Conservation, Energy, & Environment Committee - Regular Meeting

I'm calling the meeting to order. It is 4.30. Okay. Roll call. Nancy Bowden is here. Bob Dickinson is here. Claudia Guardiak is here. Brenda Watson is here online. And Paula Jones, I am here and we also have our environmental planner and our director of building and land use with us as well as guest Bradley Huskinson. So welcome all. We have a quorum. approval of agenda i would like to add one thing and we'll slip it into the other category under new business because nick brought this to my attention just a couple hours ago the nips program the nips account um Yep. Yep. Nips bottles. Um, he will give us an update and some suggestions about that. So, um, everyone okay with adding that to the agenda? Okay. Um, seeing no, no objections. Um, we will move on to approval of our June 9th special meeting minutes. Um, can I have a motion to approve?

So moved.

Okay. Can I have a second? And then if there are changes, we'll talk about it. Okay. Second from Bob and Claudia. Are there any revisions, changes, corrections? Everyone good? Yes. Okay. All in favor of approving the minutes as written? Aye. Aye. Okay. Thank you very much.

I will actually abstain because I haven't had a chance to read them, and I wasn't at the last meeting.

Okay. So I'll approve with one abstention. Thank you. Okay. So moving right along, next on our agenda is an overview from Brenda. Brenda is the Executive Director of the North Hartford Partnership, as well as being a member of CEC. And there were some emails circulating about the Climate Resilience Hub project, and she offered to give us an informational overview. And hopefully you got a chance to at least take a look at the deck that was distributed, the PowerPoint deck. So Lynn is prepared to share if you'd like that, Brenda. Would you like her to share the deck? Yep. Yep. Okay, here we go. Take it away.

Thank you. You know, I was given a limited amount of time, so I'm not going to go through the entire deck. I'm hoping that you all had time to review it. But I think the most important piece to talk about in respect to hubs is that climate resiliency hubs are trending across the country and they are serving as safe third spaces for a number of different purposes. But for the Swift factory, the hub will serve three purposes. You can go on to the next slide there. Yeah. So just a little bit about Swift in the first place. Our mission is to work alongside the North Hartford community to advance economic development, promote clean energy investments, and empower residents to access clean energy benefits and leading to improved health and economic as well as housing conditions. We have three major programs here at North Harford Partnership, starting with our multifamily housing, the Swift Factory, which is an 80,000 square foot commercial space, and the Climate Resiliency Hub is our third program. Yeah, so what we want to do is we can just skip on to the next slide. Sorry, Lynn. There we go. So why North Hartford? So there was a theory developed by a professor at UConn who calls it the SOC model, which is the self-organized criticality model, and that systems rarely fail from a single shot. They collapse after prolonged stress. In North Hartford, there are a number of accumulating stresses that include decades of disinvestment in aging housing stock, gaps in critical infrastructure, and persistent health disparities. And North Hartford has a number of designations, Justice 40, environmental justice, Promise Zone, low and moderate income community. And the goal for us at the North Hartford Partnership is to work with the community to hopefully remove those designations and which Hartford will be rebranded as a net zero community. So our hub will serve three purposes. The first working with emergency personnel as well as the community and the health and hospital personnel to help design, or I shouldn't say design, but coordinate emergency preparedness, which includes strategies that would help before, during, and after an emergency. We have 80,000 square foot of space here at SWIFT in which we can host on behalf of first responders, hazmat materials in our basement, MREs, meals that are ready to eat if there should be a need for food and water distribution in an emergency, as well as device charging. and and quiet times serving as an energy concierge to the community to again remove those designations to get us that much closer to net zero so these are three main functions of a hub but um in other parts of of north hartford because the swift factory should not be the only hub um And that includes serving as a heating and cooling center because there are leaseholders in the building who are operating their businesses. And having folks from the public come in and kind of sit down to either access heating or cooling would not be a compliment to the folks who are running businesses here. I'm going to turn off my camera as I'm getting a note that my internet is unstable. to do in the next 12 to 14 months in studying um how the swift fact service you're breaking up brenda two organizations down in new haven and And I'll talk a little bit about that later. But there are other assets in North Hartford that can serve as a heating or cooling center. There are assets that can do. How about now? I heard it was a message that I'm breaking up.

yeah you you you are you're sort of cutting in and out i'm so sorry there's something going on with our internet here um should i keep going yeah i think try it i think so i think we're we're catching most of it i think so okay all right so

