[Robert Paine]: Okay, I'm Bob Payne. I'm the acting chair of the Bedford Energy and Environment Committee. We're having this meeting actually a hybrid of some in-person and some remote. The committee members that I see that are present, I'll go through just the list on the agenda, Lawrence Grossman, the present being either virtual or in-person, Angie Giller, In person here, Barry, in person here. Lorena James, remote. Bob Payne, I'm in person. Jessica Parks is remote. Will Sherwin is remote. Sarah Sing is remote. Paul is in person. Have I missed any committee members? We have our municipal staff, Alicia Hunt and And Brenda is remote down the hall, and Alicia is at home.
[Brenda Pike]: We also have a new member of our staff here, Aditi. Aditi is our new housing planner.
[Robert Paine]: Aditi, why don't you tell us what you're doing for us?
[MCM00000770_SPEAKER_02]: I'm the new housing planner.
[Kathleen McKenna]: Thank you very much. Welcome. Thank you.
[Robert Paine]: Uh looks like we have members of treatment heard here. Uh uh, Sarah. Rule and Amanda Bowen and we'll get to that item on the agenda after. Basically our We've got introduction of guest reading. Okay, we'll go through the minutes of the December 4th meeting, which we got some edits from Loretta James. So that's the amended minutes that I sent out. Do we have any discussion of those minutes before we entertain a motion to accept them? Any further edits? I will entertain a motion to accept the minutes second okay that's benji seconded the motion by barry uh we'll go through the roll and you'll have to indicate if you accept them by yes uh or if you don't no lois she's raising her hand yes i guess benji yes in fact barry yes lorana yes All right, Bob Payne, yes. Jessica?
[SPEAKER_10]: Yes.
[Robert Paine]: Will? Yes. Sarah?
[MCM00000770_SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[Robert Paine]: And Paul? Hello, yes. Okay, accepted unanimously. Administrative updates from either Alicia or Brenda. Brenda, you can withhold your comments up to later, just any administrative updates.
[Brenda Pike]: Sure, I think I emailed this around to everyone as well, but just I think everyone should be receiving email from the Meek mailing list now. I'm not sure with some people if they're emailing the list directly is going through, but I think it's a good idea just to comply with open meeting law for folks to email either myself or Bob or both of us. And then if you want something to go out to the group, ask us to send it out anyway so I don't think that's a that's a huge problem if some people have a hard time emailing it out to the rest of the group. And then the other thing I wanted to bring up is So it's that we've had 5 people express interest in joining this committee since the summer. And I know that I think that what's been done in the past is adding new members once a year. So I think that we'll just let them know that, you know, there's not openings right now, but they're welcome to attend meetings as guests if they would like to.
[Barry Ingber]: And I suggest that they be invited as more than guests, that they be invited as non-voting participants.
[Alicia Hunt]: So, Barry, what I was advising Brenda is that this board has always been very, very open to anybody who shows up and including them. and that many of the current members actually participated in the board, in the committee for a while before they were formally added as members. And I think it gives people a good feeling for what's going on. Also, unless they only listed the energy committee, what, I don't know if you've seen the signup form, but if you go to sign up for a form for a committee, you then get, you can choose like, All the city committees and check off what you want to sign up for. So we're finding that people will check off 57 committees just sort of generally showing that they want to participate. So, the idea of encouraging them to come to the committee. participate, come to meetings. This board has never said, okay, now we're gonna open it up to the public. Usually, depends who's running the meeting, but usually it's more of a like, let's have a conversation and let's discuss it. It's been a lot easier in person than it is over Zoom, I think, but the board has often been very welcoming to people just participating. But also it's not clear that the people who checked off energy and environment Our gung-ho only want to do this. That's kind of what I'm saying.
[Robert Paine]: All right, Kathleen McKenna has actually joined in person here. We have another member. We actually have five in-person people here.
[Kathleen McKenna]: Only two more minutes than it takes to log in, sadly.
[Robert Paine]: Okay, any other administrative updates basically from fall one from the election or things like that from the mayor?
[Alicia Hunt]: Nothing like that, but you I will let you know so in addition to a DT starting last week we had a new economic development planner starting up last week and we have a new economic development director starting next week. So we're very excited to be fully staffed in our office finally after a year. And for those who haven't heard, I'm home with COVID. Sorry, I'm remote. For the latecomers, Brenda is actually upstairs because one of her office mates tested positive today. So she didn't want to be downstairs in the room just in case. She's upstairs from you, not upstairs from me. I'm home.
[Robert Paine]: She's upstairs in her office, yeah. Okay. One thing we were going to tackle this month is considering that I was, I took back over the chairmanship, the chair after Paul's unfortunate incident. We now, I would love to pass it on to others. In November, we had, we can revisit this, we had some interest in co-chairing from Sarah, Dan, and Will. Dan is actually in California working, but he wrote to me and indicated he was still interested in co-chairing. What about, okay, Will? Will, you are still interested in co-chairing?
[Adam Hurtubise]: Co-chairing, most definitely, yeah.
[Robert Paine]: And Sarah?
[MCM00000770_SPEAKER_02]: Yes, I'm still interested. I thought long and hard about it in the interim, and I reflected on my work-life balance, and I think that I have found a new balance that makes it possible.
[Robert Paine]: OK. Are you still in Medford, or have you moved out of Medford?
[MCM00000770_SPEAKER_02]: I have moved out of Medford. I'm living in Lowell, so I'm a 30-minute drive from Medford now.
[Robert Paine]: OK. Is anybody else interested in a co-chairing duty or arrangement?
[Kathleen McKenna]: Did you say Dan has moved to California?
[Robert Paine]: No, Dan is just working this week in California. So he could still be... Yeah, he anticipates to be more able to do this after this month. He just apologizes that he's on assignment in California and therefore it's still his working day. I would ask either Alicia or Brenda to comment on the path forward from here. Do we vote on this and then they ought to sort of arrange how to conduct meetings? That's my question.
[Brenda Pike]: Let me see, sorry, there's a question in the chat. Don't you need to live in Medford to be on this board? Oh, Alicia just responded, no, there's no residency requirement. I mean, I think if people are comfortable with, I think, are folks comfortable with three co-chairs or are you looking to do two co-chairs?
[Robert Paine]: I don't see a problem with the suite. I think, yeah, we'll invite discussion.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: Yeah, let's do that.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Speaking as a potential co-chair, I have no problem at all.
[Barry Ingber]: It's an interesting idea. I mean, I serve on a lot of groups where there is no chair, which means we're all essentially co-chairs and it works quite nicely. So having a leadership group of three could be interesting. It could also lead to interesting conversations among the three of you about who does what when, but that wouldn't be the problem of the rest of us. If people are interested in having three co-chairs and are running on that basis, I would be willing to support all three. If it was a decision to have only one or two, I am really happy that Sarah wishes to stay on the Energy Committee, but I'm not comfortable with a chair or Co-chair of two being from outside of the city And that has nothing at all to do with with sarah that has to do with that simple fact But if there's three at that point, it's I I don't even that doesn't even bother me Just to remind the uh
[Robert Paine]: candidates that the duties of the chair, not only to run the meetings, but to actually plan the agenda for the meetings. And therefore, to actually line up content for the meetings. So you have some work to do. You could share the work, but somebody actually has to then make sure the meeting gets executed, going to the agenda, and so on. So that's the duties of the chair of the co-chairs. And you can certainly, if one of you is out of town, that's the advantage of having co-chairs, that you have a substitute. And you can also, if you're on vacation, whatever, or just are sick or something, you have the ability to shift the load. And so there's an advantage to have co-chairs. You just have to be able to manage how this all works out. Any other discussion before we can just vote on accepting, I mean, can we entertain a motion to accept this arrangement? But I won't entertain any further discussion. I'm good with it. All right, I will entertain a motion to accept this arrangement of three co-chairs. I second. Okay. All right, I'll call the roll. Again, the three co-chairs would be Sarah, Dan, and Will. And they can arrange as to who actually, you've seen all my emails, so who actually, you would work with Brenda, obviously, and Alicia to arrange for the meeting's agenda, but also you have to plan out in advance, because you have to know, well, Harvest Journey Festival is coming. You have to plan for that. There might be some municipal events. So you have to think ahead, not just one month, but several months. OK, I will call the roll. Say yes if you accept this arrangement. Lois? Yes. Benji? Yes. Barry? Yes. Loretta? Yes. Kathleen? Yes. Bob, yes. Jessica?
