[Brenda Pike]: Okay, yeah, thank you guys for joining the second meeting of the Climate Equity Council. So on the agenda today, we're going to review the minutes from the last meeting. Oh, Lizette, do you have a question?
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, actually, Natasha texted me. She says she can't get on for some reason. Oh, okay.
[Brenda Pike]: Let me make sure that she has the link for this.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I just told her that I told you so to see if you guys can fix that.
[Evangelista]: Yep.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: She says she can't because the link says canceled. That's weird.
[Brenda Pike]: Let me email her the link.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Again, okay.
[Brenda Pike]: Okay, so she should get that pretty quick. In the meantime, while we're waiting, I wanted to mention to folks that, ah, there we go. Here she is. Hi, Natasha, can you hear us?
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_08]: Hi, sorry about that. I don't know what happened, but you know when you get the reminder for the meeting, mine says cancel. I don't know why.
[Brenda Pike]: That's so weird. OK, we'll make sure the next time that you get everything that you need for it. Yes, thank you.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_08]: Hello, everyone. Sorry about that.
[Brenda Pike]: No worries, we hadn't really gotten started yet. So the agenda for today, we have a review of the minutes from the last meeting, the selection of the chair, updates on city actions, a little bit of a deep dive into mass save incentives, more information about flooding in Medford, and emergency shelters. And then we can talk about what we want to do, what we want to talk about for the next meeting. But I also wanted to mention that the Energy and Environment Committee, they're a monthly committee that talks about these topics as well. Their next meeting is on January 8 at 630. So if any of you folks want to join that meeting to listen in on what they're doing, you're absolutely welcome to. It's a public meeting. I think this one might be a hybrid meeting where it'll be in person, but there'll be a camera and everything so that folks can be watching it online as well. So I sent around the minutes from the last meeting to everyone. Did you get a chance to review it? Did you have any edits to it?
[Adam Hurtubise]: I do.
[Brenda Pike]: Oh, you do? Okay.
[Jenny Graham]: Could you the next time just add our names on it so we know who participate, you know, the meetings, if it's possible. So when you're talking about, you know, I feel like I want to make sure when you're talking about we all on the same page, we all know what's going on.
[Brenda Pike]: Yep, possible. Definitely. I do mean just saying in terms of who's saying what for the for the discussion or present at the meeting?
[Jenny Graham]: Yeah, yeah.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, I should be doing that anyway. So that's a that's a good reminder. Any other edits to them?
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: are you talking about the minutes for this meeting or for the last for the last meeting not for the agenda for this meeting but for the minutes for the last meeting i took a look at it like when you sent it and i didn't see any big issues i guess other than the you know our participation like samia said yep
[Brenda Pike]: Okay, so do we want to accept the minutes with the addition of the names of those who are present? Can I get a motion for that?
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_08]: Motion to go.
[Brenda Pike]: Thank you, can I get a second?
[Evangelista]: Second. Thumbs up.
[Brenda Pike]: Great, all right, and so, yes, so let's, yes, who accepts these minutes, Charbel? And Stacey, I think. Stacey, yes. Okay, Samia? Is that a yes? Okay, good. Natasha?
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_08]: Yes, motion to go, yes. Lizette?
[Brenda Pike]: the same here. Great. Okay. So those are accepted with the addition of the names of those who are present. Great. So then next up was selection of a chair for the Climate Equity Council. Did folks want to make any suggestions for who should be chair?
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_08]: I nominate Charbel Hayek. I was going to say the same thing.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: I guess we have no choice then, huh?
[Brenda Pike]: Okay, so Natasha nominated Charbel and Lisette seconded it.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: I can't nominate Natasha or Lisette now because they outvote me.
[Brenda Pike]: Of course you can. You can, as many people as you want, you can nominate for this and then you'll vote on it.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: No, it's okay. If they say so, then
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: I'll do it. You agree to it.
[Brenda Pike]: Did anybody else have any other nominations? You can nominate yourself. Feel free to.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: Then I'll nominate Natasha.
[Brenda Pike]: Anybody seconding that?
[Adam Hurtubise]: How many people you need for this? the chair. How many people need to be nominated?
[Brenda Pike]: I mean, actually, you could you could choose to have co-chairs if you wanted to, you could have two co-chairs instead of just one chair.
[Jenny Graham]: No, just checking, you know, he's fine with that. You're well represented.
[Evangelista]: I'm good with Charbel if he wants to, if he's okay chairing.
[Brenda Pike]: Anybody else have any other suggestions or comments? Okay, let's vote on Charbel then. Stacey? Yes. Samia? Yes. Charbel?
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: Yes.
[Brenda Pike]: Yes. Natasha? Yes. Lisette? Yes. Great. That would have been really funny if Charbel was the one person who said no to that.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: I'd like to change my vote. No, I'm just kidding.
[Brenda Pike]: Great. And Charbel, I can follow up with you separately to talk about what that will entail.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: I'm just curious, if one person were to say no, does that mean the vote can't go through?
[Brenda Pike]: No, as long as it's a majority vote, it can go through.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: You can't get out of this, Charbel. I'm just wondering if it's like a jury where everyone has to agree. Or is it like majority vote, but?
[SPEAKER_03]: Then no, you'd still be chair.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: I know. I have a question. Are we doing co-chairs or no?
[Brenda Pike]: Because I heard that. I mean, if you were interested in having a co-chair, absolutely.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: Well, that's up to Charbel because he's devoted.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: Um, I mean, yeah, we, how many co-chairs we can have?
[Brenda Pike]: I think, I mean, it might be more complicated if you have more than two chairs.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: Okay, maybe. Um, I mean, I guess, um, if Lizette and Natasha want to be my co-chairs, because Samia, I know she doesn't live in Medford, Or if Stacey, Stacey, you live in Malden, right? Correct. Right, okay.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: I agree.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: I don't know.
[Jenny Graham]: I accept. Thank you, Charbel. I said the same thing to, you know, that I don't mind, I can help as much as you want, but like, just the fact, sorry. Just the fact that I don't live in Medford, I don't think I should.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: Makes sense, yeah.
[Brenda Pike]: So are we looking at two co-chairs, Charbel and Lizette? Is that what's being discussed right now?
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: No, Charbel's the, yeah. Natasha and I are co-chairs for sure.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Oh, they're equal.
[Brenda Pike]: It's equal, so it would be, yeah. So if they were co-chairs, they would be two equal co-chairs, yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's just two, right? Either Chabelle and Lizette or Chabelle and Natasha. I think so, yeah. Right.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: Okay.
