[MCM00001596_SPEAKER_01]: So motion to accept the minutes from the last meeting?
[Zcwx-pW5U0k_SPEAKER_00]: Second.
[MCM00001596_SPEAKER_01]: Okay. All in favor of approving, say aye.
[Brenda Pike]: Aye. Aye. Natasha says aye.
[MCM00001596_SPEAKER_01]: Literally aye. All right, and then we can start the meeting.
[Brenda Pike]: Just a moment. I thought Stacy was, oh, there we go. She's just connecting to audio. Sorry, actually, can we go back on that a little bit? Natasha, did you join the last meeting later? or did you not, okay.
[Zcwx-pW5U0k_SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we are wrapping up and we should get joined in less time.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, and I had a note in the minutes that said something about some suggestions that you had for activities. I wasn't sure if that was something that you had said in the meeting or if that was just a note that I noted to myself about something that you had said before. Okay, all right. So I can remove that comment from the minutes. So sorry about that. I think we'll need to go through the vote again with the understanding that you're approving the minutes with that comment that I said Natasha had removed from them. Does that make sense, everyone?
[MCM00001596_SPEAKER_01]: Yes, so should I go again now?
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, sorry about that.
[MCM00001596_SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so motion to approve the minutes from last meeting.
[Brenda Pike]: Second. Sorry, it should be a motion to approve the minutes from last meeting with the comment about Natasha removed.
[MCM00001596_SPEAKER_01]: With the comment about Natasha removed. Okay, so motion to approve the minutes from last meeting with the comment from Natasha removed.
[Zcwx-pW5U0k_SPEAKER_00]: Second.
[MCM00001596_SPEAKER_01]: Okay, all in favor, say aye.
[Brenda Pike]: Aye.
[MCM00001596_SPEAKER_01]: Aye.
[Brenda Pike]: And Stacy has a thumbs up and Natasha says aye.
[MCM00001596_SPEAKER_01]: So we can begin.
[Brenda Pike]: Perfect. One thing I wanted to talk about during this administrative session, oh, here's Lisette. During the administrative portion of the meeting. I'm not going to be able to do hybrid meetings on Friday evenings anymore. Because of the change in the timesheet policy and all of that, I can't stay that many hours after City Hall closes. So I could either do a Zoom meeting on Friday evenings that I could take from home, or we could do a hybrid meeting another day of the week. Or we could do a Zoom meeting some other time during the week. We could do it even at lunchtime if that was a better time for folks than evenings are. So what would everybody prefer?
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: Hi, Brenda, apologies for coming in late. I was talking to a coordinator for the Hispanic Heritage Month event for Thursday, the salsa and then, you know, the other stuff for the Bedford Family Network storytelling. So I was on a call with them, but I was wondering if maybe we can just put in what were available, like our availability on a sheet. And then maybe you can see what we can sort of coordinate to do together, because I know for me though I think in November I'm going to open up my Wednesday like full day like I'm not working at Target so I can do Wednesday at whatever time so if anybody else is open that for example that day that'd be great.
[MCM00001596_SPEAKER_01]: Wednesday is pretty busy for me. But we used to do Monday. Monday was like what we used to do and that worked well for me. But I know that Samia can't come in on Monday and that's why I moved it to Friday. So I think probably the best option is to keep it Friday and just do Zoom.
[Zcwx-pW5U0k_SPEAKER_00]: I appreciate the changes and they just changed my schedule because the new grant we got. I'm flexible too, so whatever works for everybody. I think the only confrontation that I have is the Wednesday with our meetings at the City Hall and the study. Next month, I'll be giving the classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays at the library. I think Monday will be a good day if everybody's okay with that or Friday.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: I'm okay with Monday.
[MCM00001596_SPEAKER_01]: So Monday at this time, right?
[Brenda Pike]: Oh, yes, at 530. OK. Stacey, Natasha?
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_06]: I'm not sure if Monday is going to work for me now. I was planning to sign up for the market Monday evening. So what time? 530, I think. I think I was going to go 4 to 6 or something like that. So Friday would work for me. I was going to do Fridays too, but I figured I'd take a Friday off. But maybe I can do that for a Monday too. So perhaps I could be flexible.
[Brenda Pike]: Or we could do Mondays at 6 o'clock instead of 5.30.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_06]: Whatever works for the majority, I can try to be flexible. It's once a month, so kind of mix things up. I'm speaking for myself, mixing things up.
[Brenda Pike]: So Monday or Friday for me is good. Natasha says Monday at 6 p.m. or Friday is good for her. So Lizette, Samia, that is okay. Let's do Mondays then, because that would definitely be easier for me, because City Hall does close at 1230, so I don't have to take off all that time in between and then go back on again. So that means that our October meeting would be... Do you want to do the 21st?
[Zcwx-pW5U0k_SPEAKER_00]: And it's going to be a six, right? Yes.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: The 21st of October, I think is perfect.
[Brenda Pike]: That's great. Everyone else, does that work for you? Natasha gives a thumbs up. Great. Okay, so Monday, October 21st at 6pm is the next one. Do we get an e-vite, Brenda? There's an ongoing invitation in your calendar right now for Fridays, so I'll just move that to Mondays instead. If there's a particular Monday that doesn't work for someone, just let us know and we can be flexible too. Okay. One more administrative update I wanted to give. We've hired a new head clerk in the Planning, Development, and Sustainability Department. Jackie Forcino was one of the interns that we've had for more than a year now, and now she's our new head clerk. We're pretty excited to have someone back in that position again. It's been tough the last month or so.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: Is it head clerk or senior clerk? That's a good question. because we just got a forward email from Catherine that she told us about that position that was open, senior clerk.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, so it must be that position then because we don't have another opening in our department. Interesting. Yeah, we've been without a clerk for more than a month now.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: Well, I was going to apply, Barbara. I mean, Barbara, Brenda. I'm going crazy now.
[Brenda Pike]: Aw, that's too bad. That would have been wonderful.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I was going to apply, but I was going to do it like on the weekend. But good you told me now. Yeah, I'm not trying to work at Target anymore.
[Brenda Pike]: Ah, well, I'll keep my eye out if there are openings that I think would be good for you. Yeah. Thank you. I think that's it for the administrative stuff. Do folks have anything else for the administrative portion of the meeting?
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: No, but I would like to add that it was success. The event that we had, the electric vehicles, success. I loved it. we should do another event like that.
[Brenda Pike]: Definitely, yeah. I'm terrible at estimating the number of people, but I would say maybe 50 people came through throughout the day, just based on the fact that 35 of the scavenger hunt sheets were taken, and I know there were a lot of people who didn't take those.
[Unidentified]: That's good. That's really good.
[Brenda Pike]: Yep. And then, uh, um, yeah, we had 14 electric vehicles there and I think seven e-bikes, um, because people just kept showing up and saying, sorry, I didn't sign up ahead of time, but can I, can I join? And you're like, sure, go park over there.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: But that's good. You see that? Yeah, it was wonderful. More people, the better. Yeah.
[Zcwx-pW5U0k_SPEAKER_00]: And by the pictures, the weather was nice too. It was nice. So it was perfect.
[Brenda Pike]: It was, it was, it was hot though in the parking lot there.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: I got a, I got a face like burnt in my arms and I was sitting down in the Cybertruck cause it had AC.
[Brenda Pike]: I have such a farmer's tan from that.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: I was like, I was telling everyone, I was like, come in AC. I'll tell you the features. It was too much.
[Brenda Pike]: It was fun. The mayor rode in one of the cargo bikes with her dog. That was cute.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: You got the picture, Brenda?