[Jessica Parks]: Yes.
[Robert Paine]: Will? Yes. Sarah?
[MCM00000770_SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[Robert Paine]: And Paul?
[MCM00000770_SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[Robert Paine]: All right, unanimous. All right, we are, I believe we're at the end of our organizational administrative items. Now, I've got a request from Trees Bedford to move up their part of the meeting because they have a 7.30 commitment. So I'm going to move on to the tree ordinance drafts and let Amanda and Sarah, you're all to take over and introduce what they've been doing. We've been working with them furiously, feverishly over the last few days.
[Kathleen McKenna]: Literally, some people have a fever.
[Robert Paine]: Yeah, some people have a fever as a result, yes.
[Amanda Bowen]: I'll just say that we have, we've been figuring the public, Sarah has been working on the public ordinance, our colleague Kim, Deanne Grady and worked on the tree committee ordinance and I have worked with Loretta and our colleague Marian Langan and also with Bob and Barry on some tweaks to the private ordinance and sorry did I if I didn't say Loretta I definitely need to say Loretta. And so we've got we've got a version we think is is viable. There may be some slight tweaks to it still, but we would love to show it to the brand new city council show the array. We've got we've got for each. document we have an edited version of what we were handed in October and then a clean version and then there's a sort of letter to try and describe some highlights for the city council members of what they will be seeing in these documents and we hope that it will be taken up and discussed. No telling. Last time they wanted to hand it off to legal counsel and of course there's not a lot of legal counsel in except for the for hire people these days. But I'm hoping a new energized city council will take this on as a project that they really want to work on because we really need some of these things in place.
[Robert Paine]: Amanda, what's your date that you'd like to actually forward this to the city council?
[Amanda Bowen]: Well, I think that depends. We're hoping, obviously, for your approval of, if not the actual drafts, at least where we're at. And at that point, we will say we have said we're working in collaboration with you all. And so I would love, I mean, I think everybody's getting inaugurated on Wednesday, right? And so I think that it would be great, certainly by the end of the month, and I don't see any reason why we couldn't do it sooner if you all are in agreement.
[Robert Paine]: Why don't you summarize then the changes and maybe it's hard to do but maybe as best you can for the committee to understand because some of them may not have read all this stuff.
[Amanda Bowen]: Right, right. Yeah, definitely. Especially because some of them are being tweaked. I'll just say that the tree committee one is pretty much the way it came to us. It hasn't been modified very much. There's one or two duties that were affected by changes we made to the private and public. ordinances, but I wanted to let Sarah describe some of the elements of the public one, because it's a lot about data keeping. And this is an ongoing discussion we've been having with DPW and the mayor's office about keeping track of what we've got. And as some of you may know, we are very close to having an inventory done of the entire public tree canopy of the city. It's just, they've just got to sign the agreement and it'll get done. So we want them to have the ability to maintain that data once it's available. And so, sorry, Sarah will address that.
[Sarah Gerould]: So yes, much of the, many of the words that are in there are similar to what has been, but there is a requirement to keep track of. when they're cutting down trees and keep track of the trees that they have. Another thing that is a little different is a treatment of if the city decides to take a tree down and does not plan to replace the tree anytime soon, then they have to inform local residents so that this gives people an opportunity to get some feedback to the city about the potential loss to their community. So there are things like that, where it becomes a more transparent process, the act of taking the tree down. There's also some hearing issues related to hearings, some of which I think are also in existing Massachusetts law, but this sort of bolsters that. So with that, I think more of the new stuff is actually in the privatory ordinance, and I should leave time for Amanda to talk about that.
[Robert Paine]: But before we do that, Loretta, you have your hand up. You have a... No, that's the cursor. Oh, that's the cursor? I'm sorry. Is it? Oh, you're right. Okay. Sorry. Go ahead. Go ahead, Amanda.
[Amanda Bowen]: Okay, so the private ordinance that we crafted two years ago had a lot of detail in it. And the building inspector who was asked by the city council to split the document to these three pieces, pared down the private document considerably. And so it's pretty unrecognizable, the document that we have going now. It defines, so this is about trees on private property. It defines protected trees as trees eight inches or greater in diameter at breast height. It defines landmark trees as trees that are 50 years or older or, oh boy, I don't remember, I think it's 24, 24 inches DBH. And it, There is sort of a process for trees removed during construction and there's a process for trees being removed not during construction. And the idea is that one process is handled and monitored by the building department. and the other process, the private process, is handled by the Forestry Department. And we are keenly aware that we're coming up with a lot of inspection of permitting and inspection of people who want to remove trees that is going to be more than certainly Aggie Tudin could possibly handle. And one of the ways we see the tree committee fitting in is helping her with these kinds of reviews. So to see if people really think trees should be cut down. There's a schedule for mitigation where you can, if you're cutting down a tree, you need to pay a fee per inch mitigation, or depending on how many trees you replant, you can drop the dollar figure of that mitigation. We are not, at the moment proposing a specific dollar figure because we kind of figure that needs to be discussed a little bit. It may be part of the fee structure, just the city fee structure when the time comes. And there are some penalties associated with cutting down trees without going through this process. And let's see. So those are some of the major highlights.
[Robert Paine]: Any comments up so far? I had a couple of questions. I would recommend that you, even though you're not proposing specific indicate what would be, you know, what other towns are doing, so they get an idea of, because they're going to say, well, I don't know, you can tell me what it is.
[Amanda Bowen]: We had $300 in there, and then Cambridge has this fee that's like $850, but that's really for developers. It's drastically reduced if you're a resident homeowner. And Arlington, I'm forgetting, we have another one that's as low as $30 an inch. This is all figures per inch of trees being.
[Sarah Gerould]: So in the public ordinance, there is, for someone who cuts down a city tree, there's this principle that it needs, since that is basically a reduction of the value then they have to make that good. In other words, replace the canopy. And so there are ways to do that, but there's a different method of determining how valuable that is in the case of private trees and in public trees.
[Barry Ingber]: I have two questions. One is, do residents actually cut down public trees, like trees that they don't own? Like, I mean, maybe they do. Maybe they're doing it all the time. It's just, to me, such a horrifying idea. I mean, that's an act of, I don't know, vandalism or theft or, I mean, who destroys public property like that wantonly? My second question is around your use of caliper and DBH. And I'm I'm sure there's a reason that I don't know, but why are there two different ways?
[Amanda Bowen]: I went through the document when you mentioned that the other day, and I think I've corrected the one place where we were using them in the same sort of paragraph statement or whatever. And so I think in general, caliper tends to be the number for replacement trees. And that's really the only place we're using it is to talk about how big a replacement tree is.
[Barry Ingber]: Okay. I saw that they didn't appear in the same place anymore, that you'd fix that, but I still didn't understand why there were these two different ways of measuring trees.
[Amanda Bowen]: Yeah, I don't actually know, too, although the caliper is the number that tree companies who were selling you little replacement trees, they seem to use that a lot. It's an even bigger number.
[Robert Paine]: The breast pipe, they might not really be much at all.
[Barry Ingber]: Right, yeah, that might be the answer. It might be a reason for actually using DBH consistently.
[Sarah Gerould]: Yeah, there are lots of different ways of measuring a tree. And one of the reasons why the public ordinance does not rely on DBH is because presumably the tree is gone. And so you sort of have to use something where you have some record of what that tree was like. And in Google, there are records of tree canopy. So that's, you know, you can't use DBH in that kind of situation.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: Well, I have just one question. What happens when utilities have to prune your tree? Is that discussed in the ordinance?
