[Robert Paine]: This is Bob Payne, I'm filling in for Paul Taslimi as chair of the committee tonight, because Paul has had a personal tragedy. His house had a major fire last night and he's obviously overwhelmed with things to have to do. This meeting is being held virtually. There was a bill that was passed and signed on March 30th that extends the virtual meeting, open meeting possibilities for another two years. So we are going to continue to have virtual meetings except for maybe a summer meeting. So we'll talk about that later on. I'm going to do a roll call of members. By the way, the minutes, I mean, the agenda for this meeting had several members missing, and I will try to fill them in. Lily, we're going to have to add to the committee members, Luke McNeely, Barry Inger, John Rogers, Jessica Parks, and Benji Hiller. They were left off of the list. So we have a total of 13 members, needing seven to have a quorum. So I'm going to call the roll in whatever order I can figure it out. So Loretta, you are present?
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Yes, I'm here.
[Robert Paine]: Kathleen? Here. Thank you. And Bob Payne, I'm here. Paul is absent, unless he pops in somehow. Martha Andres, have you joined? I don't think I've seen her. All right, let's do Barry Ingber.
[Barry Ingber]: Here.
[Robert Paine]: OK, and John Rogers, have you joined? I don't think so. Jessica Parker said she couldn't. Benji Hiller, you are here. I'm here. OK, and then the new member is Dan Peppo.
[MCM00001758_SPEAKER_12]: Yep, I'm here.
[Robert Paine]: Lois Grossman. Here. Sarah, I'm sorry, your last name is pronounced how?
[MCM00000770_SPEAKER_02]: I go by Sarah Singh.
[Robert Paine]: Sarah Singh, okay, thank you. And you're here too, okay. Thank you for all your attendance. We have some guests. Of course, Alicia Hunt is here as basically the leader of the, it's actually the development, but it's energy and environment, Medford Energy and Environment. Go ahead.
[Alicia Hunt]: Technically, I am staff to the committee, although I've delegated a lot of that work this year to Lily Worth, a graduate student in my office. The office's current title is Planning, Development, and Sustainability.
[Robert Paine]: Thank you.
[Alicia Hunt]: And thank you to Lily, who's actually taking the minutes and started the meeting, et cetera.
[Robert Paine]: Great. OK. Let's see. Just acknowledging guests, I see. There's a Jill Feldman. And could you just introduce yourself as your interest in this meeting?
[MCM00001758_SPEAKER_12]: Sure, I'm with Mothers Out Front, which is a state and national organization that's interested in the environment. And Medford is trying to start a chapter and we're interested in all things Medford and environment.
[Robert Paine]: That's right, we're going to have a, you're going to present in the next few minutes. Thanks. And then we have Anne Lewis also with Mothers Out Front.
[Laura Jasinski]: Also with Mothers Out Front.
[Robert Paine]: And Christina, is it Elaine?
[SPEAKER_05]: Correct. Hi, everyone. Also with Mothers Out Front.
[Robert Paine]: Okay, great. I think those are all the guests that I can see at this point. Thank you very much for that we could, since that's the next agenda, we could just start with that and then go and finish up with our administrative updates after the mothers out front presentation, if you're ready. We'll take it away.
[SPEAKER_05]: Great. Hi, everyone. Good evening. It's nice to be here with you all. My name is Christina Elaine, and I'm going to give just a very brief I think introduction and presentation with a small P of Mothers Out Front and what we're doing in Medford. Paul asked me or invited us to give an introduction. So I'm sorry he can't be here, but we're happy to be here with you and to kind of introduce ourselves and explain what we're how we're getting started in Medford. So I'll just, as you know, I have two colleagues, if you will, Jill and Anne, who are on the line, who just introduced themselves. So they may add on at the end, if there's anything I missed. I'll just start out introducing myself. I'm Christina Elaine. I'm a Medford resident since 2020. I'm a longtime, or I mean, my whole life, Massachusetts resident. And I currently work as a project manager in biotech and previously in global health. I know nothing or very little about matters of, you know, the climate from a technical perspective of climate change. And I say that because I think that's maybe an important thing to know about Mothers Out Front is that it's an organization that is, you know, kind of encompassing and welcoming everyone. You know, I think really, if I can put it this way from like, almost like the moral perspective of, you know, we really want to come together to take action that will be good for our children, for all the children, everyone's children. So I'm here as a Medford resident and as a new sort of volunteer with Mothers Out Front. I became connected with the organization in early 2022. I believe the organization has existed for about 10 years, however. So there's kind of a long history already in track record of Mothers Out Front working at national, state, and local levels in local municipalities, really making a difference. The way that they do this is primarily through grassroots organizing. I just would like to read to you a few things from their website that I think really resonate with me about what the organization is all about. So it's a nonprofit organization that was founded on the conviction that there's no more powerful force for change than mothers that are mobilizing to protect their children. So we are united in our mission and our urgency to come together for climate and racial and social justice. Through grassroots organizing, we seek to move leaders, to ensure a healthy environment for all of our children. We are an inclusive movement where our mother's voices are front and center. We believe that we have impact because we have a strong community and that's built on kindness, mutual respect, and also on collaboration. And in all we do, we keep our mission of a livable climate for all children at the center of our work. Lastly, we focus resources in communities suffering injustice from racism, fossil fuels, and climate change. So that's kind of some overarching description of how Mothers Out Front conceives itself. There are activities and groups that are at national level, state level, and I think at least 10 states, and then in many municipalities here in Massachusetts. So just to maybe switch gears from Mothers Out Front in general to the Medford group. Mothers Out Front has not had a chapter in Medford, but we are seeking to start one and have started some work to form one. We came together as a small group at the end of 2022, last year, around the event of a pumpkin smash. which is an event to raise awareness of composting and how that can have a benefit and play a role in climate action. And also at the same time, promote healthy soils and many activities that extend from that. So this event was convened on November 5th in collaboration with the West Medford Community Center with Lisa Crossman there to host the Pumpkin Smash. And that took place on November 5 and we convened a small group of volunteers here in Medford who were interested in helping to organize that worked with the West Medford Community Center, and we were able to come together on November 5 to smash a lot of pumpkins. in various fun, family-friendly, destructive ways. We were able to record 59 participants who attended from the community. We counted 110 pumpkins that were smashed in this activity over the course of about two and a half hours, and that generated 1500 pounds of compostable material, which was hauled away by our partner Garbage to Gardens, who may be familiar to you in Medford, as a curbside composting service provider. And we also had the support of 30 youth volunteers as well, who helped to manage the different tools that were being used to smash these pumpkins. We also were, you know, very grateful and excited to see Mayor Lungo Cohn attend, as well as Medford City Council member Richard Caraviello. So now in 2023, there's a kind of a core group of us who came together for that pumpkin smash who are interested in continuing in Medford and to build and grow our movement. We're very excited and actively seeking, you know, to make connections in the quite extensive kind of ecosystem of practitioners in Medford, including you know I'm very much led by the city, working on energy and the environment. And we are likely to continue working with the West Medford Community Center who are very interested in doing another pumpkin smash they saw a lot of benefits to raising the visibility and profile of the West Medford Community Center at that time through this activity and we see a lot of potential to continue working together and to likely continue to raise awareness of composting, but perhaps to further our focus on activities that are related to that, which haven't been defined yet, but certainly could include ways that composting could be used, such as in gardening or other kinds of planting, but also extending to food security as well. So we are just kind of getting started. We're a nascent group. We are Working closely with West Medford Community Center, but looking to to connect with others in Medford to partner, where we might have mutual interests or complimentary capabilities. The last thing I wanted to tell you is that just the small group of us who've come together, when we talk about kind of what brings us to this work, some of the things that we have in common that have been shared are our commitment to taking concrete action for climate, for climate action, also working locally, very locally here in Medford specifically, and also in finding and building community while we're doing that. So to me, this is kind of the essence of Mothers Out Front and the power of the grassroots organizing. And I think I'll stop there. Those are some of the main things that I wanted to tell you, but I would invite my colleagues, Jill and Ann, to add on to this presentation if they would like to add anything.