[Brenda Pike]: Especially for a committee of this size.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: Exactly. I can be one and then who would like to be the other out of Lizette and Natasha? Do you want to be Lizette? Sure. Okay.
[Brenda Pike]: Great. Any other? folks interested in doing that or do you want to make a motion to do co-chairs with Charbel and Lizette?
[Evangelista]: I'll make the motion for Charbel to be the council's chair and Lizette to be the council's co-chair.
[Brenda Pike]: So I think they would both be considered co-chairs.
[Evangelista]: Okay.
[Brenda Pike]: Yep. Can we get a second for that? I second. Thank you. All right. And so we'll go down the vote again then. So Stacey?
[Evangelista]: Affirmative.
[Brenda Pike]: Samia? Yep. Okay. Charbel?
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: Yes.
[Brenda Pike]: Yes. Natasha? Yes. Lizette? That's a yes, thank you. Okay, co-chairs Charbel and Lizette, thank you very much for being willing to do that. Of course. Okay, any other administrative topics that we want to talk about before moving on to the updates on city actions? Okay, so I'll just jump into that. So since our last meeting, I did the city's annual green communities reporting. And what I saw, there was a 20% reduction in emissions from city operations, both with building and vehicle energy use since 2009. And that is that wasn't weather normalized so if you're taking into account the fact that it's warmer than it was in 2009 it's about a 15% reduction in emissions. It's not taking into account that weather. And green communities is something that we have to do this annual reporting every year and meet some commitments that we've made to them in order to be eligible for grants that they offer. And these are grants usually to do improvements to city buildings to make them more energy efficient.
[Evangelista]: What is green communities? I mean, are these different towns or are they certain subsets within the city or?
[Brenda Pike]: So this is a state program and it's run out of the Department of Energy Resources. And Medford signed up for this in 2009. And there were a set series of actions that Medford had to take in order to be eligible. But once they committed to that and took those actions like certain amount of reduction in energy use and a commitment to buying more energy efficient vehicles and things like that. Then we became eligible to receive additional funding from the state in order to do energy projects and buildings. Thank you. And I think there are a lot of green communities now. I think most of the more than three quarters of the municipalities in Massachusetts are green communities right now. We did some tabling at the winter extravaganza. I did that with Bob Payne, who's the acting chair of the Energy and Environment Committee. We had information at the table about mass save incentives, about fuel assistance, about composting, a lot of the programs that the Planning, Development, Sustainability Department overseas. And it was very busy, actually. There were a lot of people coming through, but a lot of people actually did stop at our table and ask us questions about the programs we were talking about, which I didn't expect. There were a lot more interesting things at the winter extravaganza than our programs. So that was really heartening. So at the last Energy Committee meeting, those are usually the first Monday of the month at 630. The one that I mentioned on January 8th is an exception because the first Monday is actually New Year's Day. But at the last Energy Committee meeting, the major thing that was discussed was the tree ordinance that's being discussed right now at City Council. There have been a couple of City Council meetings where this has come up, and there's a group called Trees Medford that put together an ordinance about protecting the tree canopy in Medford. from being cut down by developers. And the city council has separated that original ordinance from Trees Medford into three separate ordinances. One focusing on trees on public land that the city owns. and what the city is going to do about those trees and increasing the tree canopy there. One focuses on private land and the trees there and what the city can require private owners to do about when they're cutting down their trees. And it proposes a permit that will have to be applied for in order to cut down a tree, especially of a certain size. I don't know off the top of my head what the size was. And there are exemptions for emergencies, like if the tree is falling over or something like that. But there's a whole process around that and then permit fees from that going into a tree fund. Then the third ordinance is focusing on and setting up a tree committee that would review these applications and help to monitor the tree canopy in Bedford. Folks are interested in more information on that, I can send some out to you.
[Evangelista]: You said that's for private homeowners as well?
[Brenda Pike]: Yes, yep, that's that's one of the ordinances they split up into three one is focused on the public ones on private and one is the committee. Okay. I am attending this week, a Department of Public Utilities tech session on community electric aggregation so that's the city's. That's the city's program where we purchase electricity on behalf of residents. And we can get it usually at a lower price than what the utilities can, and with a higher renewable content some more, you know, solar and wind and things like that, as part of it. And so the Department of Public Utilities oversees those plans that municipalities like Medford have to submit in order to be able to do those programs. And we're looking for more flexibility to be able to add more renewable content. For instance, if the pricing is especially good, we want to be able to jump on that and like increase our renewable content without increasing the price too much. We want to be able to do things like have a lower rate for low income residents, maybe because there's a you know, because the city puts in a solar installation, for instance, and the electricity from that could be feeding into the program and reducing that rate. And so these are things that other cities have tried to do and have been stuck in limbo for a long time trying to get approved. And so we're hoping that if the DPU can add more flexibility to their programs, we can we'll be able to do a lot more. I think it does make sense that the city is not treated like a regular private company that is going door-to-door trying to sell people electricity because what we're doing is we're not making money off this. This is in the best interest of our residents. So we're having that conversation with the DPU with other cities and towns on Wednesday. So hopefully that goes well. Any questions about that? What does DPU stand for? Oh, Department of Public Utilities. So they oversee like National Grid, for instance, too.
[SPEAKER_03]: Are there any other communities currently doing the community electric aggregation? Oh, there are many. Yeah.
[Brenda Pike]: Okay. Yep. Okay. Boston, Somerville, Cambridge. Melrose, I don't know the ones around here, but a lot.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, they're the ones that you will be talking to, or they would be talking to others who have not joined the program.
[Brenda Pike]: So the ones that are going to this tech session with the Department of Public Utilities are the ones who have either have these aggregation programs or they've applied to have one and not had it approved yet. Some of them have been waiting over a year.
[Evangelista]: So does this program, so does this program mean like, so for folks, lower income folks, do they get plugged into this, Alternate energy service or, you know, so is it like them? Instead of them having to shop around or, you know, responding to some. Cold call from somebody about switching over your electric. This is something that the city already kind of. would like to have in place so that if there is someone who's kind of low income and they're needing some assistance with fuel or heat or whatever, electricity, whatever it might be, they would just get plugged into that service as opposed to a national grid per se?
[Brenda Pike]: So the city already has this in place? Right now, and it's an opt-out program, so everybody who's on basic service with National Grid automatically gets pulled into this program. That saved residents in Medford a lot of money over the four years that it's been in place now.