[Brenda Pike]: Yes.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: Thank you. You guys want to see it, whoever didn't get to go? Because it was such a cute picture, guys. Look. Let me tell you something. I want an electric bike like yesterday.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah. I don't know if I would do the kind of cargo bike that had the thing in front like that, because it was a little bit hard to steer. I would not have a trailer in the back or something. Yeah.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: I like that one that Michelle, was her name Michelle? Like she had the bike on itself and it was the one that we like, Oh yes, she had a red shirt on.
[Brenda Pike]: She's one of the electrified med for coaches. Yep.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. She, that thing was insane. I was having a panic attack. Cause I thought it like, if I went like that, I would have gone flying and then fall off the bike. And I was like, no, let me not do that.
[Brenda Pike]: They do go fast. Yeah. No, it was really good. I liked it. So I sent along the EV resources flyer that we used at that event. Is that useful? Is there something else that you think would be more useful when you're talking with people?
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: You mean this one that said electric vehicle resources? Yep. I mean, And all honestly, this was good. But like, I always feel like every single like our tables, like, I mean, we're coming up already with our stuff. Anyways, Brenda, I'm gonna send you a fly the PDF of this stuff. But like, I feel like maybe, um, I don't know, it needs we need to have something more interactive. That is, like, you know what I mean? Of like, electric, like, you know, resources.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, but you had looked for, you would ask for like some frequently asked questions or something that you could that you could share with people. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good idea. You should do that. So this is what you were thinking of when you said that? Mm hmm. Yes, I meant that. Oh, it was. Oh.
[Zcwx-pW5U0k_SPEAKER_00]: Is that possible that you have?
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: Sorry, let me go.
[Zcwx-pW5U0k_SPEAKER_00]: Is that possible to have like a like a document without the flyers available. So when do we want, you know, find someone who want to, you know, forward the flyers and can just go to that specific place and now the flyers are there. Do you mean like, just like a link online that you could Yeah, maybe make a Google Docs and, you know, make a folder without the flyers. You know, I think it'll be very helpful for us, even like if you're in advance, you know, for our events too, you know, like if you, we think about, oh, let me see what do we have available and maybe can print some stuff and bring it to us, you know.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, absolutely. That would be great. I also, I have some flyers from like ABCD about the weatherization program and fuel assistance and things like that that are really useful for people. I have the, community choice, community electricity aggregation flyer that would be useful, I think. Yeah, so I'll just add what I have to a folder and share it with you. And then let me know if there are other things that you would like that you'd be looking for.
[Zcwx-pW5U0k_SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, because Lizette, you are taking care of our Facebook page, right, for our office? What do you mean? For our office, prevention outreach office, right?
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: What are you saying, like the page, the thing, the questions that I want to do for our office? No, I'm asking so you have access to our Facebook, right?
[Zcwx-pW5U0k_SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. OK, so maybe we can even make an album over there, you know, like and put out the flyers and say the resources, you know, for, you know, something like that. So it's available right now, Facebook and maybe even the city page. You can have an album just without the flyers available with resources like that. where people can go directly and see it. It's there.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: If you send it to me, Brendan, in email, I can do an album of it and post it.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah. I think it might be more useful if I have, like Samia said, to have a folder online that you can just go to if you want to print them off for some reason. And then that way, you have it digitally and something that you can use.
[Zcwx-pW5U0k_SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so and then you can just go and check it out.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah. And then you can pull from there to put into the album. Sounds good. So the next thing I think on the agenda was the Medford Connects events. I know there's the Hispanic Heritage Month events coming up.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: Yes, three. Yeah, three, which I'm planning it is. Hmm. Hold on, let me get my stuff. Okay. So this Thursday, September 26, we're going to have five to seven. It's going to be from five to seven. It's in the chambers. It's salsa dancing. It's going to be very interactive because, um, I just, like I said, spoke with like one of the, um, instructors. Her name's Esther Gomez. She works with Marie Cassidy a lot and she's Mexican. So she does a lot of like interactive like storytelling and stuff like that. So she also does like this like very interactive like salsa dancing with like, like kind of like those like fun like tarps and stuff. You go in and out and play like, you know, dance in and out and stuff. So that's for Thursday. We're also gonna have like some, you know, like, uh, bocadillos, which is like, um, finger foods as well as like, you know, chips, salsa, all that stuff. And then, um, October 11th, we're gonna have a pop up restaurant at the, um, Medford Community Center, which is gonna be really cool. It's gonna be like set up like a, you know, like the tables like a restaurant. Um, And yeah, the food and everything, Jennifer's in charge of all that stuff. That's going to be October 11th, 530 to 730, and then it's going to have resources as well. I was wondering too, if you want, you can have a table too, Brenda.
[Brenda Pike]: With your resources, unfortunately, I'm not going to be in town that day, but maybe I can get 1 of the coaches to to do a table there. That would be good and then.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: The last 1 is October 18th, Friday. From 530 to 730, and it's going to be. Medford Family Network storytelling at the library for Hispanic Heritage Month. And it's also going to be with Maureen Cassidy as well as Esther. And sorry, give me two seconds because she's calling me.
[Brenda Pike]: Are you guys, are there, are the connectors also going to have a table at Tufts Community Day? on September 29th?
[MCM00001596_SPEAKER_01]: No, I think it was too late for us to remember.
[Brenda Pike]: Interesting. Okay. Do you want to share a table? This is another instance where I'm not going to be there. I'm going to be out of town, but a few of the coaches will be there.
[MCM00001596_SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, maybe. let me get in touch if you want to get in touch with Catherine see if it would be okay for us to do that but I would be open because I was I was saying that I was gonna uh when they asked us who wants to table for the for that day I said yes but it turns out we we never had a table to begin with so we said you know what forget it but now you know I can uh I can sit into your table if you like
[Brenda Pike]: Okay. So you want me to reach out to Catherine about that? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, definitely. And FYI, so I'm going to be out of the office for the first two weeks of October. Um, starting September 28th. Um, so I am going to be frantically trying to finish up a bunch of stuff this, this coming week. So I'll, I'll try to get that all worked out, but hopefully it's not going to be too chaotic. Um, getting that information over to you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[Brenda Pike]: Okay.
[MCM00001596_SPEAKER_01]: No worries.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's see what else. Are there other events coming up other than the Hispanic Heritage Month ones?
[Zcwx-pW5U0k_SPEAKER_00]: We're going to have the winter preparedness in November. The flyer itself said we are just waiting for the confirmation of the drop-off location for the nation. So we can release the flyer. Oh, yeah.
[Brenda Pike]: Can you share the flyer with me? I'd love to see it. Yeah.
[MCM00001596_SPEAKER_01]: Also, regarding that, I don't know if you saw my email, but I got in touch with a person from ABCD. And they never got back to me. I don't know. Maybe it's because they don't know me.
[Brenda Pike]: OK. So I'll reach out to someone at ABCD. a different person than you reached out to so that we can try to get the right person. She might not have been the right person to deal with this. Thank you, Brenda. For the winter preparedness event, so that's for winter coat donations, that sort of thing?
[MCM00001596_SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[Brenda Pike]: Yep. Do you know that there is a knitting organization in Medford that they knit hats and scarves and things like that to donate to people? That might be a good thing to connect with. True.
[Zcwx-pW5U0k_SPEAKER_00]: Mary Cassidy bought some of those things last year. Oh, OK. And she got it from some organization like that. So I shouldn't assume that she's going to do the same thing this year. But I think for letting me know, I would definitely pass on to Catherine and Sophie and see what I can find about it.
