[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: In accordance, hold on a second, yeah. On July 16th, 2022, Governor Baker signed a law, an act relative to extending certain state of emergency accommodations. This act allows public bodies to continue holding meetings remotely through March 31st, 2023. without a quorum of the public body physically present at a meeting location and provide adequate alternative access to remote meetings. In accordance with this Act, this meeting of the City of Netflix Energy and Environment Committee is being conducted totally via remote participation using Zoom, including committee members and the public. The user zoom complies with the laws requirement to provide live adequate alternative means of public access to the deliberations of public body. Instead of holding meetings in a public place, persons who would like to listen to you to all view this meeting while in progress. may do so by using the link that was included in the meeting agenda posted on City and Metro website. We will also post a record of this meeting on the City's website in the near future at the link provided in the meeting agenda. Okay. All right, good. So we have gotten through the preliminaries of this meeting. We have done a roll call. So now we're going to, I'm going to ask for a review of the meetings from December 5th and see if we can get some agreement on that. So the floor is open. Anyone who wants to chime in?
[Unidentified]: Hello?
[Robert Paine]: No news is good news, probably.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: OK, so everybody in agreement with the meeting minutes of last meeting?
[Robert Paine]: I will move that we accept the minutes as posted. Second.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: OK, it was seconded. OK, so that's acceptance.
[Robert Paine]: You need to take a roll call.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: We need to take a roll call. Okay, sure. Who would like to say yay for accepting the meeting minutes? Starting with Luke.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: Yay.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: Gaston? Yes. Kathleen?
[Unidentified]: Yes.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: Barry?
[Unidentified]: Yes. Bob? Yes. Martha? Martha? Hello, Martha?
[Martha Ondras]: I'm sorry, Paul, I put it on mute for some reason. Yes.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: Yes. Okay. Okay. So meetings for the last meeting, sorry, meeting minutes from the last meeting have been accepted by the committee. So we move on. So let's hear, according to the agenda we have, we have to ask Alicia to give us some administrative updates, which are very much appreciated because I'm completely ignorant of these most of the time. So Alicia, please chime in when you can.
[Alicia Hunt]: Sure, thanks. Thank you to our new co-chairs, Paul and Gaston, and for doing the agenda and everything. This is great. I mentioned before we started that I'm going to be stepping out at 7.15 because I have to attend another meeting tonight. I do want to let you know that our office has had a number of positions posted. Recently, we have a new senior planner. Danielle Evans has actually been doing two part-time jobs in our office for the past several years, and she's now a full-time senior planner. She'll be working primarily with the planning board, but I did want to let you know that. And as a result we have two openings, because both of her part time positions, the city has posted as full time jobs. So we're hiring a CPA manager, which is a heavily, it's a planning position but it's heavily grant management. and then a housing planner position as well. We also have posted the economic development director. I don't know if you're aware, but Vic Schrader is leaving the city. He's no longer with us full time. He's still working some hours a week to move some projects forward with us, but we have in fact posted his position. And the fourth position that is not yet posted but i'd love to get if you if any of you have seen any position similar to this and would like to I got grant funding to hire somebody to do climate zoning and policy work. And it's that specific because the grant opportunity was that if you wanted somebody to work on zoning policy and zoning related to climate, like those were zoning policy was an option for this grant and some staff augmentation. So it seemed to fit together that they would fund somebody to work on that. So that's what we applied for.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: So Alicia, can I interject for a second? So this position requires the person to take decisions that have already been made and do an administrative kind of organization of those decisions, or does it require the person to do research into decisions that are still being considered?
[Alicia Hunt]: So the idea is that if you look at our climate plan, which was a big research project in the comprehensive plan. They both have a lot of goals and actions in them that in order to move them forward, you would have to pass zoning and ordinances to get them done. Right. I'm afraid I'd have to have look at it in front of me to come up with a great example, but an example might be to pass a tree, an ordinance protecting trees, right? Or to allow, I'm having a hard time coming up with an example like that off the top of my head.
[Gaston Fiore]: Would an example be that we get rid of some of the car dealers with all the, you know, huge storage of car lots that they have and things like that, which are like, really bad heat sinks and things like that. Is that a zoning issue or something else?
[Alicia Hunt]: Well, I will tell you that that's not something that's already in our climate plan. So the priority was to look at, there are about 15 items in the climate plan that are policy, like getting policies adopted and passed by the city that are climate related. And so the idea would be to start with those, but a lot of them involve finding out what other models are out there, what examples exist, what ordinances exist, what communities have done, model them, come up with draft language, work with city departments to figure out how we would implement them, and then work with the city council to get these passed.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: And so will any of this draft language find its way into the various committees that the city has for input and opinion solicitation?
[Alicia Hunt]: All of them have to because they all have to be passed by the city council in order to be adopted. And that requires a public hearing process. And any of them that are zoning by law have to go in front of the planning board as well, this community development board. So there absolutely has to be public input on all of them. Let me see if I can come up with the, I actually think that I can drop into, oh, it's a lot more than 15. The actions in the plan that we included in the grant. I am not going to read these all. I am going to put them in the chat. Examples include offering incentives for exceptional energy performance, adopting environmental performance standards for large projects, implement a benchmarking ordinance for large buildings, strengthen the complete streets policy through zoning and local ordinance, encourage mixed use development. Those are all examples of things that are in the climate plan, and many of them are also in the comprehensive plan as well. And so the idea would be somebody who all of these things to do this actually takes work, right? You have to put a motion in front of the city council, but to do that, you have to draft the language of what the motion is gonna say. And then you have to be prepared to explain it to them.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: And so this person would be in charge of doing that sort of stuff. So sort of putting together the composite of this thing and putting it in front of the city council to decide on in those terms. All right, so does this need to be publicly advertised in any way other than trying to find recruits to do it?
[Alicia Hunt]: Well, I would put it this way. You can only find people by publicly advertising them. So we'll post it. The city now uses a system called better teams, which posts it on like Indeed and all these different job finding places. And then we'll put it on LinkedIn. We'll put it on the mass planners website. the American Planning Association. Oh, I should think of, I just thought of this Urban Sustainability Directors Network. There are a whole lot of relevant places. And then I have been posting some of these openings on Facebook as well, if there are other places. The other thing that we're looking for them to do is there's additional like energy work. So we got a grant to, work on a climate net zero a net zero plan scope, and then to apply for a grant for to do a net zero plan for the city. And so I'd also like this person to move that forward. So as you can see there's like enough work for like three people. But we got funding for one person for one year. And I let the mayor know in no uncertain terms that it was my intention to then have this position get put into the city budget after that. And actually we've already submitted budgets for this coming year and they asked us to provide, what is the staffing that we're asking for in the city budget for the next three years? So we list, you know, here's who's in the general fund, the regular budget, and then here's people that we have off-budget funding for, right? So when we get the CPA, CDBG, other funding sources. So I listed this one in that, and then for the next fiscal year after that, 2025, I listed this position as one that I expect that I'm going to be asking the mayor to keep on as permanent staff. Somebody would have to do a pretty bad job to not show that they were needed after one year of doing this.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: Oh, yeah. Well, yeah. I wouldn't comment on that. But OK, good. So thanks very much for that, Alicia. The next item on the agenda is what is the status of the waste initiatives. If you can possibly give us an update, I would appreciate it. Thank you.
[Alicia Hunt]: Sure, so with the waste project, we have done a lot of various kinds of public outreach and we had an advisory committee and the consultants are right now both notifying all the companies that are able to do this work. And it turns out that it's a lot more than the four we knew of in this region that are big enough to take on Medford's as a business, as a client. So they're notifying them that this is coming and they've started to talk to them about it a little just to get them planning. It takes a lot of effort for companies to apply for an RFP this big.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: So they like knowing that- I'm sorry, could you deconvolute that RFP?