[Sarah Gerould]: It's not really.
[Amanda Bowen]: Our observation is that other cities do seem to be able to do a more detailed monitoring of the way utilities, Aggie tells us that They always tell her when they're coming to do maintenance pruning. It's not clear to me that she is able to be there when they do it. I've seen much better pruning done around wires in other communities than I do in this one. It is a question. It's definitely a question.
[Sarah Gerould]: Trees Medford does get regularly citizens come to Trees Medford, beseeching us to get involved in this issue, because they're horrified with the kind of pruning that's been done in various places.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: I've got a big old tree in my front yard, and National Grid has just
[Amanda Bowen]: Is it in your yard? I guess maybe we should figure out a way to address that because I haven't heard of that happening often, that it's not a street tree but an actual private tree. That's horrible.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: But it does affect water, so we have to deal with it. Yeah, it does affect water, so we have to do it. It's just I didn't know what the... I mean, they're not telling me they're going to prune it, so they just come and do it.
[Amanda Bowen]: Well, this is it. If they supposedly let Aggie know that they're doing pruning, but if they're pruning on your property, it seems to me they really ought to let you know. So at least so you can be there and comment and stuff like that. So we have to at least ask that question.
[Robert Paine]: I was hoping that the organizers would address the issue of pruning and what's exempt from permitting. And so I'm hoping that this is included.
[Amanda Bowen]: I think I put that one where you can't prune more than 25% of a big tree and 50% of a littler tree.
[Robert Paine]: I mean, I'm just guessing. But something like that would be good to have.
[Barry Ingber]: And that provision. work.
[Robert Paine]: Yeah, I don't know. Utility, yeah, what utilities can do is an interesting question and whether they're subject to these ordinances.
[Barry Ingber]: Well, I think even if they were, it wouldn't matter because they're not, they're never taking out more than 25 percent. Yeah, right, exactly, yeah, hopefully, yeah.
[Amanda Bowen]: Hopefully, but the other thing is that, oh gosh, I just thought of, Something about that. Yeah, they say they're doing it based on what the needs of the wires, but some of them are, oh, I know what I was gonna say. They're often contracted out and there are different levels of skill at doing pruning. And if you've got a crappy tree company, they do a crappy job. And most homeowners could give them some serious seriously useful suggestions if that were allowed to be possible.
[Robert Paine]: Regarding the level of city staff needed to administer the program, I don't know if Alicia or Brenda, do you have a sense as to what the capabilities are, and is this going to be a... I mean, I'm sure the city council is going to ask, and so I think we need to be prepared to...
[Amanda Bowen]: In the original discussion when they had Tim McGovern and I think the financial people weigh in about the ordinance, they said categorically that the way it was written at least two years ago, there was no way their staff could do it. And so it's written differently now. It's still more, it's clearly more than Aggie would be able to do all by herself. But we hope that this newly formed tree committee can help her with that.
[Alicia Hunt]: So, there are 2 things mentioned 1, there is no way for municipal boards and committees and volunteer groups to to advise the city council on how something can be staffed from the city side. Right? Like, it's the staff, like the DPW, whose area this is. It's their responsibility to say what they can and cannot do as it is the building departments. There's no, I don't think you should feel any burden that you need to advise the city council on how this, whether or not current staffing can do what's in here, because that's not your role. That's their role. Your role is to advocate for what you want to see happen, what you want to see the policies to be. That said, we have had some of these conversations. You guys do understand that Aggie couldn't do all of the amount of volume that would come in on this one person, whether it was Aggie or somebody else couldn't do this. One of the things that I've heard is a bit of pushback and I just wanted to give you this heads up is well city board so the former, I think there's some staff have said some. City boards shouldn't be doing the work of staff, right? They shouldn't be doing that. However, you should compare this tree committee to boards like the Community Development Board, whose job it is to look at projects that have come in, to review them, to give them advice and make requirements on, you know, all kinds of landscape design, outdoor site plan review sites. specific stuff. That is the job of a volunteer board. And it is the historic commission's board job to look at historic building or buildings and decide whether or not they are historic on behalf of the city. That is in the fact the role of the city appointed board. Therefore, and conservation commission's another one whose job it is to apply the Wetlands Protection Act on behalf of the city of Medford. And therefore, comparing this board to those committees and commissions. It's not just a volunteer committee, it's people who are appointed and when you are appointed by the mayor, you are legally employees of the city of Medford. and to suggest that you could have a board that is appointed that may not. My recommendation would be to have a preference for Medford residents, but to also have an allowance that it's more important to have people who are willing to serve, who are knowledgeable about trees and forestry, and therefore that you might want an a certified forester, a certified arborist on this board who is not a Medford resident, because they can be a neutral third party about whether or not this tree fits these parameters, whether or not it could should be taken down and be prepared to put that forward in front of the city council and in fact in front of city staff. There are absolutely precedents for that. I think that when you think of it, oh, it's just a volunteer group. Which, you know, we love our volunteer groups, but trees Medford is just volunteers right there self appointed, we are making recommendations were an advocacy group and and those are amazing and useful, but they are not people who are actually subject to. They have numbers of boards and commissions, as actually most of you are on boards and commissions. I mean, I know Amanda chairs a board. Conflict of interest law, right? Open meeting law. You're subject to all of those things on behalf of the city, in particular, conflict of interest. And in the event that something were to come up, you legally, once you're appointed by the mayor, are an employee of the city, even if you're unpaid. So I think you should just be prepared with that, because I think that that may very well come up, either with staff, with the mayor, or with the city council.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: That's excellent. Thank you. Yeah, thank you.
[Robert Paine]: Any other comment before we... I was going to... Well, maybe I'll just indicate that so far, commenters on the Trees Bedford drafts have basically been me, Barry, Lois, and Loretta. I'm sorry?
[Amanda Bowen]: Loretta.
[Robert Paine]: Yeah. So we are continuing. I think we're very close to the final draft. I think we've been working well together to get to the finish line. I think we, I guess I would, I guess I could actually make a motion that we can work to the finish line, our basic group here and ask at this meeting for our Energy and Environment Committee will support this final product that trees meant for it with our support will forward to the City Council. Any comment on that motion?
[Barry Ingber]: Yes, I think you cannot from the chair make a motion, but I'm happy to make that motion.
[Unidentified]: Why don't you state it then?
[Barry Ingber]: I thought I could, but I can't. No, you can't. I'd like to move that the Energy and Environment Committee I think it would be helpful to have a tree ordinance with the understanding that it will be further modified as it goes through the process.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Any discussion from any MEEC member? I did send some comments today from the previous drafts updated from Wednesday. I wasn't sure, Bob, if those were shared with the committee or, you know, the comments.
[Robert Paine]: I haven't seen them, so I haven't been able to share them.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Oh, I sent them earlier today.
[Robert Paine]: Yeah, but I never got them.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Oh, and I sent them to Brenda. Okay, that's strange. Okay. All right. I'll send them again.
[Brenda Pike]: I did receive your email, Loretta. I didn't see additional comments there. Were there additional comments from what you'd made in the past? It looked like a summary.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: It was a summary from January 3rd. I'm not going to be able to read all of them. Some new comments. Based on their updated draft, but. I did not get to read today's submittal from trees met with all the changes. So I'd like to read those in the next few days. Hopefully the rest of the committee will too. For any
[Robert Paine]: Okay, I'll have to, I'll go and maybe got... That's an attachment. Put into some sort of a penalty box somewhere. Like my firewall, my company's firewall is very picky. It might show up as a secluded item at some point. But try again.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: I'll try it again. So my thoughts are, and I agree with supporting their work. And I think, The energy committee should start writing their letter to the city council, the draft, right? Because we were supposed to submit our comments. That's what they asked for, the city council. So we should start on that, you know, and send it around for comments from the MEC members. Starting with, you know, something like, this is my suggestion, starting the, you know, we're responding to their requests for comments. I'm not sure if we have any more comments on the committee of the whole meeting they had you know for the ordinances and that we support. You know the document submitted something like that from trees meant it. if we need to add any more. Comments to that letter we can.