[Brenda Pike]: Yep. I think it's called the knitting connection. And the person who was running it um, is not, you know, her, her health is not, she's not up to managing it right now. So other people are, are sort of helping her. So it's, it might be a little chaotic right now. Um, but if you have a hard time getting in touch with someone, Alicia from my office, um, knits things for that organization. So she could help to get in touch with people. And what is the date for the winter preparedness event? November 14. 14, okay. And that's at City Hall?
[Zcwx-pW5U0k_SPEAKER_00]: Library.
[Brenda Pike]: That makes sense.
[Zcwx-pW5U0k_SPEAKER_00]: The only problem, I'm glad I went in person to see the dates. They didn't have anything available for November anymore. And the 14 was the only date they had available, you know. But they have an event before, so our event is going to start at 6.30.
[Brenda Pike]: It's so hard to schedule events at the library. They're so booked up.
[Zcwx-pW5U0k_SPEAKER_00]: I know, but like, it was the end of August. So I thought like, oh, we have plenty of time, but just check, check it out. Maybe have more options, you know? Yeah, come on.
[Brenda Pike]: Any other events that we should be aware of?
[MCM00001596_SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I don't know if we mentioned already the, is it the River Day Festival? The Sunday, they got moved to Sunday.
[Brenda Pike]: Oh yeah, the Mystic River Celebration. Yep. Are you, are you guys going to be there too?
[MCM00001596_SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, now that it's on Sunday, I can make it.
[Brenda Pike]: That's great. I'll be there too. Hopefully there won't be too much wind or any leftover rain.
[MCM00001596_SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, well.
[Brenda Pike]: So yes, that's 12 to 4 on Sunday. OK, should we move on to the city updates? We can go back to the Hispanic Heritage Month things if we need to once Lizette's back. So let's see. Yeah, so on Thursday I did an activity with the McGlynn School and an organization called Canoe Mobile that takes kids on canoe trips on rivers and lakes. And so they take half of the kids out on a canoe trip and the other half stay on shore going to different like activity stations and then they switch. So my activity station was, I was having them light up little LED lights using pencils, like the graphite and the pencil as a conductor. and connecting it with a nine volt battery. And the kids had a blast doing that. So that was really fun. And I was talking with them about electricity and the wind turbine there and the solar panels we're going to put on the schools and on the Andrews School this fall and other things. So that was a great activity. And they'd like to do it next year. So this was a very last minute thing. I heard about it. less than a week ago, but if they do it again next year, that might be something that would be great for the Medford Connects folks to get involved with too.
[Zcwx-pW5U0k_SPEAKER_00]: And I saw your calendar that the city has a Halloween bash or something. Did you hear anything from that? Halloween bash.
[Brenda Pike]: I haven't. Let me see here. I'm not planning on doing anything. Oh, the pumpkin smash.
[Zcwx-pW5U0k_SPEAKER_00]: I didn't see that one, just saw Halloween something. Pumpkin smash?
[Brenda Pike]: There's a Halloween fest and pumpkin float at some time in October, but I don't know if that's something that they're doing again this year. I haven't heard anything about it.
[Zcwx-pW5U0k_SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, just wondering because it's almost October. So I just thought maybe you have a date, you know.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, I haven't heard anything. And I don't even know who puts that on. That was just something I pulled from last year's calendar.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_06]: Yep, I think that pumpkin smash might have been something the community center did was make the community center.
[Brenda Pike]: I think well, the sounds familiar. Yeah, the pumpkin smash is a different event from the Halloween fest. The pumpkin smash happens like a couple days after Halloween and mothers out puts it on at Wrights Pond. And the idea is just to get people to bring their pumpkins in so they can be composted, but they do the smashing of the pumpkins as a way to. do it in a way that's entertaining.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_06]: Make it fun.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah. So I will have a table there for the pumpkin smash and you guys are welcome to as well if you are interested. They had quite a bit of turn out last time. Um, let's see here, I'm going to be at the farmers market on. September 26, so next Thursday. Um, and. Yeah, I think that's it. We're going to have electrified methods going to have a table at Tufts community day, although I won't be there. And then the harvest your energy festival, as, you know, is October 19th. Did the Medford Connects folks, do you have a table there signed up for already? For which event? So it's October 19th. It's a Saturday.
[MCM00001596_SPEAKER_01]: What is it called again?
[Brenda Pike]: Harvest Your Energy Festival.
[MCM00001596_SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah, we should have a table. I don't know if we registered for table, but we're definitely going to be there.
[Brenda Pike]: Okay. I can check. So Jackie, the clerk in our office is the one who's heading that up. So I can check with her to make sure that you're on the list of people with tables. Okay. Thank you.
[Zcwx-pW5U0k_SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. At the McLean School? Yep. Yeah. Charbel, Samir, and Stacey signed up for that. Is there a flyer for that yet?
[MCM00001596_SPEAKER_01]: There was a. Yeah, I can double check on that.
[Brenda Pike]: I don't know if there's a physical flyer. There was definitely some social media posts. So there were more like digital banners that I've seen. they might be waiting to put out an actual flyer until they've confirmed all of the vendors that are going to be there. So there's going to be like an e-waste recycling company and there's going to be paper shredding and things like, and they're still pinning down some sponsors like Wegmans took a little while to respond to us and things like that.
[Zcwx-pW5U0k_SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I found the post on Facebook. I guess, shall we do stay secure on? as a flyer.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: Hi, Brenda Beck. Hey, Lizette. So guess what, guys? We have Esther for both events. We have what? We have Esther for both events. Oh, nice. So continue.
[Brenda Pike]: That's great.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: So that's both the salsa and the Medford Family Network storytelling. Storytelling. Oh, cool. That's great. The good thing is though, what I like, like, unfortunately, like I was gonna get another lady and she's obviously, she does a lot of Latin dancing, but she's American, right? So I really wanted, you know, someone who was Latino, who, you know, has the culture in her, not saying that they're not, but you know, like, Esther, I got to like, meet her a little bit before and like, she has this very, like, cool way of like, showing the, like, Hispanic culture. So I was like, I have to have her, but I had the other lady as a backup. But I'm so happy.
[Brenda Pike]: That's great. Thank you. We were just talking about the Harvest Your Energy Festival. I know this year they're encouraging people to have interactive activities. Like Electrify Medford, we're going to have our dollhouse. Mothers Upfront is going to have an induction cooktop demonstration. The Energy Committee is going to have a hand crank that lights up a light bulb. I think your trivia wheel would be great for that event if you wanted to do it then.
[MCM00001596_SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah. And I could help you come up with some trivia questions if you want some help with that.
[MCM00001596_SPEAKER_01]: Oh, that would be great. Yeah. I'm definitely going to do climate-related questions.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah. I got to do better than my scavenger hunt, though, because I made my Eevee showcase scavenger hunt questions way too difficult. And only four people actually submitted to the raffle.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: That's true. My husband was like, we got to ask every single thing.
[Brenda Pike]: That was like, yeah. You didn't have to answer every question, just half of them, but you did have to talk to almost all the drivers to be able to answer them.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: But that's the thing, you interact with the people.
[MCM00001596_SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, I like... Yeah, the questions I had prepared during the national night out, apparently they were too hard, but I thought, I didn't think that they were that difficult. So I was giving the kids pretty softball questions. Like, what do you do on a hot day or something?
[Brenda Pike]: Do you want to send me the questions that you have so I can give feedback on them?
[MCM00001596_SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I will share the document with you after the meeting.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, that sounds great.
[MCM00001596_SPEAKER_01]: Actually, let me do it right now. Hold on.