There are other assets in North Hartford that can serve in other purposes if and when there should be an emergency, such as the Artists Collective, which can host opportunities for people in the community to stay engaged with the arts if there are events going on that can cause stress. And it's just a way for people to escape and again, de-stress. There's Parker Memorial, which is a city of Hartford community asset that has a gym and swimming pool. So that should be identified as also a hub space that can serve physical and mental health access and activities. when there's an emergency. If you can go back to the previous slide, yes. So what we want to do is not duplicate what emergency systems or communication tools that are already in existence, but what we want to do is bring them together and amplify them, but also make sure that they're community competent, that they meet the needs of the community, um and meet the needs of how the community communicates and you know every neighborhood is different when we're learning that such as every town is different you might find that the east and the bloomfield versus the west end of bloomfield just you know they're just different ways in which people um Travel ways in which people different ways in which people access Community programs and and even communication is different from neighborhood to neighborhood, so we want to. Again, bring all of the communication tools that are already in existence for emergency alerts and make sure that they are trusted by the Community have input by the Community and then SWIFT or the North Harvard partnership here at SWIFT would serve as an agent to help communicate whatever emergency instructions that we're getting from leadership in the state and effectively get that out to members of the community. And also, in quiet times, provide in-person supports for other clean energy-related needs. Go on to the next slide. So the way that we got here, you know, came to the North Harford Partnership almost three years ago, and I wanted to figure out a way in which we can serve as an energy support systems program here at SWIFT. And I, in my research, learned that there's a term for it and that they're called climate resiliency hubs or community resiliency hubs. So we reframe the language away from energy parks and we're calling our program here at NHP Climate Resiliency Hub. And I learned a lot about this from the Urban Sustainability Directors Network and learned that there already are hubs operating in DC, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts. In the spring of 2025, UConn CERCA hosted a hubs workshop here at SWIFT, and we convened many different organizations and state agency personnel to have a discussion about this. And shortly after that, we received a grant from MNT to hire a consultant that would lead us through the study over the next 12 months. And so we wanted to demonstrate to everyone, mostly the state, that nonprofits can be sophisticated enough to use regionalism as a tool to be efficient, but also demonstrate that climate resiliency work should not happen in a vacuum. This is statewide work, if not countrywide work. So we shouldn't be isolating ourselves here in North Hartford and having these discussions and planning climate resiliency strategies and not think about other communities that have similar demographics. Bridgeport and New Haven and Hartford have those same designations, Promise Zone, environmental justice, frontline communities, etc. Bridgeport and New Haven have some similarities in that they're shoreline towns or cities. North Hartford is inland, but as we all know, as environmental justice folks in the space, we know that the work that we do here in Hartford and Bloomfield has impacts downstream and upstream. So again, wanting to use our project as a demonstration tool that regionalism works. And we also want a product at the end of this study that other communities can use. So perhaps we'll encourage or inspire other communities that are connected, or maybe not. to copy and borrow from us so that we can show that regionalism in our state can work and that more entities should adopt the model. So I'll stop there. And take any questions that folks may have but that's that's in a nutshell, what we're doing, we did receive a $150,000 grant from again from m&t to do this work. And we also received a 150,000 dollar grant from the Greater Hereford Gives Foundation that is funding year one implementation of our hub. And so year one implementation is going to look like community outreach. We hosted an expo last month. As an opportunity to share information about not only climate resiliency but ways in which people can reduce their energy use and burden by connecting with vendors that were at the event. We are going to be collecting information from people in the Community to understand what should go in a. go bag so go bags will be emergency kits that people can hold on to if the power should go down the grid should go down it would will allow folks a few days of food supplies and the reason why we need to understand what should go in them is because there are different demographics in this community there are seniors who live in families there are individuals who live by themselves There are people who have children in their home and people who have pets. So we want to ensure that go bags include the items that people will need to use. So pet food, diapers, and other sanitary products if needed, and just other materials that will keep people sustained for a few days. And the other activities will also include continued community outreach around projects like 10-4CT's geothermal. They are actively getting the word out on what geothermal is and how they can work effectively to reduce energy burden and provide clean energy, and we're doing We're installing solar on three multifamily properties that we own. So we want to communicate that with the community so that folks understand the benefits of solar as well as heat pumps. You all already may know that the New England Heat Pump Accelerator Grant Program is now accepting proposals through, I believe, the end of next month. And we intend to apply and being able to purchase heat pumps and install them in our multifamily buildings will just get us that much that many steps closer to having our buildings be net zero. So we replaced the roofs last year. We're looking to install solar in this year through 2027 and we are also going to be finishing the feasibility of a microgrid here on the campus of Swift. And we're in stage two of that. That work will be done through the end of 2027. And in 2028, we will be able to actually seek funding to build the micro grid on our campus. And that will also make the community that much more resilient. So in addition to studying resilience, we are at the same time incorporating resilience. And it fits into my theory that all of these things need to be occurring at the same time too.

get us through the the energy transition questions for Brenda Nancy you're leaning forward yeah I mean it's an excellent model that you're using and um congratulations for not getting the state funding because I think things will go better that way because I'm sure they would do but to your last point though you want to do the study first for about three years before you can put a shovel or a suppliers or anything to work um and I'm glad that you know MNT Bank is involved um you have a lot more funds I guess to raise but you know if you get your project off the ground you know people will want to copy it and maybe the state will even try to elbow its way in and take some credit but don't let them um yeah you're you're very you're correct about that um you brought up something and I and I just

You know, I was trying to actively listen, but I, you know, an idea popped in my head, but that's okay. It might come up later.

Go ahead, Claudia. Uh, what is your, uh, web web address, please?

Oh, it's north Hartford partnership.org.

Thank you.

You're welcome. And please don't hold our website against us. We're in a process of, of course not. It's a bit of a liability right now. Nick.

Just a quick comment. That was great, Brenda. Thank you so much. My gears were also turning in that if we were to use this as inspiration for something in Bloomfield, this kind of stuff would align with many actions in sustainable CT, resiliency and planning, health, safety, and wellness, and probably some others as well. But this is just a great inspiration, blueprint, and best of luck. It seems awesome.

thank you so much yes to all of that that's the other goal is um in north hartford there are not very many assets that can serve as safe third spaces for people i mean um the library is one um but it's just not something that um you know everybody wants to access so being able to serve in this capacity but also help the community identify other hub assets would lead to um Those assets being able to perhaps even apply for funding to become an official hub. As a matter of law, the legislature passed in this session, I don't know the number, but it's the resiliency improvement districts, the RID, R-I-D. And there is a tax component to that law that allows for municipalities to, and again, this is all very new to me, and I'm not a finance person at all, so understanding taxes is, that's out of my wheelhouse, but identifying a way in which municipalities can use a tax structure to help support the implementation and advancement of hubs in their communities. So there are other opportunities in which Bloomfield might be able to take a look at.

Can we come visit? yes yes i would love for you all to come visit yeah please yeah seriously i mean it this sound i mean it's great work um nothing more to say we would love to come visit yeah thank you i'd like to go yeah actually i am going to mention this brenda knows about this um i've been carrying it around in my folder brenda so sometime when i see you I have a preservation magazine from summer 2022, because that's how far behind I am in my magazines. And so this is the National Trust for Historic Preservation. And there's a feature article on SWIFT's Gold Golden Opportunity. It's about the... Swift building and what yeah what they're doing and from four years ago so exciting stuff and uh anyway this is for Brenda when I do see her because I thought rather than recycle it she should at least have it yes thank you you can recycle it yeah yeah Swift is a good example of of what we should be doing with old buildings exactly yeah write it down or instead of you know

taking away green space and forestry to build new, we should really just be using what we have.

Great.

Okay, anything further for Brenda?

But yeah, let's literally, I mean, when it makes sense for you, obviously, and fits in the schedule, maybe we can schedule something and come visit.

Anytime. Anytime. I'm on vacation for the next two weeks, but September. Okay.

Sounds good.

Yes. I would really love that. Thank you.

Great.

Thank you. And you should come when our coffee shop is open. We also have a coffee and tea service in the lobby of our building that's run by youth. And the focus there is sustainability. So we're sourcing Our tea comes from our farm. We have a local grower who is sourcing our tea. Our coffee is coming from one of our chefs in the building. It's Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee that she imports. The kids are learning They're actually going to be doing some visioning around what their neighborhood should look like with respect to energy and environmental issues. And they'll be doing cleanups every Friday. So we're really excited about that program.

