Energy and Environment 03/02/26

AI-generated summary. Written by gemini-3.6-flash from the transcript below, which is the record. It may be incomplete or wrong; it does not report votes. Every item links to the moment it began.

The CC Energy & Environment Committee met to receive municipal sustainability updates, discuss proposed waste collection changes, and assign tracking tasks for the city's Climate Action Plan. The committee voted to endorse a letter addressing black plastic takeout containers and agreed to draft advocacy regarding proposed state Mass Save cuts.

1:23 Approval of Minutes and Administrative Items — The committee approved the previous meeting minutes and discussed establishing a direct committee email list for future communications.
5:18 City Updates and Mass Save Legislation — Staff presented updates on grants, smart meter installations, and upcoming events, and the committee agreed to draft a letter to state senators opposing proposed Mass Save budget cuts.
32:39 Black Plastic Reduction Memo — The committee voted to approve an outreach memo advising food establishments against using black plastic containers, pending added references and city official review.
58:48 Pay-As-You-Throw Waste Management Discussion — Members discussed proposed pay-as-you-throw trash collection models, addressing rodent management, overflow bin options, pet waste, and seasonal pickup schedules.
1:33:00 Climate Action Plan Monitoring — The committee reviewed the Climate Action Plan tracking sheet, with individual members volunteering to collect updates on specific energy, building, and stormwater strategies.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Let's get started the way we always do. A quick rundown for attendance. Move on to minutes. We got a lot to talk about, and as always, never enough time. So let's do attendance first. If you're here, just say hi. Go down the list, Josh. Hi. Lois. Hi. Benji. Let's see. I think I see his name in the list, but I'll let him pitch in in a minute when he's ready. Barry.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Hi. Kathleen, I'm not seeing yet. Same with Luke. Nor Pravitha, but we got Dan.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Bob. Yes. Jessica, not seen in our list yet. John, nope. Will is here. And Paul, not seen yet either. That brings us to 4-8 total, which is Quorum. Just barely, but hopefully we get some stragglers as we go. I know the minutes went out a little later than we'd like, but did everyone get a chance to look them over? Fantastic. Would anyone like to move to accept them?

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Dan? Yes. Bob? Yes. Will is a yes, which brings us to seven. I do want to check in one more time with Benji. Are you here? With seven, Brenda, I'm going to check, or Bob, I'm going to check in with my quorum experts Seven yeses is enough. Okay, I'm getting a nod. Plurality for sure. Plurality, good enough. I'll take it. Fantastic. Okay. Now we can get started with some administrative things. Next meeting will be April 6th. Let's see, I need a reason that can't work.

And one small thing. I would love it if everyone could either email myself or Brenda in the next month so we can compile a new email list that I can hopefully use. The MAUC list has not been working for me, and it seems like a lot of times when I send something it gets routed. out into the ether and a lot of people don't get what they need. So if you have a preferred email, send it to myself or to Brenda so we can just make one final list that I can hopefully use from now on and won't gum up the works.

[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, I mean, I think we have everybody's email. So but if it's different, if you want to moving forward for it to be a different email than what the meek email list goes to let us know.

[Josh Ekhart-Lee]: I think my issue, at least is not that you have the incorrect email. but that emails sent to that Meek group get flagged as junk or have issues in being sent out. So I wonder if we can shift to just a BCC model. That was my thinking.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: I don't know if I can read the MEUC group individually. So I was hoping to just collect one wave of emails from everybody so we have the right ones or the most up-to-date, and then I'd make that new group that we could use. now and forever.

[Brenda Pike]: Yeah. So that the chairs can email the whole group rather than having to go through me for everything.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Yeah. It puts a lot of, a lot of burden on Brenda and it's frustrating for me because I'd like to be able to talk to everyone. Uh, but we will get that sorted for April and hopefully without too many troubleshoots required. But with that, I'm going to throw to Brenda for city updates.

[Brenda Pike]: Great. So first off some good news. We are receiving a $250,000 federal earmark for the Medford Housing Authority's Willis Ave Rec Center. They are going to be replacing their current one. And so we applied with them to this to incorporate some resiliency measures into it, including solar panels and battery backup so it can be used as sort of a resilience hub during any emergencies. So that is going to be a multi-year process. They're working on the design of that right now, but looking forward to that happening.

I will be speaking to the Clean Energy Caucus at the Statehouse on Thursday with the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center. So we're going to be focusing on projects in Medford that we got MassCEC grants for. like the on-street charging stations, the Electrify Medford program, and the school bus electrification plan. But I'll also want to talk with some of them about the proposed cuts to Mass Save in the house energy bill, but I suspect with this group that I'll be preaching to the choir.

[Josh Ekhart-Lee]: Brenda, are you looking for some sort of like formal comment from us on that?

[Josh Ekhart-Lee]: Yeah, that's a good way, because it's just that would crush it.

[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, I mean, if that's something that this group wants to do, the House did pass the bill with a billion dollar reduction to the program over the next year and a half. So if that's something that the group wants to do to address to the senators, the state senators, that would be really useful. Brenda, could you repeat that? Sorry, so the House version of the energy bill has cuts to the Mass Save program in it that would cut the budget by It's something like 40%, more than 40% over the next year and a half.

And there's some wording in there saying like, oh, focusing on marketing and administrative costs, but the marketing and administrative costs are less than 10% of the budget. So it's gonna be cutting into actual rebates that the program has.

[Lauretta James]: That's what I was, okay. And that's what they did pass. They did pass it? The House passed it.

[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: Thank you for clarifying. I was curious. I would just add also that this comes a year and some months into the current three-year plan, for which started off with $5 billion for Mass Save, and then $500 million was cut from that. Um, and so those four and a half billion for mass save for three years, and now we are a year and plus, and by the time this actually is implemented, it will be the final year. So they're basically going to just chop what's left of mass save at the end of this three year plan. Uh, so like think of it basically ending in at the end of 2026.

[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: Wow. Because there will be basically a billion dollars left in the budget at that point. I see.

[Lois Grossman]: There was a lot of heavy lobbying to the House on this. I know I wrote to Sean Garbally, and he wrote back to me. I mean, he and Pat Jalen are always environmentally aware. If anything we write needs to go to the rest of the Senate. because the Senate can still do something about this, and we should be writing to the entire Senate. It should go to every single senator.

[Brenda Pike]: So I would point out that there was an amendment that was proposed to remove this cut from the bill, and Garbalee and Donato both voted against that amendment. So yeah, they definitely did support these cuts.

[Brenda Pike]: I haven't heard of any date for this Senate hearing for it yet. This just happened last Thursday, I think Thursday. Okay. Yeah.

[Lauretta James]: Oh, okay. And when they vote on it, do they still have the six month, usually there's a six month delay before it's enacted? or would it be immediate, if you know?

[Brenda Pike]: I don't know. A lot of times the way that our state politics works is that they'll wait right up until the last minute to pass the laws for that fiscal year. So it might be a hurry up and wait sort of situation.

[Barry Ingber]: I see, I don't think there's any delay because it's a budget item. I have a. Uh, did not wrote to me when I expressed my disappointment and he asked me to. give him a call so that he could explain his vote. So I'm interested in seeing what his explanation is. But I'm wondering if we have any sense of what the prospect for fixing this is in the Senate.

[Brenda Pike]: I haven't seen a revised, any sort of revised bill from the Senate yet for this.

[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: I do have to just say, having read through the bill, there is a ton of good stuff in there. And so the pressure to pass is, I think, largely based on all of the good things that are in the bill and a general feeling of that. energy prices are too high. And here is something that a budget oriented office can do. And so unfortunately, it seems like this is, you know, this is something that they can do. And it can be marketed as being helping energy costs.

And there is a lot else in the bill that is positive. And there's no doubt that mass save could be improved always, but it definitely is. This is improving it with a hatchet. So yeah, or a chainsaw, but yeah. I think that the Senate has the opportunity, certainly, to push back on this. And my understanding is that there are plenty of senators who are not interested in moving this part forward, at least.