[Barry Ingber]: Oh, yeah, I was going to say what Bob just said is that we've submitted our comments. They've all been incorporated. I think that it's kind of besides the point. It doesn't. I mean, if you feel like your comments haven't been incorporated or if anybody else hasn't has comments that haven't been incorporated, I guess that I I can be told I'm wrong about this, but from my point of view, I don't have any comments because the comments have been incorporated, and I just would like to approve it.
[Amanda Bowen]: And let me just say that Loretta's comments from the third have pretty much been incorporated at this point, I think.
[Robert Paine]: Oh, OK. There'll be one or two more drafts, I'm sure, and we'll finish it up. in the next few days. That's what I believe from here. We'll obviously send it to all the committee members, but I think that's what we'll do. We'll end up agreeing on the document jointly between the two committees.
[Lois Grossman]: I agree. This motion is very clear. It says that we endorse this with the understanding that it will go forward through the steps of legislation. We're not guaranteeing that this is an absolutely finished document and that it has to be done this way. We're endorsing the motion to put it before the council and let it go through the legislative process. That's the motion he made and that's the one I seconded.
[Robert Paine]: Any other discussion before we vote? All right. I'd indicate yes if you agree for the endorsement. that we will, we have worked with the trees record committee and will endorse the final product, which we hope will be, you know, expect to be done this month. I'll call the roll. Lois? Yes. Benji? Yes. Mary? Yes. Loretta? Yes. Kathleen? Yes. Bob, yes. Jessica?
[Jessica Parks]: Yes.
[Robert Paine]: Will? Yeah. Sarah.
[MCM00000770_SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[Robert Paine]: And Paul? Yes. Unanimously voted on to accept that. Okay. Any other comments from Trees Bedford? I think we've worked very hard and we're continuing to just finish up the last few details.
[Barry Ingber]: Can I just express my appreciation of the hard work that Chief Medford has done, along with particular Loretta, but others, and your openness to criticism and comments and willingness to incorporate and learn. I think you've done a great job, and I know that you've been working really hard.
[Robert Paine]: I would share that.
[Sarah Gerould]: Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much for all your help, too. You know, eight heads are better than two, so we really appreciate all the work that you have done to help us make this a better product.
[Robert Paine]: All right. As they say in meteorological forecasting, consensus actually wins against most individual I had a professor who told me we have precision, we're not sure about accuracy. Yeah, that's right, exactly. Thank you very much. We'll proceed now to the next agenda item. Brenda, you'll get to talk about your very good news about the grant and how we're going to move on from there and other things you'd like to talk about.
[Brenda Pike]: Yes, let me do a couple of quick updates first. So we have four additional electric vehicle charging stations coming online this week around the city. And we'll be doing some sort of public awareness around that as well. But along those same lines, I have a survey that I'd like to circulate to see where people would like to have additional EV charging stations in the future. So I will send this around to the committee, but I would love to have your help in getting the word out for this survey. And it's just a map where people can sort of drop pins on locations where they would like to see charging stations.
[Robert Paine]: How do these work? Do you pay some sort of rate for charging? I don't have an EV so I don't know how this works.
[Brenda Pike]: Yes. They're not free. They're either roughly probably what you would pay to charge at home or slightly more because it tends to be faster than the level one charging stations that some people might have at home. It's not the high-speed chargers that you would see at rest areas and things like that.
[Robert Paine]: But the Tesla ones? Yeah, exactly. There was going to be one at Stop & Shop. It seemed like we were talking with some company that wanted to put one in. Whatever happened to that one, I wasn't sure.
[Brenda Pike]: At Stop & Shop?
[Alicia Hunt]: I hadn't heard about that.
[Robert Paine]: Alicia, you might remember.
[Alicia Hunt]: Yeah, so there's a company, um, if anybody's familiar with the charging stations that are at the Galleria in Cambridge, in their parking area, they have like, they're a big pic video picture that changes on them and they have free charging stations. That company informed us that they were partnering with stop and shop nationally. And that they wanted to install them at stop and shop in Medford. And last I heard the city council gave him a bit of a hard time because there's a big like image on it and they're like, oh, that's distracting the drivers and they're like, well, it's really targeted at pedestrians. And. I thought they got permission and I've never seen anything installed. So I'm not really sure what happened.
[Brenda Pike]: Oh, OK. So I actually did hear about this. Tesla had hired a consultant to do some work with them around zoning questions about issues that they might run into. I didn't know there was history behind that. So that's interesting to hear about. They're talking about installing I think they said 16 ports. And it's not on the stop and shop parcel, it's actually on the Harbor Freight Tools parcel, but it's right in that same parking lot.
[Alicia Hunt]: I wonder if it's the same company? I'll look it up and I'll send it to you. The one that I had talked to, it was easily a year and a half or two years ago. I met with them. They sent me pictures and they went in front of city council. This committee actually sent like, met with them as well. And then at first they weren't sure. And then we sent like a letter of support for it. And I don't know what happened. Like they, where'd they go? They got permission then they didn't install. So.
[Brenda Pike]: Interesting. Can we clarify, what sort of permission did they need to get to do that other than sort of electrical permits?
[Alicia Hunt]: It was signage. So there- Okay, so it was just the signage. Okay. Right. This company's market, their business strategy is that they sell ads on the sides of their equipment. And then that's how they make their money is from the ads, like billboards. That's where they needed a sign permit from the city council. So this didn't seem like the same thing.
[Brenda Pike]: This was specifically Tesla chargers, which were not that same sort of business model.
[Alicia Hunt]: No, no. So Tesla chargers, in addition to the other thing that that permission they might need is that businesses have a required number of parking spots. One would think that electric vehicle charging spots would still count as parking spots, but if for some reason they were going to be changing the number of parking spots because of a realignment or whatever, that could impact their zoning and their site plan review. Depends, right? Did they have excessive more than they needed or not? So that's the only other thing that could come up.
[Robert Paine]: You would think it would be a good business strategy for parking lots and businesses to have charging stations because that will attract EV drivers to come in and charge up while they're shopping.
[Brenda Pike]: I definitely choose where I shop based on if they have charging stations.
[Robert Paine]: I don't know if businesses are aware of that potential business development idea.
[Alicia Hunt]: Right. It's just as an FYI, like stop and shop doesn't actually own that parking. There's it's a private owner that owns the property and stop and shop leases the lease is their building. Right. So it's to Wegmans. Wegmans said, yeah, but we don't control the parking out front. That's the management company. Then when Wegmans wanted to do special pull through spots for their grocery pickup, all of a sudden, they were in charge of the parking in front of their building. Interesting.
[Robert Paine]: It seems like the city, what would be the entity that does business, advocates for business? Whatever it is, Dr. Rotary, Chamber of Commerce, are they aware of this potential way to have their businesses actually get more foot traffic with this or car traffic? It's one way to see, would they be able to advocate this possible win-win situation. That's one idea. There's sort of an opportunity for cars to be able to charge faster. By the time they have shopped there, they've recharged their car. So they might want to go to that store more often.
[Brenda Pike]: Yep, absolutely. So another quick update I wanted to give, so Alicia, so I've met with Anne and Christina from Mothers Upfront, the Medford chapter of that, that they're sort of ramping up, and they're planning on having an event at the library on January 31st at 7 p.m. And it's sort of going to be talking about sort of what's going on in the city right now for climate actions, and then, you know, where mothers out front could be advocating for where they might focus their attention for the next year. And I haven't seen an invitation go out about that yet, but I know that the location and the time is scheduled.
[Unidentified]: What's the time again?
[Brenda Pike]: 7 p.m.
