[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: I just want to put a motion to approve of the minutes of this meeting. So just putting a motion out there. Motion.
[Brenda Pike]: I think we need a second.
[Unidentified]: Yeah.
[Brenda Pike]: I second the motion.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: Okay. So motion to agree to the minutes, say aye or put a thumbs up.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: Aye. Aye, Charbel.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: Okay, very good. And yeah, we can get started. This is a guest speaker, Bob Payne. From the energy and environment community that will be speaking today and Brenda will have some updates on the. Electrify Medford campaign as well.
[Unidentified]: Hello, Bob.
[Robert Paine]: Well, let's see, I actually have a short presentation. So while I'm getting that up, let me just introduce. The host is disabled. Okay. Can I. be allowed to, or maybe, or Brenda, you could always, I think I sent it to you.
[Brenda Pike]: Let me set it up so that you can share.
[Robert Paine]: I joined a committee to put in the wind turbine at the McGlynn School 20 years ago, and that then the wind turbine was installed in, so we started in 2004. The wind turbine was actually dedicated or started in 2009. The committee then morphed into a energy committee and then energy and environment ultimately.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it looks like I'm able to, all right, let me see if I can,
[Brenda Pike]: So you were here from the beginning before the Energy and Environment Committee was involved with that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. Let's see if I can figure out how to start here.
[Robert Paine]: Let's see. OK. Can you see that slide? Yes. OK, great.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: Yes, we can see it.
[Robert Paine]: Great. We have a mission statement. And I don't know if your committee has one. The mission is to promote policies and actions that improve energy efficiency, encourage conservation, and increase use of, whoops, I'm sorry, let's go back up, increase use of renewable energy to meet our present needs while considering future generations of the Medford community. So we haven't revisited that statement for a few years, but it seems reasonably, you know, long-term. We work with the Office of Energy and Environment and now it's really the Development Sustainability. I think there's another word that I'm missing.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, Planning, Development and Sustainability.
[Robert Paine]: Yeah. It used to be there wasn't no such. office than it was Alicia Hunt's. Although Alicia was actually, this office goes way back in time. I think it was, this office actually had to be started because of a, it was a requirement due to some sort of pollution event or something. We had to do this to mitigate something. We started this office a long time ago. And it was a good thing. Let me go back here. The committee provides technical consulting expertise in the city, organizes energy and environmental related projects, events and programs to benefit the residents of Medford. Now, we work comprised of residents and we submit our resumes to the mayor and then those resumes are reviewed way back in 2004. The mayor McGlynn at the time requested a bunch of resumes for this wind turbine. And so it's the same type of thing. If you're interested in the committee, you submit a expression of interest. I think you have to fill out a form of some sort and submit your resume. And if the committee, when and if the committee has openings, and sometimes people, you know, leave Medford, move away, or just resign from the committee due to the fact that they're too busy in other ways, and then we have openings. So, we've had, I think I'm the only original member that's still on the committee. So there's, you know, obviously people come and go. And my expertise happens to be in the field of air quality consulting and meteorology, and that was important for the wind turbine, it turns out. I also do, since I live on the Mystic River, I do monthly water testing for the Mystic River Watershed Association. So I guess I have my toe in the water area too. Okay, we have several initiatives. We have an annual festival in October. It's been going on since 2012, so several years, although I think there was one year during COVID where we couldn't have it because it had to be outside, but there was a drenching rain the day before, and it was just a mud bath, so couldn't do it in 2020. But otherwise, we've had it every year since 2012. We have brought specific energy and environment related issues before the city council, such as a ban on plastic bags that used to be given out at stores in Medford. The energy aggregation, which has resulted, I guess, in a substantial electric bills discounts for citizens in Medford, idling restrictions near schools, We've worked on municipal practices, such as LED lighting and streetlights, tabling at various other festivals, such as the Mystic River Arts Festival. There have been sometimes city festivals and so on. We provide education on mass safe rebates and promotions, which do have important implications for electrification. And well, so we've been promoting recycling. We have at our meetings, occasionally guest speakers from other towns and cities to discuss how they are tackling energy and environment issues. Over the last 4 years, 2020 through 2023, we've had a webinar in November with a specific guest speaker for a more extended presentation. We have, obviously Brenda is, and we're supporting Brenda in the Electrify Medford program. And we also have promoted curbside composting activities. This is, we have in our agenda, actually provided a list of our members, not only of face shots, but also a brief description of their talents and their background. So your committee may want to do that for its agenda as well. So, then the public knows, okay, we don't have to keep in reintroducing themselves. They can just look at the agenda and say, okay, here are the people, here's what their background is. This is just one, we have 14 members, so this is just one snippet of that whole thing here. Um, the meetings are, you know, we, we start with introductions of who's. What members are actually present and yes, we review as you've done previous meeting minutes and we have administrative updates so that if there's anything that the municipal staff that are part of our. Meeting have to report we get that news. We then, depending on what has been requested or what what's going on, like city council initiatives, we would have agenda items involving. I will call them hot topics guest speakers when that's available. Upcoming municipal activities, such as the harvest your energy festival or other. Items we like the jingle bells festival. We have a table that type of thing. Early in the year, we look at our annual goals, which is always a good thing to review once in a while. We actually meet with the mayor who we serve the pleasure of. So our committee is. Is supposed to be. Helping the mayor in various initiatives and environmental initiatives. We discuss municipal events, typically spring, summer and fall. and support for certain city council initiatives. One thing we're working on currently is a tree ordinance to help protect the urban canopy and trying to put into place practices that will discourage or make more costly clear cutting of entire lots, that type of thing. Our meetings happen the first Monday of each month, typically, except for Labor Day month, September. And during the summer, we try to consolidate one meeting for the months of July and August. And we try to do that maybe as a sort of an outdoor picnic. And our fall meetings certainly have the focus on our annual Harvester Energy Festival, which occurs typically in October. Recently, it's been the weekend after Columbus or the Indigenous Peoples Day. And finally, some website information. So, Brenna, you have this presentation. You can file it with the meeting minutes. And if you have any questions, I can stop sharing. I guess I'm available to answer them.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have a question, and I'm a resident of Medford, so I'm not officially on this committee, but longtime resident. I also live along the Mystic River, and I'm very interested in what Medford is committed to regarding climate action and energy management. My question is, what do you think is the biggest challenge facing Medford in the area of your committee's responsibilities in the next one to two years, say?