[Alicia Hunt]: What does that mean? Request for proposals.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: Request for proposals. Thank you.
[Alicia Hunt]: So right now the consultants are drafting up a request for proposals that the staff and the advisory committee will be taking a look at. Later in January. In mid February, we are going to present the RFP to the city council. The city council is, in order to do a waste contract, you have to do at least seven to 10 years because of the companies need to buy trucks and hire staff. So they'll only bid on a project, on a contract that's at least that long. in order to sign a contract more than three years, the city needs the city council to approve it.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: Okay, so a priori, we don't expect the companies to have any trucks nor any kind of infrastructure before they go into bidding, is that correct?
[Alicia Hunt]: Not the amount that you would need to do the city of Medford.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: Right. So, and what would be the minimum that's required for a company to bid on this? Like, I'm just like trying to ballpark it in my mind, like how many trucks would you need to do Medford, for instance.
[Alicia Hunt]: That's a number that's in our notes somewhere, but like off the top of my head, we're talking about they would have to have the capacity to have 25 to 30 trucks. And these garbage trucks cost upward of $500,000 a piece.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: Sure, sure.
[Alicia Hunt]: Because we've tried, we have looked at buying them for the city, like the city owns like two that we use to maybe one.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: So the onus for buying and completely funding that infrastructure for the company falls on the city. Is that correct?
[Alicia Hunt]: Well, it falls on the company. They have to buy them. Sure. But they're only going to buy them if they get a contract that's long enough. Basically, they're going to amortize the cost of the infrastructure over the length of the contract.
[Unidentified]: OK. All right.
[Alicia Hunt]: And so they'll charge us, they'll do a three-year contract, but they'll charge us a lot more. Because what happens if after three years we switch to someone else? Because these trucks are probably, I think their life cycle is considered seven to 10 years. So if they had a truck and they had 25, they bought 25 or 30 trucks to do the Medford contract. And after three years, they don't get a renewal contract. Now, what are they gonna do? So that's sort of the thinking that's behind some of this. So we're getting the RFP drafted this month based on all the various inputs that we've gotten from the public, and we'll be reviewing it at the end of the month. We're going to be presenting it to the city council mid-February, and then we'll release it Sorry, I should have called up those dates I wasn't thinking about giving you guys the dates, but we'll release it in early March will advertise and release it, it'll be open for about three months. And that gives them time to figure out what their proposals are how much they would charge for the various things we're going to ask about. And some of what we're going to ask for is. Give us a price for this for this for this if we chose if we wanted to do a but not be how much would it would cost how much would it cost if we do a and b. In order to get some ideas. There's sort of like a base level of service that we think the city has to have. And then there's additional service that we think the city would really like to have. And I believe that we believe that most Medford residents are cost sensitive enough that there's a point at which they go, you know, That would be nice, but that's too expensive. You know, we'll make do and so trying to understand what these various some what the cost points are in order to put together a package that provides the services that the city needs and wants.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: So is that option given to the city citizens to reject or accept that, or it's just?
[Alicia Hunt]: It would go, so I say it'll go in front of the city staff and to some extent in front of the city council because they'll need to approve the final contract, but we will certainly negotiate with the bidders before. So one of the things we'll do is we ask them, you get a qualifications proposal and then a price proposal. So first we'll look at what is it that, why are you qualified, what kind of service are you going to provide us, you know, are you going to wine and dine us or are you just going to give us like the breakfast, the freezer tray, right? And then once you understand what they're looking to do, then we also look at the pricing and say, well, you know, your freezer tray costs as much as their wine and dining. So like, maybe we need to go with these guys and, or, you know, your, your whining and dining is like almost as expensive as theirs is like, how can we get these pricing to come more in line with each other and, and get something better? So it's interesting, we don't, unlike most municipal projects, we don't have to go with lowest bidder. We actually don't legally have to put waste contracts out to bid. It's exempt from Massachusetts procurement law.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: I'm sorry, why is that? State law.
[Alicia Hunt]: All I know, there are certain things that are exempt from Massachusetts state procurement law. Waste contracts are one of them. I couldn't possibly speculate why, but we've decided that putting it out to bid is the right thing to do. However, it means that we have a little bit more leeway with negotiating that we wouldn't have. If we were building a building, we would have to go with the lowest bidder. Assuming that the lowest qualified bidder, because this is this kind of services contract and it's a waste contract, it doesn't we don't have to go with the lowest qualified bidder. We can negotiate to get sort of like what it is that we want for the city and what's going to be the best fit for the city.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: OK, so so so the. So the vetting process is done sort of in situ. Is that correct? Is that like the... Yeah. So it's within the... So it's not given to a third party to do that. It's just we consider the bids and we do the questioning with the bidders.
[Alicia Hunt]: And given that we we have outside consultants that we've hired to advise us. And the other thing that is actually turning out to be a really lovely benefit is that the state DEP has started a couple of years ago started running a. a peer group for all the communities that are looking at new waste contracts within the next 24 months. And so we're part of this peer group. And what happens is all the communities that hate their current service providers share all that information with us. And if they love their current providers and what great things are providing, they're sharing that too. So it's just staff talking about it, but we're getting this information about what kind of issues. So some of the communities in this group are already in the contracting process. And they're telling us about the problems they're running into. And some of them are a little further out than we are. And so they're able to sort of say like, and we all have different providers right now. So we're, we're able to share with each other like, who it's, it's like better than references.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: Sure. No, absolutely. That sounds capital.
[Alicia Hunt]: Right. We're trading around our requests for proposals. We're trading around contracts, stuff like that. And it's all managed by two DEP staff who've done this for the last several years. So they've been sitting in on these conversations and collecting these RFPs for several years. So they're able to provide that to us as well. okay good and and is there is there some sort of public place where people can look at that input from various cities or most of that i will tell you is not public and that is part of why we're they're able to be so candid i see okay okay those communities probably don't want their service providers knowing that they're panning them to other communities
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: Okay, yeah, sounds good. All right, good. Okay, so next item on any questions here.
[Gaston Fiore]: So, yeah, quick questions, quick questions. So the first one is like, so, um, is it possible that, um, like, we need to set up the goals of what we're trying to achieve? in order to then be able to select the best company in the sense of, for example, you know, I know that back in 2013, for example, when in CPAC, I worked on implementing the composting there, I think that staff was the only kind of big or biggish company that had composting as well. And I'm wondering, you know, if, for example, you know, it is one of the goals that, you know, we might consider doing composting, pay for the taxes, then, you know, that basically rules out Juan Fernando C?rdoba Marentes?s iPhone 2?s iPhone 2?s iPhone 2?s iPhone 2?s iPhone 2?s What is Waste Management going to do with all the trucks that they currently use to service Medford? Is it possible that then they will try to upload them and it's an opportunity for the city to buy those trucks at a very good price? Or that's not how it works?
[Alicia Hunt]: So we're not in the market to buy them. And I'll tell you that many of their trucks are at end of life because they've been with us now for 13 years. But to sort of get at that piece of it. So, we created a solid waste task force, and they have worked with city staff to develop those goals that you were talking about and what we're looking for.
[Gaston Fiore]: Are those decided already? Is there a place where we can look at them?
[Alicia Hunt]: So yeah, let me see what we posted. So there's a web.
[Gaston Fiore]: I can ask you later too, Alicia. Don't worry about it. I'll send you a link if you want.
[Alicia Hunt]: So yeah, we had some public meetings where we shared information about what we were looking at. And then there was the survey. We shared results of the survey and stuff. I'll have to look and see.
[Gaston Fiore]: Yeah, I got the email after, sorry, but I didn't know that there were like a set of goals that were already decided. And that's basically what you're going to base your green project on.
