Sustainability Committee - Regular Meeting

joining us um this is the june 25th meeting at the sustainability committee um we're sort of a little off schedule um for some summer and other scheduling reasons but um we are going to get back on track so uh we're gonna start today with the roll call we're gonna skip approval of minutes just because this meeting was only two weeks after our last meeting um and it just seemed like a bit of a tight turnaround so we'll approve last minutes and these minutes at the next meeting. So if some of you are wondering why that wasn't on our agenda tonight, we will get to it next time. Then we are going to turn to our review of the V1 CAP, which we received from NMCOG. We're going to talk a little bit about any edits and comments for that. discuss how we want to present that to the select board. And then we've got time for some any other business member updates, etc. So we'll try and I'll try my best to keep us kind of on track tonight so that we can get through this 60 something plus page document. All right. So roll call. Let's get started.

Yes, there is Sarah Rombacher, outgoing chair. Charlotte Dolenz, co-chair, Libby Donegan, Margaret Gibbs, myself, John Hagberg, Emily Squires, and Don McIver.

Great. Thank you. And like I said, I think we're expecting Jenny and or Kelly to join us, but I'll keep an eye on the attendees here. All right, so I forwarded everybody the version, what I'm calling version one, because this is the sort of the product that NMCOG has delivered to us. It always has been and is maybe even more so a quite lengthy document. So thanks to everybody for taking whatever time you could carve out to review it. I suggest that what we do to make most use of our time is tonight is focus our discussion on comments that are more substantive like that might change the meaning or the sense of the climate action plan itself um and then what I can do afterwards is forward to Jenny and Kelly um what I might call the more sort of copy edit types of edits um I think several of us noted, for instance, that the figures in the document were incorrectly labeled, for example, and there was a few typos and things like that, which are not. We could perhaps agree they're sort of on the consent agenda, not very controversial and just really need to kind of go through them. I don't I'm very open if people prefer to do this otherwise, but I don't think we need to go through all of those together. So with that in mind, I don't know if anybody has any alternative suggestions. Otherwise, I think we can open it up now to maybe sharing what your priority comments are for this version of the climate action. Anybody like to go first? Yeah, Libby, go ahead.

It's mostly just a question and maybe this was something that was discussed before I was part of this committee, but it's referencing pages 40 and 42 of the plan regarding waste. If you guys want to jump to it, if you're looking at it. So pages 40 and 42. So one is advanced food waste diversion and the other is expanding composting programs. Municipal operations were listed under both outcomes for 2050, but I was just wondering why the Center on Shattuck Street or Elder and Human Services weren't listed as champions on those, since they do deal with food with the kitchen there and like Meals on Wheels.

So you, sorry, you're referring to W,

It's I think one and I'm going to screen share as well because I think that that is probably helpful so we can just make sure we're looking at the same thing here. Yeah. So one is advanced food waste diversion and the other is expanding composting programs. They both list like action plans or outcomes with municipal buildings. But I noticed that wasn't on there. So I was just wondering if it's covered somewhere else or just sort of implied somewhere else or what's the thing with that?

Sarah, did you want to comment on that?

Yeah, I guess in the interest of not just putting everybody on everything, I think DPW probably covers that because I believe that they handled the waste stream from those buildings. Okay.

Yeah, it seems like it's covered then. Thank you.

Great. Thank you very much. And maybe this is something also as we revisit the plan on an annual or whatever cadence we decide, we may ultimately decide to add different champions as we go. So let's make sure we keep those comments front of mind. All right, anybody else like to share anything in the more sort of substantial category like that?

Sure, I'll venture forth on the two emails I sent out, the two files I sent out. So the first one, which I think is rather important, is about having electrobus transportation, school bus transportation, at least as a goal. And it wasn't really covered because it wasn't part of the town fleet. It's a service that's provided. So I know we've looked into it. Karen Morrison looked into it to see what changes could be made now. And it's hard making changes, but I think we should have it there as a goal. I know Libby also has spent some energy trying to resolve the issue. So I guess maybe why it proposes an item to add or something equivalent to it. Any comments from other folks?

And Don, maybe just to see what's, just to share what's on screen here. I just, for the sake of kind of ease of us discussing this, I inserted something in to the draft support transition of the school district's contracted bus fleet to electric school buses. I think hopefully that might capture what you were getting at. And then including in the barriers section here, vendor willingness, contract terms, et cetera. So that was purely just based on what you'd sent over email. But yeah, just to kind of clarify what I'm screen sharing here is just my interpretation of what that change might look like in the plan under T7.

And that sounds fine to me.

Libby, did you want to comment on that?