[Robert Paine]: Yeah, good question. I think we're trying to promote issues that are consistent with the state's climate law. And in fact, next month, we're going to have at our meeting a presentation by Mike Barrett, who's one of the senators who's the head honcho in getting this law passed. He will give us an update. So if you're interested in how the state is moving along their climate law, which we're trying to keep up with and emulate and take advantage of any, certainly any financial benefits to cities. Obviously, electrification is an important issue and we have to basically, there's a lot of, the climate law says, well, you're gonna have a lot of heat pump installations by 2030 and 2040 and 2050. Well, it's a slow slog because it's not as simple as even buying an electric vehicle. It's every house is unique. That's one thing. I think education, having people take advantage of opportunities such as the mass save energy assessments and rebates. So a lot of education, a lot of advocacy, because one of the largest segments of climate-changing emissions, CO2, is building, heating, and cooling. And that's a hard nut to crack, because It's not really easy to do. It's not that cheap in some cases. So there's a lot of, it's technically challenging. So that's one, you know, electrification for building space heating and cooling. And electrification of vehicles, I think there's also the issue of, well, are we ready? Is the United States ready for electric vehicles in that there's the challenge of the time for, you know, availability of charging systems and the time it takes to do it and the range of the vehicles, that type of thing. And then there's also getting signed up for solar electricity, getting your electricity renewable. And in some cases, having solar roofs or solar farm, you have an installation at a solar farm that you prescribe to. Those are some areas where we can have individuals I think the municipal initiatives are well underway with the, the office of community development and planning, because at least is very well versed in this. So, the city itself is doing its thing. to put solar panels on municipal buildings, convert vehicles to electrical vehicles as appropriate, put in charging stations and so on. There's a lot of things, but residential buildings is a big, and having the residents of Medford aware of these initiatives is an important issue, I think. long answer to a short question, I guess.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know. Thank you. It was very thoughtful. I want to say I've lived in Medford for 30 years and I'm astounded that Medford at this point is doing so much because for a long time, we certainly experienced Medford as being a little bit behind the times in some initiatives. I just have to say I was really so thrilled to see how much Medford is doing. You had a very thoughtful answer. touched on both the larger issues and how difficult it is to bring that even into a relatively small scale like Medford because it's expensive and it takes a lot of work and you need to inform people. So really, really kudos. And I do think you're right that the key is to get more residents aware and new residents because now Medford has become a place where people can afford, people will buy their starter homes, which are now pretty expensive starter homes, and then maybe move on as opposed to historically where I think people moved to Medford and stayed here. Certainly in West Medford where I live, most people had just passed on houses to their family members over the years. So I think capturing people, who might not be here for the long term, at least, you know, to get them aware so they perhaps can become active. I really support that. So thank you for the work you're doing.
[Robert Paine]: Okay. Any other questions?
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: Bob, I actually have a question. I was wondering if there's any chance you guys go to other events. Like, we are all, like, for example, The Connectors, we're all from different languages. There's Spanish, Arabic, Haitian, Creole, Brazilian, Portuguese. We all have our events that we do every year. I was wondering if there's a way that maybe you guys would be available to come and, I don't know, maybe collaborate something that can be translated into our languages so that way people can get the information that you guys are offering in their languages, especially like promoting it in these events.
[Robert Paine]: Yeah, maybe one of our agenda items should be reports from the Climate Equity Council and any requests for assistance. So, I don't know, Brenda, how would you like to handle that?