[Evangelista]: I have a better sense of what it is now. I thought it was something separate from, you know, the typical national grade or whatever.
[Brenda Pike]: And you see and this will show up on on your electric bill, actually, under the part that says supplier or supply. It'll show the name of the aggregation there. OK.
[Evangelista]: Understood. Thank you.
[Brenda Pike]: We have this program in place. We're just looking for more flexibility in how we run it. Got it. We are working on rewiring the emergency circuits for the Andrews School so that it can be used as a shelter during a power outage. And the thing is right now what's on the emergency circuit is literally just to get people out of the building. So it's just some faint emergency lights that are in the hallways, for instance, whereas this would put other things on so that the building could actually be occupied during an outage. especially in the gym and the cafeteria where people might be staying. So that's a project that we're working on and think will probably be completed, well has to be completed by June 30th because that's the deadline for the grant that we have for it. And we've also, we went out last week and reassessed the roof at Andrews for solar PV. We had originally thought that we would do a big canopy in the parking lot in addition to the roof, but that proved to be much more complicated and expensive and time-consuming than we had thought. So we're just going to shrink that project back to just solar on the roof of the school. So we just kind of had the solar developer go out and reassess the roof again just to confirm that that's good to go.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: Sorry, what is PV?
[Brenda Pike]: Oh, photovoltaic, so solar panels.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: Photo, oh, so like the individual units?
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, solar photovoltaic panels.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: Okay, okay.
[Brenda Pike]: Yep. Yep, so as opposed to solar thermal so there's there's two types right there's the kind that turns it solar energy into electricity and the kind that warms up water.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: I see so like different processes. of converting it into the electricity. Okay.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah. So for solar PV, that's when we convert it to electricity. Solar thermal is when it's warming up water and we're running that through pipes to heat your house or heat your water.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: Oh, I see. Okay.
[Brenda Pike]: So we have the electric vehicle charging station available now at Roberts Elementary. So that's been installed, it's online, it's available for public use during non-school hours. So 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. it can't be used by the public because teachers are parking there, but 4 p.m. to 7 a.m. it can be used by anybody. And we're working on installing another six electric vehicle charging stations in municipal lots around the city.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_08]: Is the library being one of them?
[Brenda Pike]: Yes, the library has been in place for almost a year now, I think. Yep, it gets used a lot. They get a lot of traffic there.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_08]: Cars parked over there.
[Evangelista]: On average, what is it, how long is a car generally need to charge on average? So is it like 15, 20 minutes or is this more like, you know, two hours, hour and a half or?
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, so it would take for these are level two charging stations, they're not the fast chargers. So the idea is that people would just plug in while they're going into the library. And so however long they're staying in the library as however long they would be charging. They're not going to get a full charge, just having parked their car there for like 20 minutes. For comparison, I have an electric vehicle. There's a charger here at City Hall. I'll plug in in the morning when I get to work. At lunchtime, I'll unplug it and move the car so someone else can use it, and I'll have gotten probably 150 miles of range from that.
[Evangelista]: Wow. It's about what? Four hours? Three to four hours?
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: Cool. It says level two equipment offers higher rate AC charging through 200 V. It basically says that, yeah, it would be one to two hours. So you guys are accurate on that.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah. Depends on the car that you have. Some cars have smaller batteries. Some cars have larger batteries. So it takes, it would take longer for those.
[Evangelista]: I would imagine the battery, I mean, how old the battery is and how often it's charged or not charged and discharged. Oh, that is a good battery mumbo-jumbo.
[Brenda Pike]: Maybe. I think it mostly depends on the ability of the battery to take a fast charge and the ability of the station to provide it. So with a level two station, it's capped out at a certain amount. So it can't charge as fast as something like a rest stop, for instance, where they have those level three stations that are really fast.
[Evangelista]: So let's say the library, they have two or three charging stations. Now, do they draw their own, each station have their own amount of charge that they're able to, or do they share?
[Brenda Pike]: Oh, OK. So there is one charger at the library. It has two ports, so two cars can charge off it at the same time. And it doesn't cut down on the amount, the speed at which it charges if there are two cars there. They each are charging at the same rate.
[Unidentified]: OK.
[Brenda Pike]: It sounds like there's a lot of interest in this. Maybe we can do a deeper dive into electric vehicles and electric vehicle charging stations. at the next meeting. So I can show you a map of where all the municipal and charging stations are.
[Evangelista]: Cool. I just, you know, just a lot of stuff going on, just not familiar with. And so, yeah. Yeah, that's great.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: I'd like to know more about like the, I guess the scientific process. Maybe that's just like, maybe that's just me, but it's very interesting.
[Brenda Pike]: Do you mean the scientific process, the process of how the batteries work?
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: No, how you were explaining before how the sunlight is converted into the electricity and the heating of the water. I think that's pretty cool.
[Brenda Pike]: The solar PV, yeah. So speaking of electric vehicles, we also are working on or we're applying for free technical assistance to put together a school bus electrification plan. and that would outline what the options are to us, how we would actually go about procuring this, and what funding sources there are for the city to pursue this. So that's something that I think is really important because A, kids are inhaling the exhaust from that, and also the school buses have diesel engines, so they're much dirtier than other vehicles are.
[SPEAKER_03]: Brenda, I haven't seen an EV school bus. Are there any cities or towns that are doing it?
[Brenda Pike]: Yes, so Beverly has had a few EV school buses for the past couple of years. The city of Boston has, oh, I don't remember how many they have now, but they have at least 10.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, because I haven't seen any in Boston.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: Are these buses the same size as the school buses we know now, or are they going to be smaller?
[Brenda Pike]: They would be the same size. I think they might be a little bit heavier because of the weight of the battery, but I think that that would be the only major difference.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: Wow. I didn't know that the technology has advanced to the point where it can be in like a school bus size vehicle. That's amazing.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, it is still expensive and there's so much demand from cities for these things that there is a wait for them too. So I think it's a process that if we're interested in doing it, we want to get in line for them early because it's going to be a while before we can get them. Sure, yeah.
[Evangelista]: Would the city become responsible for the maintenance of these buses or?