Yeah, I'm not. I'm a little bit worried about the zero to five year timeline only because I noticed that the federal funding for electrification of buses terminated when the Trump administration took over. They closed out the program that was providing federal funding for electrification of school buses. And I know that even at the state level, it seemed like some of the funding that they were depending on was coming from this federal pool of money. So I'm just concerned about how realistic it is to put this as a goal for zero to five years, given that I don't think it's going to happen with the current administration.

Sure, sure. My take is make it aspirational. And if there isn't funding to do it, so be it. But pushing it up to near term just makes it aware. And Right. It might be not totally realistic, but if funding were made available, that would be of interest. And my main concern is that when the contract goes out, that the RFP goes out, that a preference be stated for having electric school bus transportation so they get the message. And having heard from Karen Morrison, she said it's almost impossible to replace D with someone else, but who knows? But I think it is important to have that as a message in the contract that goes out rather than just saying, okay, well, there's no funding for it.

So maybe with that in mind, if the actual item is support transition, then we will be supporting that transition within the zero to five timeline. I agree. I think if we had set that as a target that within five years, the entire fleet will be electric. Maybe that might raise some flags, but I think within the next five years, it's reasonable that we or whoever the champions are could take actions in support of that end goal.

One of the things that could be done immediately, though, is when the contract goes out, and maybe for multi-years or just one year, that at least is stated there's a preference for electric buses. And so, yeah, we do our part. We advocate for it. If you see alternatives out there, we ask them to respond.

Yep. I know that the bus companies have worked with the schools on memorandums of understanding as well in the past. So maybe that's something that we could get them to do within five years, too.

And then can I suggest that, you know, when we in our next meeting, when we when we actually talk about, OK, which which of these actions do we each individually sort of want to take on as members of the committee? And we kind of pick our pick our choices. But then these are the types of things that we could follow up on. Right. We could say, OK, well, in the next six months, I want to make sure that this happens. XYZ happens or I'm going to try to advocate for ABC or whatever. So we can kind of divvy that out. Thank you. Okay.

Sorry. I'm sorry. Go ahead, Margaret.

I think Margaret just put herself on mute, so I think we're good.

Oh, okay. So the other file I sent had a series of things, and they're quick. My main concern is just make it obvious. more than anything else. And yeah, Jenny does a good job what she does. But maybe just run through it and see if there's any concerns. Number two, our renewable energy feasibility and new development. I'm saying planning department should be listed as a co-champion since it involves a bylaw that the planning board has to sell and promote and that they enact. So they were left off all that. So, okay, that was that concern. Next concern. I don't know if you want to discuss or just move on.

Well, I think that most of the... trying to find the ones here now, Dom, but I noticed that a number of your comments, I think what I would call maybe some copy editing comments. So I think those ones I'm going to say are essentially non-controversial. We'll just send them to NMCOG in order for them to rectify them, like things like spelling errors or page numbering issues or inconsistencies in terminology. anything that is like a numbering the figures. I think several people made a comment that like commercial and industry versus commercial and manufacturing industry, like all of those ones I can aggregate and just send those along. So if there are any other comments that you think require like discussion and a decision, then, then bring those ones forward as a priority.

And all the things you mentioned section two, I just, bring that to awareness and let Jenny deal with it as she sees best. They're glaring things that I know she would want to fix. So the things I was really looking at are the mitigation actions. You mentioned about the school buses being contracted. Just mentioned about playing boards. There's only two other things. And B7, resident education support. I suggest that the electric department be listed as a co-champion. We're the only people listed there as champion. And this is sort of fundamental what they do. so anyway i don't know if there's concern about that and the final comment was in a2 build municipal capital for sustainability the concom has a role there and they should at least be listed under support so that that completes the list are there any reactions so just to clarify that um

Just so everybody can be here, that was a suggestion to add here, planning board under B1, renewable energy feasibility as a sort of supporting function. I think it was B7 was the other one, which I think actually LELWD was already there. And then I think it was A2 was the last one. So just for clarity here. Yes.

These are more or less awareness.

There's more or less awareness. Here we go. So I guess, yeah, and then this one was build municipal capacity for sustainability. And the suggestion was in addition to sustainability in the support function, we had Conservation Commission. So Emily and then Libby, I can see you've got your hands up.

Thank you, Don. That was very helpful. I'm just going to go through just a very few of the items I sent in, because most of them were grammar errors and typos and things like that. So there was a whole lot of those that I think are non-controversial. But ones that might be, I think we should talk about revision control section and you know because when you have revision control you know that it needs to be updated you know exactly which one you're using um so it's just something that we can do now it might be difficult if this if the town does not have revision control software and procedures in place does anyone know whether um there's revision control uh within our town

We can maybe find that out, Emily. I think just maybe just from being on the Charter Committee, I can say that there's an option for us to host documents within our sustainability page on the town website. So we at least if nothing else, I believe that would be an option to have, for instance, you know, the one version and then to post. like the 2027 update, the 2028 update, et cetera. I don't know about the actual formal revision control, no.