[Unidentified]: I think you covered it pretty well.
[MCM00001758_SPEAKER_12]: I'm sorry, go ahead, Ann.
[Laura Jasinski]: No, I was going to say, I think you covered it pretty well. I don't have anything specific to add. I don't know if you do, Jill, too.
[MCM00001758_SPEAKER_12]: No, it was great.
[SPEAKER_05]: I guess the last thing I'll say is we just, I think I did say this, but I'll underscore that we look forward to meeting, I think all of you, this is our first introduction here and my first opportunity attending this meeting. So I'm excited to stay on and listen and hope that we can continue any conversation and meet further after this as well.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Hey, this is Loretta. Thank you for attending. Last year, I had invited you to the city for our annual Harvester Energy Festival. And I think at the last minute, I didn't get to meet you. But if you could put your email address in the chat, I can make sure that you get an invitation for the festival this year. That's Saturday, October 14th.
[SPEAKER_05]: That would be great. I'd be happy to do that. We were fortunate enough to be able to participate in that last year. So we were able to, yeah, to just enjoy that tremendous event and really get, to me, I was really struck by the number of groups and sort of, you know, practitioners in this space, which was fantastic to see. So, yeah, we're really excited to participate in that again.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Good, so if you could save the day, it'd be great to have you back. I don't remember, I thought that, the last minute you didn't come, but it's been a while. So good to see you again.
[Lois Grossman]: So you had a table?
[SPEAKER_05]: Yes.
[Lois Grossman]: Will you be advertising the pumpkin smashing?
[SPEAKER_05]: Yes.
[Lois Grossman]: Because I think you might get a lot of people signing up. How about Circle the Square? Will you be coming to that?
[SPEAKER_05]: I think that is very much of interest, perhaps. That may be our next step is I think we're planning to convene some more planning for the year in the next few weeks. But we are interested in identifying events where we can table and just meet and chat with more members of the community. I think we're very interested in understanding what the community members concerns are and interests are as it relates to these topics, especially of composting, food security and things to do with climate, which may be familiar. I'm sure everybody has perhaps a view on that, but that's some information that I think will be really helpful to us also to use those opportunities to chat with people. So we will be absolutely looking for those events and there are many, so the calendar may fill up fast.
[Laura Jasinski]: We have a slot at the farmer's market, I think, this fall, maybe September. I can't remember the exact date, but that was a spot that we identified.
[MCM00001758_SPEAKER_12]: Let me just add that mothers out front, the chapters in Massachusetts have been very active in promoting the switch from the use of gas to electricity and residential use. And so you may have heard about that project, that effort that's been going on for several years. And since this is a new group just starting, we're sort of figuring out where we wanna put our energy. So, yeah.
[SPEAKER_05]: And ensuring, just to add on to what Jill was just saying, ensuring that it's meeting a need and an interest here in Medford in the community. Which is where some of our collaboration with West Medford Community Center, and hopefully with other partners as well, comes in to play a very important role.
[Alicia Hunt]: Thank you for coming. Um, I've heard of mothers out front before, obviously over the years working in the field. I'm curious if you are doing things and forgive me if you said this and I just didn't process it as you were going through. Are you guys doing, in Medford, regular meetings? And do you have an email list? And do you want people to be signing up to joining? Like, how are you, like, are you like, oh, we want people to commit, or we just, we're creating a list and just getting as many people on it? Like, what's, different groups do this different ways. I was curious how you guys are, what's your approach and your approach here in Medford?
[SPEAKER_05]: That's a great question. I would say that our status is we're newly forming, and we recently, so to answer your question directly, we don't yet have an email list. Mothers Out Front does have a general email list, and I believe that there are many members of Medford who are already connected, perhaps at the state level, to Mothers Out Front because That's certainly a way in and there's a lot to become involved in. There is a database that exists, some of which constitutes Medford residents. We would like to add to that. However, because we're so newly formed, barely formed in some ways, we haven't started to make a big recruiting push. We're at the stage, I would say, just in my view of, you know, defining what we want to do. And one of our next steps is going to be reconnecting with West Medford Community Center and kind of fleshing that out a little bit further for the year, which I think will then make more of a, I'm not even sure if recruiting is the right word, but an opportunity to try to engage people with some activities that might be laid out where we can kind of work together on those. So I think we're a little bit early from the kind of trying to attract more people stage, but that is something that we probably will be planning to do. And certainly that would be the long-term plan would be to engage as many people as we can who who would like to work together in an inclusive way on some of these topics. But we haven't started doing that kind of fully in earnest yet here in Medford because we've been still formulating our plans, if you will. And, you know, I understand perhaps that, you know, some people may prefer to do actions as opposed to come to meetings and kind of talk about like what the plans could be. So, but we do hope to be getting to that stage. I think, you know, if within this year, even in the next, you know, few months with some plans, certainly that would involve, you know, planning a bigger and better pumpkin smash and maybe some related activities to really kind of further, you know, raise awareness about composting, et cetera. So hopefully that will get started soon, but we're just at an early phase, if that makes sense.
[Alicia Hunt]: It does, it does. through my life been involved in the starting up of different organizations. So I get it. I will offer and share. So this group can be utilized as a recruiting tool too to get the word out because this is a public group body and its meetings, I will remind everybody, are on TV, usually live. Sometimes they get replayed if they're recorded for some reason. Also, Lois and I have been managing for many years an email list called Go Green Medford, and it's got about 110 people on it. The idea is we just push out green things of interest to the community, and another resident, Ken Kraus, will often just send things of interest there. For example, he always sends the agenda for this meeting to that email list every month without fail. And so we do have, I mean, that's not a ton of people, but it is a little start. There's also in Medford relatively active is 350 Mystic Valley, which is a chapter of the 350 Massachusetts. Honestly, I think Barry could speak to it better than I can, but they have regular meetings and an email list as well. and tend to, if I remember correctly, be more on energy, building energy type topics is what I tend to see them. I'm on the email list, but I don't participate in the meetings or whatever. It's more informational for me. off the top of my head, those are the ones that really jump out. Plus we have a lot of niche groups, right? So there's Friends of the Medford Community Gardens, Friends of the Mystic River, Friends of the Fells is a very large organization. But there are a bunch of these sort of small organizations that are around. And I think there's absolutely need for more. new energy and fresh energy in a number in these areas. And I mostly share that as places that you might find synergies and people who might want, be interested in connecting and overlapping interests.
[SPEAKER_05]: I really appreciate that, Alicia. That's really helpful. Perhaps at a future point, well, I just took notes on all of those suggestions. And I think that would be great to follow up to your point about perhaps how to, when we're ready to, you know, be kind of recruiting more people, I think those suggestions are really helpful. And we should circle back to this group with an update on how to do that when we're ready to do that. So that's something I would like to commit to. And yeah, in addition, I think something that's something we'd like to offer in turn, as well as if there are ways that to synergize with us where we can help what is occurring in this meeting or by the representatives, you know, from other organizations, including the city of Medford, I think that's something that we're very interested in, as our abilities, you know, align with that. But I really appreciate those that kind of forward thinking suggestion.