Great. Thank you. All right. We will move on to the town planner and environmental planner reports.

good afternoon everybody um there's nothing going on so it's um it's been busy i i hope you all received a copy of the uh well this time is a year-end report so i will not go through it in detail just um recollect a couple of the highlights um for the town center plan we will be going out shortly for our new RF Q RFP for developers and hopefully we get a more robust response we got basically one response first time and we thought it was important to have more than one not that the first one wasn't good but I think we want some more so that'll go out we'll probably have responses do sometime in the early fall the big alpha dross POCD We have decided that we cannot sort of ad hoc the finishing of it, which we've been trying to do and fit it in with our regular workload, basically do it in evenings on weekends. That's not working. So we have assigned staff, basically myself, Nick, and Linda, with a heavy load on Nick to basically over the next 10 days wrap it up on our end and get the final versions over to Goldman and York. We'll finalize the book. with a hope that we can distribute the book to the TPZ in no later than the first week of August, which would give them some time to review it. Prior to they have two meetings in August, one on the 20th and one on the 27th. The one on the 20th is their quarterly, one of their third quarterly meeting for planning purposes. So it would be good meeting to, and hopefully they'll be able to sort of informally adopt the plan at that point assign a public hearing date because while it's not legally required because we had one a long time ago there's been so many changes it seems that it'd be very appropriate to have a public hearing and commence the 30-day statutory referral to the town plan to the town council which would allow the committee the commission i'll get it straight to act finally at their meeting in september And we can put it to bed. I think we've gotten to the point where I think we were going for perfection over everything else. I think we've decided we've got enough perfection. We've got to get the damn thing done and get on with it so that we can refocus on, as you looked at this, what is a very robust list of activities that the department and the town is working on. Nick will go through with all of the specifics here that he's been working on very superbly, as you all know. He is an absolutely marvelous asset to you, to us, and to the town in general. And we're very fortunate. He said, yes. I will repeat that all the time. And he, well, I guess he, no, you don't have it on here. No, yes. No, you don't. Yes, you do. he will be making a presentation to the council at their next meeting on sustainable CT. Um, I think the only thing I'd like to end with is that, uh, sort of what reflects, uh, the activity in town and, uh, people may think there's nothing is the last, um, slide that I sent out to you folks, which are the year end numbers, uh, for the building and land use department, uh, where we had almost, we had 2,247 permits that we issued. with a value of $1.747 million, with a construction value of $126,000, almost $500,000. So, there's a lot going on. And on the permit value, that is almost a 50 percent increase over what was projected in the budget. FY26 budget had 1.2 million projected for revenue from permits, and we took in 1.74. So I think I'm obviously very pleased with that, but it shows that there's still a great deal of interest in town and there's still, we probably have half a dozen serious proposals that we're either processing or looking at right now. Most of them residential, but very different types. and in many parts of the community. So I'd be happy to answer questions.

Go ahead, Brad.

Hi. I don't know if I missed it in the material. What is the status of the Wittenberry Mall?

Wittenberry Mall, there are sort of two statuses, one that I can't speak to and one that I can. The first status that I can't speak to is in litigation. The property owner has filed a suit against the town for a variety of reasons. And we are directed by the town attorney not to discuss that. The second is that it is clearly a cornerstone of any revitalization of the town center. And any plans, the town center plan, It shows extensive changes for that area of town and that property. How we get there is, you know, still there are a variety of approaches from the present owner doing it to private purchase to town purchase. But it will be part of the overall town center plan. And I, you know, it is our hope that we've applied as we indicated the last meeting for round nine of the CIF grant for 11.8 million. That'll be decided in September by the CIF committee. Hopefully we will have a positive answer this time. And two, hopefully we'll have a developer partner selected at that time. So then, then we can really begin to move on the town center.

um i have one quick question i think um when i was going through i don't know if this is um kind of active or in pre-development there is another um housing proposal for is it woodland avenue or woodland avenue i think it was yeah and it's been we've been in discussions with that for a long time they have they have yet to come back with their sort of final proposal okay yeah um but yeah there's it's about 150 units on there yeah

Land just north of the condominiums.

Nancy, you have a question?

Yeah, it's an impertinent one. I know the POCD is late. Does the clock start? It's like a five-year time frame, right, for re-updating it. Does it start when we file, or are we going to be like doing the next one a year later?

It is my understanding clock stops the 10 year to 10 year clock starts when we adopt this one. Okay. But I, I stand to be corrected. We're hopeful or we're, or we better get going on the next one.

Right.

Although many of us think that the 2012 was as good as it was a very good one. Yeah. Um, and has, you know, has stood the test of time and, um, a hindsight's always 100%, but it may have been better to update that than start from scratch. But that decision was not made by any of us in this room.

Right. Nick, did you want to comment?

I mean, additional comment on that about like the clock starting, so to speak, not unlike sustainable city, although the draft, you know, expires every ten years and a new one then must then be presented. updates can be made within that 10 year gap, which, you know, perhaps instead of having to find data from 10 years ago, it can be updated more consistently and submitted. So we're not quote unquote starting from 10 years scratch, so to speak. So there's a way to like, you know, continue to have consistency moving forward as well. Just throwing that out there.

Great.

okay anything else before we move on to the environmental planners updates report go ahead yep uh sure thank you uh truth be told I think most things in my report are kind of outlined in the schedule especially now that uh the other category I can talk about the nickel per nips program so I'm good to just go into old business Madam chair if that's all right unless you're thinking of anything I can't think of

nope let's go into old business okay um and most of these i think are fairly quick updates um although if it doesn't doesn't need to be quick if we've got something um more substantive to talk about um revising kind of the tree ordinance the landscape regulations update on that

sure so as you all recall the updates to our town's tree i'm calling them policies because they include revisions to both vegetation zoning regulations as well as our current tree ordinance i think i forget the exact name of the ordinance but for all intents and purposes it's the tree ordinance The updates to the zoning regulations have been shared with you all. They have also been shared with the TPZ. Emphasis on shared as in there was no public comment when they were given. It was merely the last meeting they were handed off, so to speak. I personally have not heard any comments from anybody here on CAC or people from the town or TPZ. So without, you know, I guess the next step on the regulations is they'll be heard by the TPZ at one of their upcoming meetings. I'm not sure which one, but it'll be on the docket at some point. The ordinance has been going through a lot of staff. Our staff here in the land use, we've given it a real good thorough look. I'm very happy with how it looks just across our T's and daughter I's. I want it, it's going to be reviewed by other staff that it might be impacted by just so when it comes before you all or town council, there's no like, oh, did you check with so-and-so. So that said, it was initially reviewed by the former director of DPW, Dan Carter. He has since retired. So now, just with that, it's now currently on the desk of Glenn Garrity, who was our interim director. It's also being reviewed by Bart Ritson. I forget his exact title, but it's something, I think it's head field operations manager. Although he's not the tree warden, he as field operations manager is very involved with the process that would involve some of these things. So just to kind of again, oh, and also a director of finance is taking a look at it because the ordinance does involve the call to create a tree account or tree fund where monies from the penalties of violations of the ordinance would go to and that money would then be used to remedy unlawful acts so that's why it's being looked at by finance as well uh i'm hoping i was giving i gave the documents off not you know a few days ago at this point i'm hoping to check in and hopefully i'll have something to you all very soon but again we're just crossing t's and dot and i's at this point that was more than i kind of rambled there but

Now that's good. And I just want to remind, um, the committee that, um, we did see kind of the last updated version revision of the kind of regulations, the policies. And, um, we were invited if we had, and we had some discussion, we were invited if we had any additional comments to let Nick know. So I just want to let people know, um, you know, there was an opportunity to do that. Um, But when we had a discussion, we thought, you know, I think we as a committee at that point thought they looked like a good improvement. So, yeah. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Sustainable CT.