[Unidentified]: 7 p.m. For how long?
[Brenda Pike]: I don't know. I don't know how long.
[Unidentified]: What day of the week is that?
[Brenda Pike]: I think that's a Wednesday. And then moving on to the Electrify Medford stuff. Yes, it was very exciting to hear that we were awarded that MassCEC Empower grant to be able to do this outreach campaign. I felt like it was an early Christmas present. I got it the day before going away for Christmas. Very exciting. Our next steps there, we'll be contracting with Mass CEC going through that whole process so that can take a month probably at minimum. And then finding some volunteer coaches to help work on this with us. doing the procurement for the technical consultant. That's the consultant that will be focusing, that would be helping people with heat pumps in particular, and sort of answering questions for people and helping them to sort of compare multiple quotes from contractors, for instance, so they could do like apple to apple comparisons. And then as we're going through all of these processes, developing materials, so information about incentives and decarbonization plan, trainings and presentations and things like that. So we're going to be very busy over the next few months as we're ramping this up. And so the first thing that I wanted to talk to you guys about was the outreach plan that I put together for this campaign. And I emailed this out ahead of time, but let me also share my screen too here. Can you see the outreach plan?
[Adam Hurtubise]: No, not yet. Not yet.
[Brenda Pike]: Is it coming up.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: It says. it's trying to spinning.
[Brenda Pike]: let's try that again. Can you see it now?
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: No, it's still spinning. It's trying to be a slow connection. Okay.
[Alicia Hunt]: Well, we can talk through it. You've started screen sharing, but then it's not showing the actual file yet. Oh, interesting.
[Brenda Pike]: Okay. Well, we don't necessarily need to be looking at it as we're talking about it. So I will. stop attempting to share so that we can look at each other again. But some of my major questions for this group was, what are some of the outreach methods that you've seen that have been really effective? So we have some of our, you know, more traditional ones that this group, that our department has done, like, Go Green Medford website, our department newsletter, our department social media, the city website, the city newsletter, the city social media, the events calendar, if there are events that are happening. And then there are things like the Medford Mass Facebook group and even SUFA signs so we can have some of this information out in the community. And then, you know, partnering with other organizations. So, you know, this group, Climate Equity Council, Helping to Get the Word Out, Mothers Out Front, 350, the West Medford Community Center, the Senior Center, the schools. Are there other organizations or other sort of formats that you would like to see outreach done in?
[MCM00000770_SPEAKER_02]: I'd love to help answer this question, because Brenda, I happen to also be writing an outreach plan as part of my work. So we're kind of in it together. That's great. I would suggest adding Mystic River Watershed Association, because now that I work for a different watershed association, I see that they really have their hands in everything and any kind of environmental work. They have the resources to support they'll have their internal their their newsletter. Also, maybe the Charles River Watershed Association and the local land trusts. I would add. making an event on LinkedIn, in addition to an event on Facebook, maybe also a Google Calendar event, so that through those three avenues, people will end up getting a calendar notification somehow.
[Brenda Pike]: That's great. I wouldn't have thought of that.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: I would like to comment. One of the things the city has is a welcoming committee. In the past, I was really hoping to have the time to join them to share, you know, what we do in the energy and environment committee in your office. So I think it's important to somehow share, you know, these projects with the welcoming committee for new residents coming in.
[Brenda Pike]: Yes, I've seen sort of gatherings here of new residents when they were doing welcoming committee events. Are there other things that are going to, are there like pack welcoming packages that are going out to people with information?
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Yeah, they have a printed document. Lisa Fuliani is I think the secretary for the group. So we could get in touch with her. They do have some information. a welcoming kit. So I don't know how much is in there about, you know, your office and the Energy Committee and what we do, but it would be a good place to get more involved on that. The other thing is probably the Medford Chamber of Businesses and the new, I don't know who, economic director, planner. Yeah, absolutely. Which you probably know to work with them.
[Jessica Parks]: And then I mean, I think. You say the Medford Mass Facebook, Medford MA Facebook group, that's just the one Facebook group, right? I mean, there are a bunch that I think trickle throughout. There's Medford Mass Politics, there's Medford Moms, Dads, Caregivers. So like there's a whole list that we can easily infiltrate. There's also one that's slightly broader audience, but obviously has a lot of Medford people who are, only interested in house-related information. It's Moms of Camberville House Talk. And it's basically where people go for information on their houses and what to do if they're looking to do upgrades or things like that, which is also another place to infiltrate. That's great. I hadn't heard of that. There's a bunch.
[Brenda Pike]: any other general suggestions of organizations or formats that some of this outreach can happen in?
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Yeah, I do have another one, Brenda. But in the past, we've entertained this, but I heard that it's expensive to do this, so you probably need volunteers. That is with the water bills that go out to residents. I mean, I've always thought it would be great to have a short newsletter in that the people see, you know, with links for translation. So a lot of people aren't on, you know, the internet for Facebook groups. But, you know, that's quite a bit of physical work, you know, to help stuff those envelopes. And also the printing cost, I don't know, you know, But that's a different format. I think we need to look at different formats besides internet. A lot of people don't do the internet.
[Brenda Pike]: When I was at National Grid, we were working on a sort of a municipal outreach campaign. We were working with municipalities to do these sorts of things. Medford was one of them actually. And one of the things we found that was the most effective was inserts in tax bills, because it was going directly to the owners who could make decisions. So it was really effective. Now it doesn't, It doesn't reach everyone, right? A lot of times the people who are responsive to that are the owner occupants. And so it's not reaching renters and really getting that sort of interaction with their landlords that's really going to make a difference. But it's really a factor for those owner occupants.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Right, right. I think Alicia made some comments.
[Jessica Parks]: Yeah, Alicia, I was gonna ask, do we have, I was going to say, does everyone automatically get? Water bills anymore. I don't.
[Alicia Hunt]: Oh, yeah, that's water bills only go to the owners. They don't go to renters and people can opt out of getting the water bills. On the other hand, I have found something an insert in the water bill. Very it's a very effective for the rain barrel program, for example. And when did the outreach campaign back in 2014, 15, 16. Um, it was very effective. Um, I actually, I have to share. I love the, um, obviously this was an outreach campaign that the mayor was fully aware of and we had been really in, but like, he knew what we were doing, but then we put an insert in the water bill and he shows up in my office one day with this insert in his hand and he goes, Hey, Lucia, this was in my water bill.
[SPEAKER_10]: Should I. I'm laughing at him. It's like, yes, yes, you should. And then we should do a press release about how you did it too. And we should put it in the paper.
[Alicia Hunt]: And we did. He took a picture on his iPad of the guy coming in to do an efficiency of the thing, Mass Save Audit of his house. And then I actually had people reach out and they're like, like Rep Donato was like, hey, the mayor got one of these. Can I get this energy audit too?
[SPEAKER_10]: It was hilarious.
[Alicia Hunt]: But that is to say it does work and we absolutely see a spike, whatever it is that we put in the water bills, we see a spike in calls.
[Jessica Parks]: I was just going to say, because a friend of mine just said to me, hey, Jessica, did you know I have lead in my water? I'm like, no, you don't actually have lead in your water. It's just an insert in your bill. It's just, no, you don't. We can talk about it.
[Adam Hurtubise]: So if you're making a choice between water bill and tax bill, not everybody gets a tax bill because if they have a loan, the tax goes to the bank.
[Alicia Hunt]: Yeah, that's interesting. I have a mortgage and my tax bill goes to my mortgage company, but as a result, I kind of don't look at my tax bill as closely, right? I don't take it as seriously. But those do go out quarterly tax estimates.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Yes, we just got ours.
[Alicia Hunt]: To property owners. So we can look into it. It may be the same office that does those. It's the same suite of offices at the very least.
[Barry Ingber]: But you know, most, a vast majority of households have a car and putting it in the auto excise bill would reach almost everybody.