[Alicia Hunt]: And I'm just going to check. So I now have a bunch of staff who do things I asked them where that it had been my, we have an e, a web page called go green Medford go green Medford.org is actually a function of the city and it's run out of my office. And I had talked with one of the staff, yes, it is here, about creating a page that lists green community groups in Medford. So if you were to go to gogreenmedford.org and undertake action on the menus, the bottom list is community groups. And really, this was just a way to have a list of who they are. So if it won at the point that you would like to be added. Let us know we'll add you but plus this is also a resource for you to see what else is going on in Medford like I didn't think of trees Medford but there, and walk Medford those are both very active groups here in the city right now. So, so just let us know.
[Robert Paine]: Do any other committee members have any questions for mothers. I'll just say we're going to have further in the agenda tonight, some discussion on our committee priorities for this year. And that might be some further insights as to how we can have synergies. We are certainly following the Massachusetts climate law implementation, which is going to be benefiting all of our groups and the initiatives for combating climate change. So that's something we are always reporting on updates for. So that's also of interest, I think, to all our groups. Okay, that is all. Why don't we proceed to the rest of the... Bob, if I may? Oh, yeah, sorry.
[Barry Ingber]: Christina and company, I wonder if you have an ask for us. Is there something that we can do for you?
[MCM00001758_SPEAKER_12]: Well, I kind of think you already have. I mean, the information that you shared is just super valuable. Some of it we were aware of, but it's really great to have that validated. Yes, that's an important group to connect with. And it also feels to me like you kind of have our back. So the door's kind of open for us if we wanted to reach out to you again. So that's all, as far as I'm concerned, that's all great.
[SPEAKER_05]: I agree. I think it would be perhaps great to return to this forum at a future point with an update. And at that time, we may have more concrete asks that we could put forward as we prepare for what likely will be another fall pumpkin smash and related activities. But for now, this has been a very positive introduction and we appreciate the space.
[MCM00001758_SPEAKER_12]: Can I just throw in one other quick thing, which is that when we were planning the Pumpkin Smash last fall, we collected all the pumpkins that had been part of the, what's it called, the float? The Halloween Fest. Yes. So we did a favor to the city by collecting all those pumpkins, because we needed more pumpkins to give to people at the event.
[Robert Paine]: Okay, any other comments? Thank you very much. Let's see, in the interim, we have had two committee members join the meeting, Luke McNeely and John Rogers. Anybody else?
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: Sorry for being late.
[Robert Paine]: Okay, well, we went through part of, we haven't had a vote yet, but we will soon. We do have, you may have gotten the, I forwarded, Maybe these were forwarded days ago, but the minutes from the April 12th meeting. And maybe, let me see if I can possibly share my screen and see if we can actually just look at. Here we are, okay. This is basically the, Lily just sent me this. And I'm just going to briefly review for those who were present. And Loretta had actually provided some edits. You may recall that Rocco Sherry spoke about how the high school could interact with our committee. I don't think I've seen any. high school members or any at this meeting, but they're always welcome to join. Maybe they don't get the agenda. So I want to make sure Rocco gets it. So we may have to make sure we have him on our mailing list. So then we had, after that, we introduced new members. which we, you know, Alicia, we basically made them officially new members last month, but do you have any comments on how that process works?
[Alicia Hunt]: So typically people apply to be members and then staff from my office follow up with potential applicants. and then make some recommendations to the mayor and then work with the mayor and the mayor's office to get formal appointment letters for new members. And this round, I just, to be clear, I'm in the process of hiring six new full-time staff and interns in my office. So in terms of the energy committee, I delegated this to Lily and she checked in with me on some of the details, but for what the details of what happened this time, Lily, we made those recommendations, am I remembering correctly? We made recommendations to the mayor and she did, she agreed and made the appointments, is that correct? We did, yes.
[Lois Grossman]: I actually got my letter today. Yeah. Oh, I'm glad.
[Alicia Hunt]: Good to know. In fact, because there have been a few cases where I had been under the impression that letters had gone out for some boards, and then it turned out there were some cross signals between myself and the mayor's staff. And it was only at a meeting like this where people said, but I didn't get a letter that I realized that such a thing had happened. So I'm glad to hear that they went out. So did all three of you get letters then? Yes. Yeah, okay. Great. Good to know. And I think, Lily, am I correct in remembering that we were considering that there might actually be some, if the board is interested in having more members, if there's anybody who feels that they're overcommitted and needs to step down, there were a couple of additional new applicants that came in pretty recently that might be of interest as well. So, but I thought we also kind of wanted to get the temperature of the board a little, because this is a board that does not need to come to consensus to make a decision to issue a permit, but rather looks for people to get stuff done and have volunteers to work on things and move stuff forward. It's our feeling that more people are better than fewer for this board. But I leave that up to the board, whether they think more members would be useful.
[Robert Paine]: I'll open the, go ahead, Barry, you've raised your hand.
[Barry Ingber]: Yeah, I just, what is our current count?
[Robert Paine]: 13 for these three. We had some losses, obviously, from moving away or, you know, city council, that type of thing. But we're up now to 13. We were at 14 at one time. I believe.
[Barry Ingber]: My personal opinion is that 15 would not be too many. I think that that, I probably want to cap it around there, but I think if you've got two more good people, sure. That's my opinion.
[Robert Paine]: Any other opinions?
[Lois Grossman]: I agree.
[Robert Paine]: I don't know if we need to vote on that.
[Alicia Hunt]: I think this is the kind of thing that we just wanted to, to hear if there were, you know, pros and cons people are, sounds like there's a positive sentiment. Nobody's against it. Lily, you'll have to refresh me, but I remember, but that's what I'm remembering. Sorry. I, we also staff out of our office, eight boards and commissions. So I do occasionally get some like in my mind, who did, which board was I talking about last week? So.
[MCM00001654_SPEAKER_16]: Alicia, that's correct. There were two other candidates who applied that seemed like they might have backgrounds that would fit, but we kind of held off and figured we would check in at the next meeting to see how everybody felt about the possibility of expanding the committee and sort of leave it up to you to kind of think about that.
[Alicia Hunt]: then I'm given the feeling tonight if you want to just send me or re send me the email with like the synopsis or whatever and and then the other thing just so that everybody's aware what we really do like to do for any board and commission is have somebody from staff. just check in with the person, make sure they understand what it is that they've applied for, what the level of commitment is for that board and commission, what's involved in it, and that they are interested. Sometimes it's sort of because we want to, the mayor has said, send me a bunch of names and let me choose. And sometimes she'll say, you know, filter it out and just send me, you know, whoever you want to have appointed. It depends on the board and the month and everybody's workload. So if you want to send those over to me, Lily, we'll take a look. Great. I'll do that. Thanks.
[Robert Paine]: Okay. And then reviewing last, You know, the April 12th meeting, we had a discussion of the local guidelines for resilient, efficient, and affordable buildings webinar. Rain barrel distribution, that's coming up next week, actually. So volunteers can sign up and there's the link right there. Any updates on that?
[Alicia Hunt]: Teresa asked us to very specifically, maybe, Lily, if you can grab that URL and post it into the chat. We definitely need a couple of more volunteers. We have, I think, six students signed up. I am going to have to leave early from it. And it would be really helpful, Teresa was saying, to have at least one or two more volunteers. I think, Lois, she was already counting you. and Lily and Dennis from our office. Teresa definitely had some ideas of making the flow run better because it was crazy last year and we ended up having to shuffle some stuff because people buy a particular color and then sometimes the colors aren't super clear when you're picking them up and putting them in someone's car. And so we need to work that through. So she had some ideas on that. And I believe that we have sold, yet again, over 200 rain barrels. Are Medford residents eating these things? What's happening? Because we have consistently, for the last several years, sold very high numbers of rain barrels in Medford. So. and thank you everybody for your help in distributing them. And particularly Lois, by the way, who I just want to point out is a brand new member to the board, was a member back in like a previous life practically, but she has been volunteering with the rain barrel distribution for several years now. So thank you.