[Brenda Pike]: That depends on how we set it up. So right now the city has a contract with Eastern to do the, the city doesn't own any of our own buses right now. We have a contract with Eastern who owns and operates the buses. And so we could do it that way where they own the electric buses and operate them the way they currently are. We could purchase electric buses and have them operate them. We could purchase the buses and have our own staff operating them. There's a whole bunch of options that we could choose and that's what we'll be doing in the report is like outlining what they are and all the considerations for them.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_08]: What they could do also is what I'm actually seeing going on through experience with my son, lack of school buses. Because especially Medford, there's not a lot of buses for these children. And they're sharing it like the middle school, sharing it with the high school. And the kids are like not finding seats to sit. And they have to sit in on the aisle, which is really dangerous. lack of school buses. There's an issue in Medford, and no one's talking about it, because when I saw that, I'm like, what's going on? Where's the buses? And why are kids are not finding seats to sit? Why are they sitting in the aisles? Because they can't find a spot, because the bus is being overloaded with children. So I don't get it.
[Brenda Pike]: That's interesting. I hadn't heard that from anyone else. Is that something that's happening all the time or is it?
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, especially my son used to take bus in the morning and the afternoon. And I'd be hearing that I'm like, that's pretty dangerous because if there's an accident, these kids in the aisle, they're going to be hurt badly. So what's going on? There's not a lot of school buses to be shared. I don't get it. And I noticed since I moved here, I've been here for two years, it's the same issue. So thank God Lizette's carpooled my son for me in the afternoon, because that's a concern for parents. And I'm wondering if even some of the parents know about this.
[Brenda Pike]: I agree. That's interesting. And you hadn't heard that come up at parent groups or at the school, anything like that?
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_08]: I'm not sure. I haven't been in any of those meetings yet, so I couldn't tell you. But if I do, I will address that.
[Brenda Pike]: Interesting. Yeah, I'll definitely mention that to the folks that I'm working with in the school department too, because they need to be aware of that too.
[Jenny Graham]: Yeah. In Everett, they sent a letter to all the parents saying that it was a shortage of drivers. So that's why every city need to have less buses this year. the letter that we've received. My kids don't take the passes, but they sent to every student for us to be aware of what's going on. So maybe that's the case in MedSport too?
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, probably. Interesting. Even cross guards, there's lack of that too. So something's going on. Yeah.
[Brenda Pike]: So then the last thing I want to mention under these updates is the Electrify Medford outreach campaign that we talked about last time. So I'm still waiting on news about the grant that we applied for, fingers crossed. But I'd like to, in the next meeting, if folks are interested in this, do a deep dive into what we're planning there. And before the meeting, I'll send out information on what we're looking for from coaches to get your feedback on if it's reasonable and how we're communicating is that is that reasonable and then a draft outreach plan to get your feedback on that. Okay. Right anything else, we wanted to talk about relating to these. Actions the city has been working on the past month.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_08]: With the panel that they're doing with Andrew, so far this is the only location they're working on. Do they have other locations that they're thinking of for emergency shelters and stuff like that?
[Brenda Pike]: Oh, we'll get into that later in this meeting actually. I have more information about that that I can share with you.
[Evangelista]: Good, good, good.
[Brenda Pike]: Great, okay. So one of the things you mentioned last time that you were looking for more information on is incentives for energy efficiency and heat pumps and the things that we've been talking about. So I'm just getting into some detail here on the mass save incentives. So first up, we'll talk about the income eligible program. which is, you can see the income limits right here to be eligible for this. And I think people are always surprised when they see how high those income limits are and that people who wouldn't necessarily expect that they would be eligible for this program, they actually- I was just surprised when I saw, I couldn't believe.
[Brenda Pike]: Everybody always thinks that this wouldn't apply to them, and then if they look at the numbers, yes, yes, it does, and they should take advantage of it because they're paying into this program on their energy bills, they should get some of that money back by participating in it. So the first few things I have on here aren't necessarily part of mass save but they're kind of their national grid and ABCD programs that a national grid ABCD are the ones who run the massive programs for the. for the income eligible and for the non-income eligible folks. So first off, fuel assistance. This is an ABCD program that will help with up to $1,500 of heating bills. So if you run into folks who say, yes, yes, yeah, energy efficiency, that's great, but I need help with my bills right now. This is the program that would help them out here. And all of these blue underline things here are links. So when I send this PDF around to everybody, you'll have access to all of the websites there. And then, if folks are overdue with their utility bills, there's also an arrears management plan. And that will help you to It'll help you to, it'll split your utility bills, your overdue amount over the course of a year. And then if you pay your current bills each month, then your overdue amount for that month, will go away, they'll just disappear. So if you, over the course of a year, stay current on your current bills, then all of the bills that were overdue, you won't have to pay those if you are eligible for this program, if you're income eligible for this program. And then there's also the discount rate. So this is a, Oh, Samia, I saw a question here. Do you know if they need to have an immigration status to be eligible? That is a good question that I'd want to follow up with the folks from National Grid on. I don't think they have to, but I think we ran into issues in the past when people were concerned about providing documentation of their income just because of their immigration status. So it didn't, I don't think it made them ineligible for the program, but I think it made them more, less likely to want to provide information to the utility. But the utility was not using it for anything other than to confirm their income for this program. So that shouldn't be a concern for them. And then the discount rate is, if you're income eligible, you can get a reduced cost on your energy bill. And I don't know exactly what the amount is right now, that's online, but it's off the distribution portion of your electric bill. And it can reduce your, it can reduce your bills by, at least $10 a month, I think. So it's not huge, but it's something that will add up over time, definitely. And then for the home energy assessment, everything that I have listed under there, it's all free. So all of this is no cost to folks who are income eligible. And so ABCD will come out to their home, take a look at the situation and give recommendations for if they need insulation, if it's drafty and they need air sealing, for instance, around their windows or in their basement. If they need a new heating system, light bulbs. If they have an old inefficient refrigerator, they could get that replaced. Same with an old air conditioner, a dehumidifier, or washing machine. So these are all things that if ABCD says, you know, you have a your situation is such that this could be a big energy savings for you to do these things. They will provide the services and they will pay for it all for free. It's a wonderful program to get involved with. Sometimes there can be a wait depending on when you are signing up for the program. I know people can get an emergency heating system replacement right away. For the rest of it, I would recommend that people try to do it sooner rather than later, rather than waiting until it gets really cold, for instance, in the winter, and then hoping that they're going to get insulation and air sealing installed really quickly. It's something that could take some time. Definitely something that people will have to walk through the process for. ABCD does that with them. If they need additional assistance navigating that process, they can come to us too. And then, so ABCD has some great flyers out there about fuel assistance and about the weatherization and conservation program. It's got all of the information about the income levels. It's got the fuel assistance limits there, the $1,500. I think the one thing it doesn't talk about is the discount rate. But if you sign up for fuel assistance, then they automatically will ask you if you want to be involved in any of these other programs. Do you want to get on the discount rate? Do you want to have a home energy assessment? The first step really is signing up for fuel assistance or the discount rate, and then the rest just goes from there. ABCD's contact information is on these forms as well. and this is what we hand out to people when we are at events like the winter extravaganza. Any questions about the low-income programs?