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, I mean that makes sense as those requests come up. So yeah, so Lizette, we can talk about that, like which events you think would be appropriate for that and how to make those asks, yeah.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: yeah because we i think for that we have a lot of exposure with medford um residents and as well as like in other languages too would be perfect like you know arabic like like the month like spanish heritage month all those like major events that people come to and it'd be good for them to know, you know, because to be honest with you, I've got questions about it as well and I always give them the website, but it would be great for them to like be there, enjoy their event, but as well get information of what they need, you know.
[Brenda Pike]: And I think we'll have more information available, more information prepared and more information translated as we go through this Electrify Medford outreach campaign.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: Perfect. Thank you.
[Brenda Pike]: Bob, would you mind talking about how the Energy and Environment Committee works with the city? Do you think of it as something that's an arm of the city or is it more independent?
[Robert Paine]: No, we try to coordinate with the city and we learn about, well, I don't know, I'm trying to figure out how do we learn about initiatives. Often, Alicia or you, you could bring them up and you need help with outreach. Sometimes some of our members are uniquely qualified or they're aware of issues. Like, you know, the trees, the tree ordinance was, we have liaison with the trees, Medford committee. And so things like that, there's some issues where certain members of our committee are. are connected to other committees. There's a bicycle commission. There's lots of committees that we ought to be aware of. I don't even know if I know all of them, but they're doing their own thing. And we ought to be aware of what they're doing. And so we don't ignore something. So that's one thing. We ought to have a list of everything, what everyone's doing, and whether we ought to communicate better. I did once go to a bicycle commission meeting just to. Indicate that well, here's I'm representing this committee. We'd like to. coordinate with you. I also sometimes go to the 350 node for that group just to say, OK, this is what Medford is doing. So just to let you know that we're sort of on pace to do these things. So they're aware of that. So there's a lot of activities, and it's important to know who's doing what. And I'm not sure that I know everything. So that's another thing. But yeah, getting back to your question, Brenda, We sometimes have our own initiatives from various members of our committee that are well versed in things. Otherwise, we get clues or cues from Alicia Hunt or you maybe to help out. And so we're not independent. We are trying to coordinate with the city as best we can because we serve for the city.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah. And I may be wrong, but some of those things that you had listed that you had done, like policy advocacy for, like the solar ordinance, I think, or the plastic bag ordinance, I think those originated with the committee, right?
[Robert Paine]: Could have. They might have been. I'm trying to think of where the ideas came from. could have been an individual member who said, we ought to do this, or a minority of the members. So that's often the case. So that's why when you have a diverse group of members, you sometimes get good ideas. And that's why we have a total of 14 members to not only share the load, but get a variety of expertise that helps to have a good consensus of what we ought to do.
[Brenda Pike]: I feel like I'm asking a lot of questions here, but Bob, how do you decide what to focus on?
[Robert Paine]: We do ask the committee members to provide ideas for agenda items. Also, guest speakers to suggest, because we do get good ideas from other cities and towns. And that helps too. That's why we also have the annual. review of our, you know, what are our goals and what we have to focus on. And that leads to, okay, we should start a group. Now, we used to have subcommittees, but then we were, we had to abandon them because subcommittees with the open meeting law can't just meet in secret. So you have to like, there's all these, like, all these rules. You can't have a, you can't make decisions outside of the meeting unless you have less than the quorum communicating and then they can be, they can say anything they want. So, we couldn't have large subcommittees because if you had more than a quorum, you would have to then publicize everything you said. And, you know, have public input to it. So, it's sort of like a bummer that you got to, you're constrained in what you can do in preparation for open meetings because you can't have decisions made by a large group. unless you have another open meeting. So that was sort of like, so we had to abandon subcommittees. We just have working groups, or we don't call them subcommittees, but we have to be careful about how we communicate. That was sort of like, too bad.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: My question, my original question was, do you ever look to other cities or towns as kind of like inspiration? But you already said you do. So I guess my other question is be like, do you think that like Medford is keeping track with other cities such as like Somerville or in Everett in terms of their energy and environment policies and if Medford could do better?