[Lois Grossman]: This year I'm getting a barrel for the first time.
[Alicia Hunt]: That's hilarious.
[Robert Paine]: We talked about whether to have in-person meetings or not. It's always good to have a in-person meeting. And I had one last August in my backyard and could do that again in the summer for our summer meeting. It's easy to meet virtually because you don't have to be in Medford to do that. So maybe we, I'll entertain comments as to whether we do this again, a summer in-person meeting and otherwise do virtual meetings, but any discussion on that?
[MCM00000770_SPEAKER_02]: Well, personally, I'm very keen to meet you for the first time in person. I'm all in support of meeting in real life. The only time I won't be available is June, when I'll be in Spain. But for the rest of time, absolutely on board.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: And I would just add, meeting at Bob's last year was fantastic. And thank you so much.
[Robert Paine]: We had a sort of like a potluck, so that was like really enjoyable.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: Yeah, and I think you pulled out the stops, so that was very welcome, but not necessary. We could all chip in some more. We all did last time, but it was definitely just fantastic to have such a great space to meet in. And so great to see everybody in person. I strongly encourage it.
[Robert Paine]: And we'll have to at the next meeting, you know, start gathering schedules for when people are available to try to maximize attendance. And it doesn't have to be a Monday, it could be, I think we had it on a Wednesday last summer, because it doesn't have to be on a Monday necessarily, but we'll try to maximize attendance and have a nice enjoyable outdoor and hope for good weather, of course. It worked out last time. Okay, we're still reviewing the minutes, but it's sort of interesting because we get to remind ourselves, what should we be discussing today? Um, we'll talk about, uh, at least we'll talk about the meeting with the mayor, uh, after the, um, Administrative updates. Uh, we also discussed, um, tree ordinance last time and Loretta provided some updates here. Well, there is a reforestation bill, uh, briefing and, uh, three days actually. So. Let's see.
[Lois Grossman]: I intend to go to that. OK.
[Robert Paine]: Talk a lot about rats, and rats seem to be all sorts of cities want to have rat czars, I guess. But it's definitely a concern. And then, of course, Paul was talking about urban meadows. Have we got a presentation on that? So this is the summary of last month's Meeting notes, meeting minutes. Does anyone have any comments before we vote on whether to accept them.
[Barry Ingber]: One typo. The salamanders are marbled salamanders not marble salamanders. Way back down under the high school projects.
[Robert Paine]: Oh, I'm sorry. Is that, is that near the beginning. Yeah. All right, I literally, you can take note of that. Yes, I will upload a- Here we are. Marbles, okay.
[Lois Grossman]: Marbled.
[Robert Paine]: Marbled, okay. All right, well, if that's the worst typo, that's not too bad. Any other comments? Otherwise, then I'll call the roll and say in the affirmative, if you accept the minutes as amended with this last one too. Loretta?
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Yes.
[Robert Paine]: Kathleen?
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Yes.
[Robert Paine]: Bob, yes. We're just gonna skip Paul and I don't think Martha. Martha, you're not in attendance, right? Okay, Dan?
[MCM00000770_SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[Robert Paine]: Lois? Yes. Sarah?
[MCM00000770_SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[Robert Paine]: Okay, now obviously if you weren't at the meeting, you probably have to abstain. So I'm gonna keep going. Luke? I have to abstain. Barry. Abstain. John. Abstain. Benji. Abstain. All right, well, everybody who was present voted in the affirmative.
[Alicia Hunt]: Bob, it's not necessary for people to abstain from the minutes. If they weren't there, they can just say they trust their colleagues that the minutes were correct. Otherwise, you would run into this problem very often of not having enough people to vote for the minutes.
[Robert Paine]: Okay, well, that's interesting to know. So they have to trust their colleagues. Okay, got it. Trust that they're accurate. Okay, well, it's been accepted. Let's go on. Administrative updates, Alicia, and then we'll go on to your discussion with the mayor, but separate that from your administrative updates. You may have already given them.
[Alicia Hunt]: I think, so I am hiring a lot of positions, but I will say that two of the positions have been filled. So I have, we have hired a CDBG manager and a housing planner. I am starting another round of interviews for economic development director. We are, We did appoint also a new CPA manager. I don't know if that was announced here. Unfortunately, that made us another opening because we appointed our amazing administrative assistant, Teresa DuPont, to be CPA manager. So now we are hiring for an administrative and financial administrator for my office. And we are about to do interviews for Climate Planner, which is a one-year appointment because it's grant funded. There's one more. Oh, we're going to post in the next day or so economic development planner as well. So there's a lot of changes and it might help explain why I'm a little less up on everything that's going on because I have really been trying to focus on getting people hired in order to deal with the backlog. The other, we're also hiring interns, so I spent last week interviewing potential interns for the office, and I have at least one more interview this week and I hope to give out job offers this week for internships. And the city just announced that they hired a new HR director. So that's exciting. We've actually filled a couple of positions, HR director, assessor and assistant assessor recently. So we're glad to be bringing those positions on board. And on another sort of different piece administratively, I think you guys would like to know that we have a bunch of their construction projects happening this summer, but a couple of them are, Park renovations that are being managed out of our office. So we actually had a construction kickoff meeting today for Morrison Park, which is getting new playground elements and playground surfacing, including a surfacing around the base of the large tree in the playground to help protect the roots. And that is, we're trying this out for the city. We've never used this kind of surfacing around on top of tree roots before. It's designed to help protect the tree. Um, we have out to bid right now Gillis Park which is a complete renovation of the ball field there, and we'll be putting out to bid soon this summer, a half of car park, the ball fields, the environmental work in the woods and a new loop path. The other project that it's not us going putting out that you'll all be interested to know is moving clipper ship connector. So that is actually out to bid right now by the DCR, and they hope to start construction in July. Finally, some of you may remember that we, the city and my office, and many has been participating with that and helping with that project since I want to say off the top of my head, 2016, I feel like Mayor McGlynn got us one of our early grants from the Cummings Foundation. So that would put it back in 2014 or 2015 that we started working on that project. And we had a ribbon cutting on the labyrinth this past weekend. And it's an art project, it's recreation, and it's a contamination cap. So that's also an environmental project that was a location where it was too expensive to dig out the high levels of lead. And so now we have a beautiful labyrinth on top of it. If you haven't checked it out, I recommend it. It's behind the Andrews School. And the poetry was done by our Poet Laureate, Terry Carter. And I have to get a sign out there that says it because he and the artist made signs with the poetry, but they didn't put either of their names on any of the signage out there. So we have to go make another sign to put out there that says, who did that work? I think that's a lot.
[Robert Paine]: Okay, thank you. Any questions for Alicia before we get into the discussion with the mayor?
[Alicia Hunt]: And I can stay tonight.
[Robert Paine]: You can stay tonight? Thank God. All right, proceed. Who was at this luncheon with the mayor or whatever it was?
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: I was involved with Paul. Alicia came in a little bit later. And we covered quite a few things. He mostly ran the meeting. But I can speak to some of that I have the notes if you'd like me to.