It's me again. So we're still bronze. Jokes aside, again, basking in the glow of a recent certification. If you all read the messenger, we made the front page of the messenger. Pretty cool. Also, fun fact, at least at one point, we were the front page of Sustainable CT's website, was the Bloomfield delegation. So that's pretty cool. We're getting recognized. I think we're officially like the second picture. We've been demoted from first to second, but time goes on. um as mr director mentioned uh i am scheduled to speak to town council at their meeting next monday this coming monday to essentially say like here's a reminder of what sustainable ct is here's what we've done here's where we like to go uh and you know just kind of a updating them and be potentially getting some feedback from them as well um in addition A few meetings ago, I was asked if we could, for this next round of certification, have even more community input on future actions to accomplish. Because the first certification, we did a lot of seeing what we already are doing or had done, and a few, of course, new things. But this certification, now that we have a certification to hold on to, you know, how can we build a ways that the community is like particularly interested in? So without further ado, my staff has been working on a community survey to try and get an idea of what priority actions or subjects people would like to see worked on the most for this next certification cycle. AS YOU ALL MAY KNOW, ANY COMMUNITY SURVEY MUST BE APPROVED BY TOWN COUNCIL. SO THAT WILL BE DEPENDENT ON THE SCHEDULE OF IT BEING PRESENTED TO THEM. IT WILL NOT COME UP AT THE MEETING THIS MONDAY, JUST ON THE DOCKET. BUT IT IS COMPLETED AND WILL BE SENT OUT TO YOU ALL IN THE NEXT, I DON'T KNOW, DAY OR SO, FEW DAYS. In the meantime, even if we don't have that survey completed or sent out or the data collected, we still have a lot of direction, obviously, from you all. Anybody who comes here or just talks to us, we could, of course, use that to inform what we do. And, of course, we have feedback from the community via the CEC. I forget what the priority items. It's on the webpage. priority list I forget the word for it yeah there's that and also what is currently in our proposed pocd so we have input we're not just going blind here saying I hope people want to want more forest forestry work you know we know we have input from other things so that's where we're at okay any questions on sustainable CT

you leaning forward yeah did you i'm sorry because i must have blank do you you say the survey will come to us for comments yeah i thought it'd be up to us me is that what you meant i thought it'd be appropriate for you all to take a look at it because you're the cec um but yeah before it goes to council yep okay so um let's make sure we're paying attention to our email because i know it's easy to miss emails being guilty of that so that we can provide any feedback to nick thank you okay um you get a break mr environmental planner because yeah we'll see um so i'm going to at this point look to um nancy and claudia uh to give us an update on what they're looking at for extreme heat just said whoops

i just sent up today so i'm sorry it was late but i mean we missed i missed the first big heat wave um short i decided i wasn't going to write at length and people know the big picture so i just said you know here's what to do if it gets really hot and you live in bloomfield here are resources you know reach out these I think I even put some information about when things are open and so it's a short and I asked john caris to repeat it to put it into two successive. Issues of the messenger.

good um okay and i i can't remember if i shared that or not because i just got it right today yeah okay um you did get it yeah i know i did get it yeah and nancy do you want to add something please

JoAnne Hanrahan, yeah so that was one of the actions that we talked about the work group, which is Claudia myself and jess jessica white met on June 30. JoAnne Hanrahan, and. Janet Callahan- Again, I think i've mentioned this before, but we're going to focus in this year on just getting word out to people and yeah we've missed at least three heat waves so far, but. Janet Callahan- So anyway. Janet Callahan- we're trying to move as quickly as we can. Janet Callahan- and Among the initial things that we're going to do this year is, and actually hopefully this month, is trying to get on the Lunch and Learn schedule at the Senior Center. But I also talked to them about getting an article of some sort into the August Senior Center newsletter, the Silver Scoop. And maybe just flyers on an e-blast, which would also, we could duplicate flyers, which are like emergency, you know, signs that you're in distress and then what to do about it. We have some of that material already from our webinar last year that can go out in the weekly, what's happening in Bloomfield.

This week in Bloomfield, yeah.

This week in Bloomfield. Um, and also the flyers we thought we could see if social services would distribute them maybe at food bank days or however they do that just in, you know, actual paper flyers.

Yeah.

Um, I have, uh, I did try to contact the Corey Stringer Institute, which we talked about being a sort of a professional group. That's worried about things like, um, athletes, not things, people like athletes and outdoor workers and kids, et cetera. JoAnne Hanrahan, Who you know, making sure they know they have safety measures in place in the event of heat stroke or worse and and have not I did not hear back in the 20 promise 24 to 48 hours, so I have recontacted them and hopefully I will hear soon um. And ditto the West Hartford no not ditto as far as they didn't answer me, and we have also reached out to the West Hartford bloomfield health district to see what. If they already have some materials, because I think I have seen some things, and I think that maybe it's been distributed to West Hartford but, again, something that we can put out or they can put out through the this week in bloomfield you know so we're going to try to get some stuff that's easy to to assemble out in front of people. And that you know I think the emergency alert system is something we talked about at one point, to be sure, but that's a little bit longer project. Potentially because we have to gather that information like, how do we actually get that out to people and make sure it's similar to what Brenda was talking about for North Hartford, how do you make sure that everybody is connected in some way to. you know, an emergency alert and they know who to contact and they also are signed up to get information on kind of an automatic basis. So that's kind of where we stand. We may or may not meet next week, but I'm also thinking we maybe will meet with the health district next week sometime and see what they have to offer.

Questions for Claudia and Nancy from anybody or comments? Okay. Thank you for the update. solar in bloomfield status of current projects um i added that to the agenda because bob had sent an email just sort of asking about um he was floating a couple of ideas but he was also asking about municipal projects in bloomfield um and we did get an update on what crosser and on um Help me. 330 Park. Yeah. And Nick, do you want to just sort of state that for the record? Sure. Yep.

Thanks. So I checked in with Glenn Garrity, who is our interim director of Public Works. I'm going to roughly word for word read the email that he sent me in response to my inquiry that you essentially just summarized. So there is currently a power purchase agreement in place to also then install solar panels on the roof of Prosser. The plan is to install them in the fall of 2027. and currently the idea identified during the month of september on the job schedule in addition there are plans to install solar panels on the roof of 330 park avenue currently the design for that project is under review and that project would be a 200 kilowatt system those are the statuses for those two buildings questions

Brenda, go ahead.

Are there any details about the power purchase agreement?

Plenty. Any specifics?