[Alicia Hunt]: Well, that's also a little bit in the climate plan. But yeah, that's the kind of stuff that we work through with the waste task force.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: OK, so I'm going to limit this to the time limit we have. Thanks, Alicia, for that input. Very important stuff to consider. Now there is a review of the Energy Festival date for 2023 and I wanted to tell you that obviously Loretta couldn't be here because she is banged up because of her accident and she wasn't feeling terribly well. But she did want to emphasize that we should make date for 2023 because that involves some logistics in terms of bringing in folks to do stuff and for food and stuff. I'll put this out to everyone. What does everyone think about that?
[Robert Paine]: This is Bob Payne. Historically, we've used the weekend after Columbus Day or Indigenous Peoples Day as the optimal weekend, and we could go with that, hopefully, if the mayor is available to.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: And I would add, this is Luke McNeely, I would just add that we do like to coordinate with other groups as we get closer to that date, just to make sure there isn't too much overlap.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: So are we all comfortable with that date, the weekend after Columbus Day for Energy Festival?
[Alicia Hunt]: That would be October 14th. October 14th, yes it is. 14th.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: So October 14th is the date and the decision to have it then is accepted by all?
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: about a motion to accept a motion to put in a motion to accept that.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: I put a motion in to accept October 14th as the energy festival date for 2023. Second. All right so that's been accepted.
[Robert Paine]: Alicia do we need any mayoral input on that or?
[Alicia Hunt]: I'll um send her an email my instinct is that this far out it's we get first dibs kind of thing. I'll send a note to her and to the recreation department, who's the most likely to schedule other stuff, telling them that we want that date and please let me know if there's any issue with it.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: Good. Okay, moving on.
[Robert Paine]: Presumably, we all vote on the affirmative just to make sure.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: Yeah, let's do that. Okay, so let's take a roll call. Let's start with Luke. Sure, yes. Gaston?
[Unidentified]: Yes. Kathleen? Kathleen? Yes. Gary? Yes.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: Martha? Yes. And Bob?
[Robert Paine]: Yes.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: And I'll say yes too. So it's a quorum. Thank you. All right, moving on. The next item on the agenda is can Medford apply, and if so, should Medford apply to be one of the 10 cities in the Massachusetts pilot program that bans the use of fossil fuels in new buildings and major renovations. So this is a discussion open for all. So please chime in if you want to.
[Robert Paine]: Oh, Paul, I think you missed one item, and that was the committee meeting dates.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: Oh, yeah, I'm sorry. Committee meeting days for 2023. Yes, I apologize for that. Do we approve the committee meeting dates for 2023? And I see it only as an item agenda. I'm not actually seeing the dates we have, but I assume it's the first Monday of each month. So is that acceptable to all?
[Robert Paine]: Except September when it's memorial, I mean, Labor Day. And then if there's any Jewish holidays, we have to be aware of that. I'm sure fastidiously to make sure. So it would usually be October, in fact, October.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: All righty. So except for those dates, are we acceptable to the meeting dates being first Monday of each month. And if it needs to be changed, obviously, at that previously, I would put out a change of date.
[Robert Paine]: And then typically July and August, we don't have a, we just pick a date during those two months to meet that's most convenient. So we don't set the date for summer at this point. We go through June and then we pick that up in September is a typical arrangement. Okay. Okay, given all that, I will move that we adopt that, that strategy for our meeting dates through June and September through December, except for September being the second Monday.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: Okay. Thank you, Bob. Is that acceptable to all? I put that out as a motion.
[Robert Paine]: Yeah, I move that and second and then we need a vote.
[Alicia Hunt]: Okay, I will give you I'll just give you the warning that the Monday in November is the night before election day of the city elections. And you're welcome to meet it can be depending how things are going. It can be a very stressful night to me and you might late close to that date decide to move it depending on where we're going then.
[Robert Paine]: Yeah, we could do the second Monday of November as well.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: So second Monday of November for the November meeting?
[Robert Paine]: Yeah, as well as September, yeah.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: So second Monday of November. And a second Monday of September.
[Gaston Fiore]: Is this published anywhere at some point?
[Alicia Hunt]: Typically, we'll put it up on the Go Green web page, but then I'll send it to Steve and he'll update the city calendar with all the dates.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: All right. That's put out for roll call, I suppose. Who can second that?
[Martha Ondras]: I'll second it.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: OK, I'll go through the votes. Luke?
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: I approve.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: Gaston? Yeah, you have to.
[Gaston Fiore]: Yes, sorry. I was trying to make sure that it's a second Monday. Yes, yes.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: Sure, sure. Okay. Kathleen? Yes. Barry? Yes. Martha? Yes. And Bob, finally?
[Unidentified]: Yes.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: All right, so I say yes too, so that's approved. Thank you all. Let's go back to the next agenda. And now we can talk about the next thing on the agenda, which is CanMETRID Apply. And if so, should Medford apply to be one of the 10 cities in the Massachusetts pilot program that bans the use of fossil fuels in new buildings and major renovations? So that's up for discussion for all. So I would appreciate anyone to start the discussion.
[Gaston Fiore]: Yes, I just want to clarify, because that's my item. So that was more a question for Alicia, because I didn't know whether it's still possible to apply. I know that Boston applied late. And I tried to look this up online to see whether I could find any information to see whether cities can still apply. And I couldn't find anything. So I mean, maybe we cannot apply, and then this is a discussion that has no point. But yeah.
[Alicia Hunt]: I will say that it was my understanding when that went in front of the state, that the law was actually listed 10 specific communities that were being approved to do it. There were 10 that had petitioned the state for that policy, and that Boston and someone else were both trying to say, if one of those 10 drop out, can we then fill that slot? Now, if somebody knows differently than I, that's fine. I didn't get a chance to look this one up, but that was my understanding of it.
[Gaston Fiore]: Yeah, so according to what I read in the Boston Globe, then it was still, then this, I think it was back from August, if I remember correctly. And then it was still not clear whether the 10 communities were gonna satisfy the public housing requirement that they have. So I think it was up in the air.
[Alicia Hunt]: I will tell you that. There are a lot of things that people say will stifle development. Medford is not ready to do this. It would actually cause a lot of trouble for a lot of our developers if we put that moratorium on immediately. One of the things that we have found to work well is to let Boston and Cambridge, sometimes Brookline, take the lead on these very progressive things. then they get the company's used to it. And then when we say, oh, we're doing it too, they're like, fine, we already know how to do it, we do it in Cambridge, like we can do it, but let them sort of set the pace first, because a company will pay anything practically to build in Cambridge. and sometimes in Boston. So this is sort of, rather than us, if we put in rules that companies don't like, they say, fine, we'll go to Malden or Woburn. We'll just go one city further. So I feel like this one is too aggressive for Medford at this point. Not that we wouldn't do it, but not first. I see Luke has his hand up. I know he's really in the middle of this energy stuff.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: I did also just want to point out that, so in a recent Built Environment Plus webinar, an excellent group that is really pushing net zero and electrification. An engineering company that is doing a lot of net zero buildings, a lot of extremely high performance buildings, presented a slide that literally showed dozens of buildings and compared to looking in Boston in particular, and you know the average building is using like more than half of their energy comes from gas and about less than half from electric and pushing for electrification as many of the new higher performance buildings are doing they are able to get very close to and they have I mean I could share this slide if I can share screen, but essentially with ground and air source heat pumps, as well as exhaust heat pump for labs, they're able to get extremely close to net zero with electric, but they very often need a very small amount of gas for those peak loads. And not having that is a big deal. And it's a big deal in terms of the size of the equipment that you then need to buy in order to meet those few peak moments. And that means that it's oversized for the rest of the year. So in these cases, it's clearly showing that it is more cost effective and frankly, more energy effective to at least have the option to have some gas for those peak conditions.
[Unidentified]: Thanks. Excellent.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: Any other comments on this?