[Lauretta James]: Thanks for the information, Luke and Brenda. I thought it'd be good to share that with everybody so we know what's going on. I don't, is Mass Saves only supported from Massachusetts or is it funded also by the government?

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Would it make sense to designate a member of our committee to write up a small letter? It seems like many of us are already working one-on-one as individuals, but it could be worth working as a committee to at least call out some of the more egregious parts of this bill and use our platform productively. If someone would be interested in starting that process or if there's no interest, that's fine as well.

[Barry Ingber]: I have a question. I wonder if Luke or somebody could answer or Brenda. Since MassSave is funded entirely with Okay, so I guess it's the legislature that gives the utilities the authority to bill us to support MassSave, is that? I don't understand, since it's not a state budget item, how they cut it, but I guess they cut it indirectly by taking away the utilities authority to bill us for it.

[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, I mean, there's a state law that authorized the creation of Mass Save. So it is, you know, sort of overseen by this state legal process. Yeah. If you're interested in sending a letter, but nobody wants to volunteer to draft it, I could draft one and send it around. If you'd rather just do individual personal advocacy, you could do that too.

[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_06]: I think it would be great if you did a draft and sent it around. Thank you.

[Josh Ekhart-Lee]: It's always tough to volunteer when you've got heavy hitters like Barry and Luke on the committee who've already read through it and know this stuff.

[L5Dn-1_BzKM_SPEAKER_12]: I have to say, I work for Mass Save, so I have a conflict of interest here.

[Brenda Pike]: Okay, I can draft a letter and send it around to everyone. Okay, moving on. We held the Green Communities Northeast Gathering at the Medford Public Library a couple weeks ago. Green Communities is a state division that offers regular grants to municipalities for energy efficiency projects, and they're a really great partner. At the last meeting, we briefly talked about pollinator gardens, and I sent the link for the Adopt-A-Site form online. Is the committee interested in doing that?

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: So I actually, I was just about to sign up for a site. There's one pretty close to my home. But I saw, and I want to quickly double check, I would be responsible for paying for everything that goes into that garden as well. There's no city assistance, like supplying plants or seeds or anything?

[Brenda Pike]: There is potentially some funding that could be used for materials for this, especially if it's like a city committee that's doing it. So if you're interested in that, I can reach out to Lisa Coliani and copy you and get that conversation started.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Because I got plenty of time, I just don't have a ton of money. So I was very like, that threw me as a hurdle for me where I went, Oh, I want to do a good job. I can't pay out of pocket to do a good job.

[Lois Grossman]: You can come work on the pollinator garden we've got going along the river behind West Street.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Okay, yeah. Yeah, if you know, it makes work. would be helpful there.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Perfect. Yeah, you send me an email and I'll start looking.

[Brenda Pike]: No, no, not at all. I realize now that I think Paul seemed particularly interested in pollinator gardens, and he's not here right now. So maybe I can follow up with him separately.

[Josh Ekhart-Lee]: Brenda, in my notes, you also wanted to talk about the zero waste intern.

[Brenda Pike]: Oh, yes, actually. Will, we have some news. Will has joined the planning department as an intern focused on zero waste outreach. So that really expands the city's capacity to be able to do that work. Will, do you want to talk about some of the work you've been doing to pull together some of the things that are already happening?

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Yeah. Um, so, yeah, been about a month now, started internship, feeling very inspired by our conversations about our waste programming. A big piece of this is general education and outreach, seeing if we can up composting numbers, making sure that people feel confident and ready to recycle effectively, make sure that they can feel comfortable and confident composting, no matter where they live or what systems they're working with. And I'm doing my best to support and uplift all the different swap events, reuse and repair clinics around Medford, and generally just make sure that we have a community of sharing and repair and reduction for our waste.

[Brenda Pike]: Looking forward to it. Yeah, some of the it's interesting how many things were are already happening out like the like maker space repair work and things like that, that I just yeah, that we're just not getting the word out about enough, especially in official city communications.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: And one small thing, I know that we do talk about trash and waste things at this committee as well. If you ever feel, I will try my best to keep the position separate, but if you ever feel that there's a worry or anything, please tell me or tell Brenda. I want to be cognizant of that to make sure that I'm not speaking on behalf of the city while I'm sitting here. It's very distinct. I'm here because I want to be and because I like to.

[Lois Grossman]: Will, I was wondering if we could not start a coaching program much as Brenda did with the EV. where members of this committee and or volunteers that we know could go to the homes of people and talk to them. I'm planning to do that with my neighbors. And I'm going to tell them that I'm doing it because of this committee, the MEC, that one of the things we're doing is helping people prepare. It gives me an excuse to intrude in my neighbor's kitchen.

And I just think pairing people the way Brenda did with the EVs is a good way to approach.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: I think that's a fantastic idea. I want to save a lot of this conversation for the, I think the pay-as-you-throw discussion will include a lot of this. But it is definitely something that I'm beginning to build, and I'm looking for Medford volunteers. I'm also reaching out to Garbage to Garden. There's a lot of things to pull on and people to talk to. But I want to save that and more for the discussion in a little bit, because I think that's really important to talk about.

[Brenda Pike]: Okay, a few more updates for me. National Grid has said that smart meter installations are starting now, and residents should be receiving a notice that it's happening at their particular location two weeks beforehand.

[Lois Grossman]: So any minute I could lose power to my computer and it could drop dead. So I'm really concerned about that.

[Brenda Pike]: Their communications have said that if you need to, if you have concerns, like you have medical equipment or something that you really can't have a break in the, an unscheduled break in the electricity, to reach out to them and let them know, and then they can schedule a specific date. But we included blurbs about this in the city newsletter and in the planning department newsletter, in addition to all that information that National Grid is sending out. One of our big concerns there is just making sure that people are, you know, checking people's IDs if they're coming to their house and trying to get access to things, just make sure that it's actually a National Grid contractor that's approaching you.

[Lauretta James]: Brenda, did they happen to say how long it takes when you talk for them to do this?

[Brenda Pike]: It sounded like it would be a brief interruption in power, 15 minutes or less.

[John Rogers]: Yeah, the meter plugs in. So they just, there's a lock, it's not really a lock, it's more of a seal, there's a tamper seal. They cut the tamper seal, they flip a little lug, and then the front of the meter box opens up, you unplug the meter, you plug the new meter in, you close the box, and you put the tamper seal back on, that's all it takes. So it's fast, but you definitely lose power.

[Lauretta James]: So John, they don't come into the house to turn your... No, there's nothing to turn off.

[John Rogers]: Turn off your main breaker, right? Yeah. Maybe, maybe. I mean, I guess, because yeah, if you were running like your dryer, something that uses a lot of electricity and they unplugged it. Yeah. You know, the last time I had it done, I had the service put in. So it was like... So it was already off when they plugged in the meter. But yeah, they probably do come in and shut the meter and shut the power off. Yeah.

[Brenda Pike]: They told me the only reason that they would be going into somebody's house would be if their meter was not outside. Some people still have their meter in a basement or something. Yeah. Yeah.

[Lois Grossman]: I planned when they notify and say it's going to be within the next whatever many days, I'm just going to put a sign on the meter that says, please ring the doorbell before you do it.

[Lois Grossman]: In a plastic bag, furthermore, so that it doesn't get rained away.

[Brenda Pike]: That's their plan. They do knock on your door or ring your doorbell or whatever before they do it. It's just, if you're not home or something, then they're doing it right then in the moment. They're not doing it, telling you ahead of time. Right, right. Okay, the planning department is going to be holding an open house in late March or early April. I'm going to have a table there for Electrify Medford and I think we're going to have a zero waste table there as well. Okay. But I was wondering if the, does this group want to be included to talk about anything else that you that you work on?

I know they're going to be doing some outreach to other groups to include more this time around.

[Brenda Pike]: It would be great to have you there. If you had a particular topic that you really wanted to focus on, then that would be great.

[Josh Ekhart-Lee]: I would love to table, you know, jumping ahead to, like, this climate action plan monitoring work. I think it'd be a good chance to get some, like, qualitative feedback from residents on, like, if they think about the climate action plan, and if so, what they think.