Yeah, so numbers on the amount of savings to the town and electric bills and how much energy are we going to be sending back to the grid if that's a part of the agreement.

I think the latter is about the percent of power that is being sent to the grid or in the financial part there. The amount of savings, I'm not sure of. Regardless, I did ask Mr. Garrity if the power purchase agreement is public. So I'm happy to send that to either directly to you, Brenda, or to you, Madam Chair, if you're interested.

I would just forewarn you, it's a lengthy and very legal document.

I can imagine. I also asked because I know that there was some chatter on social media that was very skeptical when we announced that we were going to be receiving an award from Sustainable CT. And I wondered if we can promote the information, the progress that we're making and promote the information in a way that folks can digest it so that we minimize some of that skepticism about any town activities that seem to just rub people the wrong way, no matter what it is.

Being not on social media by choice, I'm not aware of what the comments are. I do think, regardless, it's important to do a better job of communicating the good work that the community is doing. I think Nick's presentation to council is good. I don't think people have a real understanding of what sustainability is and how broad the scope is and how much it encompasses. And I think something we need to do is figure out ways of highlighting you know spot putting the spotlight on particular things that we have done and are about to do um we got so thank you for bringing that up because you know i am i i'll say it i deliberately have my head in the sand when it comes to social media because i think i'll live longer that way but um yeah we we need to figure out how to kind of promote kind of maybe for those of us who are on social media but also use town resources um and whoever wants to share uh because we have a lot of good you know We have some good things to brag about and people think sustainability. I think they think environmental. I don't think they're thinking about, you know, the kind of work that the library is doing in terms of kind of being engaging the community and pulling people in. I mean, there's just a lot going on. It's positive. And unfortunately, not everybody wants positive, you know, but yeah, thank you. Thank you for that. I think that's a good reminder.

Yeah.

I think a good nudge.

Yeah. I mean, for the solar projects in particular, those are really great feel good stories. And if we can just say, you know, the town is going to save X amount of dollars annually on, on energy bills. And, and, Just just the basic information that the benefits of solar so that people can like you said digest it, it is technical.

yeah and that's a we we have a lot of good things to say about solar um nick for the simsbury sustainability fair um actually um because he's um he's he's facile at gis and anything else he needs to be facile at to do this literally pulled together maps of solar installations, you know, as of some point in time for Bloomfield, Simsbury, and Avon, and Bloomfield Rocks, something like 11%. Yeah.

Double digits, like low, yeah, double digits. Yes. Yeah, the highest of any of the three towns.

So we have this map, and one of the things we want to do, and we've talked, you know, Claudia and I have talked about this, is we want to do, we want to promote that, but that would be a really good element of a story, spotlight in terms of here's where we are, here are the things we're doing, and to your point, Brenda, if we can quantify the savings, we should do that.

Yeah.

Yep. Good. Thank you for that.

Yep. Thank you, Nick.

Don't send me screenshots. I don't need to see them.

Oh, I, I, trust me. I, I looked at it and just said, oh my gosh. And I was like, all right, let me, let me see what I can, maybe there's another opinion piece that we can write. And I don't know. Yeah, you're right. It's, it's, it's time consuming and it's a headache that people choose to just, you know, be in opposition of everything.

Yep. All right. Um, okay did you want to say anything before we move on are you good okay um artificial turf i have this on the agenda because it came up last night uh last month in terms of rockwell park and you know something going in front of i think tpz at some point um i'm just bringing it back um more to level set where we left things right and kind of where cec left off um was i attended a governance subcommittee meeting of the town council on july 7th of last year um basically to Mary Pelletier, Basically, represent kind of what cc's concerns and views were we had we had passed a resolution. Mary Pelletier, As a committee about. Mary Pelletier, You know no further artificial turf in terms of new or reinstallation um. the parks and rec committee had supported that and the rockwell park committee um knew about it and basically felt like they needed more information before they opined on it so that's where things were last year okay and that was what was presented at this july 7th meeting so I think there's more to come because you know Rockwell is coming in front of TPZ but I just wanted to remind everybody that you know we had done this resolution that's where things were left if anybody wants to see the discussion from last July I'm happy to send you an email with the link because both Dave Malesko and I spoke at that particular meeting. And I think there were directions more to, work with the school board and the superintendent in terms of what they were thinking as far as replacing the field at bloomfield high school which is kind of nearing the end of its life and uh you know that was kind of the action taken out of that particular meeting so that's all i have to say about it but i just wanted to um put it kind of back up here simply because it came up last month more to come any anything else no i

I have a question. When you say more to come, I'm sorry, what do we expect to happen?

I'm going to let Mr. Coleman answer that question.

Yeah. As you can appreciate, there are countervailing positions. One of the things I recollect was the I believe as it was to this committee was the, uh, superb presentation by the folks in Springfield on, on their decision to go with artificial turf, as opposed to, uh, to go with natural turf as opposed to artificial turf. And, um, and why they thought that was both environmentally and economically the way to go. Um, Director Malesko has, um, has a comprehensive report on the on the use of artificial turf, which I know he will share with everyone. Going forward, the first conversation will be related to the improvements at Rockwell Park, but the turf is in the second phase, not the first phase. So the work that's being done now is funded under the initial CIF grant for approximately $5 million. That does not include the installation of turf. So, A, there has to be a second phase, and B, there has to get it funded. And I suspect the other conversation, which I know has had been held preliminarily, and I'm not sure a final decision has been made, is the re-turfing of the football field and how that's going to be done. But ultimately, that's a decision for the Board of Education. Whereas Rockwell Park, the decision rests ultimately with the Town Council. So I think, you know, there's going to be, we staff are going to, land use staff are going to meet with Dave in the next couple of weeks to go over the reports he has. We are attempting not to be in the middle, quite frankly, on the land use side. And so it is undetermined yet whether the TPZ and the staff will take a position on the turf. or just approve the application as required in terms of compliance with the zoning regulations.

Questions? I have one. So in terms of TPZ review of the plan, would there be review of the phase one work or is it the entire Is it the entire thing which, you know, shows the artificial turf?

I think, Madam Chair, it's a site plan for the first phase, but I cannot give you 100% assurance of that, of whether or not there also will be a component of the application that deals with the entire project. I would assume that they would at least give us, would want to show the overall master plan for the ultimate completion of the park whether or not that will be a direct subject of the commission's review at this time i do not have that answer any other questions all right and just as i i expect that um Unless there's a change because we needed some additional information that that application will be received and initially reviewed by the Commission and it's August 27 meeting. So we should know before that Madam chair, the components of that application.

Great Thank you. uh let's see and so actually last item on here um we talked about this kind of extensively last month pesticide use in town um that i've i've left more um i need to go back and look at the minutes which i had reviewed um i'm trying to remember where we left that forgive me for not knowing but i don't remember anybody remember What does it say? I'm just trying to determine if there's something we should be kind of actively doing. I mean, we should always be actively doing something around all of these things, but is there anything immediate?