Yeah, we might want to consider putting the date, obviously the date, the author or anyone who's modified it, because on the subsequent ones, it's going to not be the same author. Approvals, if we have an approval process, which is probably the sustainability, I'm sorry, the select board, and then a revision number. In any case, just something to consider. The next page we're talking about is on page 11.

Page 11, okay.

I concentrated on more of the verbiage in the front because we've gone over the rest quite a bit. So on page 11...

Sorry, I'm probably making everybody very dizzy here. Okay.

Oh, there we go. Okay. Let's see. It's the one that starts to further strengthen awareness and participation. Oh, sorry. Okay. It should be in page. Oh, there it is. Okay. Sorry. It was off. Somehow it's off.

I think the word in the PDF is slightly formatted slightly differently, which actually makes the

comment alignment hard but yeah okay okay then I should have specified I used the PDF so all of these are going to be PDF numbers okay no problem okay so in this one particular one um I asked uh whether the town administrator signed up with us because it comes in it sounds like though um is there like using wishy-washy terminology um it says May I develop an annual communication education campaign coordinated through existing town, you know, OWD and school district communications channels. This campaign could include and it lists a couple of things. So I'm not quite sure what the objective of this statement is. It's seems to not really be saying much because it doesn't say you're going to do it. And it's committing something to to the town.

Anybody have any inputs on that?

I'd just say the town, like from a legal and compliance standpoint and the work that I did, like we use that term may and could as like a nudge, but not a will and must. And I think, Emily, you're right, that we can't commit the town to doing anything, but we can... go back to it and say, hey, is this the time we want to do this campaign? We said we may do this. Is now the time to do it? I'm personally comfortable with the language, but understand the concern.

Yeah. Has this been talked about with Jim at all?

Not to my knowledge, but I think this is the kind of thing that we could consider adding to the docket for what we want to discuss. So how do we action these issues? nudges these suggestions um i think i had a similar comment um at some point where it was saying that we may i can't remember it was um make a presentation at town meeting right and i think that that was like to me it was like i don't think that's kind of something that committees tend to do right unless you've got something on the warrant um So I think, for instance, that was one of my comments was like, I think we probably want to take that part out because it just doesn't really fit with Littleton. But maybe when we pause our commentary on the document and move over to like, what do we want to talk to the select board about when we present this V1? I think that might be a good point, Emily, to raise like. you know, we want to work together with the select board, with the town administrator to say, how do you want us to continue to communicate and engage with the other key stakeholders? Does that kind of sound right?

That's good to me.

Okay. I don't know if anyone else has any comments about that particular topic, Sarah.

Yeah. So I was just reading that as, you know, it says the town, but that's because we're part of the town. And like, that's probably this committee doing some looking at, okay, this year, what are we going to try to prioritize? And how do we publicize that? And works in with all the like education type things. And it's, you know, I see that as, you know, getting on the podcast and getting in the newsletter and, you know, any other things like that.

So can we change the wording to the Sustainability Committee?

I mean, I guess to what end? I mean, we're part of the town, so.

Well, no, when you say the town, you're making a very it's a wishy washy. What does that mean? You're not committing. It's almost what's the point of putting it down? um except to capture that this is good is if if the sustainability committee main charter is to be an educational and an input to the select board this sounds like it's a sustainability um I guess my point is we're part of the town and that way if we say the town it's it's not limited to

sustainability but it's working together it's whoever it makes sense to at the moment yeah i could see elder and human services like taking some ownership over this if they wanted to present on the program that launched in the spring about students offering you know raking for older adults and doing manual labor for older adults in town like that would still be something that's related to our climate action plan and goals here maybe but they don't necessarily need to present on the entire climate action plan but maybe they're taking ownership over part of something that's in our plan. I guess I kind of read it that way too, that maybe it's not presenting on the entire document, but maybe something that they've taken ownership over and are creating awareness about.

Maybe then you can say the sustainability committee will coordinate with the department. In any case, it just seems like making it too broad All that is, you know, that may or could, you know, it's a case. That's my input on that one. And are we ready to go to the next one?

Yeah, I'm just wondering if you could say something here, like,

with support from the community with the support from the sustainability committee or something I don't know if we need to do that or not but one could imagine putting like a little tagline there I can tell you I don't consider myself the town I'm on the committee sustainability committee I do not consider the sustainability community to be the town the town is the town administrator and the departments on and who are employed um you know I'm not the town the COA is not the town um committees and um groups that are part of the town but if you say the town I would not come in and say that I'm the town

Okay, maybe in the interest of moving on to the other comments, we'll put a pin in this one, but I have added a comment here, Emily, that notes that for future discussion or for clarification. Yeah.