[Evangelista]: I have a question about assessments. When they go into homes or apartments to assess, are they poking holes in the walls and that sort of thing?
[Brenda Pike]: I don't think they poke holes in the wall. I think if they do, it would be in an unobtrusive place like inside a closet or something so it wouldn't be noticed. Generally, what I've seen is they will take off an outlet cover like for a plug-in. They'll take off the cover so that they can look behind that into the wall to see what there is for insulation.
[Evangelista]: Hopefully, what they see is a box on the other side. If they see nothing, then there's a bigger issue going on there. I'm just saying. But I have seen in some instances where sometimes these folks, I don't know who it is exactly, but they come in and sometimes they tap these holes and walls. and that sort of thing. It's just good to know because if there's a client and they're having some sort of assessment, I think the last thing that they'll expect is for holes to be tapped in their walls and stuff and not patched shortly thereafter. It's just asking the question.
[Brenda Pike]: Have you heard that happening?
[Evangelista]: Well, I've seen it. I've seen it happen before. But I don't know who's done it. I mean, I don't know. But it's one of those energy savings kind of things. They'll come in and maybe you'll get some free LED light bulbs or something like that, or that sort of thing. But they sometimes tap rooms and stuff.
[Brenda Pike]: For the non-income eligible programs that are just available to everybody, there are a lot of vendors that work in those programs, a lot of contractors, and so they could have a lot of variability over what they do. For this, ABCD does the work. and they're generally really good about the follow-up too. I've even heard of people calling them up months later to say, oh, there's a problem with my thermostat, it's not communicating with my heating system or something, and they'll go back in and reprogram the thermostat because someone changed the settings or something.
[Evangelista]: I think the key words there is income eligible, which makes the difference. You know, so we're talking about 2 different things potentially, you know, 2 different situations. Essentially, so it sounds like, you know, the income eligible. With ABC doing it, it's 1 thing, but if it's, you know. not income eligible, it could be some other contractor or something or other group doing it. And maybe that's what the difference is that I'm talking about.
[Brenda Pike]: Thank you. Chervelle?
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: Yes. So is this program, is this field assistance only eligible for residents or is it, can people with like small businesses in Medford apply for this?
[Brenda Pike]: Oh, that's interesting. I haven't heard of fuel assistance for small businesses. But there are other but there are energy efficiency programs and you know, the payment plans and things like that, that that small businesses can do. But I don't I haven't heard of fuel assistance for them.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: Because in Cambridge, at least, it's like it was kind of similar to how National Grid, like the city will buy energy from, well, in Cambridge, it's Eversource, and the city will provide like at a cheaper rate with the incentive that they are using more renewable energy.
[Brenda Pike]: Yep. That's exactly what we do with our aggregation that I was talking about. Yep.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: Okay. Thank you.
[Brenda Pike]: Okay, so that's the low, these are the income eligible programs, but then there are the incentives that are available to everybody. Again, the top ones are not necessarily Mass Save, but they are National Grid, which is essentially the same thing. So there's this more time to pay program if you have overdue utility bills. They won't forgive, you know, what was it, $1,500 in past amounts, but they will spread it over a year, and you can pay the overdue amounts over the course of the year, along with your current utility bills. Then there's the budget billing plan where you can just essentially get an average cost per month of what you paid for energy in the past year. Then they'll just charge you the same amount every month for the next year, and then true it up at the end of the year if there's a difference. But that way, there's not big spikes in the winter when you're using more natural gas, for instance, and you get a big surprise bill. And then for the mass aid program, there's the free home energy assessment and there's free air sealing if that's identified as something that's needed. And then for the insulation, there's 75% or more off of that. And there are additional income qualifications there. So I think it's up to something like, God, I think it's $116,000 a year. You'd be eligible for 100% incentive for your insulation, so it wouldn't cost anything. Heating system, there are a bunch of rebates for different kinds of heating systems. Up to $25,000 per home, that's for the most expensive one. And then water heaters, there are incentives up to $1,500. And appliances, there are incentives up to $500. And then there's also the 0% interest heat loan, where you can borrow up to $25,000 for any of these measures that you're doing through the program. So if you're doing a heating system and insulation, and you take the incentives for them, but there's still additional costs, you can take a 0% interest loan to pay off the rest of it. And then here are some more information about the rebates for next year, just breaking it down into the different types of heating systems and water heaters, for instance. So you can see, if you're doing a geothermal heat pump, that's the one that's $25,000 per home, it's a more expensive system. If you're doing an air source heat pump, it's up to $16,000 per home. And then this does list out incentives for natural gas, oil and propane systems, but those are actually going to end at some point next year, I think it's August. And they'll only be incentivizing the electric systems like the heat pumps moving forward after that.
[Evangelista]: Is this low income or?
[Brenda Pike]: This is for everybody. So for the low income program, people don't have to pay anything. That's all completely free to them. This is for people who don't qualify for that.
[Evangelista]: Okay.
[Brenda Pike]: And so this is the sort of thing that we would be handing out. Well, one of the things that we would be handing out if we were tabling about the Mass Save program, we'd also have information about the home energy assessments and what they consist of. But a lot of times people just want to see the money. So this is a good sheet for them to go directly to that. So I think that's all that I have on the Mass Save incentives today. Any other questions or comments or anything about this before we move on?
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: I have a question, Brenda. Is this stuff we can share?
[Brenda Pike]: Oh, absolutely. The more you share it, the better. OK. I'm sorry.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: You were saying?
[Brenda Pike]: I was just saying this is the sort of thing that we're going to be doing as part of the Electrify Medford campaign is trying to get this information out there as broadly as possible.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: Was this attached? My brain's like having a brain fart. Was it attached to the email that you sent us?
[Brenda Pike]: No, it wasn't, but I'll send it out after the meeting. Okay, awesome. Thank you. I appreciate it.
[Evangelista]: And with these residential rebates, would it apply to businesses as well?