There are no specific town regulations for herbicides and pesticides, which means the town defaults to the state standards. Yeah. Dan Carter reported that the town spot sprays herbicides, sprays select areas such as fence lines. Uh, concerns raised included the need for training, education for vendors or staff, charger spraying, increasingly complex landscaping that requires specific maintenance, need for oversight and a maintenance plan and the public not knowing what products are being used. These are all things we said. Uh, and somebody wanted to include mosquito sprays.

Yeah, and it looks like the action item was it was determined that concerns would be collected from interested groups. So it seems like that would be the Pollinator Pathway Group, obviously BBC, us. I mean, what I'm actually what I'm taking away from this.

Impersonal construction of the action item.

say it again yeah i can't hear you yeah say it again nancy please um no i don't want to say it okay Yeah, I think a little bit of this comes down to, you know, Dan Carter retired. We have Glenn Gearty serving as the interim. I think it's more reconnecting with DPW and, you know, having a conversation and really making sure we understand kind of what the practices are, because dpw is consistent in their answer in terms of we've asked this question several times they do spot spraying i know they are using licensed contractors um to do the things they need to do you know because licensing by deep is required you know depending on what they're doing um but again i think it's just understanding what the current practices are and i think the point the point that was made in terms of complexity of landscape um that concern's been raised by bbc in terms of a lot of the things being installed um that's been installed that have been installed in terms of gardens and pollinator and native plantings. They're more complex and maybe more sensitive kinds of landscapes. So you're trying to attract pollinators. You don't want to be spraying it with neonicotinoids. So it's that kind of thing. But I think again, DPW needs to be in the mix and other groups. It's just an aware, you know,

I think that's one of the reasons DPW asked in their budget for horticulturists because as the chair indicated, particularly with the new buildings, we're getting some fancy landscaping proposed, sophisticated landscaping that requires sophisticated maintenance. It's being installed and the skill set simply doesn't exist and the money doesn't exist to properly care for those And so they wind up basically not being maintained. The land gets converted to just very simple use for maintenance, be it grass or impervious service of some type. So there's a variety of issues here. I think one, Sharon Mann presented this. There's the indiscriminate use of pesticides as opposed to direct use where it will not interfere with pollination. the fact that we're getting sophisticated designs that we're not prepared to maintain, and the fact that in all practicality, the skillset that exists at Public Works, for no fault of anybody, and that's not a criticism, simply doesn't exist. It takes a very high skillset to maintain. And I know that in my own house. When I purchased my property It had some very sophisticated gardens. Some of them got away from me because I was not as knowledgeable as I am now. And I can imagine the situation with town buildings. I think, you know, there's a multi-pronged effort that needs to be made. And I suspect it, you know, it'll remain on your agenda for some time in terms of

information and then potentially action yep Nancy a couple years I think I mentioned this at the last meeting uh that a couple years ago we did get some information from I think from Dan Carter himself but from the department about some of the things that they knew were being used and It's, you know, for lay people, it's kind of complicated research to take that name. You can find the I guess their FDA or whatever sheets on on the Internet that talk about what used to be. I don't know. Hopefully they're still there. I haven't been wiped out about each chemical and, you know, hazards and precautions and stuff. But that's a lot of work, you know, that we probably don't want to do either. So we did talk about herrington landscaping who might be able to give us some shortcuts on the you know like again we don't need to be perfect about everything but are there certain large categories of things we want to be sure aren't being used that they may know are being used by i'll just say the run-of-the-mill landscaping company and another resource that we would have in town is laurie brown who's the executive director of connecticut climate what is it oh no

The Connecticut legal conservation. Yeah.

Thank you. And because the reason I'm saying her, not that she knows everything, but, you know, she's seen lots of legislation come and go. And so she may have names in mind of certain chemicals that have come up to be regulated, whether or not they get regulated. that um you know and concerns environmental concerns about different things including spraying and use of you know pesticides um and rodenticides you know there's a bunch of things so we may be able to call on people who already know some stuff that would narrow down our focus and you can go after like the big five instead of the big 25 or something I don't know. Just a suggestion if we want.

Those are good suggestions. Harrington landscaping is something I think we talked about before and just trying to, again, get somebody in with more expertise to kind of point us maybe in a more efficient path. That might be a good idea. Okay. Let's capture that and do something with it. um okay we are going to move into new business um i want to give brad huskinson some time to talk about stop the stuff plastics so basically new business and also we'll get into the story of plastic screening there's a lot there so go ahead

OK, thank you, Madam Chair. So hello, everyone. First, I wanted to say thank you for I didn't attend last month's meeting, but you endorsed Plastic Free July. And that's now at the CEC web page. And that's a daily calendar that gives you hints about how to remove plastic from your daily life. So that's the annual program. and so we can participate each year. So thank you. Story of Plastic. So that is our film screening on September 15th at Prosser. We have a wonderful speaker, Catherine Owens, who is a National Geographic Explorer and Fulbright Nehru Fellow. She is Professor and Chair of the Department of Politics, Economics and International Studies at the University of Hartford. And thanks to Paula, because you pointed me in the right direction of of Catherine, who is a former Bloomfield resident and very happy to come back. And so the film is 90 minutes. It's so that's six to 730. Afterwards, there's going to be a presentation about how participants can be involved with grassroots efforts to pass laws locally and at the state level to limit single use plastics. It's not going to be about can I recycle my yogurt containers or should I use silicone cookware? That's not what it's about. Right. I'll I'll set up a process with the library for fielding those types of questions. But this is going to be a really impactful event. I have flyers and I have a wonderful marketing director right here, Claudia. and she is gonna get the word out. And so is Sarah Ray, who is top drawer. That woman is on top of her game. Yes, and she is amazing. So, and I have probably about 75 flyers right here that you can take and you can distribute in your circle of friends and family. So let's just get the word out. Let's pack that room and make it an event that we'll remember, okay? questions on that anything okay yes are they going to film it so that do you know i don't know that um one one modification uh i miss i misunderstood this in the spring when i first started working with sarah ray i thought this was going to be a hybrid event like our town council or uh the town committee it's not that way uh participants have to be in person only um Yes. And that's the answer. So she, the way it's delivered to me by Sarah is that it's limited that if we had a presenter, for example, who was remote, she has the ability to zoom that person in. But Catherine Owens has already said that since she's going to be at UHA, she'll just drive up right up the road and she'll be here in person. So it's going to be in person only. that's a great question uh did you say 75 i thought it was 75. but that was i saw that first in march and so um that would be my guess knowing the community having been in the community room yeah the event is already at the processor calendar so you can register um okay And if you have ideas for marketing this event, please let me know. Social media is not my long suit. So it is for Claudia though, but if you want to help us, we have, right? The team is welcome. Yes.