[Martha Ondras]: Yeah, I have my hand up. So I'll speak. I support what Alicia and Luke have just said. I think that going to the new stretch code is an excellent thing. And Medford is apparently doing that to go to Complete net zero, I think, is a leap too far for us right now for the reasons Alicia outlined, and we very much need development. We very much need building. We need housing. You know, we need mixed use. I would just not like to see us discourage responsible energy efficient development by making the rules so tight that developers feel they have to go elsewhere.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: So what timeline do you imagine for this to be? I'm not obviously trying to pigeonhole anyone in this, but what timeline do you think we need to sort of mix and match? How far in the future do you think we can mix and match?
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: Martha may have some more comments on that, but I would just add that we have a three-year code cycle and a three-year energy cycle for our utility renewable energy and energy efficiency planning. And the new code is geared to establish these rules and then be able to be ratcheted down. And that is something that can happen every three years. And if in three years, it looks like, you know, we're making progress, then we can tighten things up. So three years is a long time, but in terms of a building, I mean, it takes three years to plan and start construction on a building sometimes.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: Okay, and we can't, I mean, I'm just asking the question, we can't imagine a situation where that could be accelerated in any way.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: I think it's possible, but as I've said before, and I say often to friends, you can't skip the necessary steps to success. And if you would like to succeed, if you skip past them, then you won't. So yeah, we kind of need to do what works first and make sure that it works well and get people up to speed. If the contractors are, not doing it and the developers are not doing it because they can get away with it. And because they, you know, can argue that it's, it's impossible, then it won't happen.
[Alicia Hunt]: One thing, sorry, I don't want to jump in, but I, I do have to run. So, but I will add that sometimes people don't realize how long development takes, right. From the length of, from the time that somebody thinks they're thinking about building a building and they start to investigate, like, the location, like we're talking like these large lab buildings, residential, not a house, right? I'm not talking about an individual house, but the larger buildings, it takes years to acquire the property, do your due diligence, do your zoning, get your plan, like your zoning things. We are not even broken ground on projects that started talking to us in 2020. submitted applications, started to do their zoning and planning, got permissions from the boards, are now getting building permits to get ready to start to do construction. It can take years. So then you want those buildings to then open and say, look, this works. Right. And so you need somebody to actually go through that whole process could easily take three to five years.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: So is there some way to is there some way to to as and as you point out, this is a long term process. Right. So it it requires people to have a great deal of foresight in terms of where you do things, right? But you see that the challenge that we have as people on this committee is to balance those long term projects with the immediacy that climate resilience requires. And so is there some way that the city can negotiate that interface?
[Martha Ondras]: If I can jump in, I don't think you can negotiate one-on-one with developers or property owners to do something that's not part of the code, unless you put it into some development guidelines. I would also say I would disagree with Luke, which I rarely do. I think three years is a very short time. both in terms of the development cycle and in terms of the cycle of engineers, design engineers and construction firms and HVAC equipment fabricators and so forth, getting going, getting the capacity that they need to implement something like major net zero buildings. So I think three years is not a long time. Thank you.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: You're pushing my thought, actually, because I said it may seem like a long time, but.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: OK, so you think five years would be a more approachable thing for this?
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: keep in mind that we are going to be making significant changes. Significant changes have been made and incentives are also pushing and frankly the communities when a developer comes to a community and they know that the community is pushing for net zero and high performance, the developer does feel that pressure a little bit. And depending on how responsive they are, they may do that. But that is why we have incentives for passive house and things like that to help push this more voluntarily as well as the code that has just been brought in to require it. So I think we have to see how well this is going to work for a little while. And we can keep pushing and it's always good to have public bodies like this one pushing as hard as we can. But we do have to keep some realism as well at the same time. So
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: Okay, thanks. Thanks. I think that's about all we can devote to that. The next update is on tree and leaf blower ordinances. Anyone can chime in with that. I don't have an update myself. So if anybody knows anything about those two things, and would like to bring it to the forum, please go ahead.
[Robert Paine]: I just asked Alicia and she had no updates. It's going to be a very short discussion.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: There we go. It's short and sweet. That's what we like. So all right. So the next item on the agenda is something that Gaston brought up. It's the new Massachusetts law meant to reduce traffic deaths. The law requires drivers to stay at least four feet away from vulnerable users. of the road when passing them, and he was kind enough to provide a link, which unfortunately I didn't go and look at. But Gaston, please chime in and let us know more about this.
[Gaston Fiore]: Yeah, and then this can only be one minute. Yeah, so there's a new law, so cars have to be four feet away from bikers, pedestrians, you know, whatever, like, so it's a law that I like a lot in theory. Now in practice, there will be problem with enforcement of this, obviously, but I wanted to bring it up so people start being aware of it. And then, you know, you can talk to your acquaintances, friends and stuff about this to make sure that, you know, slowly but surely, then maybe cars stay a little bit farther away from bikers and pedestrians. And yeah, I think, you know, WOC, Medford, MBAC will probably be talking about this at city events and things like that. But we can also, you know, mention it in our table or have something to make the public aware that this got passed. And now it's actually the law to sort of, you know, keep yourself when you're driving four feet away from pedestrians and bikers.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: All right. Thank you so much, Gaston. Anyone with more input into this? All right. OK, so I was supposed to make a presentation on Oslo's response to climate crisis. I do not have that presentation finished yet, so I would put that on next meeting's agenda. And moving on, there's a, Bob was kind enough to set this up as a presentation for us, a review of Electrify Arlington program. So Bob, please take it away if you'd like to.
[Robert Paine]: I also note that Mark Breslow, who's familiar with this, is on the Zoom call as well now, and he's going to correct anything I say wrong. I'm sure, Mark, right? Sure. All right. Can you see this slideshow?
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: Mark, can you please introduce yourself, please, and let us know a little bit of background about what you do.
[SPEAKER_11]: Yeah, I'm a member of the Arlington Clean Energy Future Committee, Electrify Arlington, And I'm a member of the coaches group in Arlington, which is four of us who've been trained to be coaches that are advising people on getting heat pumps.
[Robert Paine]: That's great. You're a valued commodity. Can everyone see this presentation?
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: I can. Everybody else?
[Robert Paine]: Okay, I see nods everywhere so I'm just gonna mark you can always chime in. I'm just going to go through this skipping some slides, some are duplicates anyway. We've also said the same thing for Medford that there's a very important component of greenhouse gas emissions that are from building heating and cooling and also transportation. And so Electrify Arlington is basically focusing on this aspect. And I don't know if you want anything else to say, Mark, on that. It's a high priority initiative for your town. Yes, it is. Okay. And then probably similar to Medford, I suspect that we have the the residential buildings and passenger vehicle, total greenhouse gas emissions are, the majority of them are from these two sectors. And so they are definitely worth addressing. And especially the residential building business, Residences and build business buildings is going to be a challenge because it's probably a. It's a large expense and it's you turn over your heating. Equipment only every few couple of decades or so. So it's unless you, you see a season opportunity. So it's have to be aware of opportunities and for heat pump systems. So this is, I think, similar to Medford's case. This is just, I believe, for heating, the breakdown of the fuel use or electricity in Arlington being, it looks like 50% roughly is natural gas and then you have electricity is 25% and the rest is oil and whatever. So, for these sectors for for. There's, of course, there's weatherization, which we've talked about is you want to reduce the amount of work needed for a heat pump type of system. So you insulate, you seal air, do air sealing and upgrade duct work as necessary. And then on the right, there's the issue of electrification affecting transportation and then Obviously, for the – where you get your electricity, you want to make it a clean, renewable energy rather than fossil fuel. And then you've got the heating and cooling and the hot water and appliances sectors that you convert from fossil fuel to electrification using clean electricity. Looks like there is a link at the bottom here for more information. And you can imagine that there's quite a bit of, you know, there's methane leaks and, you know, the trouble with natural gas is natural gas, if it's leaked, is a very potent greenhouse gas. And I'm sure there's lots of leaks. So, that's certainly a problem. And just the fact that you've got carbon monoxide emissions for use of natural gas, you've got inherent issues with using natural gas, both leaking of the methane and then the combustion byproducts. There's also the cost argument for introducing electrification. I won't go into this too much. Certainly for electric vehicles, there might be issues about the purchase price of the vehicle, but the operational cost is certainly lower. So in Arlington, they're looking at certainly modern electric appliances, air source, heat pumps, and also, and I think we have this in Medford, choosing a 100% clean option. We have aggregation options in Medford as well, as Arlington looks like. And then there's the issue of, By 2050, we would expect that electrical generation will be predominantly non-fossil fuel in terms of the outlook here. And the demand on the right here is also an interesting breakdown with vehicle charging being certainly a new component. So what does Electrify Arlington offer? They have a partnership with HeatSmart Alliance and Abode Energy Management. It looks like, Mark, you have an issue where you can get connected with a heat pump coach by filling out the intake form. We don't have in Medford a a system for this yet and we're looking into Arlington to see how this works. So have you, Mark, have you actually gotten started with this program in Arlington?