[Brenda Pike]: These residential ones don't apply, but there are separate business rebates that are available.
[Evangelista]: Okay. I mean, could you add that to this as well?
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Normally, around here, a lot of the questions that I get are for residential incentives, but we definitely want to make sure we have this available to be able to give to people.
[Evangelista]: Yeah, I mean, the reason why I say that is because, you know, we do try to do some outreach to businesses, and this could be a part of that outreach, you know, when we're pounding the pavement and such for, you know, Medford businesses and such.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, absolutely. So would you be looking more for information about what's available to small businesses?
[Evangelista]: Yeah, it would be pretty much small businesses and stuff. I mean, and maybe, I mean, I don't know, would you consider churches small business? Or is that become something a little bit different?
[Brenda Pike]: It depends on how much energy they use, I think. I used to be at National Grid working on the Mass Save incentive programs on the residential side five years ago. When I was there, I know there was a particular program for churches to help them through the process. I don't know if that still exists anymore, but I can find out.
[Evangelista]: Yeah, I mean, you know, you know, some of our outreach might take us through. You know, to some churches as well, so it wouldn't hurt to have the information if it's if it's something that, you know, we could push as a resource.
[Jenny Graham]: I love the idea. I love the idea because I know some local business owners who has been saying that they got a little help during the pandemic and then after that, you know, like no help at all. And I think we need to support them to somehow.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Absolutely.
[Brenda Pike]: Okay, so if there aren't any more questions or comments about this right now, we can move on to flooding. So I have some interesting maps here to look at. So this one is, so it says it's a 1% storm. You might hear this referred to sometimes as a hundred year storm. The idea is that there's a 1% chance of a storm this large hitting every year. Although I think they're happening more often now than they used to. So that might be 1% storm might not be a good indicator anymore. You can see here, we don't get a lot of flooding from the river because the Amelia Earhart Dam prevents the ocean from surging up the river. So really the flooding you see here would really just be rainwater not draining out of the river fast enough. And you can see some city buildings along the edge along the edges there. And that flooding wouldn't really impact them right now. But we're trying to plan our infrastructure investments farther out into the future. And you can see here that a 1% storm in 2070 looks very different, partially because there's more rainfall, but also because with the sea level rising, the Amelia Earhart Dam would be overtopped or flanked by ocean storm surge. And a lot of the city would be flooded in that case. The dam's not owned by the city, but this really just highlights that we have to work with the Department of Conservation and Recreation and other cities around us to make sure that the dam is improved so that this doesn't happen. It's interesting to look at the different buildings here and the city buildings and how they would be impacted, like the police and the fire department, for instance.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, they're all near the river. Now that I think of it.
[Brenda Pike]: I mean, that was the land that was available when they were built. Yeah, essentially. So all along the river here. It used to before the dam was there, it used to flood at high tide.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: Right.
[Brenda Pike]: And then when the dam was put in place, and it didn't flood, there was more room for for buildings to be built right up to the edge of the river.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, yeah. Because it's like the school, the city hall. But I guess that's, like, historically, that's where people settle, is near the water. So it makes sense. Also, and just curious, who owns the dam? Who's in charge of the dam?
[Brenda Pike]: So that's the Department of Conservation and Recreation, I think.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: The state?
[Brenda Pike]: The state, yeah.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: OK.
[Brenda Pike]: Yep, yep. And there are a lot of cities and towns around here that would be impacted if the dam were to fail. So we're working with the Department of Conservation and Recreation. We're working together as a group to try to apply for grants, for instance, to, you know, there are three pumps right now. We're trying to apply for grants to get an additional pump to be able to pump water out faster. Looking to eventually the dam is going to have to be raised up and sort of built out on the side so that it can deal with sea level rise and ocean storm surge. And so those are all things that we would be advocating with other cities and towns around here to get funding for the state to do that work. But this is more of what we have control over here, so this is current storm water flooding during a 1% storm. So this is just water not draining fast enough. And then the areas kind of circled are the areas that are affected by certain pipes, like the areas that are sort of draining into these areas. And we saw today, there was like right outside of city hall here, right outside the parking lot, there was a lot of water in the road because that's one of the areas that during a big storm like this, that it just doesn't drain quickly enough. And Medford's lucky enough that we, other cities that are older than Medford in the area have combined sewer and stormwater pipes. And they've been doing a lot of work to very expensive work to separate those out into two separate systems. I actually live in Somerville, and they've been doing this work on my street for the last three years to try to separate out the sewer and the stormwater pipes. So we're lucky that Medford was built like that from the beginning. It's just in some places, the pipes aren't quite large enough or there needs to be some sort of retainage, like container underground to hold the water while it seeps out slowly into the ground, things like that. So this is sort of a cleaned up version of that last map. And the blue dots here represent areas with flood risk. And then the other dots are showing essential infrastructure, schools, public safety, and vulnerable populations.
[Evangelista]: Yeah, I was kind of looking to see where West Medford was represented here because I recall A few years back, they had some flooding along the river there and the houses that are right on the Mystic River Road there. I grew up in West Medford, so that was one of the reasons why I was interested in this whole flooding thing because I had never seen that in all my growing up. and West Medford, I had never seen that, how the river had just overflowed. You can't help but to feel for the folks who live alongside that river road there because their basements had to have been flooded and that sort of thing. But I think I see it now. I think that's that Area 10 area over there. There's Arlington Street. By the Mystic Lakes? Yeah. It's actually further down. I can see Arlington Street, so it would have been in that area. I was just trying to get a sense of, yeah, so that was more or less the Winchester, getting close to the Winchester side of things. But if you come down to that corner, If you follow that line number 10 down around that corner at the bottom there, I can see Arlington Street. So that's where the river is there. So I was talking about in that area there. So I was just kind of curious because I don't see it in blue. I see it up further in the lakes.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: It might be 39, right? 30.
[Brenda Pike]: 39 is just identifying a vulnerable population there. Yeah. The blue dots are the ones that show flooding.
[Evangelista]: Flood risk. But I saw some flooding there. It's Mystic River Road, so it's right there. Anyway, I was just interested and I wanted to see where West was represented on there. But I see it now.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah. Sorry, let me back up a little bit. I think that the left-hand side of this map here shows some of that flooding in that area that you were talking about too, right? Isn't that the same? Maybe.