Yeah, let's go to page 15. There's only a few of these. Okay. Oh, 15 books.

Where did I go? Sorry. Making everyone dizzy again. Okay.

Sorry, I'm on the Word documents. It may be different. Okay, so it's... It's the one that starts, what does the, oh, it talks about COVID-19.

Yeah, there are several factors that contribute to, including an increased, and then, oh yeah, this is the line I think you were referring to, right? Why the town is utilizing its building more following the COVID-19.

Okay, so my consummation with that is, what does the COVID-19 pandemic have to do with the town increasing the utilization of the town hall? Then I go on to say, whole departments left the town hall in the last two to three years, park and rec and the COA. What is driving the high EUI? And frankly, what does the pandemic have to do with increasing the energy usage per square feet? It just doesn't make sense. When I read it, it's like, I have to go into more detail or not blame it on a pandemic that was, you know,

I agree with you there, Emily. And I think I had in my head to put the this just needs wordsmithing. I think I think it just doesn't like you said, it doesn't make a lot of sense. I think maybe the intention was to say that, you know, when people weren't in the office in person, energy uses maybe went down and then they came back. But that I agree that there needs to be a little bit of clarification there, because as it's currently worded, it doesn't really.

In my public health classes, it's sort of seen as this big like before and after this big marker at public health. So it's possible that like they just see this lens of the before and after the way a lot of people in public health happen since COVID because a lot of disparities came out in COVID-19 and public health. there's just, like, a before and after, just kind of, like, when you have a baby or something, like, there's your life before and your life after. Maybe they're just kind of, like, using that as sort of a milestone or something. But, yeah, like, it could be words of method. I agree with you, Charlotte.

Okay.

Noted. We'll add that one to the mix.

I don't think it's appropriate to use a code. Maybe in a public health perspective, if you want, you can say... It says, while the town is utilizing its buildings more following the COVID-19 pandemic, it says following it.

I agree. I mean, I don't think it makes sense. So I'm going to ask them to reword that.

I am very concerned about what's driving the EUI. This is true. What's going on when you're taking like a third or something of the building and relocate it to other areas? Why is the town hall taking so much energy, except if they're considering they see the center on Shattuck in combination with the park and rec new site as part of the Tom Hall, in which cases the square feet have significantly increased. But EUI is based off of square feet. So I mean, I read it, it's like there's so many questions that generate

Yeah. And so that one, Emily, I wonder if part of that is because if it comes from the energy, the greenhouse gas emissions assessment, that that would have been a 2022 number that was pulled in line with the greenhouse gas emission assessment. And if that is the case, then we're talking about 2022 data, I believe that's prior to some of those groups moving out of the town hall building. So it would have been at more usage during that time, I guess.

I think it should be clarified because we're talking about this four years later. People are going to read it, look at the date.

I just made a comment in there, yeah, to say let's clarify the date that that's based on.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And what has happened since then, you know, since it's been a major change. OK, the next page I have is 16 says it questions it talks about. Challenges of older buildings. Yes. OK. What challenges are those? I mean, I don't want people to read the climate action plan and not do. um put in heat pumps because it's stating that um heat pumps that older home will have challenges to do it they're talking about it up to 1999 I have a 1996 house I just switched it over to you know I I took the fossil fuel oil out and went completely um heat pump and electric yeah and there was absolutely no problem so I I think I don't know what they're talking about in terms of older buildings may pose an issue.

So I just... We can add that to their comments and exactly whether we're talking about a building built in 1764 or 1998 is a very different conversation. Yeah, I can say our 1913 was not, it posed...

unique problems so maybe we just need to clarify that that uh and my 1820 house had some issues um you know it isn't it's not an easy fix in many cases so i have heat pumps but i also have gas as a backup that was suggested it's not a typical house easy to do but if i don't think so there are challenges to come in and throw up um you know

questions about whether they should electrify it's not the appropriate place to to do it I think um let's see we can stick to the facts here and yeah just get them to adjust or at least to clarify that statement yeah the last time I went through and highlighted I might have missed some because I just went through quickly to to get the highlights um I don't think it's controversial um on page 18 they reference a chart produced by

Yeah, I noted that too. I would put those into the category of copy edits.

Yeah, exactly. We have not seen that chart. We don't know what chart they're going to be putting in.

True. I think I may have forwarded that one a while back because it's on their website. It's the energy report that's available. It just says how much... energy they procure from renewable sources but i i can um forward that one again just to make sure everyone has it's footnoted right on the bottom of the page uh i actually pulled it up and went to it when i went through it or at least in the pdf version it was footnoted yeah i can't remember where we are uh yeah energy efficiency report here yeah okay

But since it says that it's included. Oh, no, he definitely needs to include the chart. Yeah, 100 percent. Yeah. And all the other ones are basically. You know, words, the edits, gambling modifiers and a lot of edits need to be done. Yeah.