[Robert Paine]: Please do.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Let me just get some more light and grab my notes from several notes. So Paul had submitted a list of the priorities that the committee had agreed to. And pretty much she supported everything we're working on. She supports electrification and she mentioned a lot of things that the city is working on. And one of them was increasing EV charging stations throughout the city and buying more electric cars within the city. I'm gonna move through this quickly because it was quite a bit, and I know there's more in the agenda. Trees, she's definitely supporting the tree canopy by increasing it and for us to continue working on that and also with trees mentioned. And I'm sure Alicia can add, you know, too. about the rodent control that we put on last month. It wasn't even last month, our April 12th meeting when we brought up rodent control. Just to be clear, that was about trying to prevent the use of toxic rodenticides to allow the natural predators to live. And because they often die from eating rodents, not just rats, that are eating rodenticides and they die an awful death. And this was all over Facebook. And there are other things that can be used besides rodenticides. And so, you know, I had said to at the last meeting that I was working on a few things with the health department. And I mentioned that to the mayor. And one was to have another public meeting, education meeting with Yankee Pest Control that was done several, well, not just before COVID, where they gave an excellent presentation on how to combat and how to deal with rodents. And their main point is that killing them with with rodenticides is not the answer. It has to be integrated pest control plan that residents would have. And they really didn't recommend poisons and killing because it doesn't really work because of the way they multiply. So in any event, I might talk to the health department about getting that replay if there was a replay or having another meeting, a public meeting And the health department was up for that. But I said I'd bring it back to the committee to see if they needed help because a lot of the departments at the city are shorthanded and help would be if they agreed to have another public meeting to help them advertise it or maybe help staff the meeting. And I said I could be accident so I brought that up to the mayor, and she said sure that's, you know, that'd be fine. I just have to go back to the health department and see if they want to do that and let them, you know, handle the start of it. And also advertising a program which I didn't know existed in the city. that if residents are having a problem with rodents, they can call the Board of Health, discuss the situation, and the Board of Health, through a grant they received, working with Yankee Pest Control, will come out to your property free of charge, depending on the situation, to survey your property and see what the issues are. And they may provide some measures to get rid of rats. And one of them is if you have burrows, which are like the worst thing you could have in your property, they would use carbon dioxide, which is not poisonous to the animals and install that and provide that service free of charge to residents, depending on how bad the situation is. so we can work on that. And there was a press release that was sent out. It doesn't explain the whole thing last year that was sent by email and on the city website. So anyways, the mayor was in support of, you know, talking about that, maybe working with the health department and also finding the video replay of that original public meeting, which I did find that was one of my tasks to do. So I have the link and I can, put it in the chat, you know, for people to see, and it's very informative. It's two hours long, but you will learn so much about rodents. It was a fantastic meeting. So, and I have to send it back to the Board of Health because we were looking for that. And it's not, it doesn't say on Medford Community Media TV, you know, rodent public meeting, it's called something else. in between when I'm not talking, I'll put it in the chat. And also the mayor said, yeah, we can definitely advertise that somehow, or maybe we can too, to help educate the public on other measures. Then we went on to talk about the festival, the Harvester Energy Festival and her suggestions to grow the festival, to have maybe other groups attend because we often have the same groups every year. And it would be good to try to reach out to other groups and make it, since we have so much important information to share with our vendors and exhibitors that show up to a broader crowd. a broader scope of people. So we shared some of those ideas too. That's about all I can remember, because it went pretty fast. Oh, and also she does support the Meadows. She's also had signed on to the Monarch Butterfly Pledge. So I didn't know that. So that was interesting. So she would support pretty much everything on the list that was presented. And maybe Alicia can talk about that too.
[Alicia Hunt]: You summarize that so well, and you had such great notes. I don't think that I can. Did you touch on this stuff about the energy festival?
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Yes, that was towards the end. And what was interesting is when I got the invite, Martha, myself, and Paul had agreed to be there. And we thought it was just about the priorities for the Medford Energy Committee that the committee had been working on since January, but the invite said have a strategy festival meeting with the mayor. So I was like, okay. So she had some good ideas. And, you know, last year we did try to get beer. People like to have beer at the festival. And once several years ago, we had a Downey cider sell their six packs with little tastings that was allowed. And I did try that last year. If you remember, I started very late on the festival last year. So it wasn't a lot of time. But what I had learned, and the mayor will help us this year with this, what I had learned last year is that the schools don't support serving alcohol on their property. And I was hoping to get Medford Brewing because they were just planning to open up their microbrewery in West Bedford. At the time, they said, well, it's a problem because I'm a teacher at the school, the owner of American Bar, and they don't look kindly on me selling beer at school property. And I was like, okay. So they passed and it was a no-show. But anyways, didn't work out. But this year, the mayor was saying, and Alicia, that there is a part of the property over there that's city-owned, and this could be doable, which I didn't realize then. you know, this last year. And then we would just have to apply for a permit through the alcohol, what's it called? The Liquor Commission, I have my notes somewhere. And they would help us fill out the application.
[Alicia Hunt]: The mayor offered that she would submit the application to have a beer garden at the energy festival in her name. which would help smooth things through. So legally the school is a school property and the playground is, but I have all the deeds for the property and all the allocations and all the rest of the land, actually where we hold the festival outside is city property. It's controlled by the city, not by the schools. And what we did the year we had the CIDR was that we promised that if in the event we had to move inside because of weather, the CIDR would not go inside. And that year was actually a bad weather year. And so what we did was we had a CIDR tent and the bike commission and I want to say Mahoney's out back and everything else was inside. And it worked sufficiently well because people who wanted to drink, they were okay with being outside. And so if we had that in mind, that if in the event of rain, we'd have to do a tent out back, and if it doesn't rain, then we can put it wherever outside on the property works best. And I think that the mayor and her staff, her interest, she was basically saying, you know, we've been getting like a thousand people at different events and they come and they stay and they linger. And what she's been noticing is that things like Clippership Day, the way and the where they linger is at the beer garden.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: It's true, yeah.
[Alicia Hunt]: And so having a beer garden, having, you could even have tables around the beer garden, is conducive to having people, different crowds coming, different people coming, and more people coming and staying.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Right, right. And also the arts community. Last year, because I thought, oh, I'm the coordinator, I'm gonna invite some different groups, But there's so many events in September and October. And that's why I started early with, I actually had called several other groups that have events around the time to let them know when our date was, because even though I didn't attend, for personal reasons, January through March, the committee had already set the date, which was great. So I jumped on that right away and I called, a few key people like the arts groups and the chamber of commerce says, this is our day. This is going to be the same day to shoot. So we didn't have a conflict. So there was no conflict, but there is some other event. That's a city event. I saw on the calendar, Sarah, something, I can't remember what it is, but it's in the morning. But anyways, I had reached out to the arts group and I definitely like to have environmental artists there would be great. If there's a little more time than last year at a plant, maybe they could also attend. So I see her point. You know?
[Alicia Hunt]: Something the mayor had done for some of her events is to actually reach out. So there's a business in Medford that hosts small artists and sells their things. I wanna call them sisters.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Well, a good vibe. No, I know them. It's four good vibes. Right, and they help organize some of these things, right? Yes. Right. And I had gone right to the arts groups in Medford, so I could try that too. It's interesting, you know, needs a little more planning because we have so much space. And what if it rains? How do we fit all these people inside? So need some thought. I'm open to having, and I think the committee would be too, but would need more help if another 300 people show up or 500 people show up. But I think that was about it. You know, I have some to-do things. So unless Alicia has more to add to that, we can move on.
[Alicia Hunt]: You covered it really well.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Thanks.
[Robert Paine]: This is Bob. Do we have any, is there going to be an intern that's going to be engaged for preparing for the Harvest Your Energy Festival?