[SPEAKER_11]: Yeah, we have. It's been going for like maybe two and a half months so far. So the four of us were trained by a boat and It was done. So, um, Talia, our energy management person for the town got a grant from mass CDC to have the four of us trained and she got trained too. Um, so, so we got trained that quote makes us quote coaches. Um, so, so the four of us are, are the coaches for Arlington and, um, and we did an initial. some initial publicity about it, both by web and email. And we had an initial, what was it? A presentation that we did at one of the schools in town. And we had like maybe 50, 60 people there and then a bunch online for it. And that generated a bunch of requests So we've had lots of requests for help with getting heat pumps. And, um, I think each of us has done like, I don't know, maybe six or eight or eight consultations so far.
[Robert Paine]: How much time does it take out of your busy schedule to do these consultations?
[SPEAKER_11]: Um, well, I would say that I probably do an hour of prep time for them. And then the initial consultation is like an hour. And then once after they do that, they're supposed to go out and get three quotes from installers. And then I'm gonna review those with them. And I haven't gotten to that point with anybody yet. So I'd say it's taking maybe two hours per person so far or per household.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: So Mark, do you get any remuneration for this at all, or is it just a volunteer?
[SPEAKER_11]: No, just volunteer.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: And it's Abode Energy Systems, is that right?
[SPEAKER_11]: Well, it says on the slide, Abode Energy Management.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: Abode Energy Management, yes. And they are, what are they? They're a clearinghouse for heat pumps.
[SPEAKER_11]: Yeah, and I think they have some kind of contract with Mass CEC to be the clearinghouse.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: Yeah, I think Abode More is like a quality assurance company though, aren't they? They help with overseeing implementation of heat pump installations and things like that. I don't think they're necessarily providing equipment or anything like that.
[SPEAKER_11]: No, they're not. And I think individuals, like if they live in towns that don't have coaches, individuals can get consultations from them. And I think MassCC kind of subsidizes them. So I think you can get a consultation from them for like a couple hundred dollars, which is a discount off what it would be otherwise.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: So Mark, is this is this over and above what MassSave provides? So, yeah, it is because MassSave
[SPEAKER_11]: doesn't really provide in-depth consultation about it. So, I mean, I haven't seen what Mass Save provides, but I think they will just, they'll look at your house and they'll, based on looking at their, at your house as part of their Mass Save audit, they'll say, well, you know, you're a good, you're a good candidate for it or a bad candidate for doing it. And You can either do it with ducks or you can't do it with ducks based on your situation. And I think they just give introductory information, which is less than we give them.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: So you provide more detailed input into the energy requirements of the house as a coach?
[SPEAKER_11]: Yeah, and it's not so much. I mean, the energy requirements are something, but so far, I wouldn't say that that's most of what we do. or most of what I've done, it's mostly like looking at the at the rooms in a house. And well, if they've got ducks in their house, then you tell them, well, you can do with duck work. And you're going to do it cheaper that way. Or if you don't have ducks, you can do with mini splits. And let's look at your rooms and see where you can put mini splits in your rooms. And you know, I'll talk to them about the relative cost of it. And, and there's always questions. So every house is different. And every house brings up new kinds of questions. Sure, sure.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: Thanks very much.
[Robert Paine]: Go ahead, Bob. How much trade? What was the extent of the training you got from Mass EC?
[SPEAKER_11]: We had like, four sessions, I think, for fairly lengthy sessions.
[Robert Paine]: Okay. So in terms of a number of hours per month, what is it amounting to for your time to do this?
[SPEAKER_11]: Well, so it's kind of optional. So the way we set it up by choice. So one of our coaches is the coordinator. So all the requests come to her and she keeps track of them. And each of us just requests a new client whenever we want one.
[Robert Paine]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_11]: So, so we can kind of do as much or as little as we want. So I've been putting in probably a fair amount of time. I've probably been putting in. I'm not sure, maybe four hours a week.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: Do you know if you're, oh, sorry. Do you know if your coordinator is overwhelmed with requests? I was just wondering.
[SPEAKER_11]: I don't think she's overwhelmed, but I think, I think we have more requests than people have taken up on. So I think there are a few people who have not gotten a coach yet.
[Robert Paine]: Yeah, I was going to ask if four coaches is enough.
[SPEAKER_11]: Well, it might be a little bit less than is enough so far.
[Robert Paine]: Right, OK. All right, let me go on, see if there's anything interesting. So this is just, I think we can skip some of these. I think I want to get into the guts of the actual heat pump. And Andy Winslow was actually on one of our, he's in Medford, I guess, so he was on one of our sessions last year. And we've seen this slide already. But it looks like if you have, for heat pump systems, you might have to have many splits, several of these types of outdoor units. And then the indoor floor unit associated with it. Let's see, there's also, Hot water heater options, closed air options, et cetera. And then there's some costs here. I don't know if these are typical. I don't know what you've been finding, Andy, about, I mean, Mark, about whether these are current costs.
[Unidentified]: I think these are low, but I think costs are going up.
[Robert Paine]: Right, but there's incentives because MassSave gives you up to $10,000. Yeah. And then the Inflation Reduction Act might give you up to $8,000 and who knows whether the new governor will add more to that. So we will see.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: What do you mean, Bob, by adding more to it? She would require us to pay more.
[Robert Paine]: Adding more incentives.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: Incentives, right. Yeah. And so on average, Mark, what would you estimate the cost of a system to be for a homeowner? Yeah. And I know that's a tough question. Obviously, each house is different, like you said before. Yeah.
[SPEAKER_11]: But I would guess, just a guess, that it's going to cost at least $25,000 a house before you get the rebates.
[Unidentified]: OK.
[Martha Ondras]: Can I jump in with a question for Mark? This is really great stuff. I am looking at, there are a number of things that kind of coincide. One is solar installation, the choices a homeowner has to make, whether to do a heat pump. Mass Save, you know, typically will give you a bunch of options for sealing and insulating your house. and replacing your appliances with more electric and more efficient ones. We have the option of joining the city's consolidated electricity consumer plan. And all of these things, you kind of have to look for each homeowner, as I'm sure you know better than I, each homeowner has to look at this whole constellation of choices. in order to come to the best energy as a consumer, the best energy reduction package that they can do. And so I'm just curious, are you as a coach advising them on all of that or? A little bit.
[SPEAKER_11]: So I will answer questions about most of these things, but I don't know a lot
[Martha Ondras]: So you're focusing on the heat pump, whether heat pumps are a good idea for them.
[SPEAKER_11]: I generally do ask them about putting up solar in conjunction with doing heat pumps saves you more money because the electricity used to heat pumps to run heat pumps is fairly expensive, especially after it went up this just this year.
[Robert Paine]: Okay, let's.
[Barry Ingber]: Mark, you're freezing. Are you having a connection issue?
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: Hello? You're coming through to me anyway, so.