Yeah.

OK. OK.

Wonderful. Thank you, Emily. Appreciate the very detailed review. That's super helpful.

Libby, yeah, go ahead. Mine is quick. I just wanted to offer some consensus on something that Don brought up with B1 and the planning board due to the bylaws. I had picked up the same note that he did for the same reason. So I just wanted to offer some consensus with that with him. That's it. Great. Thank you. That was the B1.

Yeah. Margaret. So at the risk of people going crazy again, going back and forth, back on page 14. Okie dokie. Yes. Oops. Okay.

Close your eyes if this is making you sick. Okay. Sorry, Margaret, if it's a bit off because I'm using the word document.

Yeah, the word is what I used. Oh, okay. Okay. So the third bullet, I think it was, they talk about 49% of emissions within this sector. What sector? Which sector? Yep. So I don't know.

Okay.

I'm not sure, but yeah, I think it probably is.

Just a little bit. I think this whole section had quite a few typos.

And this next one here, the numbers don't match. The figure doesn't. When you look on page 15.

Oh, yeah. So these I would also consider to be type copy edits. And I think both Don and Emily, you also noted those in your written a lot of the written comments as well. Like all of the figures need to be relabeled both in the labeling of the actual figure and then in the reference and in the narrative.

That's it. I just didn't know if everybody was looking at the numbers. Yeah. Thanks. Good catch.

Well, sometimes numbers don't exactly add up because there are some discrepancies and other things. But it's nice to see the detailed graphs here. The Word document did not have that. And this must be the PDF. It has things labeled. That makes it a little easier. But, you know, raising the issue, Jenny will look at it, and she'll do a good job.

Yeah.

Thanks, Tom. Yes, Sarah, go ahead.

minor that are nice to have on Littleton's progress so far, which is about page seven in the PDF. I would just add in, yeah, right there. It says that we recently completed a new fully electric COA building. I guess one, I would not call it the COA building. I would call it the center on Chadwick street or something. um and i would also add in the library that was built that is lead certified and that we're in the process of building an elementary school that is whatever the terminology for whatever we are like you know fossil fuel free or whatever the the good words are that's all i had

Yeah, just a quick comment on the certification. I mean, the library is a great example. However, there's no sign there saying it's LEED-certified, and that's something that should be done. And when I checked about the center on Shattuck Street, I did talk to the people who have done things. And in that case, it wasn't LEED-certified, even though it's probably as efficient as LEED-certified. But it wasn't in the RFP that went out to build it. It wasn't specified. And to retrofit it to technically be LEED certified would be very expensive. So, you know, there's a message here for the new Shaker Lane School that it should be indicated at whatever certification is desired, whether it be passive or LEED or whatever. And, I mean, that's part of the building committee process. uh doing that and yeah i remember remember the fire station talking to the architect the architect had no interest in green roofs or solar and once again that goes back to the building the building committee is on it i'm friendly with sean who's on the building committee and i know that he's on it to try to make sure these things are right all set and it's supposed to be silver yeah Yeah, just point out, you know, you look at the root cause of it. And here we have the center on Shattuck Street that is in fantastic condition. But all they can do is say, well, it's sort of like it, you know. And, yeah, if we want to promote stuff, we should make sure it gets advertised. That's why I pushed the library to advertise it and let people know that this is worthwhile and the money is well spent. And it sort of builds up support.

Yeah, that's a great point. Does anybody have anything else that is worthy of deliberation or discussion? Otherwise, what I will do is consolidate the comments and try to kind of send what we have already worked on and then the written comments as well to Jenny. Just looking at them myself, I can't imagine that it would take a lot to turn those around. And worst case scenario, I'm also happy to work on them myself. It's relatively straightforward. These are copy edits for the most part. But yeah, Sarah, did you have anything else you wanted to add? Yeah, sorry. I wrote myself a note not to forget.

Just before we're all done with their contract and everything, just make sure that you have all the source documents that they have and we have them in a safe place. Great point. I'll make a note on that one.

Okay. I did get from them all of the Excel sheets that they had used for the MAPC greenhouse gas emissions inventory. Although I think for us to fully understand that, that's something we'll probably have to unpack with MAPC at a later date. But yeah, that's a great point. Thanks, Sarah. I'll make a note to do that. Don, anything else you wanted to add?