[Alicia Hunt]: Ask Loretta, I'm trying to recruit her.
[Robert Paine]: Again, huh?
[Alicia Hunt]: I did actually interview an intern this past week who said she has a lot of interest in things like that, but she's a graduate student and I'd love to have her do many other things and that just be a small, tiny piece of what she does, particularly if Loretta really was interested in taking on the role again as a paid position again this year.
[Unidentified]: Okay, good.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: I have to think a little bit more about this. This is not the week for that answer. I'm certainly going to help, as I've done in the past, at least on a part-time basis. Can't answer that right now. But we're good to have an intern, especially if we want to grow this. But I'll get back to Alicia if we forget.
[Robert Paine]: Okay, thank you. Let's see. There was a priority list for the committee, and I don't know if I've got the latest version. I had sent Paul some updates, some edits, but others may have, and I don't know if anyone has the existing version. I can show my version if there's no other.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: I think the latest version, Bob, was like done a week and a half ago. very recently, so yours would be good. And the last one was the rodenticide, you know, limiting the use of rodenticides to save the natural predators and also cats and dogs and other animals.
[Robert Paine]: Well, I'll show what I've got. I don't, Paul unfortunately can't, let's see, let me find, It's okay. Let's see. All right, this must be it here. This is what I've got, because I did some tracking of what he said, you know, support and promote electrification of public transport. And I noted that it's, state climate law actually says, yes, you will do that. The state will do that. So I don't know if Medford has to do anything except to just be aware of what the state is doing. I've asked, there's a state office that is in charge of this climate law implementation, but they're trying to staff up with the new governor's administration. And I keep asking, well, what's happening? And they say, well, we'll get back to you when we get the right person. So I haven't got a reply yet. Now it turns out that the MBTA is already behind on the project schedule due to supply chain issues and funding. So good and bad news, I guess. I'm gonna still try to keep track of what the state is doing on this. I asked Mike Barrett if he would be willing to give us an update and I haven't heard back from him. Senator from Lexington who is on top of all this stuff. Okay, number two, help increase engagement of Medford students. Now we had our wonderful presentation last month. There's also a June event that typically happens. I haven't heard much about what they're doing for that. Sometimes we are invited to it. It's usually on the second Friday of the month of June. We'll have to check back with Rocco on what's happening with the environmental students there. Paul had presented something on urban meadows last month and there might be a, presentation at the Circle of Square event on that. Tree equity, certainly that is an ongoing issue that we're well aware of and progress on the draft, the draft municipal law on that. We'll see how that works out. And Road to Control, you already mentioned that. Annual organization of the Harvester Energy Festival, that's certainly one of the annual events that we do to bring more awareness to energy issues. The circle of the square event is going to be basically our warm up for that, which we'll talk about next. I did add related to electrification, promotion of insulation of heat pump heating and cooling systems. I'm going through my own personal vetting of vendors on that. So it's a tricky issue. It's complicated. But that's one of the ways, because the buildings and transportation are the biggest in Massachusetts, the biggest sectors for greenhouse gas emissions. So electrification of cars, et cetera, and then electrification of Building, heating and cooling are big important issues because that will reduce dependence of fossil fuel emissions. Certainly increased use of solar energy, both rooftop and community solar is another aspect to get the electrification more climate-friendly to reduce use of fossil fuels in production of electricity. And we will continue, of course, with Tufts University, basically that semester ending next week, that engagement will pick up this fall with the Tufts Energy Group. That's basically, I added some of these items to the list of our priorities. Anybody else have any things I may have omitted?
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: I would just like to add that along with the electrification, heat pump and cooling, heating and cooling, and solar, those are wonderful things. Ideally, they can be and should be coupled with energy efficiency improvements as much as possible to reduce the size of the heating and cooling systems required.
[Robert Paine]: And in line with that heat pump installation, there's a lot of incentives going through Mass Save. And what you're supposed to do, of course, which I did, is you have an assessment and you install insulation, et cetera, to make yourself eligible for the incentives, which can be up to $10,000 for the state for heat pump installation. And then the federal government has also their own incentives.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: Yes, this is a good time to.
[Robert Paine]: So yeah, this is like money is flowing here. So if you're, that's why I'm sort of trying to take advantage of that. Plus, update my 1888 era steam radiators and have cooling in the summer, which So that's the advantage of that. You have to be concerned, the only concern is you have to have the electricity costs and hopefully that will be less of a concern after the Ukrainian war ever ends and we get back to more rational pricing on electricity. That's been like a drawback, a temporary drawback to use of electricity is the cost.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: have a hand up.
[Robert Paine]: What's up?
[SPEAKER_05]: Can I ask a quick question? I'm curious if Medford has any kind of targets for heat pump or projections, I suppose, would be another word for how many businesses are eligible or could be eligible if they were to take some of those steps that you mentioned, both for heat pumps and also for solar energy. and then if there's any tracking of kind of where Medford is relative to those projections to see uptake.
[Robert Paine]: Alicia, I don't know if we have any way to track that.
[Alicia Hunt]: Yeah, there is. We haven't done any studies we actually got a grant to help us make a plan, so we do our greenhouse gas inventory every year. But we and we got a grant to help us scope a plan Oh, it was just so complicated to do a greenhouse net zero. plan to get us to net zero. But that's part of why we need to get more staff into the office to do these things. I will tell you, though, that National Grid is very close with their information. They keep it very close to the vest. So sometimes you can find out a total number of how many businesses how many organizations have taken advantage of incentives, but it's not always the easiest stuff to get out of them. And they certainly won't give us anything that is in any way identifying of a business or residence. And I see Luke nodding I know he knows a little bit more about the program than we do than I do, but we have gotten years ago when we participated in a program to do. weatherization and solar the solar eyes, but we also did a weatherization pilot they were willing to give us the numbers of. properties that did insulation and various upgrades that year, like as an aggregate number for the year. Um, and I expect that we might be able to get members of heat pumps out of them, but, um, and they run a heat pump program. I think this group is most of the group is aware of this, but some of our members are new that the state has had a program where you can, uh, the city could get some incentives to help, uh, educate people and encourage people to do heat pumps. And that's a pardon the cat. Um, that's what, um, Arlington did, but part of that is that you need a volunteer who is willing to spend really significant time, like 10 hours a week or more, working on the project. It's part of the program the state runs, and I and some of my colleagues have pushed back several times saying it's inequitable, it's not fair, and we don't have volunteers who can just give that kind of time, if you let us make that a paid position or compensate the volunteer, then we might be able to find somebody. And we've never gotten them to say, OK, yes, you can pay somebody. They've actually said, no, you can't. It has to be a volunteer. So that's part of where we've and the staff haven't had the time to basically manage a program like that, at least since the pandemic. It's something I think we'd like to get back to, especially if we had volunteers who were willing to really do it. Heat pumps are, it's complicated. So I see a number of hands, so I'll shut up.
[Robert Paine]: Okay. Sorry. Benji, you had your hand up.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_06]: Yeah. And, um, as I've described before, I had an extraordinary frustrating experience trying to decide about heat pumps and at least temporarily gave up. But so that's sort of a background. It's my understanding, and I'm not positive I'm right about this, but I think it's the case that Cambridge and Brooklyn actually have a full-time heat pump consultant that residents can call and have that person guide them through the process. I'm not certain that's true. I believe it is. And so I guess it raises the question whether we might want to promote that, whether it's a full-time person or if the budget doesn't allow a half-time person.