[Robert Paine]: I think there was a temporary. It's a temporary thing, yeah, I agree. So here's some of the financial.
[SPEAKER_11]: So running the electricity to run heat pumps is still fairly expensive. And if you put PV on your roof, you can cover a lot of the costs through the PV.
[Unidentified]: So we generally do talk to people about that. Okay.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: But percentage wise, can you give an estimate for that?
[SPEAKER_11]: For what?
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: For like, how much of a PV would end up, on average, powering the heat pump? Well, I'm sorry, I'm being maybe too specific about, or rather asking for too many details. But, you know, I mean, it's hard to estimate these things. Each house is different.
[Martha Ondras]: Yeah, I had an estimate done recently on my house, and I could get approximately 70%. According to this company, I could expect to cover approximately 70% power, home power needs from the PV. Assuming with a lot of assumptions built into that, obviously.
[SPEAKER_11]: That includes putting in heat pumps?
[Martha Ondras]: No, no. I'm talking about solar, rooftop solar would cover 70% of my power costs.
[SPEAKER_11]: Your current power costs.
[Martha Ondras]: Right.
[SPEAKER_11]: Right.
[Martha Ondras]: Well, my current power need, which would not change, it's what the house requires.
[SPEAKER_11]: Well, no. So, I mean, if you put in heat pumps, your house is going to require more. That's right.
[Martha Ondras]: That's right. I missed that point.
[SPEAKER_11]: Yeah. And in general, I mean, every house is different, but generally heat pumps are going to require more than all your other electrical needs. except in the summer. Well, I mean, the heat pumps will do your air conditioning in the summer too.
[Robert Paine]: Because that's a big component, then it could maybe double the electrical needs.
[SPEAKER_11]: Well, it depends, but yeah.
[Robert Paine]: Okay, good to know.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: Yeah, I might just add in to that. Yes, it could double. And again, it comes down to how efficient is your envelope. So if you can take advantage of those air sealing and insulating opportunities as or before you do the heat pump, then you can reduce that energy load, but it'll still depend.
[Unidentified]: Gaston? Oh, yeah. Thank you.
[Gaston Fiore]: Quick question. I mean, I'm still, from the research that I've done, I mean, we're all kind of environment people here, so we have a special kind of motivation to do something like this, but assuming that that wasn't the case, I still don't see why I would convert to a heat pump to heat my house, even if my gas steam boiler went down, because it looks like an efficient way a gas boiler would probably be about 10K. It will be cheaper to run in terms of the, you know, gas versus electricity. It's cheaper to replace. I have all my radiators that work. I have pretty much no maintenance. So why would a regular resident, you know, switch to a heat pump for heating? It wasn't just, you know, trying to be environmentally conscious. And moreover, then, you know, you've got to, even after all the incentives, you still need money to do this. So how, yeah, so how do you sell this to the regular person? And this is not even considering, as I always bring up, landlords, which basically I see no incentives for them to, you know, do anything related to the heating that they offer in their return properties. So do you do anything trying to convince people why they should do this?
[SPEAKER_11]: Well, we don't really try to convince people to do it because we're not trying to do that. But I mean, in general, heat pumps are cheaper than using oil heat. and they're cheaper than using propane and they're cheaper than using old fashioned electric heaters, resistance heaters. So if you've got any of those systems in your house, then it's cheaper to put in heat pumps, right? Although, you know, that makes those numbers. Well, I think I just ran those numbers and they're still true at the moment, even with the increases in electrical and gas. costs. Um, if you've got natural gas or gas, um, it's going to be cheaper to use gas, at least for the moment. But over time, um, gas price are going to go up and probably over time, the cost of electricity is going to go down. Um,
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: But Mark, why would the cost of electricity go down? I mean, I have not in my entire 63 years experienced a lower electricity bill. I mean, I'm guessing that the I would have to transit to another universe before I see that. So is that something that you can imagine happening in the future, gas or rather electricity prices coming down? I mean, it went up 60% literally here. Right.
[SPEAKER_11]: Well, so remember that this year is a very unusual year, and I'm sure they're going to come down from this year. Because a lot of what's going on this year is that Europe is consuming a lot of the US's gas because of the war in Ukraine. And that's probably going to change somewhat. Yeah, I guess you're right. I don't have a reason to claim that the cost of electricity is going to come down. besides the cost of it coming down, if you insulate your house well and air seal your house so that you don't use that much heat, then the increased costs from electricity may not be that much. And we can do those calculations for people. So it may not be that much more. And frankly, Gaston, most of the people who want to do this are doing it in order to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: So are you saying education is a big part of it? And getting folks to understand the calamity we're facing is probably
[SPEAKER_11]: Yeah, well, we're not really we're it's as T pump coaches, we're not trying to show that education, of course, people come to us having understood it already. Sure. But people are trying to get more information about how they do it and what the risks are, and what the costs will be.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_11]: And we can help them figure that out. So I mean, just to give you an example of the cost.
[Unidentified]: So I have one
[SPEAKER_11]: client who has gas heat and their boiler is over 30 years old. So they are going to have to replace it sometime. And for whatever reasons that I don't quite understand, their heating costs are fairly low currently. They're only spending like last year and they'll go up this year. you only spent like $1,000 a year on heat.
[Gaston Fiore]: Yeah, that's my case. So my wallet is even older than that. And I probably spent less than $1,000. I mean, granted, I keep my house at 55. But yeah, I mean, I pay almost nothing in heat. Right. So please keep going because I'm very interested. Right.
[SPEAKER_11]: So if you suppose that switching to heat pumps will make your costs go up by 30%, which is a reasonable approximation. That means your heating bills are only going to go up by $300 a year. And for a lot of people, not everybody, of course, but for a lot of people, that's a cost that they're willing to pay. And then there's another thing, which is a lot of people want to put in air conditioning. And a lot of people want to get rid of their window air conditioners. And they're tired of putting them in and taking them out every year. So if you're thinking about the initial cost of putting in the heat pumps, a lot of people are considering both the cost of the heating equipment and the cost of putting in central air. And it replaces both of them.
[Robert Paine]: Okay. Any other questions for Mark before we transition to another item in the agenda then?
[Barry Ingber]: I have a different type of question, which is just the sense that, and I don't think that heat pumps are a bad idea. I mean, I've considered it. I don't think it's economic for me, but, I don't think they're a bad idea, but I do think that in some way they're putting the cart before the horse or the cart before the horses, the horses being tightening the building envelope and decarbonizing the grid. Because And people would rather, if they can afford it, buy themselves a sexy toy than tighten up their house, which is, you know, there's just no cachet there or trying to deal with the difficult political issue of trying to force the utilities to more rapidly increase the renewable portfolio standard. And until we do that, the heat pumps are consuming gas and oil-produced electricity. And I think that we've got to put the horses in front of the cart.
[SPEAKER_11]: I respond to that.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: Oh, I do want to just throw in I agree completely with Barry, I would just note. There may be less electric less gas use. If it is centrally produced, not not guaranteed but that is a possibility. Sorry.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: You mean as opposed to.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: Consumed in each house, no, as opposed to delivery to each house along the way, and the gas lines to each house, et cetera.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: Right, so if it's centrally produced and there'd be a central heater, is that what you're looking for?
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: No, centrally produced electricity as opposed to heating via fossil fuel in each house.
[Barry Ingber]: but you also get transmission and distribution losses, but I would like to hear.