[Robert Paine]: Good question. We have had guest speakers from Arlington on their Electrify Arlington. We've had Melrose who this one person does a lot with grant money. There are some cities that have gargantuan budgets because they just have rules of money and we can't really compete. We use a lot of their studies that have, like, for example, flooding maps. Cambridge does studies, and MedBird happens to be on their map. So we'll take their study. Thank you. Thank you, Cambridge. Things like that. We are aware, we try to be aware of work that other cities have done that we can just take and use. But some cities have huge budgets and we cannot possibly compete with the level of effort. Fortunately, with Brenda's hire, we have a new initiative there because Alicia was just too busy. She couldn't do everything. And our committee is basically an unpaid group of volunteers. And so we have our own lives. Um, well, we, yeah, that's it's a good question. We try to be aware of what other cities are doing and what the state is doing. That's why we're having that presentation on our. I think it's going to be the April 1 meeting. Where Mike Barrett is going to talk about and he presented before and it was very interesting. In that case, it was the previous governor, Baker, who he had to work with and almost twist his arm to sign that bill, the climate bill. He would have been overridden anyway, so he had to sign it. Now, the implementation of that bill has been stalled in some sense. due to the fact, well, we had a change of administration, so they had to get up to speed on that. And then the utilities have been slow to like solarize and expand the solar capacities. So we're going to get an idea of what on the state level is the holdup. And then certainly the heat pump installations are are gonna be a big challenge, and would the state have any ideas as to how to make that more amenable, maybe more funding, et cetera, more rebates, more incentives, that type of thing. And in fact, the state has to link up with the federal government's, what was that bill last year? It was the Inflation Reduction Act. Until the state, as a plan to use the money that's allocated to it, we probably have more incentives, more financial incentives for these things that the state hasn't even implemented. So we wanna know about, and then there was an interesting radio show where the governor was asked, well, how's that going? And the governor said, I'd better call you back, because I don't know. So there's issues where, The state is catching up, and they have to be reminded that there's this climate law, and you need to provide incentives for municipalities to help meet your goals. So we're trying, and this is why we're trying to get Mike Barrett to tell us, okay, how are things going, and how can Medford take advantage of any new initiatives?
[Brenda Pike]: Oh, I want to point out along those lines, the Department of Energy Resources is having a town hall sometime in mid-March, I don't remember the exact date, about the, what are they called, the HERS and the HEERS incentives that are coming up, the home energy rebates. that are coming from the Inflation Reduction Act. Yeah. I think they're going to be presenting their proposal for that. I know there's a whole other path of rebates that they're going to be recommending that they're proposing with MAPC. This is just one of those sets of rebates that are coming out, but they are talking about that sometime in mid-March, so progress.
[Robert Paine]: And then we want to then inform Medford citizens when these become available that they are available to citizens and they should certainly take advantage. But of course, Electrify Medford is going to also have coaches, and I'm actually going to try to be a coach and to help advise citizens. I've gone through the heat pump installation process myself. Solar, more solar on my roof, et cetera. So I'm a subject of that whole thing too. We may have exhausted the questions. You guys can move on to your agenda, I guess. But, you know, we ought to have we ought to have input from Medford, the Climate Equity Council. And how we can work well with your committee and Brenda can be the conduit because she attends both meetings.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, we just, I really appreciate you answering my question. I just, I want to be as educated about the subject as possible so that I can pass on this information to my community. So I really appreciate it. But if you want to continue, Brenda, you
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, sure, yeah. Thanks again for joining, Bob. You're welcome to stay on for the rest of the meeting if you want to.
[Robert Paine]: I'll just mute myself.
[Brenda Pike]: Okay, great. Yeah, so I think the next agenda item was the updates on city action, so that's on me. So for Electrify Medford, the press release about that went out at the end of last week. I'm announcing the fact that the city was awarded the mass CC and power grant. And the fact that the city will be doing this outreach campaign and putting the link out to the energy coach sign up form. We still need to get some more information about that up on the website and get the flyers together so we're ready when we're actually starting to go out and talk to people. That was the first step. We are working on adding a translation widget to Go Green Medford. Thank you for suggesting that at the last meeting. I can't believe that was oversight there completely. That's so good. That's exciting. It's great. Yeah, so right now, we're just looking through different translation widgets that are available and sort of assessing which ones we think would be best to use. But so if you have any experience with those sorts of translation widgets, the Go Green website is on the WordPress platform. So especially if you have any experience with it on there, let me know. We'd love to get your experience on that if you have any. So far, we have 15 people actually signed up to be energy coaches. The form will be available through the end of this month. People can obviously sign up to be energy coaches after that, but because of the stipend and because of the training, that's the initial deadline. Then we'll I'll be interviewing each one of them and then we'll let folks know if they're eligible for the stipend and then schedule our first training session at some point in March. And we're still looking for more people who speak languages other than English. So please, please share that sign up form with anyone you think might be interested in that at all. And let me pop that into the chat again, actually, just to make sure. I think I've shared it with you so many times before, you probably haven't memorized. Okay, just drop that into the chat again. And I'm still going through the internal processes to hire the heat pump consultant, but I have good news on that front. Mass Save is now offering most of what we were going to be paying that consultant for for free. So now anybody is eligible to get a consultation about heat pumps paid for by MassSave through this consultant that we were looking at. So that's really exciting. The quote comparison tool that they talked with us about, which actually shows like if you have If you go to multiple contractors and you get quote estimates from each one of them, you could submit these quotes to the consultant and they would like compare them and sort of spit back a report that shares it in sort of an apples to apples sort of way and explains the differences between them. That's not something that's available through Mass Save right now. They're working to make it available. But I don't know what the timeframe is for that. That sounds like something that's going through a longer process. So I think, and the training for the energy coaches on the heat pumps, that's not available through the MassSafe program. So those are the two things that I think we will be actually paying the consultant to do. And we are still working on sort of developing those resident incentives internally, figuring out how that whole process is going to work. So more info about that as we move along with it. I think that's it for Electrify Medfair. Did folks have any questions about where we are with that right now?