[Brenda Pike]: So some of the other things that are going on at the Harvester Energy Festival, we are going to have another EV showcase there. It's not going to be all Medford people. Green Energy Consumers Alliance is looking for volunteers from their membership. But we should have probably 10 cars at the festival. So that will be cool. We're going to be doing a tour of the wind turbine again, where we open it up so people can see inside it. Um, and we won't be doing a raffle this year because that didn't seem to work so well last year. People were not necessarily going table to table to, to do it. They were just kind of hanging around the raffle booth waiting for their raffle.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: You should do like a, um, like a raffle. But like, you know how you put like it in and you grab like the person, like they sign up to be on like the, I don't know, like a, like the newsletter or something like that.
[Brenda Pike]: You know what I mean?
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: That way, like they're enticed to like get the information slash get the giveaway.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah. I think we're too late at this point to do it for this year, but that's a good idea for next year. Yeah. Um, I think that's it for events that I'm doing in the near future. There's also a run run Medford event, September 27th and 28th, but we're not, I'm not going to be there or electrify Medford's not going to be there. And then there's Oktoberfest on October 5th. And we're not going to be there either, mostly because I'm gone and it's hard to get to organize it with other people when I'm not around. Let's see, moving on to curbside composting. One thing I wanted to talk with you about, we might be doing a pilot where Garbage to Garden drops off bins at people's houses with a note saying, you can start using this or if you leave it untouched, then we'll just pick it up again as a way of making it easier for people so they don't have to sign up and then get the bin delivered. They just get a bin delivered and then they can sign up if they want to. Is that something you think that would work, or do you think that would irritate people to get a random bin delivered to their house?
[Zcwx-pW5U0k_SPEAKER_00]: I think you're going to get a lot of complaint calls, especially the elderly people saying, I didn't ask for that. I'm not paying for that. I can't walk. And it's free, but yeah, we'll probably still get those. Well, maybe, maybe could be like we have available, you know, at this neighborhood, you know, this day if you wanna, you know. let us know we drop off or something. But I think I would be very mad if I found something from my house. And I don't know what to do with that. You know, like, what's going on? And then I'll, it's not that I'll be mad, but like, oh, like, what's going on? So now I need to try to figure out what this is. Let me call and see what I need to do. Because no matter what people don't read. I was gonna say, even if there's a note there. Yeah. people don't read, you know, like, and I think if the city hall gonna be going crazy with all the calls and stuff. And they always have those people that is very negative and they hate, you know, towards the city hall. And, you know, can we set up an opportunity like that, you know, to get people in.
[Brenda Pike]: Do you think it would work if we I don't know, did like one of the robocall things to give people a heads up ahead of time. And then we did the drop off of the bins.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: I would say 50-50 in all honesty, because a lot of people don't like the robocall. So that's yeah. Half and half. Yeah.
[Zcwx-pW5U0k_SPEAKER_00]: What about like it's just like we're gonna start going to the market, you know, it's mystic markets that the name is that Yeah, the food the food yeah, yeah, you know like places like that and you know have at least couple video available and say hey don't sign up this is how it is and show people how it is and we can drop off at your house and this how work and you know, and getting people like little by little where they are coming for service, because maybe they don't even know how things work.
[Brenda Pike]: That's interesting. So I know the Garbage to Garden has been tabling at different things like the farmers market and things like that. I don't know if they've been at the Mystic Market before. Is there a better day or time that more people might be coming there? I have no idea.
[Zcwx-pW5U0k_SPEAKER_00]: We're going to start going over there the second week. of October. So maybe you can give a feedback about that. You know, hey this day is super busy and I just think you're gonna target different people over there. What I see at the farmers market when they go there is there's always the same people that come over there. So people probably already saw or have seen don't even stop at the table anymore you know just
[Brenda Pike]: I think that's why they were trying to look at different ways of reaching people. That's why they were thinking about the drop-off thing. But Mystic Market is a great idea.
[MCM00001596_SPEAKER_01]: Is there a way to send it as a text message?
[Brenda Pike]: Well, I think that's what the robocalls are. You can sign up either as a phone call or a text message. Okay.
[Zcwx-pW5U0k_SPEAKER_00]: We just started working with the PTOs from schools too. So, you know, they have events at schools, you know, maybe it would be a good idea too to present that to the parents or, I don't know. I think you need to find a way to bring the stuff to people so they can see it because people really don't come to us and try to get information as much.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah. Any other suggestions for locations or events like that that you think would be useful for Garbage to Garden to be at? I would love to hear more. We've signed the contract with the designer. They're working on the existing conditions assessment, and they're doing some more immediate designs for the Brooks water heater, because they don't have any hot water right now at the Brooks school. So, we're working on that as well. and many split heat pump replacements for the IT closets in most of the schools. I think about half of them have failed at this point. And so some of the equipment is overheating because of that, like the computer, like network equipment is overheating and that's really bad for it. So we need to get those replaced quickly or we'll be losing equipment.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's see what else.
[Brenda Pike]: The EV charging revolving fund that we talked about last time, the city council passed it for its first reading. And then the second, so it's three readings. The first reading of the city council, the second reading is when it gets posted in the newspaper. And then the third reading, it goes back to city council again and they do the final vote on it. Let's see what else. The Great American Beer Hall. I don't know if you guys have heard about that, that opened recently. I was really excited because they applied for interconnection for a solar panel installation on the roof of that. 247 kilowatts. So it's not, it hasn't been installed yet on it, but they applied to National Grid to be able to install that on there. Yes, at first they had said, no, they didn't think the building would be able to hold the weight of it. And we said, well, at least do a study to see if that's true and how much it would cost. And they did the study and they found out, oh, actually it can, and it's going to save you a lot of money. So they're moving forward with it, which is great.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: Where is it located?
[Brenda Pike]: On Mystic? Let me see here. Let me drop it into the chat. It's quite a large space.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: I saw the pictures of the ones that mayor put on the Facebook page. That looks gorgeous. Yeah, yep. Yep.
[Brenda Pike]: Oh, I know where it is. So, the energy committee met earlier this month and a couple of things from that a resident came and got added to the agenda to speak to them about how she'd like to start a zero waste Medford volunteer group. So, if that's something that you or anyone else, you know, might be interested, I can, I can put you in touch with her. And it's interesting because I think groups like that can sometimes be more flexible than official city boards. For instance, like Trees Medford is an official city organization. They're a resident volunteer group. And then at the next Energy Committee meeting on October 7th, they're going to have a presentation about PFAS. which is a chemical in some plastics that has some really negative impacts on people's health. So it's a public meeting, you're welcome to listen in on that if you're interested, it's a Zoom meeting. Let's see what else, Electrify Medford, we've had 65 residents sign up so far, 19 of them have had a coaching session. And it's been sort of split between people who are really focused on saving money and people who want to reduce their carbon footprint. So for the first group, we really talked to them more about reducing their energy rates and getting a mass safe home energy assessment, usually with ABCD because they're income eligible. And for the second group, we talked with them more about heat pumps, solar panels, electric vehicles, those sorts of things. And most of the coaches have taken on their first coaching session and some have moved on to their second. So I'm really excited of getting them ramped up so that we can get more of these coaching sessions done. I think I did five myself last week. And just a couple more updates here. So we're submitting our annual greenhouse gas report this week. And I don't have a good summary of it for you right now, because I'm still working on it, but I can summarize it for you at our next meeting. And sort of do a good comparison between previous years and this year. And I'll also be doing our green communities annual report so that's a state level report that we do that makes us eligible for grant funding. And I'm also going to be finishing up a building inventory for our green communities decarbonization roadmap. So that's one step to becoming what they call a green communities climate leader, and that makes us eligible for even more funding from green communities. So I just got... We're doing an assessment of every single system in our buildings for this decarbonization roadmap. So it's taking forever to collect all of that information from them.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: But that's good.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, I mean, that'll be really useful moving forward, definitely. And then that way we can plan it out. So instead of being surprised by something, failing like the Brooks water heater, we can say, oh, okay, that water heater we know is 10 is, you know, more than 10 years old, we should make a plan for what we're going to do and put some and plan some capital dollars to fund replacing it. And then we're also working on what's called a SEMP, a strategic energy management plan with National Grid, which is similar to the building inventory. It's like, what are the projects that we're going to be doing in our buildings over the next three years that will save energy and that National Grid can give us rebates for? And if we do this bigger plan with them, instead of doing them as just one-off projects, then we can get extra incentives from National Grid. So anything that can give us more money for these projects is good. Yeah. And I think that's it for my updates. Did you guys have questions on any of those or comments?