[Josh Ekhart-Lee]: It can also be me volunteering to do that tabling, depending on availability.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: He had given us the heads up before. I'm sure he'll email us later and go. Actually, I do want to ask.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Oh. I think there are two to select from though. Currently, it's a Tuesday evening, either the 31st of this month or maybe the 7th of April were the two that I saw.

[Brenda Pike]: Okay, Josh, I'll, I'll reach out and especially as you're still scheduling it so that we can get your availability in in there too. For Electrify Medford, we have one event coming up that I wanted to highlight. It's a utility bill checkup event at the senior center, and National Grid and ABCD will be there. So that's March 18th from 1030 to 3 at the senior center. And we're encouraging people to bring their bills so that they can talk one-on-one with the representatives from National Grid and ABCD.

Another event coming up. The Citywide Cleanup is happening May 2nd. Sorry, May 2nd is the Citywide Cleanup. I'll drop the link in the chat for the volunteer sign up form. They're looking right now for people who are interested in nominating a site or choosing a site to clean up and be the leader for the group of volunteers at that site. I'm going to be doing one at the West Medford parking lot, because whenever I go to check out that charging station, I notice that people are just tossing a ton of trash around there.

[Brenda Pike]: Trees, Medford is looking for volunteers, it sounds like for planting the Tufts Park mini forest that's going to happen in September, October. But if you're interested, you can get your get into onto their list for that. Dropping that link into the chat about the mini forest. And then they're also doing their free tree sign up right now. So in certain neighborhoods, it's, um, the, the trees would be free, um, outside of those neighborhoods. Um, there you, you could still get a discounted tree, um, and pay for that, uh, your portion of that.

The free neighborhoods are the ones where it tends to be, they tend to be heat islands. And so they're really looking to get more trees planted there for the shade aspect of it. And then the last thing I just wanted to mention was that at the last Climate Equity Council meeting, Alicia attended that, oh, and Will actually. And Alicia talked about the waste program changes and got some feedback from them about it. They had some great suggestions for outreach. A lot of focus on video outreach, which I thought was interesting, yeah.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: In that case, we'll move on to a hopefully about 20 minute discussion on black plastic. I see many of us are in the doc already that was put together by Lois, Benji, and Prabita. I'd love to have a moment to talk about what we're seeing, what changes might need to be made to this letter, and next steps. But I want to throw to Benji and Lois. I don't know if Prabita is in yet or tonight. But I want to give you the floor to start talking, if you'd like.

[Lois Grossman]: Did you all see the email I sent around? after Bob's comment that he wanted to know more about what other towns might be doing this and so forth. So I went online and discovered that as of January 2026, black plastic is not allowed anymore in food, restaurants, takeouts. It's been banned according to what I saw online. I didn't have time to go further with it, but apparently there is legislation already, state legislation, on the use of black plastic.

[Brenda Pike]: Point us to that, because I didn't see that. I saw that the town of Hudson voted for that, and that took effect January 1st.

[Lois Grossman]: I also gave you the website for the Sierra Club, which did five towns. It did Needham, And I don't remember now. I don't have it in front of me. But there are several towns that have already done it. But I had no idea there was state legislation on this. And I'll have to do more research on it. I wasn't able to today. But I will. If there is statewide legislation, that'll be a help. But what I proposed in this memo was that we really don't have to reinvent the wheel, Bob, getting documentation and so forth. The wheel is already there.

And we can read what other towns are doing, but clearly, There's widespread concern and the Board of Health banned styrofoam several years ago for health reasons. I see no reason why we can't urge them to do the exact same thing for black plastic using the same channels that they used with their authority to do this. Maybe our approach should be to contact the Board of Health rather than the retail establishments.

[Lois Grossman]: Yes. I didn't get it. I sent it back to whoever Bob sent it to, which was, I think, the whole committee. Some people obviously got it. Some people didn't. I can see by your nods.

[Brenda Pike]: I did, yes, but I only saw the link about the five towns. I didn't see anything about the state law.

[Lois Grossman]: No, I didn't have a link for that because I didn't have time to pursue it further. Okay. But I will pursue it further. After all, it was the internet that told me. So you can't always believe what you see. So I will find out more about it. But clearly, the five towns that the Sierra Club does, if you could put a link to that memo or put it in the chat so Loretta and anybody else can see it.

[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_06]: Just just looking quickly, it does not appear to me that there is a state law that the five towns are Brooklyn, Hudson, Needham. No, I lost it. But it does not appear there is actually a state. Well, there's a headline that you find that says the new law taking effect will ban black plastic, but the text of the Sierra Club Post does not confirm that. So I think it's pretty clear that there are five towns and other towns that are considering it, but there's not yet. Brookline, Hudson, Needham, And Newton have already passed such bans, it says.

So I think we should go ahead with the letter to the retailers. I don't think there's any reason not to do that at the same time that we're talking with the Board of Health about hopefully passing a similar statute to the one that's been passed in other municipalities. Those two things don't seem to me to be at odds with each other. And at some point I'd like to, and maybe it's a bridge to the conversation about pay to throw. Ultimately, what we'd like is to see all plastic banned for takeout and it be all compostable. But that is a more complicated question. How does the compostable push sort of be at odds with the plastic, asking people to do too many things at the same time, and feeding into the fact that people are upset about the once every other week trash, and being forced to compost, and I just can't figure out how all those things intersect with each other. I'd love to hear what everybody else has to say about that.

[Robert Paine]: Yeah, Josh, it was just Bob. I was noting in your letter indicated there are several communities, but it was sort of, I didn't know what they were. I would, I was going to suggest more specifics link to maybe the best. 1 of the best example of that. Because it looks like there's not a state law at this time.

[Lauretta James]: I found a bill, you know, that they're working on. It says mass S two, five, four, one, but, um, bill reported favorably by committee and referred to the man center ways and means of June 23rd, 2025. And there's another bill, a companion bill. That's 543, to reduce the unnecessary use of plastic straws. Okay, well, that wasn't, the other one is much larger. Food containers, food service, we are blaming black plastic service items and preventing automatic distribution, it's a lot. It's a lot.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: I think there are a lot of potential bills in the works. I think one of the strengths of this letter and perhaps subsequent or in tandem letters to the Board of Health is that it's not making any policy recommendations. It is making the recommendation directly to the supplier and to the food establishments to make the change. in anticipation maybe of a bill, but also just for the general health and wellbeing of their customers. I think that's the strength of it.

[Lauretta James]: I agree. Well, I think the letter, I liked the letter and I think it teaches people. A lot of these restaurants may not know it's small establishments and they do give out a lot of black plastic containers to go. So I think it's good education for them too.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: I also liked the idea of incentivizing compostable takeout containers, especially if Medford residents are being incentivized to switch to composting. If we can make that even easier by reducing the amount of plastic going into their systems and instead give them something that is easily compostable, I think that's a net good. I think the big thing is I made a bunch of comments on the side of this memo of like, just making sure we have links to our facts and figures, make sure we're really specific with our, our notation. Um, especially if we're purporting to be experts on this, we should showcase that you guys did all the research you did. Uh, cause you have a pretty substantial list of sources. I, I think, uh, everyone would benefit from.

[Lois Grossman]: Probetha did a lot of it. I want to, I'm going to get in touch. I guess it's Marianne O'Connor, right? Is, is the board of health Brenda?

[Lois Grossman]: So I'm going to get in touch with Marianne tomorrow and uh, I'm going to write her an email and tell her what we're working on and so forth, and asking her for how they went about the styrofoam. Did it require city council? I mean, do we have to do one of these things where they have to have a hearing, three different hearings on it in order to propose it? Do we need to go through all that rigmarole? Is there a shortcut by going through the Board of Health, is my hope, and not making it a political issue at all, but a health issue?

So I'm going to contact her directly, and I'll CC Brenda, as well as Benji, and Prabita, and whatever I write. And if you think, Brenda, that it should go to the rest of the committee, I'll trust you to do that. And then any answers that we get, I'll share with everybody.