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: Yes, Brenda, I forget if we'd discussed this already, but if, let's say that I wanted to be a coach for the, I'm sorry, what is it called again?
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, the energy coach.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. Is that, am I allowed to or is that like a conflict of interest?
[Brenda Pike]: Absolutely, I would love that.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: Okay. Because I, like I would, not just to like, I like, I think it would be a good idea to kind of get that training on how to, be educated in these topics like heat pumps and stuff. I might consider it. Yeah, that would be great.
[Brenda Pike]: Sign up through that form and then we can have a one-on-one conversation about what your interests are in doing with that and how much time you think you have and when you might be available. We say up to four hours a week is what we're asking people to commit to that. But I fully expect that most weeks it's not going to be four hours a week just because of what's going on those particular weeks. And then it's all really dependent on your availability and your schedule, right? So as people come in, or as people express interest in the program, if you, you know, I'll ask if you're available at a particular time, like I'll try to match, I'll match them up with when, even if people are available, like evenings or weekends or weekdays or whatever, and match them up that way, then also reach out to you just to say, do you have time to take on another person right now before? assigning them to you.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: That's awesome, thank you.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, because I mean these energy coaches, even the ones that are going to be paid a stipend, they're volunteers, like everyone is just volunteering their time for this, and so we really want to be very aware of that.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, no, I was just reading the the information and just like learning and just seeing like that will be like trained on all these different things. And just seems like a really good idea, especially if I'm going to be on this council, you know, to know, to be educated in those things.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: That's great.
[Brenda Pike]: Anything else for Electrify Medford or should we move to curbside composting?
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: We can move to composting, Brenda.
[Brenda Pike]: So the press release announcing the free curbside compost program went out at the end of January. And people can sign up now for their composting to start July 1st. And that sign up is at medfordcompost.com. I just dropped it in the chat here as well. And just a reminder that this is for residents living in buildings of four units or less. For buildings that are larger than that, the owner of the building is supposed to be providing waste services to the residents that include at least recycling. So yeah, this is just four units or less. And we're still looking for volunteers who might be interested in doing outreach around this. I think they're planning on doing, going door to door, at least with like door hanger, doorknob hangers for this program at some point in March, just to make sure that people are aware that it's happening. One more update that I wanted to provide here. So we talked about stormwater issues in December, and I pointed out the flooding in South Medford and that it was a priority for improvements. And the city received a grant to design those improvements. And now we're applying for a grant to do the construction there. And I think it would be really helpful if the Climate Equity Council were willing to offer a letter of support for that grant. This is for the MVP grant the municipal vulnerability preparedness grant that does a lot of work around resilience for climate issues. And so. So, okay, so there were two things there. One, it would be great if the Climate Equity Council could offer a letter of support and that timeline for that is the grant will be due in mid-April. So I think that's something that you could consider, maybe vote on at the next meeting and develop the letter of support before mid-April if you're interested. And then the other part of this, as part of that project, we really want to educate property owners about drainage and stormwater issues and permeable pavement and things like that. Because that area is so dense, there's not a lot of room in the street and the sidewalks for things like permeable pavement, for changes that they could make in Like my street here in Somerville, they're putting in some drainage where it will actually like have sort of retaining containers that will hold the water when it rains and then slowly seep it out into the ground so it doesn't overwhelm the drainage system. But there's not really that sort of room in that neighborhood just because it's so dense. So we really want to focus on talking to people about their backyards and their driveways as an opportunity to increase the permeable pavement in the area so just to remove like You know, asphalt or paving stones or things like that that people might have so that there's more like open ground and grass cover or whatever so that the water can can seep down in there. So I think the idea through this grant would be to educate people about the stormwater issues in the area, which they see flooding there all the time, and what the solutions that the city's looking to do, which include, I actually have some, I think I have a map here that's showing What the area is and what they're talking about doing.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: If you run another letter, the letter would be written to me by Sharbell and I right.
[Brenda Pike]: Yes, I mean, if you wanted to draft it and then the entire committee would could vote on. On actually approving it and signing the committee's name to it. Yeah, yeah. It would be great.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: That's awesome. Yeah, I don't think sure about would you be opposed to it? I don't think so.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: I mean, I'm I was I was like, already on board when it was brought up. Yeah, that's great. Working on that. And then hopefully we'll have a draft by the next meeting.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: That's wonderful.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, so this kind of shows what they're doing. So these streets here, Goldsmith, Billings, and Bowen flood quite often. And so they've identified that in order to fix that, they would need to increase the size of the storm drain on the north side, as well as one on the south side. And then connect this this 1 on the right hand side here. Connect it to the mystic ab storm drain instead of the 1 that is currently connected to, because the mystic ab storm drain is larger and can handle more water flowing through it.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: Oh, Brenda, I have a question. Does spring street is spring street 1 of those. streets as well because in the middle of Spring Street there's always a huge flood and it's like hard and damaging to like cars when it like rains a lot.