[Zcwx-pW5U0k_SPEAKER_00]: I do have a question. I was talking to someone recently and talking about money that comes to the city and everything with that kind of project. Is there anything that is dedicated to give a job opportunity for people to work on those projects?
[Brenda Pike]: Interesting. So you mean for the projects that the city is doing, having a requirement that there's certain amount of local
[Zcwx-pW5U0k_SPEAKER_00]: residents that can do a stipend or any kind of a part-time job or full-time job during that project, you know, that you get the grant for.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, there's not right now, but I think a large project like the high school replacement, I think that's the sort of project where you can write in those sorts of like local worker requirements into it. So that's definitely something that we should keep top of mind and remember to try to include in the high school project.
[Zcwx-pW5U0k_SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, because it's kind of like helping both sides, you know, we have a lot of people looking for jobs and opportunities. And maybe they are not even they don't even know what what is about and they can learn new things too. And maybe it's an area that they want to continue working on with that. But also for the companies that provide services in New York City, you know, that can be hired for that, you know.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah. They're also There are training programs that exist right now that people can get into. And then the training programs have connections to different companies so that people are more likely to get a job with one of these companies that have partnered with the training program. I know of a few of them. It might be useful if I have a list of them that we can have posted online and we can talk to people about. So if people are interested in getting involved with them, then... Yeah, but it would be nice if we have a program.
[Zcwx-pW5U0k_SPEAKER_00]: just an example, you know, when they're building the casino, you know, near my house, you know, they're talking about all the opportunity jobs that will bring so have all those training, because people already knew the jobs were coming, you know, so we can offer people training and everything, but like you What are we going to say? Oh, because they're coming. New positions are coming. Mad for it for those positions, you know, or, you know, like, so be good to kind of have that balance, that answer. Yeah, you know, like we have.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, I think partnering with these training programs is a great way to do it though, because then you can point to, you're not just saying to a company, oh, you have to hire this many local people. You can say, you have to hire this many local people and here's a training program that you can pull people from so that you're not just saying, figure out how to do it. You're actually making it easier for the companies to hire them too. Yeah. Anything else? Okay, I think the next thing on the agenda is the second part of that Electrify Medford abbreviated training. So I can share my screen so we can get started with that. Can everybody see that? Cool. Let me just move my Zoom screen around so I can actually see it too. So last time we talked about energy efficiency in your home and air source heat pumps, and this time we'll talk about heat pump water heaters, solar water heaters, induction cooktops, solar panels, and electric vehicles. So we've got a lot to talk about. So heat pump water heaters. So these are basically like regular storage tank water heaters, but with a heat pump on top of it. And because as we learned last time, heat pumps can be three times more efficient than other equipment or more actually, these can save a lot of energy. So here's a comparison between an electric resistance water heater on the left and a heat pump water heater on the right. So you can see that difference there. And the dollar values here, because this is a nationwide, the energy guide is a nationwide thing. This is based on the national average, which is $0.12 per kilowatt hour. And here we're paying $0.31 per kilowatt hour. So our savings would be almost three times the savings that you see here. And domestic hot water heater, hot water is about a quarter of a home's energy use. So here in the Northeast, at least. So it really adds up. And another interesting way of looking at it is with the electricity that you save switching from a standard electric water heater to a heat pump water heater in one year, you could drive my electric car all around the country. So it's not as big of a change as switching over your heating system. It doesn't save as much as that, but it's still a big deal. So heat pump water heaters are taller than regular storage tanks because they have the heat pump on top and they're pulling heat from the air around them so they need some room around them, they can't be in a closet. And they can cool off that room up to five degrees. And because water condenses out of the air during this process, they dehumidify the space around them too. So they make a lot of sense for basements. In places where people have their water heaters in a closet or something, they don't make as much sense. They also need a drain for the condensed water and they need to plug into a 240 volt outlet, like an electric dryer or stove outlet. There are heat pump water heaters that plug into a regular 120 volt outlet, but they don't work very well in cold areas like ours yet. Hopefully that's something that will come in the future. So solar hot water or solar thermal, you might hear it called that. It's not as common as solar photovoltaics or PV, but it's actually more efficient than that. It's 80% efficient compared to 15% efficient for solar PV. And the way it works is it has piping that collects the heat from the sun that's behind that like dark panel that you see there. And then that piping runs through a storage water tank to transfer the heat. And then inside the piping is a type of antifreeze, propylene glycol. It's a non-toxic type of antifreeze. So it's not the kind that you have in your car. There's also an electric resistance coil. Natasha, it looks like it's jumping back in. Okay. There's also an electric resistance coil inside the water heater up even higher. So this whole system, it saves about 70% of the energy that you would use heating your water, and it lasts a long time. If the storage tank dies, you can just replace that part of the system instead of the whole thing. So it's an upfront investment, but it's a really good one. So you may have heard my spiel about induction cooktops before. Cooking is probably one of the most sensitive topics for electrification because so many people love their gas stoves, to the point where we have that phrase, now we're cooking with gas, right? To mean that something's good. The reason we have that phrase, the gas companies actually knew as early as the 1960s that it was bad for people with asthma. And they hired the same PR firm that the tobacco industry used to convince people that it was good for them. And it didn't really help that electric stoves weren't great in the past. They had uneven heat and they cost a lot of money to operate. But now with induction stoves, They're not just better for indoor air quality, but they're more efficient. People like how well they work, partially because you have more control over the temperature. and they're also easy to clean. But you do need metal cookware that a magnet could stick to, because the way that they work is there are coils inside that create an electromagnetic field and that agitates the molecules in your pot. So it just heats up the pot and not the air around it. So you're not going to burn yourself or anything else by touching the stove while it's on. You can even cook through a towel. I really love that you can get a portable one to test out before replacing your whole stove. And the library has two portable induction cooktops that people can borrow. Oh, and a fun fact. The mayor actually told me recently that she just bought a portable one to try out. And she was excited about it because she was like, oh, my kids can use this. That's so cool. Yeah. So, after reducing your energy use as much as possible and switching away from fossil fuels, the next step is to get your electricity from renewable sources. And for most people, that's going to be solar. Most people connect their solar panels to the electric grid so that when they're generating a lot of electricity, they can, but not using a lot, they can feed it back into the grid. And then when they're using a lot of electricity but not generating a lot, they can get it from the grid. And that's called net metering. And you see it on your bill as a credit that reduces what you have to pay. So say you use a lot of electricity in the winter because you have heat pumps and you have a heat pump water heater. You can use the net metering credits that you saved up all summer when you're not using as much electricity to pay for it. So that's sort of what it might look like. So owning your own solar panels on your own property will give you the most cost savings. But there are options if you can't do that, like leasing power purchase agreements, community shared solar, or Medford's community electricity aggregation, 100% green option. If you install it on your roof, you should make sure that your roof is new enough that you won't have to remove the solar panels at some point over the next 20 years to repair your roof. And generally, if you lease, the way it works is you'll pay a set fee for the panels each month, and then you get the electricity from them. And if you have a power purchase agreement, the way it usually works is you agree to pay the installer a set cost per kilowatt hour for the electricity that you get from it. So it's a little bit