[Brenda Pike]: Great. Yeah, I'll just make sure that Alicia is aware of it, too.

[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_06]: Let me try one more time to ask the question I've been trying to think about. If our ultimate goal regarding takeout containers is to bin the plastic completely and have everybody using compostables, does doing the plastic now make sense, or are people going to be annoyed? Well, you just told us not to use black plastic, now you're coming back to annoy us again. Should we wait until we are ready to do a compostables kind of ordinance? Or should we think about doing it in two steps? What's the politics of that? What are people more likely going to be compliant with and more likely to be upset about? And how does the people sort of being forced to do composting because their garbage isn't being picked up, how does that play into the strategy we're trying to develop?

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: I think it's two separate strategies. And I actually like either angle for different reasons. If we did it one at a time, we're kind of shifting that Overton window little by slow. We're saying, you know, ban black plastic because that's easy and good. And we've already done that. Well, now you can do regular plastic too, or you can do clear plastic, you know, and work them slowly that way. But the alternative, and I kind of like the angle now of linking it with the composting initiative and saying, actually, you would be doing a huge favor to the town, to the residents, to everybody, to the city, to the residents, and everyone, to switch directly to compost, rather than recommending aluminum, rather than recommending any diffuse alternative, just saying, switch to this compostable. Maybe even garbage to garden can help us. Pitch that to folks, there might be an angle there. That's my 2 cents.

[Lauretta James]: I'm 1 of the things that I'm thinking that's a great idea, but a lot of these food service establishments. And restaurants may not have the room to keep the compost, you know, for pickup because they're using whatever they're using, regular trash pickup.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: So they won't have composting. Businesses don't get free composting curbside.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Well, I mean, if they're doing takeout, it's by definition leaving their establishment. They won't have to worry about it. Right.

[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_06]: We're talking about the containers that they're putting the takeout in. OK. I'm sorry.

[Brenda Pike]: I think I confused that in the letter. I was the one who brought up, oh, businesses can't do the composting program.

[Lauretta James]: Sorry. We're thinking about the whole establishment of composting with zero waste, like the whole city, including business. So if I went in a different direction, still thought. Right? I don't know what they do for composting. Some do, some don't. Supermarkets, a lot of them do it. But otherwise, going back to your... I think it should go out beforehand as a slow, you know, a step process for the containers. I agree with what Will said.

[Josh Ekhart-Lee]: Yeah, I agree with you both, Loretta, and I think, like, Louis, in your conversation with Mary Ann, it would be really valuable to get some clear guidance on what kind of health code or ordinance work is necessary. Because I do think this socializing effort through the letter will need to be accompanied by an actual ordinance, which will likely be tragically that long three hearing process. And so if we start with something that is really robust, like Benji suggested, that's like a total plastic ban, we can kind of say, well, we've already preempted trying to talk about black plastic and can have that as a potential room for negotiation.

[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_06]: It feels fine. I still wonder whether, it appears to me that the every other week trash and pushing people to composting is unpopular. And to what extent are we hooking ourselves to that and making anything else more complicated. But it seems like there's a fair consensus. We should go ahead with the easy piece. There's no legitimate reason. There's no argument on the other side. Black plastic doesn't cost any less. There really is no... It should be low-hanging fruit. So why not take it and then...

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: So I think the big thing would be to touch up this memo and see what Marianne has to say. And if you need more comments, I'll keep sending this memo out. I will keep rereading. And this is handy to me. I'll keep talking about this for months. Great. Thanks.

[Brenda Pike]: So my question here is how is this letter going to restaurants going to be finalized and how is it going to be distributed in the end? Is it going to be the same way that you sort of collected information from the restaurants where you'd be going sort of door to door with it?

[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_06]: My memory is that at some point the mayor said that she'd be willing to send it out over her signature.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: I also fantasizing that I remember the mayor saying she would use the chamber of commerce mailer to reach out to restaurants. Oh, that was many moons ago. I forget when she actually came in, but I do remember she got very excited about this project and wanted to support. And that was one of the things that she felt able to do.

[Brenda Pike]: So it might be once you get this into a state where you want to share it, it would be good to share with her and the communications team that she has.

[Lauretta James]: Exactly. Right. You know, it's interesting. She mentioned the chamber because they wouldn't. Yeah, it would be more the building department of the assessor's office would have all the businesses.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: I could be misremembering, but I remember she had a network she wanted to work for.

[Brenda Pike]: She had suggested putting it out in like the city wide newsletter and other communications channels that she has.

[Lauretta James]: Right. But I think I was just saying for the complete list, probably be the building and the assessor's office. This is a lot of little places that, or maybe larger ones that aren't members of the chamber. So I just wanted to throw that out there for a more complete list.

[Lois Grossman]: That's why I want to get in touch with Marianne first. I want to find out what they did, how they did the styrofoam. I think it's really important for us to understand what they did and how they did it and how long it took. And I just, it never occurred to me to look into that in this process. We never talked about it.

[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_06]: My memory of the styrofoam is that there was an ordinance passed the city council and it was presented by a bunch of high school kids and their advisor. And because it was high school kids, everybody was pretty happy about it and it sailed through and everybody clapped and everybody was happy. That's right, I remember now. Yep, that's correct.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: I also, my understanding is that it was a pretty like public outcry event against styrofoam, especially like the clamshell containers and stuff like that was like a big public push. That black plastic doesn't seem to have quite the same build up around. But that doesn't mean it's impossible. It just means we don't have an ocean behind us, we have a little less.

[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_06]: I think the good news is there's no black plastic copy. There's no constituency on the other side, as far as I could tell.

[Lauretta James]: Well, it would be good that Will or somebody on this subcommittee or group to get the high school students involved. and then their parents can learn about how toxic the black plastic is. And share that with the high school and maybe some of the grade schools.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Yeah, I think what I would like to see for next meeting, and I'm willing to work with Benji Lois-Perdueza as well, is to finish up this memo such that it can be just used as a public resource at this point. I'd like to see the facts, the figures in this nice one page that we can send out to the general public. And if we can get that clean enough, we can begin that outreach process and everyone and their, everyone and their neighbor can know about this.

[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_06]: And hopefully it will, hopefully it will build some momentum towards getting the board of health or the city council or whoever has to do something formal to do it, but we can get the ball rolling. Yeah.

[Josh Ekhart-Lee]: And I would suggest if it would make y'all feel more confident in sending that out, I think you have all those resources and those abilities. If you want a motion from us to support you sending it out with those added references and specificity, I would make that motion to approve and put our name or I don't know if we have letterhead on that letter in support of this effort.

[Lois Grossman]: I know that's what Benji Parvith and I were looking for from this meeting, an endorsement of the concept. If you have any questions, any queries about the information, the sources, otherwise, we want you to endorse it so that it goes out from this city committee with everybody's approval.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: I would endorse with amendments. If we can do a couple of the different amendments that have been added into the suggestions, make sure everyone had a chance to look it over. I want this to go out as soon as possible.

[Josh Ekhart-Lee]: So with that, I'd happily accept a second to that motion if folks feel like that, those are suggestions and edits and comments are enough for us to get to those amendments.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Oh goodness. Yeah, Benji has seconded to send out this memo once amendments have been made. So in that case, we'll move to a quick vote to accept this memo with amendments as something we as a committee feel is important to send out to at least city, who in particular, probably to the mayor for a review.

[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_06]: I think the mayor for distribution, hopefully her endorsement and then distribution.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Perfect. Okay. I wanted to make sure that was clear in the record.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Yeah. So we'll move to motion that. I move to vote. Let me grab everyone's names, make sure we have a bunch of people have added since we last did this. So, going down the line. In favor, just say yes, Josh.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Yes. No, Jessica. John? Yes. Will is a yes. And with that, no Paul, to my knowledge. Last call for Kathleen. I see you're lost in the Zoom haze.