[Brenda Pike]: Interesting. Where is Spring Street here?
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: Spring Street is like near the Target in Medford. I live on Salem Street. So every time I'm going to take my son to school, because he goes to the Andrews, like there's, and it's raining, it's a huge flood, like where that like pizzeria place is. And it's just because like the leveling of the street and as well as like the drains there too. So I think that'd be one major like help for the community in that area?
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah. I don't remember off the top of my head. I'm trying to picture the map now with the different areas where they identified problems. I can't picture if that was there. Yeah. But I can definitely pass that along to them so that they're aware. It's that feedback that we really want from people.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. No, thank you. To be honest, I feel like we should go in any event or Meetings that we have with, like, residents, like us connectors and ourselves just ask them really quick, like, hey, like, what's going on with, like, you know, flooding situation and the rain and stuff like that. Just so if you guys are missing something, we can give you that feedback.
[Brenda Pike]: as well. Yeah, absolutely. Because I know when they first put that report together, they did some like passes to the city where they actually drove around during rainstorms to like look at where places were flooding. But of course, they probably, you know, it's hard to cover the entire city. And then they did some outreach to get some feedback. But again, you don't reach everybody when you're when you're doing that. Yeah, yeah.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: At least with events, you can get people from all parts of, you know, Medford. in one area. Yeah, that's why I think it'd be so good to like, have like, the go green method and as well as like us like they're like in events and stuff. So we can get more from the residents. Because, and especially from all different, you know, backgrounds, I think that'd be really amazing.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, definitely. That's great. Yeah, so I was thinking some of the things we would do with that education. We would talk about, you know, Somerville has a deep paving incentivization program where they actually give people funding to pull up the asphalt of their driveway and replace it with something that can actually let the water down through. I'm not sure that the city has committed to that yet, but that might be something that we could do. But we also want to let people know about the rain barrel program. Because the city has a, this is not my program, so I feel like I'm saying this wrong, but I think it's a discounted rain barrel program. I don't think it's free that people can get and hook up to their gutters and then use it for gardening and things like that. And then we also have a new stormwater ordinance. So I don't think that applies so much to people who are living in existing buildings. That's more about people who are building new buildings and what they need to build into it to make sure that they're not creating these problems for the future. But it might be a helpful thing to talk to people about just so that they're aware of the types of things that can be done to prevent that sort of flooding. But so I would love to do to do that sort of like as we're developing that sort of education and getting it out there, I would love to work with the connectors to like put the materials together and do some of the outreach.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: We're down for that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if Janet's talking to us. I kept clicking, but it was over the search bar. So I just wanted to say I just learned about the Adopt a Storm Jane program, which I had never learned about. And I think it's a great idea. Very low you know, expectations, very minimal work to be done, but it's kind of neat where you basically say, you know, you'll, these storm drains that are identified in your neighborhood, you know, after, you know, you'll check them periodically and make sure that they're clear of debris and they'll throw out the, you know, you'll make sure the debris is cleared away from the grate. So according to what I saw, there are only 35 people in Medford who have signed up for this. But it does seem like something that you might get people to do with just some education, you know, at one of the apps, including that as some of the outreach that's being done, that that's a really very modest time sink for doing something that if enough people got involved might really make a difference.
[Brenda Pike]: That's a great point. Yeah, definitely. I think that's all that I have for our city action updates. Any question about anything either that we talked about or that you were hoping to get an update on that we didn't talk about? We're going to move on to transportation topics after this.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, just just briefly about the letter. Do you think that meal is that could talk to you like one on one later, just to kind of, I guess, outline what we should include in that letter. Because like, I don't really have much experience writing letters to for grants. So yeah.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, absolutely. As Bob knows, the Energy Committee actually signed on to the MassCEC Empower Grant that is allowing us to do this Electrify Medford program. So that sort of thing carries a lot of weight. Cool. Okay, moving on to transportation topics. So I apologize if I don't have as much information here as someone in the transportation department would, but I figure we can do some like, at least introductory information on these topics, and then we can follow up with questions if folks have some. But let's see, I have a map of the Blue Bike Station here. There we go. Yeah, so I think I mentioned in the last meeting that Medford had put in, it was an additional like two Blue Bike Stations that month. And so you can see the total here of existing stations, planned stations, and sort of more in the future stations. And the Blue Bikes program, I don't know if everybody knows about this, but the way it works is you have these stations with the bikes in it that are kind of locked into it, and you sign them out using your phone. And it costs about, I think it's, yeah, it's $2.95 per half hour, and then $4 for an additional half hour after that. That's just if you're doing it on a ride-by-ride basis. If you have a membership, that's $129 a year, then each ride is free for the first 45 minutes, and it's an additional $2.50 for an additional 30 minutes after that. The idea is, if possible, if you have enough stations around and you would just go from one station to another for your ride, so you're always in that first 45 minutes ideally, and then when you're going back, you would take out another bike and ride it back to the original station. If you qualify, if you're income eligible, then that membership fee is $50 per year. Um, so conceivably, if you pay that $50 per year, um, upfront, then you could ride for free everything after that. Um, and I will drop the link to that income eligible program in the chat. Um, and I'll include it in the meeting minutes as well, just so that everybody is aware of it. Um, and so Medford might not have as many blue bike stations and some of the other. You know, larger cities around here, but we have quite a few now and it's and we're. Looking to expand every year.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: So, Brenda, I have a question. Yeah, are they planning to put more in, like, the areas that don't have because I see, like, some areas that don't have it and it's not like. Future stations, so I'm just curious.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, I mean, I think the goal, the transportation department, I don't remember. If the goal is, like, everyone being within, like, a. 10 minute walk or 15 minute walk, but something like that love of something like a blue bike station. So, yeah, so they are looking to spread it out geographically. A lot of times it depends on. You know, where the space is for the location for the station itself. So that might be something that. could be helpful in the future for residents to give input as to where they'd like to see a blue bike station, where they think that there's room that it could be done. I know the city has worked with private building owners to have installed their private buildings as well. The two red ones down near the bottom, those are installed by Tufts.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: What about near the high school?