[Evangelista]: It was hard for me to tell from here versus the other one. Yeah. I had just never seen anything like that before.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, this is actually really helpful because a lot of, so a lot of this is done through stormwater models, and then also just from observation that people have done driving around during storms, and then from community feedback of like where they're seeing flooding. So if you hear from folks or you see areas where there is flooding, always really helpful to share that so that we can make sure that we're collecting that information.
[Evangelista]: Yeah. This was a few years back. It was after some storm or something that we had, but I do know one or two people who still live over in that area. I could ask them just what it's like and do they get water in their basement or whatever.
[Brenda Pike]: That would be great.
[Evangelista]: Yeah.
[Brenda Pike]: So again, all the things that are underlined in blue here are links to the reports and the resources that I'm talking about here. So you'll have access to that when I send out the PDF. So we did a climate change vulnerability assessment and identified sort of general areas with flooding issues and potential for future flooding. And then we followed that up with a localized flood mitigation assessment, which got into more detail about which areas flooded and why.
[Evangelista]: Yeah, we are right there, that West Medford, Lincoln Street, Mystic River Road. Yep, yep, right there.
[Brenda Pike]: And it identified the cost to fix it too. And so you see that would be, that's an expensive fix, it's 1.3 million. And then, yeah, and so these are focusing on the areas with the worst flooding that were identified through that first through that map and through these processes here. And then we went on to zero in on this and South Medford for the these South Medford flood reduction strategies report. And sorry, just let me double check. I was sure about had to go. Oh, yeah. Okay, so we will finish up with just us. So the South Medford flood reduction strategies got into more detail there. And It was talking also about general policies to improve flooding in the future, including reducing the amount of pavement so that water can seep into the ground, updating the city's stormwater policy so anyone building a new building has to make the drainage around it better, and recommending more green space and more open space to help absorb that water. And we held a webinar about flooding last month, and it's available online that folks can view at any time. That was with Julie Wormser from the Mystic River Watershed Association, and they have lots of great resources around this, including an adopted drain program where people can sign up to check on drains in their neighborhood and clean up any leaves or sticks around them before a big storm so that flooding doesn't happen on their street. Not many people are signed up for that right now. If that's something that people are seeing flooding, this might be an option that they can sign up to help to reduce that by caring for their drains before a storm.
[Evangelista]: That might even be something that if some of the kids from the high school live in the area, maybe that could be you know, what is it they have to get every year? Community service type stuff. I mean, why couldn't that be a part of the program for this, you know, for students? If they're people having difficult, you know, people aren't signing up or, I don't know, just kind of throwing it out there. Young people could do and get some community service and do a service not only to their neighborhood, but to their elderly neighbors and whatever. Yeah, same was same with sort of shoveling out fire hydrants and that sort of thing. I mean, you know, that could be part of community service, potentially with the city or something. I don't know. Yeah.
[Brenda Pike]: I've heard of programs where teens can sign up to shovel people's sidewalks. Yeah, we could definitely do it with this. Yeah, we could reach out to the high school with more information about it and get that out to kids who are interested.
[Evangelista]: Yeah.
[Brenda Pike]: That's great because I know they have a required number of hours of community service they have to do. Right. I go and this slide goes into way more detail than is actually readable for the different areas of the city that with recommended flooding mitigation measures. But I thought it was important to have here if people wanted to refer back to it. So in the first project in South Medford, the city did make some changes and are monitoring that to see if that actually solved the problem. The second project in South Medford, the city recently received a housing choice grant for the design of the solution, which is increasing the size of the connections between the drains. But it's a surprisingly complex and expensive project. The first step was getting the grant to do the design of it, and then it'll be pursuing the funding to do the construction. And then that's sort of the same process that we have to do for each one of these. So I think that's all the information that I have about flooding. Did you guys have any questions or other comments about it?
[Evangelista]: No, this is all good stuff. You have some really good stuff to look at and to go through. So if I click on the flooding webinar, would I go to the link and be able to see that presentation?
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, that goes directly to the webinar. You can watch it there. Perfect. And I do recommend it because Julie Wormser from Mystic Watershed Association who did that webinar with us, she's actually done something similar as a TED Talk before. And so her presentation is actually really good. Okay, emergency shelters. So right now, the high school is the current emergency shelter. They have 50 cots that are stored there and a cafeteria so they'd be able to feed people if they needed to. The Andrew School, that's the one where we're working on the wiring to be able to connect it to backup power. So it could be used as a shelter during power outages, either instead of the high school if the high school has no power, or in addition to the high school if there's more need than what the high school can handle. The city also has a portable trailer that they use to provide certain services around town like they use it for vaccinations that's not a shelter but it's it could be used for to provide emergency services to people. And then the Red Cross and local churches also respond to natural disasters and fires and the Red Cross will actually bus people to hotels sort of outside of the zone where there's a disaster. And then I think one of the issues that we run into is that the schools have limited storage space. So it's not a lot of space to store things like cots and other materials like that for emergency shelters. And they can't be used as shelters of schools in session. So that really limits what can be done there. And then for communications, there's a city alert program. I don't know if you guys are signed up for this, but there's a sign up form online in multiple languages. And if people enter their address, then they can get neighborhood specific alerts for things like And it's for things like snow emergencies, street sweeping, upcoming events, water service alerts. But in the event of an emergency, it would also be used to inform people of what's going on and where they should go. So the more people we get to sign up for these city alerts, and especially put in their address so that they're getting location-specific alerts, the better. So that could be something that I think would be great to get out there as part of the, even as part of the Electrify Medford program, honestly, or in any of our outreach that we're doing, just sign up for these city alerts so you can get more information about what's going on. And then in the event of an actual emergency, they would be going around with a truck with a loudspeaker to get people who are not signed up for something like the city alerts. And we're working, so the city put together what they call a resilience hub plan a couple of years ago. And this is for a physical location where social services would be provided all year round. So it would be like a rec center, a gym, food pantry, childcare, nonprofit, admin offices. And so people are used to going there for services and are comfortable going there for services and then in the case of an emergency. It could be used as a shelter and it would be a place that people would would know about and would naturally go to because they've been using it all year round. This, we're actually looking at a building for this in partnership with a nonprofit, but it would need to be leased or purchased from the owner and it would need renovations to make it usable. So this is definitely sort of a longer term project, a multi-year project, but the resilience hub plan that's linked here is the ideal. And the map here was the process they went through trying to identify potential locations for it. So identifying different particular buildings and then connecting it to sort of environmental justice criteria, different neighborhoods. And I actually don't think that the building that we're looking at right now is one of the ones that are listed here. But it's also still very much in early stages, so it might not happen there, so I'm not sure how much we should be sharing about the actual specific location. So this is our goal, is to have a really good shelter that is not something that is going to have limited storage space, not be able to be used in schools and sessions, not a government building that people are uncomfortable going to, something that they're more used to going for services all year round. Oh, I think that's it for the shelter. I would add that We are doing, with the Department of Public Health, we're doing regional emergency planning with Melrose, Stoneham, Malton, other municipalities. And the focus is right now, this year, is on sheltering and accessibility. And we're working on getting things like wheelchairs and oversized cots and things like that to improve the accessibility of our shelter. And we'd also like to work with the Metropolitan Area Planning Council on some Medford specific emergency planning. And so that's something where we would need some funding to do that. So that's something for the future. So any questions, comments about emergency shelters?