[Alicia Hunt]: You need to understand, they have more money than God. Cambridge has like 35 people who do what I do. Even Somerville has 70 people in their planning department and we have nine, planning and sustainability. So they have incredible amounts of money in Cambridge. And so they're able to hire people to do all these niche things that we can't even consider doing. They have really great biotech. We're gonna spend some more time getting biotech in, paying higher taxes, more taxes so we can afford to do this too.
[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: can we make an arrangement so that we can use their heat pump resources and guidance, et cetera? I will say, it's not crazy.
[Alicia Hunt]: They often hand us, like they do reports and they hand us the information. They figure things out and they do it. They pay for startup costs for things that we do jointly. A lot of our climate work, the early stuff was actually funded by stuff that Cambridge did and we built on. So it's not crazy to ask that. I'm not clear we could just refer our residents to their consultants, but they would happily hand me the job description, how they did it, what their guidelines, their documents, they're very generous with any materials they can give us.
[Robert Paine]: Maybe we'll have to have a guest presentation from somebody and do we know who we would reach out to?
[Alicia Hunt]: Lily and I could figure out pretty easily Cambridge. Yeah. I mean, I, I know the person, the people who are like the, the staff that do the management of the whole of everything can easily reach out to them and ask.
[Robert Paine]: Uh, other, uh, any, any other, um, people wanting to ask a question. All right, any other comments on the priorities for the committee for this year? Okay, why don't we go on then to the circle of square preparations. That's Loretta.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Right, hi. I had a few things, I don't know what the agenda included, but I'll start with the circle and the square, which is June 17th, from three to seven. I was working with Paul on this. So he will be there to set up. We sent out a survey to see who can be there to staff the table to make a determination if we'll be there. And he submitted the application, I know that. So we're all set. And, oh, I'm trying to remember what he told. This was horrible, I think. or maybe by email, we're going to show invasive plant species and have samples. And he's going to bring some plants, I think, well, maybe not now. And he's going to have native pollinator seeds to pass out to the public, that might be up in a year. But anyways, they are application isn't so we need staff, we have plenty of materials that we have from last year too. And also, we can have materials from the planning and development office like the sign up sheets for the newsletter. that we didn't have last year, but we made do we made something up. So we have Paul was going to set up setups at 130 say around there, it starts at three and it goes till seven so it's a long event. in the rain dates the next day. So we sent out a survey and Paul said it'd be there at 1.30 to 7 and Dan and Lois will be there 1.30 to 4. And Bob, you wrote in also that you could do about 4.30 to the end. We need people to set up two to three people at a time would be good because we can get a lot of people at once. And we do talk to people for quite a while. They want to know about trees. They want to know about energy savings and massive or invasive species. So it's good to have two or three people there. And reminder, there were no public bathrooms for us. That's something to be aware of. So if someone wants to take a break, which they should, they could be gone, you know, an hour to take a break. And the rain day is Sunday. In the survey, Hey, they asked if the same people would be available Sunday. So I don't know, because they just mentioned the day they'd be available. So I can send that out again and ask, but it would be good if we had two more people. So if you could look up that email, even if you can do two hours, that would be great. You know, at 3.30 to five, and maybe Paul's not available. We'll need someone else to set up. I can be collecting a lot of the pre-materials, which is printing a lot of things at the office, to bring. And I'll be there at some point, but not the whole time.
[Robert Paine]: Are we going to advertise the Harvest Energy Festival somehow?
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Yeah, we usually have a little flyer that says save the date. We always have those.
[Robert Paine]: OK, I think I had a presentation on a a science fair type of board for electrification issues that may be in the Energy and Environment Office somewhere. That could be.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Yeah, I think you did. And I just realized Paul had this really big poster with invasive plants that he put together. Oh, I don't know. We'll do something. I'll send that out again, that email. See if anybody else can sign up to be there, even if it's two hours, it would really help. So you get a mob of people all at once in the rain day. They wanted some idea if we would be able to do it on that Sunday too. So I don't know. Since he sent in the form what he said, so that he was planning to be there the whole day. He's very excited about it. That would be a good event for us to be there. And I had a few more things. I don't know if there's time.
[Robert Paine]: Yeah, we're actually had so you have like up to 810 according to the schedule here.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Okay, so were open to other things. There was a woman at the last meeting, who I don't know, she was a guest. And if she's listening, I didn't get her name. And she was talking about an invasive species that was bothering you know, a lot of people, and I think it was Oriental Bittersweet, if anybody recalls. And she was looking for some advice on how to spread the word and get this. And I had mentioned the wrong thing. I said, if you look at the city website, I think I said Metro Garden Club, which is the wrong thing. It's the Garden Commission. So she's listening. They might have people already working on this invasive species. So I just wanted to click that on the Medford website under boards and commissions. It's a garden commission. They have so many more members. And I had given her some ideas. If she is interested in making a flyer, you know, for that, we could have, so maybe have that at our table at Circle in the Square with some samples. People like to touch and see things. And that was, overwhelming response at last year's Circle in the Square is like, oh, so that's what black swallow looks like, you know, and they were touching it. So if people in May, well, actually just before the event in June, have samples of invasive species that people can touch and feel, that would be really great to have at our table. That's all I have to say about the circle in the square event. I'd like to move on to trees. I don't know any updates on the method tree ordinance, but I do know that May 4th, which is Thursday, I believe at 10 AM, I had sent an email out about the legislative briefing by, excuse me, it's the state house. It's open to the public to discuss and act establishing the municipal reforestation program. And the briefing is for other legislators to get their support by the writers, which are Senator Cream and a few other representatives. I also found out, I didn't know this, because I had invited Senator Cream to be at a meeting tonight, but she couldn't make it. But what I found out from their office is that Speak for the Trees actually helped write that. with Senator Greene, the act establishing a municipal reforestation program. I think that bill numbers have changed and I reread some of it. It's changed from the original one we talked about last January, but it still has a lot of interesting aspects to support municipalities to maintain a percentage of tree canopy, for new planting, helping residents with planting new trees, and administrative costs for low canopy areas first and providing a three-year guidance plan to municipalities that participate. So I did send the email out before, I don't have it in front of me with the link if you wanted to attend by Zoom, but otherwise you're open to joining them in person at the State House at 10 a.m. May 4th. if you'd like to show support. Any questions on that? No, okay.
[Robert Paine]: I had a question. What would be the benefit to Medford for passage or some sort of funding? What are we able to look forward to?
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Well, first of all, it could be further route than just having a tree ordinance. because it has to be passed. And it's a three year plan from the start of the bill passage and creating it. So they would administer a tree program and help the city groups, whoever, you know, this bill has changed a lot. So like the forestry department, maybe tree groups to maintain a certain amount of tree canopy, planting new trees and maintaining those and offering them to residents. that would be funded through grants through the state. So that would be percentage possibly free to Medford and help with installation of new trees and the administrative cost would be the biggest, well, actually the labor probably that installed the trees would be more than the administrative cost to run the program. So that would be funded through the state to the cities.
[Robert Paine]: Right, I think last month we were talking about, for this ordinance, you would need more people to handle the permitting program, and that would cost money, but if once the permitting program got on its feet, there would be ongoing income to fund the staff, but the startup would be the problem. And maybe this law would provide that funding up front. I don't know if that would work or not, but that was just a thought.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Right, and a lot of people may think that. I'm open to that idea, but I think it's two different things. There will be very strict guidelines that you will have to submit reports to, to the state to administer this program. Having a tree ordinance for the city, as other cities do, is somewhat completely different. Because that was also regulated, you know, the canopy of maintaining your existing canopy. And that's, I didn't read the whole new bill. It is different than the last one. I didn't see too much about maintaining the existing tree canopy. So they're going to target first areas that have low tree canopy, cities that have that balance of inequity. So I would just go ahead with, you know, the tree ordinance to protect the existing canopy, which we're losing in a tremendous way. Tremendous rate. And as I've said before, we can't replace 60 or 100 year old trees. So we can trim them. That's a whole other conversation. I hope I answered you. So yes, I think so.