[Josh Ekhart-Lee]: I can see that Kathleen unmuted, but I didn't know I can't hear though.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: I see activity. I'm going to move forward while she figures it out, but the yeses have it. 821 possible abstain from Kathleen. So let's get those amendments in. And once we're finished with this letter, you have my signature and that of the committee. I'm going to move this forward.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: And with that, I want to move to the pay-as-you-throw amendment discussion. We've talked about it a few times now. We had Alicia come in to present a little bit about it. Now that I've started to kind of immerse myself into this, I wanted to have a more formal conversation for my own benefit and for the benefit of MEC getting to make the recommendations that we are supposed to make. So I want to start first with just a brief like facts as I understand them. So we're all starting at the same place and understand the problem. So currently we're seeing waste disposal fees are going up quite a bit.

The estimates I found are showing an increase of close to $200,000 per year over the next, like each year for the next 10 years as they've shown it. The pay-as-you-throw system can entail a bunch of different things, and different towns have pay-as-you-throw systems that exist a bunch of different ways. In general, we are eligible for a $200,000 grant if we can produce 32 gallons of trash per week or less for every household. Since everyone already has 64-gallon bins, every other week was one solution, that would mean that we're producing 32 gallons each week, 64 every two weeks. That would mean that we're eligible for that grant, get a bunch of money that helps us to supply free composting to Medford residents.

That being said, I want to acknowledge that, you know, every other week is not the only way forward. And there are a ton of different ways that we can go about this. But the big issue at hand is waste is getting more expensive to produce and compost is being pushed as a really powerful way forward. One that would save the city money but also keep us in line with general statewide regulations that are starting to push towards bans on food waste writ large.

So with that, the question to you all is, what does the future of trash in Medford look like? Does it mean making amendments to every other week that makes it more equitable and more sustainable for folks? Or does it mean not continuing every week trash pickup, but find other ways to manage this new cost that will be incurred? So with that, I'm setting about 20 minutes to talk about it and begin voicing what's on our mind. But if there's more to say, you should always email me and Brenda, and we can talk about it or schedule more time next month.

[Lois Grossman]: Isn't it already a fait accompli, Will? Hasn't it already been contracted and decided that it will be this way?

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: So my understanding is that they are looking to sign that contract in June. This is something that the Office of Sustainability has been planning for the better part of three years. They've been thinking about this for a while. And they decided that this was like the right opportunity to start making that transition. But it is not necessarily a given. But it is something that they are pushing for because it is one of the more cost efficient ways to get everyone to free composting. Because the money being saved for every other week trash goes pretty much one to one for paying for free composting.

That being said, given the backlash and the pushback from especially some of our city councillors, there's at least been conversations about what it would mean to eat those rising costs and figure out other systems, which is exactly why I want to field it to you all here as environmentally minded folks that care and might have amendments that would make this easier for everyone. Right.

[John Rogers]: And now my understanding is that the composting is still every week.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Composting currently is every week and free to all residents. Right. No, what I mean is it would continue to be every week. Yeah. Yeah. No matter what happens with the trash. But if we switch to a pay as you throw system, we'll get money that will help to keep it free and keep all those costs down.

[Josh Ekhart-Lee]: Yeah. Isn't the composting program funded by a mass DEP grant? Is that grant only applicable to the program as a pilot and isn't able for continued operating costs? Why are we not still looking to state funding?

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: That I actually don't have a good answer to. My understanding is the $200,000 PAY-AS-YOU-THROW grant was also going towards more bins and more composting systems.

[John Rogers]: Wasn't there something about the 32 gallons a week trigger? Um, didn't that trigger some kind of a grant as well? Like if you did that, that is the page you throw. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Um, so that's $200,000 is what that is.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Yeah. I got it. Okay. Um, and that could be 32 every week or it could be 64 every other week. And that was the reason for this every other week pitch at all. Right.

[John Rogers]: Yeah. I mean, we've always, we've talked about this, you know, ad nauseum, but it's the big problem I have with the 64 is every other week is the is the rodent population, you know, but, but I have to say, you know, one night I left my trash out by accident. but it didn't have any food waste in it at all. It just was trash. And a squirrel, I have cameras around my house, and a squirrel became interested in it, but quickly realized that there was no food in it and left it alone. So maybe if there's no food in the trash, then rodents will realize, you know, like the two week thing might not be a big deal if there's no food in there.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: And that's something I've been finding in my literature reviews as well. A big piece of why there is a rodent management issue in Medford is because the latches on our trash cans are not that substantial. The compost bins, however, are thicker and they have a clasp that keeps it locked in. So if you put your food waste in those bins, in theory, those are more rodent resistant than our standard trash bins.

[Lois Grossman]: I hate to tell you this, but my neighbor, who loves composting and puts it out there, has a raccoon that comes and unlatches it. Fascinating. Doesn't get to mine, but gets to hers. Interesting he's able to manage that latch.

[John Rogers]: Well, what happened when I had a raccoon drag it across my lawn, and my feeling is that if you drag it, don't forget they have hands. If they drag it and happen to drag it by the latch, then it'll open. But you know what, we can find a way to like some kind of a way to deal with that moving forward, you know?

[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_06]: I have a few thoughts. One is that Barry, who is not with us now, has been, I think, the most vocal among our group about having serious questions about this. And I'm sorry he's not here to offer his thoughts. And maybe we should start next time to let him catch up on it, because I often find his thoughts to be quite useful and insightful. The other thing is, a number of people have talked about it. We haven't, I don't think, heard any conclusive way of dealing with the issues of pet waste and diapers and whether having them sit for two weeks as opposed to food waste is a problem, since they do not get composted.

And then the last thing is, if a significant part of the motivation for doing this is to get people to compost more, I would think that offering bags either for the compost containers in their homes or for the compost containers on the street would help get people to do that. Because if you don't use the bags, it's more of a mess. And if you do, it's an expense. For some people, the expense isn't an issue or a barrier. But for others, it might be.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: I've been using, I think Garbage Garden says it's OK if you use two brown paper bags. That's been a system I've been using. But I do agree that having an answer to, I'm putting together a quick Google Doc so we can add our own things as we like. Having an answer to pet waste is a really useful thing we should be discussing. I know Alicia is an avid proponent of some secondary bin, one that can live outside, inside, but just you wrap your pet waste in there, latch it for the time being, and when it finally fills up over the course of multiple weeks, then you can put it in the compost or in the trash.

But having a separate bin has been proposed a few times for that. If there are other systems, other maybe policy levers that we can recommend that would make that easier, all yours.

[Lauretta James]: I'm sorry, did you call me? Oh, okay. I don't know if there's a possibility. I mean, I have, besides Barry and maybe a few others, like the second person that's most concerned about this for the roadman's increased because I've had a firsthand experience in our neighborhood, not just my street. And I've also seen raccoons just rip open bags. I don't know if this is a possibility and what the costs would be. And I know they're looking for these grants and I understand what Alicia said, and ideally it's to reduce the waste that's burnt in the compost. So I'm not against that. It's just, we have so many residents and it's a huge learning curve.

So I had mentioned before, what would be the costs or the ramifications or benefits if you had, you still have the weekly pickups from say May 15th to September 15th. And then the rest of the year would be every other week because that's when it's usually the hottest year and garbage really attracts, you know, all the different animals, not just rats. And, maybe also the holiday weeks like Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter.

[Lauretta James]: I really am concerned about this because a lot of the people, I don't know, the people on the energy committee, you know, have homes or apartments or see as much as I've gone through and I've worked with the building department. Um, And when I had mentioned before, and I wanted to make this clear, you can buy overflow. Like if you go to every other week and you have overflow bags. Where are those overflow bags gonna go? They're gonna go on top of the barrels, they're gonna be left in yards, because they might not buy extra regular, you know, rubbish barrels that you can get at Home Depot, you know, metal ones or containers to hold those bags. So you can buy overflow bags, or you can use regular trash bags, and they can be left beside your bin, and it causes a problem. So, who's, you know, Who's going to monitor that? And the building department doesn't have enough, not the building, the health department doesn't have enough resources to go out. And if this is enacted, you know, every other week, people have a lot of trash. They don't have the capacity to go out and, you know, give people a violation because now it's a health hazard and a nuisance.