[Brenda Pike]: Is there any near the high school? I'm not aware of any near the high school.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I'm looking at High Street and then after that, but I don't see any. I'm just saying for students who want to use it. And to be honest with you, there is an area area or two that like is open there that they can definitely put it.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, definitely. Especially since high school students don't have bus service, right? So they have to find other ways of getting there.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[Brenda Pike]: So this is something that I think, as we're talking, I know at Electrify Medfair, we've been talking a lot about electric vehicles. But as we're talking to people about options to sort of like decarbonize their their transportation. We want to make sure that we're also talking about things like, like biking and making sure they're aware of the blue bikes program and the income eligible blue bikes program in particular, as well as like, the fact that there are, you know, discounted MBTA passes and things like that as well. Um, anything else we want to talk about about blue bikes.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: I think those are my suggestion.
[Brenda Pike]: Um, so I think the next thing. That we wanted to talk about was the Wellington. Um, underpass. So again, let me share my screen here. This is just a website that I'm sharing here, but can everybody see that?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah. So what's being done is this. So it starts out as a boardwalk along the river, but it will, drop down underneath the highway and have a boardwalk on the other side as well. So there's a safer way for people to cross over that intersection and then be able to continue along sort of past station landing and out towards Wellington.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: So in that case, I guess I was kind of, I was thinking about it in a different way. In this case, I don't think it would affect traffic in a big way, would it?
[Brenda Pike]: No, this shouldn't affect traffic at all, except that you'll probably have fewer people hitting the walk signal to cross.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. I don't know why I thought in my head that there would be some construction blocking. But this is actually very good, because that intersection can be dangerous sometimes.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: 100%, especially for bikers, people in general. But for bikers, it's crazy.
[Unidentified]: Yeah.
[Brenda Pike]: And then there's also, I don't have, and the timeline for that, I think the design of that is going to be done this fall. So I don't know what the timeline is for construction. So it's not going to be ready this year, definitely. But it's moving along. And then I think something similar is being planned over towards the actual Wellington T-stop to again try to reduce the conflict between cars and bikes and pedestrians over there. And then they're also planning on building I think this is just a separated path that's like along the river going north from the Wellington T Station along the river that way. So I don't think any of these should be negatively impacting traffic, at least once they're constructed. I don't know about while during construction what that'll look like, but once it's actually constructed, I think that it's all going to be a net improvement for traffic and for pedestrians and bicyclists. And then I think one of the things that we wanted to talk about was the reduced fare T passes. And again, I'm just going to just pull up a website here. Just the MBTA reduced fares website. And so children 11 years and younger, people who are legally blind, uniformed military personnel, police and firefighters, and government officials. Interesting. DPW employees. I was like, man, would I count for that? But no.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: That would have been amazing.
[Brenda Pike]: So they all ride for free. And then for the reduced fare, you're eligible if you are disabled or you have Medicare, you're 65 or older. Interesting. Some middle school and high school students, I'm not sure if Medford is one of those, but we could look into that some more. If you're 18-25 with low income,
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: Did they just do this, Brenda, or is it like it's been there for a couple of years?
[Brenda Pike]: I think that it's been there for quite a few years, actually. I don't know if they've changed the eligibility at all in recent years, but this has existed for a while.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: That's wild, because I only knew about certain, not all of these, and I used to take I think the last time I took the train and bus for commuting to work out of like in Boston was like around 2019. And I never heard like, you know, two or three of them. I've obviously known about like, um, you know, elderly and all that stuff, but never the other ones of low income and other stuff. That's really interesting to know. I never saw it.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, it's interesting. It doesn't seem like the income eligible part of it is open to everybody. It's just, they said 18 to 25, or if you are disabled. So I think that, so folks who are sort of outside of those categories, but are still low income, I think don't, this doesn't apply to it, unfortunately. Yeah. Here's what the reduced fares are. A $1.10 on the subway and 85 cents on the bus.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: The reduced fare card is what we talked about, the low income and all that stuff. Is it talking about that or is it just like- Yes.