[SPEAKER_11]: Barry, let me respond to that. One is that according to Mass Save, you have to make your house efficient before they will let you get rebates. So you have to get an audit, you have to put in insulation, and you have to tighten up your home. and you can't get the rebate until you've done that. So they are putting the horse before the cart there. One of the two horses, yeah. And secondly, as far as the grid, so right now the grid is somewhat cleaner than using just gas because the grid has some solar in it, it has some wind in it, and frankly, it's got some nukes in it. So if you, depends whether you like nukes or not, but the grid is somewhat cleaner than using just gas directly right now. And because the RPS is going up every year, the grid is going to get cleaner year by year. It's just going to. And so we're kind of, I think we're trying to do both sides at once. So cleaning up the grid is cleaning up the supply of fuel. putting in heat pumps is cleaning up the demand, right? And you need to do both things at the same time. And particularly for heat pumps, it's important to do it now because everybody who's trying to replace their heat pump, who's trying to replace their heating system currently, if they've got a 25, 30 year old or older system, Well, if they put in that system now, they're likely to still have it in 2050, right? So we need to get people to switch into heat pumps when they're switching, when they're putting in new heating systems currently. So we're not arguing necessarily that it makes sense for everybody to do it now, if they've got a relatively new gas system, but if you got one that's old, then it may make sense to do it.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: So more of a replacement and inclusion in new buildings and stuff.
[SPEAKER_11]: Yeah, and a lot of people have old gas furnaces or gas boilers.
[Robert Paine]: Yes, I do. I'm done with my presentation. If anyone has any more questions for Mark.
[Gaston Fiore]: I just have two very quick comments. So the first one is that even though I agree with everything that Luke and Marta had said in terms of getting rid of fossil fuels, the pilot to get rid of fossil fuels for new construction. To me, it's a no brainer that that's where we should be pushing this it's for you know either hold renovations or new houses to me like I don't see how a lab or an industry is different, but for residential or even commercial I don't see why we should have new residential and commercial properties that are not fully electric number one. And number two, that I would like to see, so this goes into the next section, session two that we're going to cover, but it will be interesting to see because I'm still dubious, you know, so if I replace all of my system with a heat pump, what do I do with my radiator? What do I do with all the pipes and stuff that, you know, feed the radiator? What do I do with all of that? I would have to move out. break all the walls, get rid of all of that, et cetera. So in addition to it being a lot of money, it's like a big project. So I'm also curious for the future, not right now, to discuss at which point does it become sort of better to maybe, you know, just leave the house how it is and then, you know, maybe sell it and then move to a new one that is like, you know, passive sort of thing, new construction. But also like, you know, how expensive is it, for example, a retrofit, a deep energy retrofit, as opposed to just like, you know, knocking down the house and building it from scratch. So for future discussion, I will be waiting to see Luke or someone that knows about this to sort of address this. But this was extremely interesting. So thank you so much, Mark and Bob for presenting. I really appreciate it.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: Absolutely. Terrific presentation. Thank you very much, Bob. Thanks so much, Mark, for chiming in and giving us details about that. And I completely agree with Gaston. There is already existing infrastructure that you have to refurbish or get rid of completely in order to install the new stuff. what information isn't there is, in my mind anyway, is how you can save energy with your old shitty system that you have in place. Like, you know, there's one thing that came to my mind when I moved into this house was, well, it might be a good idea to clean the radiators so that water actually goes into the fanning sections. And that would be a lot more efficient. I mean, I go around and I have one right here with a little key opening up the air thing for the radiators so that air pops out. And I hope that water would replace that air. Things like that. don't really configure in the energy efficiency kind of dialogue and discourse we have. So I applaud Gaston for bringing that up. Very, very important topic. Anyway, if there's no other questions about this, I'd like to move on to the next item on the agenda, which is a series of questions that I pose to the committee for consideration. And I put them out. I'm sorry, who's this?
[Barry Ingber]: Mark, thank you for joining us.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: Yeah. Oh, Mark, thank you so much. I appreciate it so much. Yeah. Thank you. I'm going to sign off. Thank you. Thanks again. Appreciate you coming. Right. So, the, the questions I wanted to put forth was sort of for general consideration with the committee, and I'd start off by saying it that, you know, I, When I joined, I didn't know what the operational bandwidth was, what we were essentially tasked to do for the city, were we tasked to do anything for the city, or are we just sort of a you know, ancillary kind of arm of the resiliency and energy considerations of the city. So I guess the first question I want to pose to everyone is what is the operational bandwidth of our committee? And I don't want to drag this on too long because if you have anything to say about it now, please do. But if you need time to think about this, by all means do it. This doesn't need to be a once and done kind of discussion. So I would appreciate any kind of comment starting with that question. So I'd say it again, it's what is the operational bandwidth of our committee?
[Barry Ingber]: I think that the. only requirement of our committee is to plan the Harvest Your Energy Festival, but that we have a lot of other options for things we can and do, in fact do. That Alicia comes to us with projects, that we come up with projects, we can initiate legislative efforts, we can support legislative efforts that come up from the community or from elsewhere. or from city council or from the administration. We take positions on policy. We are empowered to do that, either in support of the administration or in opposition to the administration, as uncomfortable as that can get. We have that ability, we have that power, and we have done those things. Our only requirement is to harvest your energy festival.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: Okay. So, so that, that's all, um, sort of goal to sort of achieve at the, at the, at, at least for that year, the minimum goal that we need to achieve. You think, right.
[Robert Paine]: This Bob, we do have a mission statement, which is on all of our agenda items. And we did come up with that and we could always reconsider that, but We are trying to promote, I'm going to paraphrase, promoting policies and actions that make Medford more sustainable, encourage resource conservation, improve climate resiliency, and includes the use of renewables. So that's sort of a overall arching statement, but we're supposed to be, we exist at the request of the mayor or something, it was Mayor McGlynn who actually established it. And we continue to exist. The mayor can direct us, but most mayors do not as to what we should concentrate on. And it would be nice to engage the mayor at some point to see what she would like us to do. But usually we just tell her what we think we ought to do through Alicia.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: Sure, sure. Do you think that's something we can broach in the new year? Do you think it's something we should strive to do and sort of engage the mayor more directly?
[Robert Paine]: It would be nice to be able to meet at least once a year with the mayor, at least for half an hour, and that's hard to do. Sure.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: Yeah, if I may jump in on that. We have in the past put together a list of our goals after a meeting like this in which we established goals for the year and presented that to the mayor and with that also asked for her input and any priorities that she may have. We did that for Mayor Burke, and I think we did also do that as Mayor Lungo-Koehn came into office. And I do think it's a good idea to kind of just formally put out something that says this is where we think we should be going. And, you know, we're open to your additional comments or suggestions.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: So Luke, I thought if I or somebody on the committee sort of formulated a goal or objectives for the year, could we put that out for comments to the members and have some input on that? And perhaps we could discuss it at the next meeting. Is that something that folks can agree on?
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: And I would just note that I'm looking right now for it, but I know we have that previous list of what we've previously put together. Our goals are going to clearly be different this year, but just as maybe a starting point, I can forward what we've done in the past. But one of your, so that's actually the second bullet in terms of what we might want to focus on, but you also are asking about bandwidths. And I see that more as what is the capacity of our, the limits of our capability. And I will note that in previous years, we've tried to take on a lot more than we can chew. And, you know, sometimes we've had multiple subcommittees. Obviously, you've been part of that. And sometimes those can be effective. And sometimes they like I was on three different subcommittees, and only one of them got anything done, I have to admit, I wasn't able to keep up with all the requirements. So I do think, you know, that comes down to us as members, what we can, what we can actually put volunteer time into. And each of us really only has a relatively limited amount of time each month to
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: Yeah, no, no, that's that's perfectly understandable and perfectly cogent remark. I, I would want to ask everyone, if, if, like, do we feel that our concerns are sort of covered by the Medford Resiliency Plan. And like I said in the bullet point, that's number three in the bullet points, how do we negotiate city or navigate city policy, and how do we jive that with individual members' concerns and, you know, opinions. And again, this is a complex question. And I assume each of you have your own particular concerns, but I think that we have some sort of thought process with this question in mind going forward. I think it may sort of align us a little bit better in terms of what we do. And I'm just going to continue on and say that on a fourth point, which for me is like, how does this committee engage with the broader public? Because we can sit here. And we can discuss a lot of nice stuff. Like the presentation Bob made was absolutely great. And having Mark's input there was just tremendous. And it was really a very, very informative discussion we had, at least in my mind. And I think that some of that needs to be you know, disseminated a bit better, if that sort of resonates with people. I'm putting that out as a question. Does that configure with everyone?