Sure. You know, even though Michelle did a good job with us. I think we're very fortunate having Jenny and Kelly do this. And they put in a lot more work than any contract would specify. And hopefully they use some of this for some of their other municipalities. But I think it's very good. And we're fortunate to get all the work from them. And we have some general comments and they'll weigh it and do what I think is best. Would you want some approval that we approve it and maybe allow you to delegate if anything needs to be changed? You have an awareness of what's necessary. They're doing a good job and I'm sure they'll finish it well. What would you like that approval vote to say.

So I'm going to probably sort of butcher a potential motion here. Maybe we can wordsmith this one a little bit, but I would say something along the lines of to make a motion to adopt this version one of the climate action plan with the amendments that have been discussed previously. this evening.

Um, so suggested recommendations.

Exactly. Suggested changes, suggested edits, suggested, um, edits that we've made this evening.

So, yeah. And this is general. I mean, this is almost like a policy and yeah, you can't get into the nuances, you know, I mean, you know, the next step will get into the details. So the next question is what does marker have as a proposed, uh,

You mean after listening to you all right now?

Yeah, I mean, you heard what Charlotte was trying to wordsmith. What would make sense?

I just write down what you guys say. I said adopt the version one of the climate action plan with the suggested edits that we made this evening. That's what I have written down right now.

Emily, you have your hand up. Did you want to make a suggested change to that?

Yeah, I'm just concerned because there are a whole lot of changes that need to be made that are not controversial. So do we want to put those into the records? Because otherwise, your emotion is not going to do it. As I ran through this again, I found a few typos in my list is being it or something like that. I mean, they're pretty easy ones to figure that out, but I could.

I can add your comments, Don's comments, my comments, and I can send those to Margaret so they're reflected in the minutes. And yeah, and maybe we say as per the edits as reflected in the minutes. I mean, Sarah, maybe you can help me word that a little bit better. Yeah.

Maybe we can delegate Charlotte for resolving issues because otherwise it goes back and forth. Someone has to be deputized or authorized to resolve issues.

That was what I was going to say. As you look through some of these, sometimes it says, well, I think this is my proposed wording, but doesn't have to be that right so um so it might be that these are relatively minor it's just that sometimes the sentences just did not make sense yeah um and um and it's like okay i think this is what you they were trying to get to uh yeah so can we authorize you to or one person on the committee to make a decision on that so it doesn't have to go back and forth can i make a motion

All right, go for it. As my final... You'll saw me, saw me, sir. So, what does the motion say now? Yeah, so, I'll probably forget the words, but I move that we approve the version one climate action plan as presented with the edits that we've discussed and And annotated and listed additional administrative comments listed in the minutes from tonight. This is too long to be. I don't think the motion has to say that Charlotte will.

Well, actually, I mean, changes have to be decided. You need someone to say, okay, this is okay for the committee.

Okay. So is that close enough, Margaret?

Move that we approve the version 1 cap as presented with the edits that we've discussed and additional administrative comments as made prior to or as made

by other... How about just as listed in attachments to the minutes?

As listed in attachments to minutes.

Alrighty. Anyone going to second that?

I'll second it.

Okay. I just suggest that we still... I mean, like I said, in some cases I give two alternatives. You know, I think we need one decision maker.

I'm happy to do that, Emily. And I did really appreciate your rewording. I think maybe because you're reading with that like fresh set of eyes and I think a lot of the times you caught things that just didn't read right or confusing. I'm happy to go through those with Jenny and just make sure that we address them.

Emily, did you want to add an amendment to this?

I would suggest that we have an amendment to authorize Charlotte to decide what of the additional comments, administrative comments, typos and grammatical errors and so on.

How about we authorize Charlotte to adjudicate all administrative comments?

Perfect.

That is why you do what you do, Margaret. You got away with words.

It just seemed a lot more succinct.

Wonderful.

Is there a second to my amendment?

I'll second that amendment. Second. Yeah.

Withdraw my original. No, I'm just kidding.

All right. Without further ado. So let's go around. Sarah, how do you vote? Yes. Don.

Yes.

Margaret.

Yes.

John.

Yes.

Libby? Yes. Emily? Yes. And that's a yes from me as well. Great. Thanks, guys.

Success.

Indeed. So the second part of this conversation is then we are on the agenda for July 13th select board meeting. Last I heard, we'll have a few minutes, maybe five, 10 minutes tops for a presentation. I think maybe we want to keep it to like a five minute presentation and then an opportunity for some Q&A. Again, brief. Just looking at the calendar here. What that means is that we will need to have the. Package or whatever we want to send to the select board no later than July 8th. I'd like to aim for us to have it to them sooner, given that it is a massive document. So I will work with with with Jenny and see if. how quickly we together can turn around these edits to get it over to the select board as soon as possible with that eighth being the hard deadline. But the question for us here is, in those few minutes that we have, what do we want to put forward as our key messages to the select board. You know, what are we wanting to share with them as a priority? And what are we asking of them as well? Now we have, in terms of materials, we have a lot of this already laid out from our own forums. So we don't have to recreate the wheel in terms of that, but just given that this is a different audience and we kind of want to go in with a kind of clear, I guess a clear audience in mind. So just, yeah, wanted to get your thoughts on that. So yeah, I see Libby and then Sarah.