If anybody has talked to me some other time, you know, offline, about what I saw when we went into it, it took a year, a year of, you know, documenting this rat problem and getting some help from the city to get this particular property to take care of it and get more rubbish barrels. And actually they had to have Yankee pest control come out. And it was really unbelievable amount of rats in one property that infiltrated the whole neighborhood. So all my neighbors know about it. And we're still watching these properties because they, you know, Every week the rats would open all the rubbish bags and the rubbish would be all over the place and you can't feed the rats.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: I'm looking at Maldon, does a pay-as-you-throw system, they have their blue bag system. They have mandatory, the bags must be placed in some form of lidded barrel that can be securely closed. If that is not what happens, DPW and usually it's the trash collectors will leave flyers and give them violation notices. So it is in the same way that Garbage to Garden will replace compost bins that are broken or not working correctly. education is delivered on site when the violation occurs. But that's going to be an issue perhaps regardless. If people aren't taking the time or the effort to throw away their trash correctly, having more bins doesn't necessarily solve that problem. Education does. And in that regard, we should maybe scrap everything and just do all of million dollars on education and make sure that people are thinking critically about trash.

[John Rogers]: I don't know what Malden has done. Malden, my mother lives in Malden and I frequently drive across Medford into Malden and I'm right on the edge of Medford. So like one of the main street I get to my house with is half Malden and half Medford. One side's Medford, one side Malden. And um, They have 32-gallon trash bins, and I don't see a lot of trouble with it. The bins are there, and the overflows are next to the bins on trash day, but they seem to have their act together. I don't know, and I don't know how they did it.

[John Rogers]: The overflow bags, they're blue and they're beside the bins. But I mean, I'm talking on trash day now. I don't know what happens to them during the rest of the week, but they don't look ripped. They don't, you know, they look OK. So. And they have compost. You know what, I'll have to take a bet. They have blue bins and black bins. And I think the black bins are recycling and the blue bins are trash or maybe the other way around. But I'm looking at their website right now. Yeah.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: I think Medford is one of the few spots doing weekly composting the way we are. Very few cities pay for it.

[Lauretta James]: So those are my concerns. And it'd be interesting to know, could we go, you know, half a year and then October, November, January, February, March, you know, by week. Right.

[John Rogers]: I like that idea. The thing is that what I could do, like, so for years, I only use about a third of my trash bin. Um, what I could do is I could like, it's kind of pointless to do it now, but maybe in the summer, what I'll do is I won't put it out every week and I'll see how bad it gets with, you know, uh, stuff that's been in there for two weeks. Cause the other thing I, you know, I'm just thinking about now is it's, it's not a full trash bin for two weeks. It's a half a trash bin for a week. And then like, you know, it progressively gets fuller and fuller. So, so yes, the first trash you put in it is two weeks old, but the last trash you put in it is a day old. Right. So, so I could try that at home just to see what, what that's like, you know, and it's easy enough to stop if it's, if it becomes like a nightmare for me, I'll just be like, Oh, I guess I'll put it out every week now, you know?

[Lauretta James]: Right. But that's, you know, that's for maybe a lot of us that only have maybe two or three people or people who are really conscious about, you know, compost. But for a large house and, you know, rooming houses that we, it's way more than that. And so that's why I brought up, you know, the requirement to have extra barrels.

[Lauretta James]: a lot of them won't pay for the extra barrel or rent it and just leave it out for the rubbish.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Yeah. I think it's what, $12 a month for an extra barrel, which if you're in a large household, that's probably a fee that you're willing to bite. But if there's a better way about it, this is the opportunity to do it.

[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_06]: Well, does anybody have any sense of if the extra barrel were free, how many people would take advantage of it and how much the expense would be?

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: We're free. Yeah, just get it would be pay as you throw. We wouldn't qualify for the grant. We would. Yeah.

[Lauretta James]: You know, Will, I just remembered something. I don't remember what town, but it was a Massachusetts town. And it came up on some feed, maybe on Facebook, where they were getting rid of all their rubbish bins because of the logo and size of it. And they donated them all to Boston Building Resources, and they were happy to get them. And it was hundreds and hundreds of them, and they didn't pay for them. So Boston Building Resources went and got them and resold them to people.

So there are cities that, I mean, what Benji brought up would be interesting if we could get free barrels. Because they weren't the color.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: I think the worry is that if you give multiple barrels for free, we no longer qualify for pay as you throw. which was kind of the whole point of this programming, because we're supposed to produce 32 gallons a week per household. Right, right. It's like the operational goal.

[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_06]: But those aren't the same thing. Yeah. Is it the number of barrels or the weight of barrels?

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: It's total gallons, barrels. So it's 32 gallons of waste. Yeah.

[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_06]: So if my barrel is half full, that's still considered 32 gallons of waste?

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: You are, it's basically, your barrel is 64 gallons. If you produce more than that, you are, in two weeks, you are over the pay-as-you-throw limit, which is what- Right, but I'm trying to figure out whether it's what's in the barrel or the size of the barrel. Size of the barrel. We as a city pay for weight of our trash, but you as a consumer don't. You could throw out cinder blocks, but as long as they fit in the barrel, that's fine.

[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_06]: And so it's the size of the barrel that controls the eligibility for the grant.

[John Rogers]: And you can't throw out cinder blocks. They won't let you do that. I just wanted to be clear. What about this idea? I mean, so what if you let everybody keep their 64-gallon barrels because they might need them for overflow or whatever, but the trash company does no longer pick up 64-gallon barrels. They only pick up 32-gallon barrels. So now everybody has 32-gallon barrels, but they still have these

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: 64 gallon barrels that they've always had and uh, you know, I wonder if that's Something I could worry is that everyone currently has 64 gallons Yeah, so the the other process like the logistical nightmare of asking everyone to either trade in or get new ones is a pretty substantial expense that I think Folks are trying to avoid. Yeah, but I do I do like the thought that

[Lois Grossman]: There's another issue that we haven't mentioned, and that's the traffic, the wait on the streets. If you come every two weeks instead of every week, that's less air pollution, that's less destruction of the roadways, that's less obstruction of traffic when collection goes on.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: That's true. that is I think factored into some of the conversations. One that's really hard to communicate to folks that aren't maybe in our spheres, but it is something that I think people should be talking about.

[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_06]: I think already suggestion of maybe a compromise of June, July, August, and September, which are the hottest months of the year, is that a potential compromise? Have it every week for those four months?

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Yeah, I like that as something to, I will at least pitch and talk about and think through what it represents. My worry is you could just as easily make an argument for every week during the winter when people don't want to have to lug out their barrel all the time or, you know,

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Well, I mean, to make up for every week, we'd have to go to like every three weeks in the winter or something, you know, as we're supposed to be producing 32 gallons of waste per week.

[Lauretta James]: Yeah. I haven't really caught my head is not. Okay, my head is not into that. Right, right, but I mean. I'm like, they only want 32 gallons every two weeks?

[Lauretta James]: Okay, sorry. Right. So if you want more, you need to buy overflow bags that you pay for and they'll pick them up. Correct?

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Well, yeah, you can always buy the overflow bags. Malden does overflow bags. Metro does too. The proposal in this case is for renting a barrel.

[Lauretta James]: OK, so my question is, you can get another barrel and they will pick it up? Oh, okay, so they won't say they're not gonna pick up your extra barrel.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Yeah, you'd have to get like a special, because they use the arm and everything, it'll be like a Medford.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: But yeah, you can just, you can always just spend $12 and get an additional barrel if you don't think you can reduce the waste that much.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: I think the level of outrage I think is maybe different than the reality, and that's why I wanted to talk through with you all to figure out where, we can find compromise and where we can find things that will work for folks.

[Lauretta James]: Okay. And so, in addition, they can buy another barrel, okay, or they can buy overflow bags at the supermarket, I think, some supermarket, and they can put that on top, or does that have to go into a barrel?

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: It's supposed to go into a lidded barrel. I believe the system is not overflow bags, because you can use any trash bag. The overflow is bins. I don't, I don't think we're doing overflow bags.