[Robert Paine]: Yeah, it's not.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Yeah, it's a two different. Yeah. If other cities do permits to regulate their own tree on this isn't that helps with funding the staff. But every city is different. Like Alicia said, Cambridge and some of them will have a lot more money to do this. So, you know, little steps would help instead of nothing. So I'm moving on to the rodent, unless anyone has any more questions about trees, which I try to keep up with. I don't know whether you, I don't know where the existing ordinance is at. I know that Tim McGiven had the answer to some things, some about mapping trees through trees method at the last meeting, which I didn't attend, but I think Lois did. Cause it's good to have a map of, you know, where these areas are heat islands and trees are missing. I don't think that's available to the public yet, or maybe Lois could speak about that. They should like to.
[Lois Grossman]: Yeah, I'm just looking at the notes. One good thing is they gave out 49 seedlings Saturday at the library for Arbor Day. Right. So that's 49 new trees. And Tim McGivern came to the meeting. Right. And they, they're worried about this GIS, the mapping business, they talked about that. And with Tim, there is somebody now in the engineering department, who is a specialist, but you know, it's like Alicia says, too few people for too many tasks. But there might be some help with that. And they were going to, yeah, one of the problems is again, staffing, they can't get enough people to keep track of the things because they're too busy chopping down the trees to keep up ledgers. The, new building commissioner is open to a permitting process for replacing removed trees with new trees through zoning. He said that regulating private trees outside of the building process would require a new legislation. So if there's a building going on, the zoning laws will cover it and they can oblige people who are gonna remove a tree put two new trees in somewhere else in the city. And that's pretty much what they talked about.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Thank you. Right. So, yeah, I don't know any updates on the ordinance or where it's at. I just know it's split between different committees on the city councilor committees. So zoning's one, and Alicia may be knowledgeable about there's an energy and environment committee through the council, city council. So the ordinance has been split into different areas to discuss. And he's right, the building commissioner's right. That would come under zoning as far as private trees. But, you know, think anything's negotiable at this point, depending on how much staff, the permitting process and who's going to review all these. But I did make a point that it is important. And I suggest this to maybe city Councilors, or Lois, maybe you can, that if they have someone at city hall, forestry department, preferably, it should be a certified arborist, if they can afford it, even a part-time one. If we get to a permitting process that reviews these, that would reduce any liability as far as people were concerned with, many people are actually concerned with, you know, possible litigation for telling property owners, large or small, what to do with their property. But if you have a certified ASI arborist, that can help reduce the amount of claims. I learned that from, there was a public meeting about ordinances across the country. And many cities showed up to discuss their, how they handle, you know, implementing and starting tree ordinances. And that's one of the things they do, is have a certified arborist on. And they also recommended, and Gary and I discussed this before, is that maybe, you know, the city should consider that anyone that's working on public, well, they do that probably in public trees, but private trees, also be certified. So we don't have any damage to the tree canopy and professionals working on trees, because there's a lot of mistakes by tree companies that are just that, tree companies, they're not arborists and they can do a lot of damage. And we have permit requirements for licensed electricians and licensed roofers, licensed this, well, why not be a licensed arborist? And file a permit for that. So, you know, the work's being done correctly and they don't take off more than 25% of a healthy tree, which can kill a tree or cut it incorrectly. So I'm going to move on because... Yeah, pretty much covered that before. I put the link in the chat for the recording of the public meeting on rodent control by the board of health and Yankee pest control that was done in 2018. very informative, it was just really great and educational and fun to be there, I was there. And it's just amazing what you're learning about rodents, why they multiply and killing them is not the answer. So it's stealing your property. and a lot of other things you can do. What else?
[Robert Paine]: I just wanted to mention them. Yeah, have that in the circle of square handout. Yeah. Or maybe a QR code.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Yeah, exactly. I already have that. There's something else that came up. I thought the group might be interested in this. Breakout reservations having a problem. It's 28 acres. And I read this article. that they may lose 13 and a half of those acres due to a building, which is pretty sad. They're heavily forested, there's hundred-year-old trees there, urinal pools, lots of nature. That's half of Brinkhead Reservation will be lost to a building, the Northeast Metropolitan Regional Vocational School. So there's a group trying to fight that in the location. because they believed it was going to be built somewhere else, the school. And from what I read, this forested site, the property is owned by the school district. It was transferred from Breakout Reservation to serve as a buffer between the existing vocational school grounds and the reservation. But now they want to take it back and build on half of it. So if anybody's interested, they can contact me and I can send the article over. I don't have it readily available, but I could email it to learn more to maybe support the group that's trying to fight this to have them build somewhere else to protect the forest.
[Robert Paine]: Yeah, why don't you send an email? That would be helpful.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Okay, will do.
[Robert Paine]: All right. Why don't we go on to Lois, this is the last Schedule item in the agenda, update on the webinar.
[Lois Grossman]: I told Paul that I can't really speak to that, but Alicia was there and she's in better shape. I got there too late from the beginning and Alicia has the guidelines, which is what I missed, so.
[Alicia Hunt]: The, the webinar on the guidelines so there was a project between funded by the municipal vulnerability preparedness program for Medford Malden and Melrose to work together on guidelines for encouraging energy efficiency building. in the community and the idea is that they would they put together stuff that could both be used to give to developers to say like here's what we would like to see and things that we could use to then update performance standards, zoning, ordinances in the city. Originally it was building energy efficiency was the target And then as they started working on it, they expanded the scope to include more things that get covered in site plan review. the bicycle, transportation, like what's the plantings that you use around the building, trees, like sort of the wholeness, like to be more, I'm not thinking of the word, but the word that means all encompassing and not just the physical building piece of it. And so the idea was that the guidelines would be something that could be replicable across other communities as well. That's why they did three communities together. But at the same time, each set is standardized enough that it reflects the fact that we have a solar ordinance, but Melrose doesn't, right? So they wanted to be cognizant of that in what they put out. I have the draft guidelines and I could share them with this committee. In the end, I ended up having, so Danielle Evans, who's our senior planner, is very interested in how can we incentivize green building in the developments that come to us. So she ended up being the representative of Medford on this. And the idea of this was to sort of, the webinar was to provide information to other communities and all like, so what's the idea here and what are we doing? And it didn't actually get into the details of what the guidelines say, but rather more the idea of the process. Danielle did send me the draft guidelines for review. They are like 600 other things open on my computer, and I've read like the first several pages, but not the whole thing. Just part of why I haven't sent them to you all, because I felt like I should read them first. But the reality is, it would be more timely if I just sent them to you guys, if you all wanted to see. the guidelines before they're finalized, because they certainly would still take feedback. They did have some public listening sessions. I wanna say last winter where we sent mail out, I am certain that we sent mail to this board and the planning board and ZBA for when they were taking ideas on input on these guidelines. But so if you ask me specifically what they say, I'd have to open them up and read them. But that's sort of the big picture of it is environmental goodness for development.
[Robert Paine]: OK. Any comments on that? Any, this is the end of the formal agenda. Any new business that anyone would like to bring up? If not, I guess we can entertain a motion to adjourn and give you back 15 minutes. So moved. I can second it. Does anyone object? Hearing none, we are adjourned. Thank you.