[Robert Paine]: Right. The fact that we have recorded meetings makes it easy for anyone to say, well, go from minute X to minute Y at this meeting, you're going to find out everything you might've missed. Yes, of course. And so remote meetings do have their advantages.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: Absolutely they do.
[Robert Paine]: And they're recorded.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: Sure, sure. But I would like to see that if there is some feasibility in terms of getting these informational sessions sort of more publicized, you know, to get them out so that folks can know about Arlington's attempts to electrify things, how those bleed in or can feed into Medford's attempts to do stuff, how we can get folks engaged and get that information out in a more solid way, in a more consolidated way, maybe that's a better term to use.
[Barry Ingber]: You've brought up a lot, a wide range of questions there. I kind of want to respond to a bunch of it. One is that as politically difficult and fraught as it can be, we are not bound by city policy. We are an independent committee and we can make independent decisions. Now, you know, there's a point at which that might be unwise, there's a point at which that might be difficult. But we have that, we are empowered to do that. We aren't bound in any way.
[Gaston Fiore]: Question, Barry, can I ask you a question on that? Yeah. Yeah. So So, I heard Alicia mentioning, you know, at least a couple of times, the difference between our committee and an independent organization like for example just met for work met for. what are the differences between those two cases? And then are we as independent as, for example, what Medford or just Medford is?
[Barry Ingber]: No, because those are non-governmental. We are governmental, but we are, even as an ad hoc committee, we are still an independent, autonomously functioning group of people. and we are empowered to make our own decisions and take our own positions. Walt Medford, of course, can do that too, but we have to operate within the constraints of state and city law, whereas Walk Medford only has to work within the constraints of IRS charitable organization laws. So we're subject to open meeting law. Walk Medford is not, for instance. And the other thing that Paul brought up, which I think is really good, is how Because I think that one of the great things that Bob did over his tenure as president was. we got in place like a series of really good presentations, outside presenters, really good stuff. I mean, we had Matt Barlow presenting from an international perspective on climate policy and impacts. I mean, and we did have some, members of the public there. And we did a bunch of publicity, but we didn't have very many, you know, it wasn't a failure, but it wasn't a success either. You know, how do we get And how do we even know if we've gotten the word out? Because we have no idea how many people are watching the recordings afterwards. We have no idea. It could be thousands. It could be two. We wouldn't know the difference. And, you know, I mean, I'm not sure that, I mean, we're setting up a goal that we don't, can't have any way of measuring that I can imagine. I would ask everyone to possibly consider ways to measure that.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: So we can, I would, I would put this as a recurring item on the agendas, going forward, if that's acceptable to folks to see how we can measure that how we can. have some metrics on how we do in terms of disseminating the information, how we get this information out to the public so that they can make decisions on their own, and perhaps even think about ways of like what other cities have done to, like we just talked about Arlington, thanks so much, Bob, for this, to, you know, what they've done, what they're going through, and perhaps give examples of what they've done, and maybe those can inform us in future meetings about how we can better that sort of information Is that kind of an acceptable kind of approach to everyone?
[Robert Paine]: Yeah, and Alicia might have some input too when she is available. Yeah, absolutely.
[Unidentified]: I wish she was here.
[Robert Paine]: She might have some overarching knowledge as well. Does anyone care what the Medford Energy and Environment Committee does? Does anyone know who they are?
[Gaston Fiore]: Well, in terms of views, the Medfar community media should be able to provide us with how many people are viewing our recordings or not. I guess it's almost no one. But yeah, we should request the data.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: Yeah, because I don't want these to be a a waste of, you know, we're a bunch of intelligent people. It's just, you know, having a meeting for two hours a month and not having anyone benefit from it is a bit of a waste in my mind anyway. So I would sincerely hope that we could come up with some way to get this to a broader audience. If that's, yeah, if that's something.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: If I can just weigh in, I do think that Barry hit on a few very key items. Bob did a fantastic job of drawing in pertinent experts on issues that people in Medford wanted to know. And so we had good attendance on the Zoom And I, for one, you know, forwarded the link to other people. I don't know who who watched it, but I presumably there there can be data analytics on, you know, who's clicking to watch those things. So we can at least know that how important it is. I don't know. But I think we will know in part based on attendance. And for instance, when we have a good Harvest Your Energy Festival, we know that we've at least connected with a lot of people and that they're engaged and interested. You know, have they learned? Have they gotten everything that we have to tell them? Probably not. But I mean, I do think that some of the impacts that we've had and that can't we can have again as Barry pointed out are legislative you know so it might not be so much that it is noticed in you know during a meeting but we can impact the way city council is thinking about a particular bill or we can we can we can have those significant impacts by by participating in those legislative efforts as well.
[Barry Ingber]: Sure, sure. And we can initiate legislative efforts like the solar roof bill.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: Good, yeah, good, yeah. OK, I'm satisfied with this session.
[Gaston Fiore]: Paul, so can we create both a wish list, sort of what Luke was mentioning, and once we have the wish list, then we should probably go through it and convert the wish list into a list and maybe leave the wish list as well for the future, but to try to avoid sort of you know, then tackle too many things and then we don't end up achieving anything at the result.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: Okay, sounds good. Excellent. We have two minutes before adjournment. Any other questions, any other remarks, concerns?
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: I will just note that I've been looking through my files. I can find the letter to Mayor Lungo-Koehn just introducing our committee. I don't see our particular goal list in that, but some accomplishments are listed there. I will forward that, and I need to go through my emails to see if I can find the goal document that I was referring to before, because it's not in my files.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: So please chime in. I would appreciate input from everyone, if you can. And thanks so much, Luke, for doing what you're going to do. And Barry, so much for your time.
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: Thank you. I just wanted to chime in very quickly that I did. I messaged Alicia just to see if she had ideas about whether in the past there had been efforts to do some kind of self evaluation or measuring of impact. And she said not that she was aware of in the history of the committee, but that she recommends doing that on kind of like a project by project basis to start with kind of like specific initiatives that you're doing and kind of starting. To do assessment from there, but she wasn't aware of any previous kind of large scale efforts. I don't know if that's helpful, but just wanted to throw that out there.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: Okay, thank you. Yeah, good. Okay, I'm going to put out a motion to adjourn.
[SPEAKER_09]: And not make a motion. We don't have any more people can ask for a motion, but I'm going to ask a motion.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: I'm sorry I told you I'm. So, so I appreciate your help and Bob and Barry thanks for laughing at me so that's good. It was a great first effort.
[Robert Paine]: That's right. Great. Great job, Paul.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: Excellent. Good. So I wasn't a total embarrassment. I'm glad about that. So excellent. And so what do we do now?
[Barry Ingber]: I'll move to adjourn.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: There you go. I'll second. Let's put this to a vote, Luke. Yes.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: Yes. I don't know if we can actually make a vote.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: There we go. We don't have enough quorum.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: I'm sorry, we have to continue for the rest of the month.
[Barry Ingber]: I'm not sure. There's something to look up in Robert's rules. I was once taught, that once you have a quorum, once a quorum is established, that it holds through the meeting.
[SPEAKER_09]: Even if you lose members?
[Barry Ingber]: Those members. I also was taught, and we can look for this in Robert's Rules, that a motion to adjourn does not need a second. Oh, there we go. Oh my God. But I haven't read Robert's Rules, so these might not be true.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: So we'll make it up as we go along. So that's good. Thank you so much, Barry. Thanks, everyone. Have a wonderful evening. Thanks again. And thanks for your patience with me. Thank you. Bye bye.