[John Rogers]: No. So in Medford, just to be clear, cause I have overflow bags and I use like one a year. But, um, what you do is you go down to the certain like, like stop and shop in a circle. You buy for $2 a piece, you buy these overflow bags and they come in, in, uh, groups of 10 and what you do. Yeah. They're, they're all rolled up and they were in a little, you buy them in groups of 10 and, um, Basically, what I use them for is styrofoam. That's what I use them for. So when I have styrofoam, I put them in the overflow bag, and then I put the overflow bag next to the trash bin. And I usually loosely tie it or tape it to the trash bin so it can't blow away, because it's only styrofoam. But styrofoam is big. So if you were to put styrofoam, like you buy a TV or something and it's got styrofoam, that spills the bin. So I use the overflow bags for that. But right now, you could use overflow bags every week if you wanted to. And so you fill your bin. And then if you have more, you use the overflow bags. And they have a city logo on them. That way, they're not just a regular bag. OK.

[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_06]: If somebody's checking about the Molden program or any place else, is there some way we could make it possible for people to whom there's a financial hardship involved in buying the second barrel or buying or the overflow bags and paying the cost of having those picked up, is there some way to have the city have some kind of program where those can be free or reduced cost for people whom it's an economic hardship?

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: I have that at the top of my list of ideals. I think that's definitely the right way about it.

[Lauretta James]: So, Will, I didn't understand something, not to make this longer, but are you saying, so when I mentioned that some cities are getting rid of their barrels, and there's 64 gallon, if you got a new barrel from the city, isn't it a 64 barrel? 64 gallon.

[Lauretta James]: Right. So if we found another city that was getting rid of theirs, they didn't want them, I see what you're saying, oh boy.

[John Rogers]: The money you're paying for the barrel is not the money for the barrel. The money you're paying for the barrel is for the pickup. When you pay 150 bucks a year for a barrel, you're not paying, it's not a $1,000 barrel that you're renting for five years or whatever. I'm sure the barrel probably costs at least $100, but what you're paying for is the pickup, yeah.

[Lauretta James]: Right, but what I'm talking about, John, is that You wanna reduce waste, but if you have extra, right, and you have another free barrel, they won't pick it up unless it's, is that what you're saying, Will?

[John Rogers]: I don't know, this is what I know, I'm the kind of guy, I know who my trash guy is, I know him by name, and There's cameras on the truck, they see when they dump it in, they see what dumps in. And there's cameras and I think I believe this. So there's a barcode on the face of the of the barrel that faces to the To the truck, so I believe there's a barcode reader, but I'm not sure, but there is a barcode on the trash barrel. So, um, so they don't pick up, like, I don't believe you'd be able to get away with just having another barrel and putting it out there. They know what they're picking up.

[Lauretta James]: I see, you know, okay, so they have to get a barrel or by labeled with the Medford and everything, right?

[John Rogers]: But if I were to, like, go down the street and grab somebody's barrel and drag it over to my house and put it in front of my house, they won't pick it up. You know, they know.

[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_06]: Well, in the snow, there was no way for them to get to my side of the street. And I kept putting my barrels on the other side of the street and didn't have any problem. And maybe they recognized it was because of the snow.

[John Rogers]: Right, and I think they were OK with that, because I think I've done that before, too. But what I'm saying is when there's a, like, they know how many barrels they're supposed to be picking up at your house. I'm pretty sure they know.

[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_06]: Right, and they probably looked across the street and saw that there was nothing on my side.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: What I have, I'm going to put in the doc one final time. I want to thank you all for indulging this conversation, and it will be hopefully something we can talk about more as we go. Putting this link one last time, this is a link to the sort of rules of the trash challenge, as it were. um that we need to reduce our ways to a certain level and we can do it any way we like yeah um the current pitch is to pick up 64 gallons every other week but there might be better ways and there might be ways that help people more um that i'd love to see brainstormed throughout time as a possible amendment to this system uh as it's being discussed and thought through um and of course This is now part of my day job. So if you're concerned or excited or any number of emotions, email me. I want to hear about it. And I want to talk about this so much so that I went beyond the 20 minutes I said I would. Shame on me.

[Lauretta James]: Are there any more public meetings that they're taking comments about?

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: They are looking at scheduling a few more. I think there's one, they're looking at one in end of March, early April, and then one for I think over the summer, but they're like figuring it out. Nothing on the books to my knowledge.

[Lois Grossman]: Will, can you send us the contents of the chat? I'm on a device that doesn't let me copy and paste.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Yeah. Yes, if we could attach it to the minutes, that'd be hugely helpful.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Yeah. Yeah, you do your absolute best, Josh. We're going rapid fire. Right.

[John Rogers]: Because once the meeting closes, you can't get to the chat anymore.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Gotcha. I will make sure it's sent out as a end of meeting action item for you all to peruse as you like. think on it. But I think what's really important is we're working with the Climate Equity Council as well. We want people to be critical, but also productive. Think about a way forward that helps people. Because the waste is a problem, but we don't need to make new problems to fix one. Right. Right. Anyways, I've gone way over the time I wanted. Josh.

I'm giving you less time than you deserve. Do you want to talk a little bit about climate action monitoring?

[Josh Ekhart-Lee]: Absolutely. And I have to start with apologies. I have continued to follow up with Brenda's colleagues in City Hall to try and get a sort of initial response to our first data ask for this project, which is open to sort of build a complete update on what's been happening since we enacted our climate action plan to no avail. So I've been still unable to provide a template for folks to do data asks or have a meaningful update in this tracking doc that we can use as a useful example. I've thrown the sheet in the chat, but I think an obvious sort of win is one of the sort of actions in our first strategy for about diverse and affordable housing was the establishment of the Affordable Housing Trust that was done in 2023. And so small updates saying that that is, you know, an ongoing project. They have a five-year plan that's available here, and it's funded through the Community Preservation Act. They're like small updates that I put in, despite not receiving sort of direct feedback from city staff yet on that data ask. So it doesn't have to be a big lift to sort of give a kind of brief update on each of the actions. But I think collectively, there's a lot of actions to tackle and a lot of lifting to be done.

Since we talked it through in the last two meetings, what I would love to do, what we said we were aiming for at the close of last meeting was that folks would take a look through these series of strategies and actions and put their name in the cell for outreach volunteer. I don't think, as far as I'm looking at, and I believe I have the right version open, I don't think folks had the opportunity to do that. And so maybe what we can do kind of live together is I can sort of like walk through each of the strategies and a volunteer or two on this committee might say that like they would be open to taking responsibility for getting an update on those different strategies with a sort of understanding that we're kind of moving left to right from buildings and energy into transportation, into environment, and then into public health. So if you're looking to do work later down the line, public health and environment are probably more within that wheelhouse, because there's a bit more time before we'll talk through each section as we do them in each meeting. That's that's what I think, given the sort of lack of feedback I've gotten from city staff and the lack of meaningful engagement with you all to build up you researching what you're interested in. Does that sound. just generally OK, I can open up a spreadsheet or just walk through each action. And we can see if folks raise their hands. And if they don't, I know there's a lot of folks not here. So I'll give you a minute summary.

[Lauretta James]: Josh, can you send that link to that again? Yeah, it's the most recent thing in the Zoom chat. Right, but once it closes, I'm using a different device. Of course, yes. It's also in the minutes. It is? Okay. Oh, last month's minutes.

[Brenda Pike]: It was also in the agenda. The link to it? The link to it was in the agenda. Yeah.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Yeah. We've been trying to add action items to all of our emails, and preferably the same list of items from the month before.

[Lauretta James]: There's no link. It's underlined, but there's no link in the one icon. The Word document version, not the PDF. PDF thing. I'm looking at the PDF.

[Brenda Pike]: And for folks reaching out to city staff, just maybe a couple of suggestions that might help. I think reaching out to people individually rather than in a group sort of increases the chances of people replying to you because they feel like you are, you know, that they are responsible for replying to you. And then I also think sometimes that asking people a single question rather than sort of a list of them means that they can answer you quickly, one at a time, rather than sort of putting it off till they have time to get back to it later. From my experience with people, that might help.