different between those two things. And those last two options can be tricky because you are making a decades-long agreement to pay this company. So, if you sell your house, you either need to pay them off or you need to get the next owner to take over your contract. So, it's important that people understand it before they sign any agreements for that. For community shared solar, you're not installing anything on your own roof. You're just buying into a solar farm somewhere else, either through a lease or a PPA type arrangement. And like any competitive supplier, people need to really be careful about reading the small print. make sure you know exactly what price are you going to be paying? Is there an introductory cost that increases after six months? Is there a fee to break your contract before the end of your contract? So same thing that we always tell people when we're talking about Medford's Community Electricity Aggregation and other competitive suppliers out there, we're like, just make sure you understand exactly what you're going to be paying for. This image here is actually from the roof of the library. This is one of the little waves that are up there, and each one of them has these solar panels on it. We also have solar panels on the police station and the Department of Public Works, and we're looking to add some to the Andrews School this fall. Wow. You're going to take over all Medford, Brenda, with that. Hey, I hope we get solar panels on all of the city buildings, definitely. Amazing. So let's see. Battery storage, this is especially interesting for people if they have solar. But an important thing to keep in mind is it's probably not going to power your entire home in the event of a power outage. I mean, if you strung enough batteries together to do that, it would cost a lot of money and so probably wouldn't make economic sense in our area where we don't lose power that often. But if you wanted to have a battery for backup, you could choose what you put on that battery, right? So do you want it to be your refrigerator and some outlets so you don't lose your food and you can keep medical equipment running during an outage? Do you want it to be powering your heat pump so that you have heat during the winter? For some of my family in Maine, for instance, they lose power more often in the winter than we do here. So they really feel like they need some sort of backup. And instead of choosing a battery or multiple batteries, they chose to get a backup propane generator that could power their house. And honestly, it's not used often enough that it's really terrible for the environment. So, you know, my sister, her house is heated by heat pumps. So she's mostly using, you know, more renewable sources. But then occasionally when the power goes out, she uses the propane generator. And that seems like a fair trade off. Okay, moving on to transportation. So obviously walking or biking is best for the environment. And then after that, riding the subway or the bus. But if you do drive a car, electric vehicles and hybrids are a better option than gasoline powered ones. I like, excuse me. I like this slide because it shows the spectrum of how much gas versus electricity different types of cars use from a from conventional gas to fully battery powered and because we use the word hybrid for both the. Like a traditional hybrid and a plug-in hybrid, it can confuse people. But like a more conventional hybrid, like a Prius, mostly runs on gas, but has the battery to assist for like short distances and things like that. And then the plug-in hybrid is mostly using the battery, but you use the gas more on long distance trips. And electric vehicles might cost more upfront, although there are rebates and tax credits that can help with that, but the operating costs and the maintenance costs are lower. for electric vehicles than for gasoline cars. And that's true for a lot of things that we've talked about here. There's more upfront cost, but the operating costs are less. And then there are rebates and tax credits to help with the upfront cost. The plug-in hybrid is interesting because you get Because you still have a gas engine, you get all of the maintenance of a gas engine plus the electric stuff too. So that's kind of a, it's not necessarily a cheaper option than a fully electric car. People get concerned about charging an electric vehicle, but most people could plug into a regular outlet at home each night and be fine. Honestly, I don't even have a driveway. I just use public charging stations. And there are more public chargers every day, including Medford owns 11 public chargers. They're level two charging stations. And you can see all the chargers in our area that are publicly available by going to a map like this one I got from PlugShare.com. And the ones that are on here, these are just stations that my car can use. It doesn't even include things like Tesla superchargers that my car can't use.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_06]: So, Brenda, what's what's it like? Okay. With your car so so what do you have to plug it in every. 3 or 4 days and what do you just roll up on some do you mostly use the city. City's charger, or I mean, in. So if you use the city charger, you can do that while you're there at work. Yep. Yep. But what if you're not at work or something, you just roll up to a charger and what do you do? You just, do you make a, I mean, are you plugged in for an hour or, you know, are you near a mall or something and you go visit the mall for a little while and have a lot, I mean, how do you know what I mean? Yep, exactly. So most days in the life of a electric car owner life, charge and, you know.
[Brenda Pike]: And no driveway to charge at home. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, most of the time I either charge here at work just like once a week for like four hours, or I'll charge at a charger near my home. I have three of them in a, like a 15 minute walk from my house. So I can just drive up to them, plug in, and walk home, and then go pick it up later. So that's what I usually do if I'm around here. If I'm traveling up to Maine to visit my family, I'll just plan where I'm stopping for bathroom breaks and for lunch around where there are level 3 chargers so they can charge pretty fast. So I've kind of got my spots all mapped out. And every time they add a new one in, I'm like, ooh, exciting. I can go to a new restaurant now.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_06]: That's pretty cool. So you have some close by and walking distance. So you essentially could go plug your car in for the afternoon, go home, do a little house cleaning or reading or whatever it is you got planned to do at home for the day, and then go get it. Now, what about in the wintertime? Does it take longer to charge or is there any sort of difference?
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, I would say it probably, depending on the temperature, it could lose up to a third of its range. I've got on the 260, I think they say the average is 260 for my car, for the range, but depending on how I drive it, or in what the weather is like, I can get over 300 miles. But in the cold weather, it's down more in the 200 mile range.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_06]: Well, I'm sorry I'm sorry. I didn't mean to go ahead. Go ahead. 1 more 1 more question. I think I have about, like. So, if you just start a long drive somewhere. Well, maybe there are 2 questions here. I wonder about, you know, are these charging stations now kind of showing up at rest stops and a lot of rest stops and stuff like that when you're traveling, like, on the bike or something like that.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, yeah. So just just to finish the coal temperature thing. My car is it's not as good as some of the newer cars out there. Some of the newer ones have heat pump heaters. So they're much more efficient and they so they don't lose range as much as mine does. Yep, so I think we had last Saturday we had five cars here that had heat pump heaters, and so they didn't lose range like that. And then, yeah, oh, rest areas, yeah. So I think I'm not going to say all of the rest areas on the up 95 going up to Maine have them, but a lot of them do. And then I know there are rest areas on 90 going west that have them as well. So yeah, there are actually federal incentives for or actually each state had to make a plan for how they were going to build out their EV network. And one of the priorities was rest areas, getting level three chargers in rest areas.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_06]: That's pretty awesome. So they're sort of popping up, you know, they're popping up here and there. Yep.
[Brenda Pike]: And if you don't Go ahead. I was gonna say, and if you go on PlugShare and take a look, there are some of those dots on here that have like wrenches on them. And those are ones that don't exist yet, but they're coming soon. So they're planned new chargers. And so you'll see those popping up, like as the state plans have come out, people have entered those into PlugShare saying, okay, this is gonna be coming. It might be a year before it gets here, but there's one coming here.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_06]: Coming soon. Yeah, that's pretty awesome. Yeah, I just kind of wondered if the electric cars or anything like, um. Like, motorcycles where gas powered motorcycles, of course. Um, we, we, we, you have, like, a reserve. So, you know, if you. I guess, because on a bike, you can't see, you know, you don't have a gas gauge most bikes. So, do the electric cars sort of have something like that? Is there some sort of, like. you know, reserve, I don't know, battery or whatever, where, you know, it kind of starts, it sends you a warning. It's like, yo, you know, you're on, you're about to, you're about to hop on borrowed time here. So plan accordingly.
