January 12, 2009
Energy Committee minutes taken by: Chinloo Lama
Energy Committee Present: Chinloo Lama
Martha Broad
Paula Berg
Michael Gorr
Laura Kischitz
Beth McGilvray
Non-voting members: John Balco
Paul Vasington
The Energy Committee met at 7:00 p.m. at the Town Hall.
The meeting was adjourned at 9:00 p.m.
Discussion:
Agenda
- Cool Mass Program
- Energy Emergency Plans for town during power outages
- Public Safety Ground Breaking this weekend
- Energy Audit
- Request from the Lieutenant Governor for Jan 8th
- MAGIC meeting on Green Communities
- Discuss a chance to initiate a multi-town effort for ESCO (Energy Services Company) with Bolton as one of them
- Decide on who is the liaison with Public Safety planning committee.
- Need someone else to take minutes for February. Chinloo will be away on business trip.
- Report on transition meeting
- Open Discussion if there is time
Last Month’s Action Items
Chinloo – coordinate with Linda to get a day for the lunchtime launch. John wants to attend as well.
Paula – Talk to Bob Zak about the library planning.
Laura – research ESCO initiative. Follow up with Linda on the senior citizen about this.
Grant report to MTC
Paula is reporting on our grant money spending for 2008.
Guidelines Launch Event
Talked to Linda and agreed that we would set up a meeting for each separate building.
Library Planning talk with Zak
They backed away from the LEED because it cost a lot for the process evaluation. They cannot afford the service but will do as much as possible to design for efficiency. They wanted to put the money into the PV and not the LEED service.
Senior Citizens
They are not interested in helping with the grant. They seemed intimidated. The blurb will be coming out of newspaper.
Multi-Town Event
Other towns would prefer Bolton to host this. They do not have very good venues or location to do this. Others are more interested in coming here.
Cool Mass Program
There is a request for MCAN to apply for this program. Laura thinks that our town is not ready for it. We have to demonstrate that we are an active community to try to achieve a 20% reduction goal. If we get accepted, we would get some seed money to support our efforts. They will also help provide resources to help achieve some of the effort. If we can get 40-50% of households to support this effort, it would be feasible. Towns like Lexington and Groton would most likely be in the program because of their commitment. We can wait to learn some more from the other towns and try to achieve this later.
Public Safety Ground Breaking Attendance 24th
A good number of the group will try to attend.
Public Safety (PS) Meeting (reported by Laura)
Laura went to the meeting because she had to submit the request to the Lieutenant Governor. Unfortunately, prior to Laura arriving, PS committee had voted to use the extra $1M from underbid of the building to spend on other things than energy efficiency elements.
The members were reluctant to consider efficiency redesigns. They say the design was already made and it was too late for changes. Laura did some research on cost of LEED certification. She spoke to Andy Proux, He usually quotes on large commercial buildings. He did a rough estimate for Laura and also offered to just do the amount of work that we can afford. He seemed to be willing to help. We are confused that after getting some reassurances that the PS building design would consider energy efficiency solutions, it did not seem so now. Their comment of “Designing to the minimum state requirements” implies that there is no consideration for energy efficiency. Laura asked for a projected energy use from the building design to the engineer. Laura has also drafted a letter to the PS board suggesting/recommending
a reassessment of better designs for energy.
John suggested that we should mention our concerns to Ken Troup. Laura will contact Ken and present our concerns.
VOTE
Motion to vote on sending a letter to PS and board of Selectmen (All 6 members present voted to send the letter.)
Laura motioned to vote on transferring money (<$800) allocated to the Earth Day event from our budget to get an energy evaluation review on the building design. (All 6 members present voted to reallocate the money for Earth Day to put towards the evaluation)
Energy Audit
Margaret had reported the updates. We have enough money to get this done. We are already getting signatures and our budget will cover the implementation which is being discussed at their next meeting.
Gas/oil audit
This will be in March 2009 instead of December 2008. This was sufficiently requested in our budget $2500 requested for 2009.
MAGIC Meeting
(Minutemen Advisory Group on Inter-local Coordination)
This group is concerned with Energy efficiency, walking safety, community planning. Green Communities Act was reviewed at that meeting and Paula (who attended) got the impression that it was very vague and not very organized. Paul seems to think that they were not going to make any policies until a director has started the role. One was appointed earlier in December.
Transition Meeting
This was held in Harvard (ran by Ayer and Concord). The meeting was on transition towns at MCAN and to update other towns on how the MCAN meeting was and ask if we as a regional group would like to coordinate our efforts. This is an initiative that would encompass the Low Carbon Diet (LCD). Laura got a book that shows how to get the enthusiasm flowing in the town. Linda King was present at the Transition Meeting, and is looking to start a town group following this. Multi-town event was discussed there by Laura and the groups out there. Laura made clear that we will initiate and host a multi-town separate from other events like MAGIC and Transition. We will run it as an invitational from Bolton. Bottom line is many towns are very interested in meeting.
Energy Emergency Protocol?
Nashoba tri-town emergency preparedness plan. Our selectmen attended the meeting. There might be minutes on this. Lancaster opened up a building for emergency building during the storm.
Paula suggested that we should suggest to the town to get solar phone chargers the town people can borrow.
PV array for School
Tomorrow, Martha will be meeting with Bill Pratt, Ken Tucker, and Michael Wood. They are concerned about integrating a school curriculum. They are concerned about how to teach the information. A free consultant will be visiting to review the site and we can issue an RFP.
Lecture Series
Doug Storey. Monday night Jan 26th. 7:30pm at Town Hall. There will be live recording.
CFL proper disposal
People are confused that they are disposing CFL into the computer red trailer at the transfer station. It seems like it is not properly managed. The bulbs would be crushed with the computer parts. Paula will investigate.
Action Item
Chinloo:
- Send Linda invitation verbiage.
- Follow up with Daniel (Bolton Celebrates) about helping with Earth day celebration
Martha:
- Send Jennifer (town planner) examples of Wind turbine bylaws.
Laura:
- ESCO research.
- Follow up with Shelly on CFL disposal at the transfer station
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