[Robert Paine]: Yeah, and there's also, once a year there's a census. Is that a testing idea, Bill? Let's set out. Yeah, it's kind of what month that is.
[Barry Ingber]: I don't know.
[Alicia Hunt]: Right. I have asked about putting stuff in the census. I we could that would be Melissa Ripley in elections. We can talk to her. I just have to call out. So do you guys see how we have split screen of Bob Barry and my brain stopped. Right. Benji, who's the bees? This is a device called the owl that Teresa got for us to use for doing hybrid meetings like this. It's just right now when all three of you talked near close to each other at the same time, it's nice things with the display there.
[Barry Ingber]: Okay, and it forgot about Paul and Kathleen.
[Alicia Hunt]: If they talk, it'll spin over to them. Kathleen, say something.
[Robert Paine]: I took down the picture of this gentleman who was behind me here, so I wouldn't focus on him. It was zooming in on his face. Yeah.
[Brenda Pike]: So one of the things that I'd like to get some more feedback on from you guys in particular is some of the events that I had listed out. So I basically listed out almost everything on the Medford events calendar. I filtered out very few things here just so that we had an idea of everything that's going on. Are there particular events that you think are especially useful to have some sort of presence at? Are there events that aren't on the list that I sent around that you would really like to see something at because you do think a lot of people are there and they're open to getting this sort of information there. I know Circle the Square is something that a lot of times this department will be doing tabling at, so that's a good opportunity.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: You know, when you have events like that, you got to grab people with a carrot, right? So you've got a dangle of carrots, and then they come by, and then you slowly have a conversation with them, and then perhaps, you know, this is what I want you to look at. So the more we have at that meeting, at that event, the better. You know, single-mindedly going in there with that task, I think, you'll have a lot of, and then word gets around. People talk to each other, so obviously that's word of mouth. In this day and age, people might not think that's the case, but it does get around. There's a lot of groups, like Jessica was saying, and method, people talk to each other. So if you convince one person, you reach out to one person, then others sort of, it sort of cascades off that. But you have to be convincing about it.
[Robert Paine]: There's also school events, like the high school, where there's a lot of families, students that are attending meetings, general meetings, and some evenings or, you know, during big plays or whatever, there might be some possibilities there too. Yep. And you can certainly send things through the school system. The school system sends lots of notices with the students home, and things can be included in there perhaps.
[Brenda Pike]: Yep, that's a great idea. That's a great idea. Going off Paul's comment from before about word of mouth being really effective, and we saw that with the mayor, with Alicia's anecdote about the mayor earlier. One of the things that I would love to do is have case studies of people who have already done this work. so that people can see their friends and neighbors who have already done it that they might not even know because this is the sort of thing that tends to be pretty invisible. And so if folks want to volunteer to be case studies for this, if you have suggestions for anybody who you know that has done any of this sort of work that you think would be great case studies, please let me know.
[Robert Paine]: I'll be in contact Brenda. You're going to have a whole new house. You're going to have all sorts of great things.
[Kathleen McKenna]: I'm wondering if it makes sense, maybe it doesn't, the case study would probably cover it, but to do some sort of meeting, I don't know how many people you could really have, but like a live walkthrough where you have the homeowner and maybe you have other people just watching what happens? Does that make any sense or that just be too complicated?
[Brenda Pike]: Okay, yeah. So more than just like an open house where people can talk about things they've already done, actually having, say, a home energy advisor there who can do the assessment with a group of people following along.
[Kathleen McKenna]: Oh yeah, or maybe it's even a little, you'd probably have to get the assessor to agree to it, but maybe, you know, talk about it a little more, like have an introduction for people. And now we're going to do the walkthrough and okay, everyone's systems are different and this is what we have here. And, you know, if you've had this system, I might, enough to see it, but I just maybe react this way. And this is the process we go through. I'll do an estimate and get back to you, that kind of thing.
[Jessica Parks]: Or even, you know, one of the things that I've seen a lot in actually a bunch of groups that I've part of is the conversation right now about how well things work in low temperatures and people deciding whether or not to keep a backup source. in their house, can I rip out my boiler or should I actually keep my boiler? I've seen a lot of those discussions back and forth and people are like, you can take that out, they're rated to negative 15, it's totally fine. The newer systems are so much better and then other people are like, no, you can't, my system's not performing. Then it's like, well, have you cleaned your filter? You have to clean the filters every four months and all this back and forth. I think stuff like that is really useful, especially in an environment like New England, where people get concerned about the winter months, I think, is kind of one of the biggest things I hear, at least.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, absolutely. I think that's in the same way that for electric vehicles, there's range anxiety. For heat pumps, there's definitely cold anxiety.
[Kathleen McKenna]: And is this only for residential or is this including small business? I read through it, but it's been a number of months.
[Brenda Pike]: So my intention was for it to really just focus on residential, but since then I've gotten commentary that we should be at least having materials for small businesses as well, even if we're not going to be doing such a directed push at them, we'll at least have like materials that can be shared with them.
[Robert Paine]: What's the time frame for getting geared up here for this whole activity?
[Brenda Pike]: So my goal is to have the coaches in place by the time that we have the contract signed with MassCEC. and can officially move forward with it. That's one or two months. Then with the coaches, it's finding the coaches, it's bringing them on and training them with an overview of all of the technologies and how to talk to people about them. Then for folks that want to go deeper, doing a deeper dive into heat pumps with them.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Brenda, I had a question about that. I thought you had sent out a page on the coaching and the requirement and the amount of hours for training, but I couldn't find it. So one of the things I wanted to ask, I think you're training them, but I'm not sure, is if you're spending the time training the new group, would it be possible to record that training for us? for the energy committee so that we could also, I'm not saying that we would definitely be coaches, but at least we'll have the knowledge.
[Brenda Pike]: Absolutely. And I think that I would want to make it available online for anyone who is interested, for residents who are interested as well.
[EO-vAhUJAKo_SPEAKER_21]: Okay. It would be good if we could speak to the committee, so if we're asked, we also have that knowledge.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, so I think the sort of the overview that I was talking about is something that I would do. But when we have the technical consultant on board, they can do that sort of deeper dive into heat pumps in particular. Okay.
[Unidentified]: Great.
[Brenda Pike]: So some of the other things that I talked about in this outreach plan, obviously having flyers that we can be using at these events and send through the schools and post in businesses and at the library and things like that. And having case studies and maybe even videos of folks who are case studies for this. going door to door in certain neighborhoods. I know that's very time intensive for volunteers to do that, so I think we'd want to be really specific about what areas we really want to focus on, places that are really sort of underrepresented in these programs in the past. and doing things like lawn signs for people to put in their front lawn or their front window if they're interested in doing that, sort of along that case study line so that people can see that people around them are doing this and can reach out to them if they have questions. I was thinking of doing sort of a soft launch at first and then doing a big sort of kickoff around Earth Day in April. I know that's later than I'd hoped to do a big launch of this, but I think there's enough sort of interest in these types of thing around Earth Day that we're more likely to get more sort of attention from from people around who are looking for that sort of content around that time.
[Robert Paine]: I was going to say, on Monday, it's after the holiday week, which is because Pantry's Day is the 15th this year. So there's no issue with the school being in session again.
[Unidentified]: So is it for Monday?
[Brenda Pike]: Yep. But that might be a good point not to plan something for the weekend before Earth Day because people might be away at that point.
[Barry Ingber]: Take a look at when Passover is as well. It's around then this year. I think it's towards the end of April this year.
[Unidentified]: I think it's towards the end of April this year.
[Barry Ingber]: End of April? Yeah.
[Brenda Pike]: Yep, good point. And then also, I would like to do outreach to landlords. So if we're getting responses from renters who would really like to have this work done in their homes, but they can't do most of it themselves, either helping them to talk to their landlords or if they're not comfortable with that, doing outreach directly. Okay, so unless anybody has any additional comments, questions or anything right now, I think we can move on and feel free to email me anytime with any suggestions that you have.