I think we should remind the select board at the meeting that we voted in October to declare a climate emergency in Littleton. And so that was with public support. I think that'll help sort of help the rationale for part of why we're doing this as well and the importance of making efforts to implement it.

Mm-hmm. And I can certainly, if you think it's appropriate, we present that timeline slide, which would also highlight that journey that we've been on. Yep, sorry, go ahead. So I'm jotting down notes.

Yeah, I'm guessing it might come up that the whole like, well, who's doing this? So I think it's worthwhile to upfront just say, this is a living document. It's going to happen over time. Sustainability Committee is going to work with all the other boards and departments to prioritize and move things forward. So some nice words like that, but just to put it out there that this is a process. It's not a law that you just, you know, that you're laying down. It's it's intended to be a living document.

Yeah, definitely can leave with that. Yeah, done.

Yeah, I think what Libby said is important. You know, we question whether the town meeting would have to approve this and we're not going that route because but it's important that we did have a town meeting agreement of emergency So we can always point to that. And I think it is good just going for approval of the select board. Like any critical vote or main thing to cover, it's a lot of trying to educate some people ahead of time. So I don't know who the chair of the board of selectmen is now. Could someone share that?

It's Gary Wilson, right?

Yeah.

Gary Wilson.

Oh, okay. So educate him. Maybe Mark's going to be educated anyway, but educate people beforehand. So if you get into trouble, you have people supporting you, and there's one select board person who votes against environmental things, and I don't know what he's going to do with this, but Be aware that there may be some opposition, maybe some opposition from the audience. But, you know, have your votes in place before you have a formal vote. That's what happens in Congress. That's what happens everywhere.

And maybe also with that in mind, John, just in terms of the presentation, I can put together something that just highlights the threat. of the climate action plan this is about mitigation and resilience and i think even if one is not necessarily in a massive proponent of some of the more things people might think of as strictly like climate action i i can imagine there's common ground when we're thinking about protection of natural lands and you know maintaining open spaces and you know pedestrian friendly So maybe if we can kind of just very briefly demonstrate that this plan intersects with a lot of different aspects of community life.

And documents. And exactly.

Yeah. And we have that also in the materials. I can make sure that that's...

I think it'd be worthwhile to sit down with Jim also and go through it because he may make a recommendation. I was very thankful in the beginning that he endorsed it. He liked the idea of having a climate action plan. And, you know, any town... Administrators in a funny situation. They're dependent upon the selectmen renewing their contract, but they're also to guide. But I think Jim would be an important person to sit down with and show how it works. So if he has questions, he can ask them and he can be a strong support.

Great. Thanks, John.

Just for my own quick question and then a couple of thoughts. One, are we actually asking for a vote at this meeting? I wasn't thinking that we were, but just given, Dawn, your comments, I want to make sure that I understand. Are we asking for them to vote to adopt it?

So I think one of the... requirements of moving towards being a climate leaders community is that one's town has adopted a climate action plan um and so i guess that is for discussion right now but i think that is part of what we want to ask them to adopt or approve this as the one not just to acknowledge that it was done um yeah but that's my understanding from diane dickinson who said this is one of those it actually counts towards the town of Littleton's viability for applying for grants and things like that if we actually have an adopted plan.

So I love that. I think we have to add that to the presentation about the value to the town of it. Um, so that's one piece to, uh, if we go all the way back and I know this is the timeline, but again, maybe highlighting thanks for supporting back in day one, us getting the grant and spending town resource to engage with MCOG and getting us this far along. Right. Um, And then the last piece I'd add is like the sustainability committee's charter exists because the select board brought it into existence. And so to me, this is us doing the mandate that the select board has asked us to do, which is to have a plan for how to support the town. So we're asking for, and that's where the question of what we're asking for them to adopt, that this is version one of that plan that they can, we're not asking them to specifically spend any money, commit any money, do any of those things, but to adopt that we have a plan that we can start to action against as a sustainability committee with, with partnership with, across the town and then, you know, maybe an ask of the, in the future.