[Josh Ekhart-Lee]: Thanks, Brenda. And that's what I was hoping to get from my initial outreach was just to figure out what works best for staff given capacity and preference. So I appreciate that. Thank you. I'm not hearing any sort of complaints apart from, obviously, the void in which all of our emails go and that we don't seem to be able to read. Do you all mind if I just sort of walk us through the different strategies and folks can volunteer to sort of start looking at our progress on them?

[Josh Ekhart-Lee]: It would. It would prevent me from taking notes for the minute. I have to send a request, and I sent that request. Great. Are we all seeing? We're seeing your desktop. Or just my desktop. Yeah. That's not useful. How about this?

[Josh Ekhart-Lee]: Great. So for demonstration purposes, I had taken on the sort of the strategies and objective B1 on sort of new buildings. And I'll keep doing outreach to city staff to fill that out. But I would love to sort of share the weight as we jump into the strategies tied to like building retrofits in our existing building stock. The first strategy, it's always hard to remember which term we use, is on like tools and resources for fuel switching and energy efficiency retrofits, like a lot of the work I think that Brenda and Bob, I think it's been leading with some of our Electrify Medford work. Anyone like to call that for their own kind of updating purposes?

[Brenda Pike]: And for some of these here, I think people can at least start them with the information you already have, right? Like the top one here, we know that there's an Electrify Medford program. If you're looking for more details in terms of like how many people have been served and things like that, you can certainly talk to people about that, but there's some things here that are common knowledge.

[Robert Paine]: Yeah, Josh, this is Bob. You can add me to anything that's related to electrifying Medford.

[Josh Ekhart-Lee]: Great. Do you think then you'd be cool taking on this full strategy and it's sort of fought for sub-actions on data tracking for fuel switching, other financial incentives, and building rehab programs?

[Robert Paine]: Oh, let's see. I'm trying to read this here, sort of fine print. Yeah, sure, we'll all pitch in. Be sure, yeah, you can add me to that.

[Josh Ekhart-Lee]: Great. The next action is on benchmarking and energy standards. You know, something along the lines of BRDO. The state has their large building energy reduction, so I don't know where that's at. But anyone interested in taking on energy standards and benchmarking? I'm thinking of Luke in this moment, even if I would end up being in the room with us.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: I was actually going to ask if it would be possible to move it for me to claim something in a different section other than building an energy that better aligns with what I know, like going through. I would love to look at the rainscaping and storm infrastructure work in the environment tab. And I can go down. almost all of objective EN2 would be delightful to me.

[Josh Ekhart-Lee]: Right. Does anyone want to jump in? Since that's three whole strategies, want to be involved in that work at all?

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: I'll start with EN2.1 to start and give everyone a chance to catch up.

[Josh Ekhart-Lee]: So that's things like updates to the stormwater regulations, a design toolkit for green infrastructure, Now, impervious surface reduction, things like the work being done nearby at Grand Open Somerville, for instance.

[Lauretta James]: Well, so I went to the agenda, the doc agenda, and when I different documents and you have, so could you email me that link?

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: This one, did you see the email for MEC minutes that went out on the 3rd?

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Yes, but there are also March 1st updates. That went out to me as well, including this is. Plastic ban documents.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Um, we will, we'll send it out and. I think a goal we should have. would be to claim a section.

[Josh Ekhart-Lee]: That was what we had hoped for at the end of last meeting. And I just don't think it was communicated very clearly on my end, so I apologize, guys. But looking at like 2.2, short of will claim in the whole section, I don't know if other folks have, you know, We already have this adopt a catch basin, as we talked about earlier today program to put to is, is there anyone else who wants to get their teeth sunk into stormwater and sort of flood mitigation works.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: I also see, for our Trees Medford minded folks, tree canopy work in the same section. Folks like Lois and Loretta, who already have a bit of background in this, would probably be able to clean this up right quick.

[Josh Ekhart-Lee]: I think, Will, your facility with this spreadsheet is maybe not universally shared amongst folks. So I want to make sure I'm not jumping people around too much. Gotcha. But yeah, while we're in the Environment tab, strategies on tree canopy feels like a natural fit for our Trees Bedford leadership in this room.

[Josh Ekhart-Lee]: I'm not hearing a lot. I don't know if this exercise is really resonating with folks. Dan, I see your hand raised, but maybe we can continue to do the work of You all have this information. Please put yourselves in.

[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_12]: I was just going to, I have to drop off, but I was going to quickly volunteer here for, if you go back to the energy tab. Yeah, buildings and energy. Buildings and energy. I can volunteer for 3.1 and 3.2. That is what I do professionally. Anyways.

[Josh Ekhart-Lee]: That's the thing. On this committee, we really have everybody who knows all this work. professionally. Thank you for volunteering. And in the spirit of that, as a model for proactive volunteering for sections, shall we just say, please, I encourage you all, if you feel so moved to volunteer for a section. And Dan, my hope is that for our March or April meeting, we can provide a comprehensive update on the building's energy sections. Does that feel appropriate and doable?

[Lauretta James]: It's interesting. I found the spreadsheet. I can see that some people logged into it, but it doesn't have the same look as yours. It says T1. It's an older one or something.

[Josh Ekhart-Lee]: It doesn't have all. So this is a spreadsheet that has tabs. So if you look at the bottom of it, you'll see that there are tabs tied to different sections. So yeah, you were in the transportation section.

[Josh Ekhart-Lee]: I don't need it. But I want to respect everyone's time. And so I think with Dan setting that excellent model, I look forward to providing an update on the buildings and energy section at our next meeting and seeing a lot of names pop up in the intervening weeks.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: And if you are not, we're going to send out an email with some of these action items within the next day. If you do not receive it, Tell me, and I will hand deliver it to you via messenger pigeon. I will run to whatever building you need to make me go to. I'll make sure you get it. Just let me know. Yeah, if you don't get it by Friday, it means something terrible has happened, so please tell me.

And that way we can get our volunteers in a line ready to go, because I think it's a really important project, and I want to see it Any parting thoughts, any new business? I know we've kept you longer than we used to.

[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_06]: Well, I just want to tell you I appreciate how you facilitate these meetings and all the time and energy you put into preparing for them. So, thank you.

[Lauretta James]: Thank you, Will. And thanks, Josh, for doing the spreadsheets. Yes.

[Lauretta James]: Now that I can see it all, it's really great. I mean, it's great.

[Josh Ekhart-Lee]: Brenda gave us a very useful starting template. And I'm glad to co-chair with Will and Brenda.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Yeah. So give those a look over. and see if we can begin that research process and see what we can come up with. So yeah, any parting thoughts, any new business, anything I forgot to mention? Anyone, comments, concerns, haikus?

[Lauretta James]: I do have a quick thing, you know, that you ask and I always have something. The tree committee was approved by the city council And the mayor's accepting letters from people that are interested in it. I was told that back in December, but I haven't seen a press release.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: I haven't either. I wonder if they're waiting another, maybe too much snow to be talking about it right now.

[Lauretta James]: Well, so they got, in December, I'm pretty sure it was December, Sarah or Amanda told me at least one person had a plex. So if anybody here is possibly interested in the new tree committee, they could send a letter of interest. But I might call Daria, her assistant, after I looked through all the notices I haven't seen on the city website for communications, in case I missed it, to remind her to send out a letter. Because usually she'll send out a letter or communication director. that will list all the openings for different boards and committees.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: Keep us in the loop. I think we have a handful of people I can probably count on two hands that would be good and right for the job. So keep us in the loop as things need to get posted around, we'll make sure it moves and those seats get filled.

[Lauretta James]: Yeah, I won't be on there. I won't apply to the committee, because it's much more than this. It's a lot. But we'll see.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: R is peeled. Final thoughts, any motions for the evening? I would make a motion to adjourn.

[rov34HMcKiU_SPEAKER_27]: I see it from Lois. I'll count it. Any opposed? Perfect. All right. Get out of here. Enjoy the rest of your evening. Sleep well. And I will see you all next month, but talk to me sooner if you need. Take care. All right. Thank you.