[Brenda Pike]: You'd apply and you'd get a card to Like a Charlie card that would have that.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[Brenda Pike]: And then it goes into more detail about these, but I think that's the important part of it. It was the parts we just talked about. Um, but again, I can include this link. I'll drop it in the chat, but I'll include this link at the minutes as well. And I know one of the things you want to talk about was adult bike riding classes, but I couldn't find any information about that, at least for this meeting. So maybe we'll follow up on that for a future meeting. Or maybe that's something that maybe that this group might be interested if there's not something out there right now that we try to get up and running. I think that's it for our transportation topics. Any more questions around those or anything else you wanted to talk about around transportation? So what's next on the agenda? Um. I think it's just future meeting topics. Anything else folks really want to talk about at our next meeting or guest speakers that you want to have?
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: Didn't you say there was a guest speaker that couldn't attend this meeting, Brenda?
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, Todd Blake from the transportation department. I'm not sure if he would be, I'll ask him again if he can make next at the next meeting. But I think it would be, it might be better to invite him if you had specific questions that you really wanted to dive in depth with him about. Yeah.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: I had a quick question about the MassSafe program. I think it's called the Leaheap plan.
[Brenda Pike]: Oh, yeah, that like CD implements. Yeah.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: So I was, I was informing a few people about that, and they applied for it. And they're saying it's taking a long time to review. I don't know if Do you know that if that's like a common thing or, or because it's a first come first served thing, they might not have.
[Brenda Pike]: It's interesting, it's not actually first-come, first-served because they do prioritize certain people above others. I think if you have a child below a certain age in your house, if you have a senior in your house, people with particular medical issues, so they will bump those people to the front of the line because they want to make sure that they're in good living conditions. So, I think that does sometimes mean that I know that there can be long waiting lists, essentially, for that program sometimes. These folks you were talking about, how long had they been waiting for that?
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: Well, I think they said that they applied at the end of January. So like January 2026, I think. Because as soon as I found when you were showing us in the last presentation, I thought that I was amazed at how that like the income eligibility. So I immediately shared it with my community. And I was helping some people with applications. And yeah, it's been like a month. They're still like waiting for review. Not a lot of communication from the agency.
[Brenda Pike]: So they put their first application in and they haven't had anybody follow up with them about it yet?
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: Not that I know of, no. Um, apart from some forms that needed to be like updated or like, uh, like income, uh, what's the word income, um, verification. Yep. Apart from that, it's like, no, there's no, uh, updates on the matter.
[Brenda Pike]: Um, If they're comfortable with you share with, with sharing their information with me, I can follow up with ABCD directly. Um, just to see sort of what the, what they're thinking of, what the timeframe would be for that.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: Okay. I'll, um, I'll, I'll reach out with them and see if they are. I think they're just like, they're just kind of confused. Yeah.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah. I mean, and this is sort of what I really wanted, part of what I want to do with the Electrify Medford program, right, is that as people are going through these programs, if they're running into delays or issues, I want to follow up with these programs to try to move things along.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[Brenda Pike]: I had to do this for myself recently. I applied for some rebates right as they were changing rebate processing vendors. And so I got my rebates got caught up in that confusion.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: That's a shame.
[Brenda Pike]: So I was trying to be patient about it, but eventually after it was five months. I was like, okay, this is crazy. And I reached out to somebody I knew there that I used to work with. And I was like, okay, what's going on with this? And surprise, I got my rebate in a week.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, sometimes that's really all it takes. It's like, Right, right, like right now, for example, I know it's not related, but I'm still waiting on like, like some tax forms from the IRS. And like, my dad is saying like, oh, they probably lost the paperwork or something. Like, like knowing them, but who knows? Who knows? Anyway, thank you, Brenda. I appreciate it.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, absolutely. But we can follow up offline about future meeting topics as we move along through the month. Anything else we want to talk about today?
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: I can't really think of anything else. Try to brainstorm some future topics. I can't really feel like the things we want to talk about are all tapped out.
[Brenda Pike]: Well, I'm sure more things will come up. We'll definitely need to delve more deeply into the stormwater improvements. I think probably Owen Wartella is the city engineer, and he's heading up this project. And I think he'd really like to come to your next meeting and talk to you about it a little bit more in depth.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, OK.
[Brenda Pike]: And then, of course, we need to follow up about Electrify Medford and the curbside composting and all those things. Yeah.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: That's good.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: All right. So I think we need a motion to adjourn.
[Brenda Pike]: Yes, I was going to say.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: Motion to adjourn the meeting. Aye.
[Brenda Pike]: So Lizette seconded.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: You have to get good at this stuff, Lizette. I second the motion. So, motion to adjourn the meeting everybody say, I, or a thumbs up. Okay, very good. Great.
[Brenda Pike]: Thank you. Everybody.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_04]: Yes, thank you.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: Everybody.