[Robert Paine]: One thing I forgot to do administratively is to go through the calendar for this year's meetings. We sort of addressed it last month, but just to focus on it again, and I don't know if we actually resolved the date for the Harvester as we best hope. I'm noting that the 12th of this day is the 14th, the latest it possibly can be, which is a Monday. So we would have to, if it's a Saturday in October, it would be the 5th or the 19th. to avoid the weekend, the 12th would be that closed-day weekend. So now that the first meeting in October, our meeting in October would be normally October 7th, which is the first Monday. So I would sort of suggest that maybe the 19th meeting after that meeting would be a candidate for the harvester as the first of all I don't know for sure you check with the mayor's schedule all.
[Alicia Hunt]: I usually check with her before we nail it down I'd actually just put it in an e-mail to her that October 19th would be. In line with the pattern that we've been doing we've been going the Saturday after. And one of the good reasons for staying with the pattern is because other events tend to block into a pattern as well. And that way we know what we're conflicting with and what we're not conflicting with. People will predict when our event is gonna be. So I'm assuming the 19th, I've sent a note to the mayor asking about that and her availability.
[Robert Paine]: Okay. meetings will be the first Monday of each month, except for September. We avoid Labor Day, so that would be September 9th instead of September 2nd. The summer meeting will be done during the months of July and August. We'll just pick a mutually agreeable day. That could be a Monday. We had discussed in-person meetings maybe every season, so maybe April 1st is the date in April. And then the summer meeting could be in my backyard again, hopefully not raining. And then October 7th would be a good day, a good time to meet in person before the Harvest Trinity Festival. Otherwise, it's basically the first Monday of each month, other than the September and July, August. I think those are the dates that establishes our meeting schedule. Let's see, on the agenda we had Paul to discuss the COP.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: I have actually a presentation. I don't know if, Brenda, could you give me a guest password for the thing that I can send this to you? Would that be feasible?
[Brenda Pike]: I think, let me see, could you log into the Zoom from your laptop and then I can just make you a co-host so you can share your screen?
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: I don't have a Wi-Fi connection right now.
[Robert Paine]: Yeah, I don't know what there's a password for, even though you're making a guess, you need a password. Does that make any sense?
[Alicia Hunt]: Why don't I put, I could put the password in the chat. I'm not sure we actually want it on live TV.
[Robert Paine]: Right, good idea.
[Alicia Hunt]: Can you see the chat?
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: I can't see anything.
[Alicia Hunt]: Will it pop up for you guys? I'm just saying once I hit send, it'll, does that pop up for you?
[Unidentified]: Okay, that's an interesting test.
[Barry Ingber]: You get that, Saturn? I didn't get that. I didn't actually say it because it didn't have the entire message.
[Unidentified]: A1, B1, C1, D1, E1.
[Barry Ingber]: Are you kidding me?
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: I'm not kidding.
[SPEAKER_10]: No, he's not kidding.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: I'm not kidding you.
[SPEAKER_10]: All right.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: I don't know if that got recorded or not.
[Adam Hurtubise]: I could hear that, so.
[Robert Paine]: Oh, I'm sorry. Now we have to block it out. I should have written it down.
[Unidentified]: Oh, nice. Can you write it down for me, please?
[Robert Paine]: Oh, yeah. It may be case sensitive.
[SPEAKER_10]: It's all lowercase.
[Unidentified]: These are all number one. Sorry about the delay here.
[Robert Paine]: Sometimes we have, while we're waiting, we have guest presenters. A while ago, I haven't gotten a reply, I asked Fred Pulaski, if MWRA could present on basic flood issues, any updates on overflows, sewer overflows, et cetera, plans in general. And I haven't heard a reply, but I just want an example who used to be the chair of the committee. I'll try him again. But if anyone has an idea about any guests that they would like to have presented to our meetings, feel free to provide your ideas to the co-chair group.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: okay um you're connected i'll tell you i'll tell you later all right so yeah i'm connected so let me just uh go in and rise to
[Robert Paine]: I guess they have one of these every year. Is that how it works? I guess this is number 28, right? I'm sorry, one of these every year.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: Every year, that's right. Past 28 years.
[Barry Ingber]: I just read that the next one is going to be chaired by an oil executive as well in Azerbaijan. Yes, yes. So we've got a pattern.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: We've been completely incorporated. I promise this won't be long. I would try to So I joined. I don't know if you see me. I'll let it go. I'm just going to... You have to be admitted. Yes.
[Unidentified]: I guess you're admitted now. Okay. Connected.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Recording. All right. So... Paul has to turn off the sound on his computer. Yes, I'm doing that right now.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: Is that good? Yes. So now I'm going to unmute myself. You have to be muted and the sound has to be off on your computer because there is another mic in the room.
[Alicia Hunt]: Brenda, now both those kits are muted. One of them has to come off.
[Adam Hurtubise]: There, it works. Right, that's good.
[Unidentified]: All right. Well, it's going to be on this screen here. Actually, that screen, that's fine.
[Brenda Pike]: Are you sharing your screen, Paul? I'm not seeing anything.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: I am sharing. Hold on. Let me try again. It says host disabled participants screen sharing.
[Unidentified]: Brian is going to look into it.
[Brenda Pike]: Okay, you should be able to do it now.
[Robert Paine]: All right. Can you see it? Yeah, we can see it on the screen, so everyone can see it.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: Right. Okay, so I'll send this out to everyone afterwards, but I got some links there. The PDF link you see, that's to the 18-page document that these guys produced. Can everyone hear me? Yes? So can everyone on screen hear me? Yes. OK, good. So this is the PDF to the document they produced. So I'm going to go through this by telling you what I thought of it. But anyways. That looks a bit dystopian, but anyways, we'll go forward with this. So this was an image that I actually pilfered from MIT Technology Review. And they said that, obviously, scientists are warning that we are running out of time, dangerous warning levels, warning levels. pictures grim. But if you know where to look, there are a few bright spots shining through the darkness. So this is a very positive take on COP28. However, after getting into the meat of it, I realized that COP 29 might be there, and COP 30, and then 31, and then there might not be a window at all. So anyway, we have to be cognizant of this. Right. We'll start by saying who presided over COP28. This was Dr. Sultan Ahmed Al-Jaber, and he was the president designated in January. He's the Arab Emirates Special Envoy for Climate Change and also Minister for Energy and Technology. But also he holds a private chief executive position of the state-owned oil company. So this was a bit of a surprise to, well, a big surprise to everyone who was there. Anyway, who attended this meeting? This is sort of a big list of everyone who attended. It included Britain's King Charles, John Kerry was there, Kamala Harris was there, various kings and prime ministers from the Middle East. I was surprised somebody from Syria was there, but there we have it. Narendra Modi was there, various people from Africa. And of course, Latin America, we know the Lula da Silva from Brazil. And of note is one billionaire CEO of Microsoft, or former CEO of Microsoft, Bill Gates. I was surprised that other billionaires like that, but I do Anyway, this is going on to look at who the lobbyists were there. So there was literally a 400% increase in lobbyists at this meeting. There were 100,000 attendees. This represents 2.5%. The fossil fuel industry was 2.5% of the attendees at this meeting. right there was carbon capture people there who were very much in sync with the with the fossil fuel guys. So these guys were feeding off each other. Obviously, carbon capture is a attractive thing for fossil fuel industry because you can get away with it. And then, of course, there's always agribusiness, pesticide manufacturers, and synthetic fertilizer. This is not a complete list. You can find a complete list on one of the links I've actually produced on this. A couple of points is that the increase in the number of industry representatives was disturbing. And of course, what this means is that countries were actually giving passes to industry representatives. So for instance, Canada or the United States was giving passes to oil company lobbyists and whatnot. And what this means is that these guys will now be perceived as peers by the policymakers, which is not a good take for this conference. Anyway, an analysis of this, and so one of the links down there you can look at, was a show that nine in 10 large businesses present are either lobbying against progressive climate-related policy shifts or completely disengaged with any kind of green policy entirely. On a more positive side, the UN moved