Nick. Yeah. Two questions. Although I forgot the first one, but if you haven't already reached out to our operations and communications departments across the hall, did you already do that? No, I didn't. Okay. You don't have to, but they're a resource that's there for you all. So who is there?

I'm sorry, India, India, but the director, but, but you, oh yeah, of course you talk to Lynn as well. Yeah. Oh, Lynn. Yeah. Okay. That is her department. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah.

So Lynn, I'll email you later. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. I had a second question. Do folks have to register to go or can you like show up same day?

No, you should register. Okay. Right. Only because if it's sold out, right. You're not going to be let in.

Yeah, and I would just say, I think if you register and then you're not, you know, your plans fall through or something and you can't go, I think you can let them know and they will let people in.

And if you're not going to be in town, this film was released seven years ago, and it's available on Canopy streaming service from the library. And so you can see it. And so if you can't be there but want to see the film, which is pretty informative, you can see it. It's available now.

And I will make one comment. Brad sort of credited me with finding her. He did all the work. I found her literally by Googling single-use plastic. I Googled something and her name popped up. And she has an amazing... like resume. She, she really does. And it's like, then I looked like, where is she? University of Hartford. And I'm like, you know, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's, and I mean, she really has, um, quite the pedigree. I guess I'll say that. Pardon me.

No, she's the professor and chair of Department of Politics, Economics and International Studies. And she's been there for 18 years. If you're interested in her auto signature, when we were communicating through email, she's got links to podcasts where she's been interviewed by do you know Alec Baldwin and then here's the thing she was interviewed by him if you ever went to BDL and there was a giant plastic sperm whale on the wall if you remember that 60 that's her creation she she's an artist and she sews plastic film on canvas and it's 60 feet long it's down now but it was up for several years but now she I just talked to her she's working in an 80 foot uh long

creation and she has neighborhood sewing parties where they hand stitch this plastic on the canvas she's really multi-talented it just seems like a great speaker for a program co-sponsored by a primary sponsor being the public library and then co-sponsored by by cec so very exciting i think this will be great and brad is right we need to market it yes so yes

right away or you may not get in. Yep.

Well said. Okay. That is exactly right. Okay. Moving on. So very briefly, Bloomfield Public School cafeterias use disposable plastic utensils in all seven schools. I found a nonprofit that will fully subsidize the conversion from plastic to stainless steel. I also found out that there's funding available every fall from the state for the purchase of commercial dishwashers. And I talked briefly to the food services manager, Nick Karambelas, who is open to maybe piloting one school to convert from plastic to stainless steel, which likely would be a cost savings. So stay tuned for that. Skip the stuff law. Okay, so skip the stuff law. For those of you that aren't familiar with that, that's a law that requires food service businesses to provide single-use plastic items like cutlery, straws, and condiment packets to customers on request only. And other towns in Connecticut have already passed similar laws, Norwalk, Westport, Groton, Hamden. And my thought, the plastic bag ban passed in Connecticut in 2021 because enough towns had already passed bag restrictions that the state easily passed a statewide ban. And why couldn't we do the same thing for single-use plastics? Last night I was at the subcommittee, the Public Health and Safety Subcommittee, and I talked for three minutes about this and the feedback seemed positive. Many people weren't aware of what microplastics do and that that handful of soy sauce or duck sauce packets that you continually get and don't need really are poisoning you and the environment. so i'd like to start working on uh skip the stuff law for bloomfield and we have model bills from all four of these towns some are very comprehensive that also talk about styrofoam but i thought that we could get this on the books as soon as possible to help our state lawmakers at the next session because the more towns that have these on the books it gives them more muscle to push back against special interest groups like the american chemistry council so that's what a skip the stuff law is and i talked to someone in norwalk they've had this law in the books for six years and he gave me some feedback about what it is about penalties about violations about who it applies to so we can talk about that moving forward i know we're looking at time but that's the overview of the skip the stuff law yeah and that that's it unless unless you have questions comments

no i just it just occurred to me that laura palandre was working with one of the schools at one point i don't know which one to do to try to get them to compost food waste and whether that's a good school to try to do this other pilot with i don't know but i also don't know if laura's still doing it because it was becoming different i don't think she is and i think you've talked with laura

I did talk to her. Thank you for that, Nancy. She's no longer doing it. Like anything, it's not simple. We're going to have to really connect to get in there and sell it. Thank you. She was a big help.

Let's move on. I do want to try to get Lynn out of here a couple minutes before 6. Lynn, can you share the budget? um which is a relatively simple budget um so i circulated this and to give you some comparatives i showed you our fiscal year 25 actual expenditures um we totaled three thousand twenty four dollars we were actually twenty four dollars over budget because our budget that year uh allocated amount was three thousand dollars um our fiscal year 26 budget was 3 000 our actuals were 2 888 dollars um that's this past year um that's in part because claudia did not reimburse some expenses for for reimburse some expenses um so we would have spent it all um And I do want to just let folks know, just make a couple comments because I'm looking for kind of a direction kind of on what, you know, we can tweak the numbers a little bit. but our shred day we are you know we've been doing two shred days a year and um this is something that is very popular in town um we've changed it so that we've got one shred truck um i think a really beneficial angle of this is we have the small electronics recycling and we've been collecting a lot of material which you know to my view isn't getting dumped you know it's getting kind of you know put where it should be put so that's a win um the cost of that's been going up um and you can kind of see we budgeted uh 1600 for fiscal year 26 this this past year we came in a little higher because the um spring event was 88 it's going up about a hundred dollars every year okay um so i'm just saying two shred days a year no for each shred day you know i've i've kind of it went up 86 this budget covers two shred days this budget covers two shred days correct okay so i've got 800 and 1850 that's maybe a little conservative we could come in under but um you know i just want to be realistic because we had a jump and lots of apologies from the vendor because um fuel prices i mean you know i wasn't surprised um the photo contest which the town is very um supportive of it's it's popular um staff like it residents like it um cc has paid for that in the paid for part of it in the past um What's different this year is I have $270 budgeted for matting and mounting the winning prints because we had a volunteer, Mr. David Royce, who did it for us for five years um he did an amazing job he provided all of the materials his time and um i'll just say it i said david i'm going to ask you one last time and i won't ask you again and he said thank you um because it was getting it was getting more expensive for him the materials um and that it was pro bono so that was a very nice thing for him to do so i think that's a reasonable estimate we're going to make some changes to um know standardizing things to kind of keep costs down in terms of the matted mounted photos um but that's probably reasonable we still would like to do a reception i've got 400 budgeted that um we have had help in the past from senior services in terms of partially funding the reception and i don't know that that's something we can count on anymore so we probably would do some kind of little reception in december but we'll probably scale it back in terms of the refreshments Claudia volunteered to bake you. So the $400 is just kind of a... I wanted to trim back what we spent last year, which was $500, what we budgeted. And I did want to have some money in the miscellaneous category because... you know we're getting a rocking speaker for this you know the story of plastic it'd be nice to give her you know a token stipend i think um you know and to the degree we bring another speaker in we want to print flyers i think it'd be nice to have some money available so this was kind of in my head to nancy's point i put it on paper um so i guess i'm looking for feedback um tweaks any suggestions well it's a it's a budget actuals will end up looking different it's a budget we don't have to be everyone okay with that using it as a guideline