[Evangelista]: So this list of emergency shelters, are these places that are in effect right now, or we're working towards getting them in effect?
[Brenda Pike]: So right now, the emergency shelter is the high school.
[Evangelista]: Okay.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah. These other ones, I mean, the Red Cross and local churches will also respond during an emergency. But for city emergency shelters, the only one we have right now is the high school.
[Brenda Pike]: The other ones are things we're working on. Yep. Or aspirational.
[Evangelista]: Sure. Sure. Yeah. It's a good plan. It's a good plan. It's a good start. Anyway, got to start somewhere.
[Brenda Pike]: Well, feel free to come to me with any follow up or questions or anything in between these meetings too. Always happy to talk. And for the next meeting, I would love to do a deep dive into that, the Electrify Medford outreach campaign, like I mentioned earlier, to talk about what our plans are, get your feedback on that, and to share some like specific, maybe some specific materials that we're hoping to use for outreach and get your feedback on that. And I'd also like to share information about the Energy Environment Committee and the work that they do, because I think there's a lot of overlap in these two groups. So I think it would be great for you to have some understanding of what they're doing and for them to have understanding of what you're doing. That sounds good. I might ask someone from the Energy Committee to come and speak at our next meeting so that you can talk to them specifically.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: So all of this that you presented to us, you're going to send it to email, right? Yes, I will.
[Brenda Pike]: Yep. And when this meeting is eventually, when the meeting minutes are eventually posted online for the public, they'll be attached to that too, so anybody can have access. Awesome. What other topics are you interested in talking about at the next meeting, doing sort of a deeper dive into?
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: I was curious about the, You said that Andrews is like one of the schools for that you guys are looking for like, um, kind of like the McGlynn.
[Evangelista]: Um, what do you think about the solar PV?
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: No, more like right now, because like, you know, how like my sons, like, like the Andrews, like today, they were out of power and stuff like that. And like, I don't know what it was like the internet and stuff like that. I'm just curious if that's like what they're fixing for it to be like a backup generator for that. Is that what they're working on?
[Brenda Pike]: No, so I think what we're working on is we're putting more things onto the backup power so that it can be used as an emergency shelter. So there's not enough, so there's a generator right now that attaches to the building, but it's relatively small. So even with the new circuits put onto it, it's not going to power the whole building. So we're really focusing on things like the gym, the cafeteria, so that those are the areas where we're expecting that people are staying there. If they're like, you know, they're sleeping in the gym, they're eating in the cafeteria, those places are the places we'd want to have power and the rest of the building wouldn't. Okay.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_08]: Do they have the same plan from the McGlynn or just the Andrews?
[Brenda Pike]: Right now we're just talking about the Andrews.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_08]: Do they plan on doing the McGlynn in the future?
[Brenda Pike]: I haven't heard any conversation about that. I think It might make sense to have multiple emergency shelters, so I think, you know, having the high school and Andrews might be a good idea. And maybe another location for resource hub, but McGlynn and Andrews are so close. I'm not sure if it makes sense to have 2 emergency shelters that close together. Yeah.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_08]: So, so far, they have the high school as being 1 of the. emergency shelters, right?
[Brenda Pike]: Yes, Medford is the current one emergency shelter that we have, the Medford High School.
[Evangelista]: So Brenda, what is the wind turbine and is that for the McGlynn? Does that provide energy to the McGlynn?
[Brenda Pike]: It does. There isn't a battery so that it could be used in a power outage. Right now, it feeds into the electric grid. I can't remember how much it's providing. It might be providing something like 40 percent of the electricity for the McGlynn.
[Evangelista]: It's subsidizing what we currently Um, currently have going on over there, so it's, it's helping with the costs of. Yep. Okay.
[Brenda Pike]: Yep. If if it were to be used during. and a power outage, there would have to be a pretty significant battery system that was attached there. So it could charge up the batteries and then the school would be running off the batteries and not directly from the wind turbine, because that fluctuates.
[Evangelista]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, just kind of curious and just kind of, you know, just, just kind of curious.
[Brenda Pike]: see. One of the other things that were mentioned at one of the other meetings was just talking about different levels of action that people can take. So like not just talking about electric vehicles, but talking about buses and talking about bikes at the same time. Is that something that folks would be interested in?
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, I think she was really interested in that. He came up with some of the questions about that. Yeah. Yeah.
[Brenda Pike]: Okay. And we can follow up outside of this as well. I'll send a draft agenda around and folks can add other topics that you're interested in diving into in the next meeting. And I'll work with your new co-chairs to flesh out what the agenda is going to be for the next meeting. Yay. Yay, Lizette.
[Evangelista]: Great.
[Brenda Pike]: Anything else folks want to talk about today?
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, co-chairman, start practicing now.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: No, I just like when, for example, these are really like informative because that way, you know, as we have more conversations, we can dive into like, know more about like the changes that we need and and inform ourselves that way we can help other people so i like these meetings and like getting all the information that we need and also having it at hand is like really cool so i'm excited for the next meeting okay i don't love you yeah okay
[Brenda Pike]: And once we are starting to do outreach for Electrify Medford, we'll be collecting a lot of these materials into handouts that you can give to people as well. So it'll be close to hand when you need it. That's good to know.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_08]: With these handouts, will you need translation for the people who don't speak English? Absolutely. Probably.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. So that's a connector thing. Yeah.
[Brenda Pike]: That's good.
[Adam Hurtubise]: That's great.
[Brenda Pike]: Great. Well, thank you, everybody. Unless there's anything else we can, do I have a motion to adjourn?
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_08]: I do. Motion to adjourn. Seconded. Seconded. Nice.
[Brenda Pike]: Thank you very much.
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