to require everyone to register, anyone registering to the summit to declare their affiliation. This hadn't been done before for some obscure reason. I don't know why, but we have it now. At least there's some transparency in this process. That's about all I want to say about that. What was done? What happened at COP28? There was a There was this back and forth about transitioning away from fossil fuels. And finally, it was acknowledged that they're dangerous. We have to transition away from it. So that's after 28 meetings, I suppose, we came up with that. And then there was the phasing out fossil fuels proposal. So many countries, including the EU, wanted to phase out fossil fuels, considering it's an essential matter. And obviously, small island nations were threatened by rising seas, and these also wanted to phase out fossil fuels. But Some of the countries, notably Saudi Arabia, were resistant to this due to the significant economic reliance on fossil fuels. And I would add that 50% of the GDP of Saudi Arabia comes from fossil fuel sales. So this is a huge moneymaker for Saudi Arabia, also for many of the Gulf states there. how the consensus works at COPS, they have never been able to resolve this. So any decision has to be by complete consensus of everyone. So if 198 countries agree and one disagrees, that decision is not made or there's no consensus at all. So everyone has a veto power on this, right? So they have to come up with some way to resolve this. George Monbiot, who I like a lot, he's a Guardian columnist, he has written an article about this, you can read about it, and he offers some solutions about it. Anyway, so the controversial draft text was drafted and, you know, there was a, there was the language, the phase out language was taken out, the transitioning away was put in, so phase, I guess phase away or something like that, not phase out. Anyway, so this is a concession. This was considered as a concession to the fossil fuel interests. So at the end, that was called a UAE consensus. And like I said before, this has to be agreed by everyone. If there's no, even one a country that doesn't like the language, they can just veto it and nothing will happen. So eventually, they decided on the transition away from fossil fuels in an orderly and equitable manner. So that's what we did. And of course, this was hailed by the EU Commissioner as a historic and a paradigm shift. I don't know, I'll take issue with that maybe. But unfortunately, it leaves a lot of loopholes for the fossil fuel industry to do what they normally do. And the final text of the global stock take was, gives them essentially broad license to carry on conducting business as usual. Right. So, and then, so there was like I said before, there was a lot of, you know, there was an incestuous relationship between carbon capture groups, 475 lobbyists there, and 2,456 lobbyists for the fossil fuel industry. Obviously, none of these methods have been proven, and the capacities aren't even Unless you somehow come up with some miraculous technology that does this, you're not going to be able to do this at all. So this is just a fluff just to say that we want to mitigate. So essentially, it's a mush. So what are the takeaways from COP28? fossil fuels will not be phased out, but be phased down, right? This is after 28 cops, right? So we came up with this after 28 cops, which begs the question of how smart we are with this and with our own existence. Okay. Fossil fuel industry was given broad license to carry on as usual. They'll reduce methane emissions. They have agreed to reduce methane emissions dramatically by 2030. But unfortunately, this is voluntary, so there's no, you know, there's no accountability for that, really, in any real sense. So carbon capture tech was hailed as our savior. Obviously, like I said before, it's not proven. Capacity is minuscule. And it generally means that you want to have your cake and eat it too. What else? Transition away from fossil fuels applies only to energy systems, right? It doesn't apply to plastics, transport or agriculture. So this is bizarre. So I don't know what we're thinking. It doesn't apply to concrete either, right? What's that? It doesn't apply to concrete either. No, definitely doesn't apply to concrete, which is a major contributor. I completely agree with you. There is a major contributor. Anyway, transition with fuels was discussed, and this is really a reference to fossil gas. Fossil gas in bits is fragmented. So anyway, since we're not taking plastics into consideration, just to remind people that by 2050, there will be more plastic in the oceans than fish. Okay, so the commitment was, this was at least, this is one advance, right? The commitment to triple renewable energy capacity by 2030 was an advance. So this is good. So in a way, it represents more and more market share of those technologies coming on board. They're getting cheaper. getting easier to install and people are adopting it, so hopefully that'll help us avoid calamity. Okay, so U.S. pledged $188 million for adaptation to help states most in need of assistance to strengthen their climate resilience. This is about half of the $300 million target, slightly over the $300 million target, but half of 300 million target that they want. So this was pretty visible, because we need, obviously, billions to do this, not 188 million. We seem to have money for everything, but what actually is going to help us survive the next century? All right. 720 million was pledged by the US and others to mitigate loss and damage. This is a loss and damage fund that was set up to give this to countries that are suffering from climate change or will suffer. like the Marshall Islands. But then again, this is a visibly small amount. We need actually trillions of dollars, not billions. And this is barely enough to get the fund running a little more. So just I made the point that we gave $7 trillion in subsidies, not us, just us. This is wrong. This is not fair. Anyway, one thing that I liked was that cities and other sub-national actors played a large role at COP, because obviously cities produce 70% of the carbon dioxide emissions from urban areas, the first of its kind. This was local climate action summits. This was thing that was supported by the World Resource Institute, WRI. If you go to the website, they've got some interesting stuff. So I encourage you to go to that. And there were like a lot of mayors there and so this is great to have the mayors of towns go there and that's where the action happens and those are the people that need those are the stakeholders that need to be having impact on these So these are some comments from various people. This is Greta Thunberg saying this is toothless, Texas toothless, and there's no way even close to being sufficient to keep us within 1.5 minutes. This is George Monbiot, who is a Guardian columnist. He thinks it's a fast food to fail. He says it's like allowing weapons manufacturers to dominate a peace conference, which is exactly what it was. And this is the president of the COP responding to allegations that he was making deals, a backdoor in secret, with people at the conference. And of course, he said these allegations are false, not true, incorrect, and not accurate. I thought I'd put that there just for posterity. Well, that settles it then. That settles it. Yes. This is Samantha Burgess with Copernicus, and she was essentially saying that the last half year was truly shocking. We're running out of adjectives to describe this. And I have two more. 50 oil and gas companies said they would sharply reduce emissions of methane. And of course, methane is pretty bad. It's worse than carbon dioxide, actually. So across their operations by 2030, of course, it's not enforceable because it's voluntary. And this is a emergency room doctor who attended the, I just like this, well, I mean, it's cheesy doing CPR on the earth, but kind of a lot of trouble right now. And he's right, so. And of course, lastly, it's the quote by Samuel Silk, who's the Marshall Islands Chief Delegates and Natural Resources Minister. And he said, we will not go silently into our watering graves. Right. So where is the COP going to be next year? As you've mentioned already, it's going to be in Azerbaijan. And lo and behold, it's a petro-state. So we are where we are by design, I would say. Okay. Anyway, so we look forward to what comes to that boss. But I don't want to be too negative about this. There was some, I will be, I have included some references that you will go look and these are some references that I've included. Particularly the second reference, wri.org, is a very positive sort of thing to that. Go there and check it out. And some details about all the rest of the stuff I talked about. Obviously, there's a lot more went on than I mentioned here, but it is what it is. And lastly, I'd like to say that I am now a lobbyist too. That's me with Christine Foote and Zaina Ortiz. I went to lobby for Mass Power Forward on some legislation that Mass 360 was interested in, or rather, Mass Power Forward was interested in. Christine got in touch with me And we went there too. And I prepared a bunch of materials for one of the items that they had on their list. I pretty much convinced Paul Tonato to sponsor it. So I was happy about that. So anyway, that's it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Paul.
[Robert Paine]: We're close to the end of our two hours, so I guess feel free to, if you have suggestions for presenters or future agenda items, send them to our three co-chairs, Brenda and Alicia, for following future meetings.
[Barry Ingber]: Motion to adjourn.
[Kathleen McKenna]: second.
[Barry Ingber]: And the physical gesture too.
[Kathleen McKenna]: And I guess if anyone objects, raise your hand.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: I see no objections. All right. Meeting is adjourned. Thank you.
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