yeah the answer you asked the question last month so go ahead no i think the budget's fine but um if we're going to tackle something like climate change and resilience and all that kind of stuff from a broader perspective from the town the funds are totally inadequate however i think and i'm not blaming you or you know, or expecting more from the town, but I just want to remind us that we can't, we are eligible to apply for a grant from the, um, it's now greater Hartford gives it was the public, you know, public foundation, whatever. Um, so we get money every year for, I think we call it Bloomfield greater together or just feel community funds. I mean, there are different names that float around. So, but as a town entity, we're eligible.

to apply for those funds if we have some big campaign or project or something so i just want to put that on the table yeah and i want to make one comment about that cc's actually done that before when we first kicked off the trees for bloomfield initiative claudia suggested that and we got like a three thousand dollar grant um we actually supported a girl scout troop who wanted to plant trees getting a grant and the question came up I'm going to say what I find challenging about that particular grant program is I feel like when I, you know, I feel like it would be helpful to have more of a expectation of when those grant periods are going to be open and maybe I'm just missing it because you want to have something specific that you can budget for. But yeah, I mean, that is definitely something we should avail ourselves of. my point is basically we shouldn't say oh we don't have the money for something you know we don't from the town actually um with your permission i want to pivot to the other nips program because i think that's appropriate when we're talking money yeah go ahead yep

Okay, I guess I'll keep it pretty brief here. I looked into the Connecticut NPS program. This was a subject that was brought up several CEC meetings ago. I believe it was by Laura Palandra, actually. She just kind of inquired as to what the town status was with it, and I made my mission a check, and now I'm reporting to you all. Anyway, for those who aren't aware, Is anybody here who doesn't know what the program is? Should I just? Okay, then it warrants me explaining. So there's per the Connecticut Bottle Bill. This is Connecticut legislation. It's not a grant. The Bottle Bill states that in Connecticut, because nips, which are those like small alcohol bottles, like, you know, they're like tiny little, they're littered along highways, sidewalks. Unfortunately, they're really hard to recycle. From what I understand, just the way they're built and also they're really easy to litter and people tossing out windows and what have you anyway to combat the impacts of this litter uh this law states that customers pay a five cent environmental fee on every nip that is sold and for every nip that is sold in each town in Connecticut that money that is taxed in that town then goes to that town so for every nip sold in Bloomfield money those five cents per nip go to Bloomfield every five cents per nip sold in New Haven go to New Haven Etc um the funds are distributed twice a year to each town I think it's in April and October um and the catch but the good catch in my opinion is that by law cities and towns I'm quoting the law must use these funds for quote environmental measures aimed at reducing solid waste or reducing the impact of litter it's almost like a settlement theory if you will like you know this is a little problem we're going to tax it and therefore the solution the money will be used to try and absolve litter problems Anyway, yeah. So in the past, our town did use this money for... People might recall there was an anti-litter campaign in town. This was before my time, so I kind of learned secondhand. I think the money was mainly used for things like... uh making signs and outreach that kind of stuff um i think it was from what i heard successful uh i think the campaign is no longer going on because it was that of the previous mayor so that's just why it stopped that said we keep getting money so even if we don't do stuff with it we keep collecting money from what i understand the town got paid this is all public it's on the internet around twelve thousand eight hundred bucks in october of 2025. I don't know how much we got paid in April, but I think we did get paid this April. So if you want to do some rough math, if you want to roughly times 12,000 by two, that's $24,000 maybe for not official, but maybe something like that. anyway i'm giving a lot of context here yeah but that's great that's 24 000 bucks that we are allowed to use for anything in bloomfield involving environmental measures aimed at reducing litter or solid waste um i spoke with the town manager director john coleman here and our finance director about if they had any thoughts or if you know they thought it'd be a good idea to turn it to the people of bloomfield here uh so i have a few ideas but i think over these next few weeks maybe if other folks had some ideas about ways to use this money we should look into them maybe have them you know become official initiatives of the town i can share some ideas i have now i can send them via email if that's easier for time but just want to keep folks informed

yeah and and let's actually um nick was just brought this up earlier today um so i think if you want to share um with the committee kind of some of your suggestions not not now but through email um because i want to release lynn for her next meeting um but i think the point is is this is a source of money to be using for you know waste reduction litter reduction all of that CERTAINLY APPLICABLE TO SOME OF THE PROJECTS WE'RE TALKING ABOUT. THAT BEING SAID, ONCE PEOPLE REALIZE THERE'S FUNDS TO BE HAD, OTHER IDEAS MAY POP UP, WHICH IS FINE. SO DON'T SPEND IT ALL IS WHAT I'M JUST SORT OF ADVISING FOLKS. BUT THERE IS ANOTHER SOURCE OF FUNDING THAT POTENTIALLY COULD BE DONE, PARTICULARLY AROUND WASTE REDUCTION INITIATIVES, I THINK.

Yeah, go ahead.

If it wasn't clear, the money doesn't go away. So like if we don't use it this year, it's there next year. And if the law stays in place, we'll get more. So there's no rush. So other than, you know, being responsible members of the community and doing something with it, but yeah, yeah.

Okay, so we need to end. So I'm going to, the one thing I wanted to bring up, we traditionally cancel our August meeting. So is that something people want to do? Um, and I traditionally host a potluck for CC members and friends, other people, um, generally kind of at the very end of August, um, kind of once people summer plans or, you know, vacation vacations are over, how are people feeling? okay um i mean one thing i could do is if if people are comfortable with that that will be what i plan to do but maybe i will hold it on the calendar for a little bit before can't before canceling it officially um just in the event there's something that we potentially need to handle but if everyone's okay that's the plan is to cancel that good go ahead yeah yes okay nancy

Yeah, as long as the, what I have presented to the extent that we accomplish what is in the extreme heat work group plan, we can, we don't need committee approval.

I don't think we need, I mean, I think this isn't consistent with everything you've been talking about. So I think this is good. Everyone good?

Yeah.

Okay. And I will send some, I'll send some suggested dates out in terms of having our annual food fest together okay can i have a motion to adjourn yeah i think i've got everything that's critical motion to adjourn motion brenda okay and second okay so we'll say uh brenda and bob for second and claudia for the motion thank you we're adjourned