[Brenda Pike]: Yes, and I've actually done, gotten to that point before, because I was driving home by myself from Maine and it was nighttime and I didn't want to stop somewhere and charge. And so I was almost home and I was like, yeah, I can make it home. It'll be fine. And it like, when I got below like 20 miles left on the rain, my range, it was like, And I was like, Oh no, I don't know if I can make it. But I did. It was fine. I think they do plan in some like buffer into that range estimate that they give you, especially at that lower end.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Yep. Wow. It's too bad you couldn't have like a power pack you could carry in your purse or maybe pop in the trunk of the car. Those do exist.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah. But the thing is, in order for it to be big enough to hold enough charge to be useful for something like that, it would be pretty big and heavy, and it would actually reduce your efficiency of your car. So you would actually lose more mileage than you would gain from having it. Some people will have that, especially if they're going on long trips in rural areas or something, but I don't think that's useful for most people.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_06]: Yeah. They interest me. I just don't know if there's one in my future, but they are incredibly interesting to me. Yeah.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, and people are often worried about the cost of it, but compared to another new car, they're not necessarily more expensive. Mine cost about 25,000 after all of the rebates. And then when you start looking at the used vehicles out there. There was someone at the EV showcase last weekend who bought her car used for $14,000. There are definitely possibilities out there. Wow.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_06]: Wow, 14 grand, that doesn't, you know, it doesn't sound like a ton of money. I mean, in these days for a vehicle, an electric vehicle, that's pretty awesome.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah. And then the operating costs are cheaper, right? So, and it's, it's pegged to your electricity at home rather than the, you know, shifting gas prices. So.
[Unidentified]: Right.
[Brenda Pike]: Yep. Wow. So I mentioned that there are different levels of chargers. If you're charging with a regular 120 volt outlet, you can charge about 50 miles overnight. If you're charging with a level two charger, like we have here at City Hall, you can get about 300 miles overnight. And then with a level two, you can either, if you're at home, you can either plug it into like a 240 volt outlet, like a dryer outlet, or you can install a full charger at home. And National Grid has incentives to pay, I think 100% of the cost of installing a charger at your home. And if you're charging with a level three station, like you find at rest stops on the highway, you can get about 170 miles in 30 minutes. So different types of charging for different uses, right? Like you wouldn't want level three chargers everywhere because that's just a really high spike in electricity usage and that's not great for the grid necessarily if you can just charge slowly at home instead overnight.
[Zcwx-pW5U0k_SPEAKER_00]: And people can leave their car overnight on those chargers in the city? Yep.
[Brenda Pike]: Actually, the one here at City Hall, there's a hotel right on the corner here, and we often have people from the hotel plugging in at City Hall after hours and leaving it overnight.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_06]: Well, you have to pay, don't you? You have to pay. The longer it's on there, the more you pay?
[Brenda Pike]: Right now, you're just paying for the number of kilowatt hours that you're drawing from it. If you stop charging, then you're not paying for it anymore. After that, we are going to be moving. I mentioned last time we met we are going to be moving to a to a system where. if your car is sitting there for an hour after you've finished charging, then we'll start charging you to be parked there. Because you're really only supposed to be connected to the chargers while you're charging. I was just going to say, I think there's a way for us to make an exception for people who are charging overnight. Because we do want to encourage people to charge overnight because that's better for the electric grid because it helps to balance things out.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_06]: So, when you, when you charge, do you. Do you say how much how much time you how much time you want to charge for. So, when you go to plug in, do you say, okay, I'm, I'm charging for 2 hours. No, you just plug in and then you need to.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_06]: All right, 1 more. Okay. I think this I'm hoping that this maybe this is my last questions for for this, but so let me ask you this. So, if if I were planning to, if I was thinking about buying an electric vehicle. Is there a certain order to do things? Before I even consider an electric car and I'm thinking about having a plug at my home and stuff, do I need to find out what kind of plug I can install at the house or if it would be even configurable at my house kind of thing, then go look at a car? And does charging system, are there different charging systems for different cars or different makes of cars or that sort of thing?
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, that's some of the different plugs that you'll see here. So the J1772 here and the Tesla are both level two charging, but they're for different types of cars. And same with the DC fast charging ones here, they're all DC fast charging, but they're for different types of cars. So you'd want to choose 1st, what car you wanted and then see what plug it needs.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_06]: Okay, car 1st, then plug and so do you think that, um, you know, most plate, most homes and stuff are configurable for. Whatever sort of plug you might need. I mean, do you know of any roadblocks for that sort of thing?
[Brenda Pike]: I mean, the only roadblocks that I'm aware of would be, well, A, if you don't have a driveway like me, or if you're in an apartment building or something where you don't have permission to make that change to it. Yeah.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_06]: Yeah. Okay.
[Brenda Pike]: Then I know in addition to National Grid having incentives to install chargers at your home, I know some of the car manufacturers also offer that as a bonus thing to try to convince you to do it. They'll also either pay completely for or give you some money towards getting a charger installed. It will add on. Yeah. And then some of them I know, like Alicia in my office just bought an EV, and she got two years of free charging on Electrify America charging stations. Now that's not what we have here at City Hall, we have Chargepoint. but those Electrify America ones are more of the level three chargers that you'll find at rest stops and places like that. But it's a nice little bonus. Yeah, no doubt.
[Zcwx-pW5U0k_SPEAKER_00]: No doubt. Brenda, we had the parking department come to our office. Can you hear me? Yeah. Oh, I couldn't see you over here. It was weird. And she was talking about the increasing the number of the two-hour parking in the city. And now that they have this sensor that if the person stay more than two hours, you know, they get a ticket. Maybe something that you guys can use for those chargers, you know, those parking with the charger.
[Brenda Pike]: Interesting. Was that on city streets or were they in the parking lot?
[Zcwx-pW5U0k_SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. The city parking that they have and then they increased the two-hour parking and they eliminated the 15-minute one, something like that, she was explaining to us. Then she said, well, we're probably going to ask how we know if the person passed the time, like we have a sensor. you know, that automatic, you know, let us know if you pass that time, so the person is going to get a ticket, you know, because two hours is more than enough for them to take care of whatever they need to do, you know. Yep. So maybe something that you guys can check with them, what do they do, you know, how is that system?
[Brenda Pike]: That's a really good suggestion. Yeah, I was asking about whether it was street or parking lot, because right now the parking lots are four hours, I think. So I'm wondering if they're reducing the number of hours in the parking lots or if they're just like doing that for like the on street parking and like business areas or something.
[Zcwx-pW5U0k_SPEAKER_00]: My understanding was the main streets, those 15 minutes parking spots that they have in the street, and they increase for two hours. So people will have time to go to the business and stuff without getting ticket or not extending, staying longer than that, what is not fair for the other people that also can take advantage of that. That's great.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, we don't have any chargers on the actual streets right now. They're just in city parking lots. But I would love to have some on the streets, especially in neighborhoods where there's not a lot of parking, like there's not a lot of off-street parking. And there's like multifamily buildings without enough area in the driveway for everybody to park there. So more people are parking on the street. I think it would be really useful for people to be able to plug in and charge overnight where they're parked on the side of the road there. We're running into some issues with that, so that might not be the very next thing that we do, but I'm working on it.
[Zcwx-pW5U0k_SPEAKER_00]: Do you know if that is a limit of residence parking passes that a house can have? Like I see my neighbors, like they have like four or five cars, you know, like, because everybody rent a room, you know, so, so many people living over there. And, and I was just thinking like, you know, maybe have a limit by household, you know, like, well, your house is a two family home, you know, maybe each house can have two cars, you know, and have that many, you know what I'm saying? Like resident parking.
