]: Yeah, so we just wanted you to know what we're doing. If you had any ideas or advice or insights to offer us at this point, we're listening. That would be great. If you don't yet, that's fine, too. And yeah, yeah, we just wanted to not Come to you when we had a near finished product.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, yeah. Okay. That sounds good. Um, 1 thing that I would share, I don't know how much you've spoken with resident in the past. Um, but they, they had a model or they have a model where they, they put. Solar on the roofs of low income. homeowners. And then at no cost to the to the homeowner. And that is subsidized by like a local nonprofit or something that's taking something like 80% of the electricity from it. And then the homeowner gets, you know, 20% at no cost, which is a great model. And I was really excited about it. We incorporated into Solarize East Boston. But it sounds like that's something that isn't necessarily viable on its own outside of the grant funding that they had for it. And so it sounds like they're not going to be pursuing that model moving forward, which is really disappointing. In that model, who gets the 80%? It was generally a local nonprofit that was signing on to it, so they're paying the cost for the installation, and then they're getting 80% of the electricity.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: Yeah, and so maybe the grant may have been what is basically paying residents to do that coordination between nonprofit and homeowner, because otherwise, the nonprofits aren't going to be organizing those kinds of deals themselves, that would need an intermediary-like resonant to put that all together.
[Barry Ingber]: Yeah, I vaguely remember reading something about that. It was over a year ago. It was churches or something, primarily.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: Well, they've definitely done a number of churches as well. But in that case, the church is the nonprofit. And, you know, if they're putting solar on Grace Church, which they did, well, I don't know if it was resonant, but... It was Sunbug, yeah. Sunbug, right. Yeah, you know, then it's more of a, that's a direct, you know, nonprofit benefit, benefits.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, they do a lot of work with affordable housing.
[Barry Ingber]: I mean, there's still, I mean, two of the concerns that I have about that is one, that it's still a bit of the scholarship model, like, you know, which houses get in while their neighbors don't. And, you know, the subsidies are paid for by rate payers and their neighbor, low income neighbor is, electricity rates go up as a result of subsidizing. That's one problem. The other problem has been lost to me, is the inefficiency of doing single residence roofs. What we're talking about is large developments like I mean, I know large-scale solar arrays get far bigger than the size of a business or residential development, but we're talking medium-sized solar arrays, not small ones, and there's a huge deficiency of scale there. you know, the electricity is just as good and the cost of producing it is way, way lower. So the benefits are way greater. It's also large amounts of waste space, you know, where most larger scale solar arrays mean using farmland or not, you know, using space. Yeah.
[Brenda Pike]: And especially right now with, you know, with smart incentives and tax credits, that it's not going to cost the developer as much to do this, especially if their offtakers are low-income residents, right? You get a higher SMART incentive if that's the case.
[Barry Ingber]: And Green Energy is probably willing, I mean the devil's in the details, but are probably willing to be the developer on things like this. I mean, and one of the thoughts also was that the electricity could feed in, you know, this is simple, it doesn't directly benefit the low income community, but it benefits the residents of Medford, which is to have that electricity feed into the aggregation.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: Right. Actually, I meant to bring that up. So we have community aggregation. Community aggregation requires local renewable energy that they are purchasing. Could they somehow basically be the buyer of that community solar and therefore benefiting the entire community of Medford? With this array and the more arrays, you have, you know, have have have the community aggregation basically be the I don't know.
[Brenda Pike]: That's a good idea. It's complicated by the aggregation approval process by the Department of Public Utilities. So Boston, when I was there a year ago, was really trying to do something like this and wrote it into their aggregation plan. And the Department of Public Utilities was They weren't explicitly saying that they didn't like it, but they were dragging their feet and they were questioning it a lot. Now it's a different Department of Public and different commissioners now, so it could be a completely different process, but I think that would complicate the aggregation.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: Would we be willing to look into that? And are there people that you could connect us with that we could talk to about it?
[Barry Ingber]: We're connected. You and I could talk to, I think it's John at Good Energy at the Harvest Your Energy Festival. We've met, we could talk.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: Well, yes, but also I'd be interested in finding out more about that internal process that Boston went through and any lessons learned they got through that DPU process. Because as you were saying, It's hardest when you're the first. It helps when you have a model. And if you can find out what didn't work with that model and adapt it so that it does work the second time around, I mean, I'm very happy to hear that Boston attempted this. And I'm okay with the fact that it didn't go through. I would be very interested in knowing what did they do and what were the sticking points with the DPU and can we maybe make some adjustments.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah. Do you want me to put you in touch with them?
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: Absolutely.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah.
[Barry Ingber]: Okay. That's interesting too, because Larry thought it was a good idea and that it would be easy to do, that we just needed to talk to good energy, Larry at Green Energy Consumers. And they do the green electricity part of the aggregation, so you would seem to know. The thing that Boston was trying to do was to
[Brenda Pike]: create with the low-income rate class, lower the cost to those customers.
[Barry Ingber]: I see.
[Brenda Pike]: By doing this, and that was what complicated it.
[Barry Ingber]: Okay. That's not what we were just saying though.
[Unidentified]: It would be ideal though.
[Barry Ingber]: Having it feed into the aggregation overall, but if we could have it feed into the low-income portion of the aggregation, yeah.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: That would be even yeah I agree feeding into all of Medford is the easy path if it could be focused on and that's what Barry and I have been talking about is how do we focus on the low income. And so, I mean this would be a good. fallback approach, you know, again, as, as we were saying, we're just looking to have a success to start. And then maybe we can refine that success and work towards betterment. But, but we should try and get something to happen.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, yeah, set up the structure, have a developer that you're working with, who's willing to use their the roof of their building for this. And then we can, yeah, then we can try to expand it. Yeah.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: Yeah. Well, it is nine o'clock.
[Barry Ingber]: Wow. I haven't eaten dinner yet. I haven't either.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: Brenda, thank you so much for staying on along with us. This is very exciting. And as you can see, Barry and I are very interested in making something happen here. We appreciate your time and any help you're willing to provide.
[Brenda Pike]: Happy to, definitely. Yeah, I love this idea. Thank you so much. Don't take any of my questions or caveats as not liking the idea, because I would love to see this.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: No, we respect constructive criticism at any time, definitely. Great.
[Brenda Pike]: Great talking to you guys.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: Thank you. And if you do have anybody who we should talk to at Boston and or DPU, let me know.
[Brenda Pike]: I don't know about the DPU. They're very difficult to talk to, but definitely can put you in touch with someone from Boston. Yeah.
[Barry Ingber]: Cool. Great. And we'll make a point of talking to Good Energy at the Harvest Your Energy Festival.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: And I'll be talking to Isaac from Resident on Friday.
[Barry Ingber]: Great. And I'll talk to Zach.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: And I will talk to Alicia. All right. Lots of talking going on.
[Barry Ingber]: Good night. Good night.
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