[Brenda Pike]: I don't know if there are any, any limits for that. I think there are limits on visitor parking passes that you can have about resident parking.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, well.
[Brenda Pike]: Um. I think that's all that I have for this information. Oh, the only other things that I wanted to mention, I didn't make slides for these, but just to mention in passing, for other appliances, the major thing you should do is just look for the Energy Star label, because the federal government is already labeling things that are more energy efficient than others. And then for lighting, look for LEDs instead of other things. Most lighting right now is efficient LEDs, but there are still halogens on store shelves that are less efficient. So it still matters that you're looking out for the LEDs. Yeah, but that's... Yeah, any any other questions about any other part of it? We had a lot of conversation about the electric vehicle part.
[SPEAKER_01]: Cool, I think that's it for that part of it then.
[Brenda Pike]: Um. What do we want to talk about at the next meeting? Let me stop sharing my screen here. So we had a few things that we've mentioned in previous meetings. We had said there were, we maybe wanted to have the tree warden come to a future meeting to talk about trees in the city. We said maybe ask to have someone from the transportation department come by. I think a useful thing for that would be to have some specific topics that we wanted to talk to them about so that we could tell them ahead of time what we're looking to learn and then they could talk about that and then anything else they thought would be useful for us. So was there anything in particular about either one of those that you really wanted to dig into?
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: But do you have the list to the to share just so.
[Brenda Pike]: We can, I can refresh my memory. Yeah, I mean, I'm dropping it in the chat, but the only things that I had written down were. Those 2 things, and then just the, the green jobs in general talking about, like. Things like we were saying about training programs and how to connect people to jobs, especially city projects.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: Looks like Lizette has a topic because I'm very disappointed now that you pointed out about the tree warden. Any tree that's in that's in Medford has to be. Like, reported to take out right? Like, they have to go to the city and ask whoever like.
[Brenda Pike]: Not yet. So there is a series of three tree ordinances that are being considered by the city council. And the update I got on that was they made some revisions to them and they resubmitted them to the city council. And they're talking with city staff and the city council is considering them. So those haven't been passed yet. Hopefully by our next meeting, we'll have some update on where those are.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: I'm just saying because the, I don't know if you guys know where the Franklin School is, but they took out a gorgeous, beautiful tree that has been there for years since I went there in kindergarten. So imagine I'm 31 now, so imagine how far. And I'm very annoyed because like, you know, we kind of planted our like stuff for like the future. So like after 50 years, we opened it. Oh, your time capsule. Capsule other like beside that I'm really mad about the tree Just saying yeah, do you know if there was a reason for it like was it?
[Brenda Pike]: Like honestly it did not even construction or something.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: Oh It's like the the Franklin school already was like like on the outside obviously It's like a more than a hundred year old building at this point, but like they remodeled the whole entire thing inside There was no construction to do whatsoever. They literally just like chopped that tree into pieces and it was gorgeous. Didn't block anything. Like I don't, I'd be so pissed if the people from the apartment said something because I swear that tree was absolutely gorgeous there.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_06]: And it's a sick tree that... The school was turned into condos or something? Yeah. It's not, you said it didn't block a view or anything like that? No, it didn't at all.
[Zcwx-pW5U0k_SPEAKER_00]: Like I'm telling you, I don't know if, let me, where's my. Well, but that's why the residents need to stop participating in the city council meetings. The thing was gonna get chopped up, that's the problem, okay?
[Brenda Pike]: I mean, that's the reason for the tree ordinance, right? Is so that there will be notice about things like that beforehand and, you know, if there's not a good reason for it, then they wouldn't be able to do it.
[Zcwx-pW5U0k_SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but you need permission for that, right? You need to pass through the city and everything, correct?
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, so the city council needs to take it up and approve the ordinance before it.
[Zcwx-pW5U0k_SPEAKER_00]: We always pay attention to the agenda to make sure we know what it is so we can participate and have our voice heard. Because I'm sure if people knew or aware of that, everybody would be attending the meeting and complain about it. That's just so sad.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: Look at how gorgeous the tree is. In the wintertime, obviously, you didn't even see nothing because it wasn't, but I just.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_06]: Is this tree ordinance, is it for trees on public property or is the ordinance also for trees on private property?
[Brenda Pike]: It's for both. So that's why there are three ordinances. One is for public trees. One is for private trees on private property. And then one is to create a tree committee in order to help to manage the extra work that will be coming in for people getting permits to cut down trees.
[MCM00001596_SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. Yeah.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: All I know is Brenda, every time I drive Gabe now, like, you know, to the Andrews and I see like that, they literally like shaved it up and had a pile of the shavings for like a week. And then now it's like that, like, kind of like soil, like brown soil put there or something. Yeah. I want to cry. I'm serious, like, really bothered me so much.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_06]: I know it's a true childhood that was just ripped down and was uprooted.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I was not ready for that. I like, like, at least like, you know, I knew that the buildings there and nothing around it changed. But like that for me was like, sad.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, so I will get a copy of the revised ordinances so that I can share it with you guys and then maybe we can talk more about it in our next meeting. Yes.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: Right. You do realize that the trees are like the best thing that we could have for our, you know, planet gives us oxygen.
[Brenda Pike]: So for so many reasons, pulling carbon emissions out of the air, giving a shade and cooling us down. Yeah.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: That was the best tree to like sit there and chill. Let me tell you. Like it was so beautiful. I just don't get it. I'm sorry. OK. Thanks. Yep. Roll it.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_06]: Take a hole and plant another.
[Brenda Pike]: It takes so many years for it to get to that height.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_06]: No doubt. No doubt. Well, you know.
[Brenda Pike]: Part of the ordinance is if you are cutting down a larger tree, you will need to replant multiple smaller trees in order to make up for it. That's good. Then think twice about taking out the tree. Okay, so we can talk about this in more detail at our next meeting, and I'll see if Aggie, the tree warden, can come to it too.
[Zcwx-pW5U0k_SPEAKER_00]: Great, yeah. It's a great idea. I agree. And can we just maybe have the link for the resources too? And maybe can If we have the time to talk about that too, the flyers. For what resources? Yeah, the document, the folder without the flyers with the resources. Yes. Yep.
[Brenda Pike]: Definitely all the flyers. Yep.
[Unidentified]: Awesome.
[Brenda Pike]: Okay. Does anybody have anything else we should talk about tonight?
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: No, but I, when I met Brenda, when I was like the chat thing was like, you know, the, the, the, the thing you had that gave us all of the topics that we wanted to talk about. I meant the link of that. Oh yeah. Lost for me in the email. And I need to like pin that thing there at this point.
[Brenda Pike]: The list of priorities. Yep. Okay, I can resend that. Okay, so I'm going to pin it.
[Zcwx-pW5U0k_SPEAKER_00]: Thank you. Or maybe just put it together with maybe a different folder and everything just in one place, every time you need it, everything's there.
[Brenda Pike]: That's fair. Maybe we should just have a shared folder for everything that we do, including all of the meeting minutes and agendas and things like that. Yeah. I mean, most of those are available. Those are all available online as well, but we could just have a shared folder that we can have for our own information as well.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: And then I pin it. Let me tell you the amount of emails that we get and then I'm trying to find something and I'm like.
[Zcwx-pW5U0k_SPEAKER_00]: I want to cry. It's a lot.
[Brenda Pike]: So if there's nothing else we should, I think we need a motion to adjourn.
[MCM00001615_SPEAKER_02]: Nothing else guys. Nope. Natasha, you're okay? You can't talk? Samia? Nada? Nada. Okay, so motion to adjourn the meeting. Second.
[Brenda Pike]: All in favor? Aye. Aye. That's up from Natasha. All right. Thanks, everyone.