Yep. Love that. I will look that in. We are doing our jobs. Yep. All right. Any other thoughts? I think this is already, um, a nice, uh, bit of content, substantive content for a five minute presentation. I can work on those slides, which I said many of them will be co-opted from from previous materials and just highlighting the specifics that we talked about just now for this particular audience and then share those with the rest of the committee. ahead of time. Well, we can talk about what our next meeting will look like, but I don't imagine we'll have a chance to kind of deliberate on those slides. But I think if we're agreed on the overall content and then, yeah, I can just, like I said, looking at a lot of the materials we have is already materials that we've used previously. All right. So I think that concludes that part of our agenda. Unless anybody else had any final comments on it. Otherwise, we can move to member updates or other business within. this I had one kind of more substantive topic I wanted to bring up if we have time but then two just quick admin ones for us which I'll maybe just cover now next meetings so we have normally our next meeting would be July 2nd so we can keep that one and keep the momentum going and I guess Emily and Sarah, you can bow out of this part of the conversation. But I did want to get a kind of headcount for that one because it is the Thursday before the long weekend. And then the one after that would be on August 6th. And... We would want to essentially do a reorg or at least just kind of revisit our organizational structure at our next meeting. And I believe that we had a new member confirmed by the select board on Monday's meeting. So we should be welcoming a new member at our next meeting. I've yet to receive official communication, but when I listened in to the meeting, they said, yes, confirmed. Fingers crossed. But I know it takes a little time sometimes to get sworn in some. OK, any comments on meeting timing? Do we want to keep the July 2nd meeting or do we want to move to a summer schedule and bump it to August or anything else?

I'm not going to be here on the second.

OK. Oh, Margaret, you're on mute.

I thought that the reason that we met tonight was so that we would not be meeting next week because that's just next week.

Yeah, that's what I was going to suggest, that we just bump July's meeting and meet in August instead. August 6th will be our next meeting. I see a lot of nodding heads. OK, let's keep that then. So for the record, August 6 will be our next meeting, and that would also give a new member time to get sworn in and join us. All right, before I jump into my topic and hog the mic, anybody else have anything they want to share under member updates?

Yeah, go ahead, Libby. I was wondering if we could get something on the agenda in the future, and it doesn't have to be at the next meeting if it doesn't make sense for timing with the reorg and introducing a new member. But I was wondering if we could explore a polyesterine ban at some point, sort of doing some work to try to make some progress on seeing if we could get a bylaw passed in town about that. I noticed that Concord has a plan that we could use as a blueprint, but I was just wondering if we could sort of get that on the agenda at some point in the future.

yeah um libby i wonder if we want to wrap that into a sort of broader conversation which we could have at our august meeting which would be what do we want to prioritize out of the cap um and then as a committee and then an individual kind of essentially raising your hand for certain uh initiatives um so we can kind of look at the next six months and say okay you know this person's going to be like working on this and kind of give each other um some targets, but, but inclusive of like that topic, for example, that work.

Yeah.

Okay. I'm going to call that sort of our roadmap for once, one of the better word or something, but yeah. Um, kind of understanding what we want to focus on, um, going forward. All right. Anyone else? Okay, so quickly, I circulated a letter to everybody, and I had, through a separate introduction that we had with Margot on the planning board, I then reached out to say, whatever and whenever and however this supposed Dunlin site redevelopment happens, which I don't want to fuel any rumour mills, because... Nobody quite knows exactly what's going to happen with that site, but it will be potentially a new development of some sort. How would we as a sustainability committee begin to even engage in that topic? And her suggestion was to just write a letter from the committee to the board saying, hey, you know, we'd like to engage in this and kind of, take it from there as essentially a way to kick off that conversation without necessarily presuming any plans, because obviously no plans have been submitted. So I drafted that letter, shared it with you guys. My ask is, are you comfortable with me then sharing that with the planning board on our behalf in order to kickstart that conversation?

I don't think I've seen it, but the concept seems fine.

Okay, thanks, John.

Yeah, I had a chance to read it. I thought it was well-worded. I thought it was inquisitive and appropriate for some of the things we're trying to achieve as a sustainability committee. So I would be in full support and think it's a nice way to open the door to future conversations as well.

Okay, great. Thanks. Well, I'll send it along. CC our Sustainability Committee emails and we'll see where it takes us. Thank you.

Thanks for doing it.

All right. So barring any June 30th emergency meetings where we... Make Sarah and Emily show up one more time. This is actually a last meeting. So just wanted to say a final thank you and maybe a see you later. See you around. Certainly not goodbye in a little town. Yeah. Thanks again, guys.

Thank you both. Yes, thank you.

I think you'll see us again.

I have a feeling. You won't be able to hide, is the thing. We're going to have to go visit the kitties.

Yes, yes. Well, thank you all for continuing on. And thank you, Emily, for all that you've contributed over the past couple of years. And thank you all for continuing on. And I welcome the new people that are going to be joining in the future.

And Sarah, thank you so much for your leadership. And I will definitely be seeing everyone on this committee in various positions around the town, I'm sure. So looking forward to working with you guys again. It was really a pleasure.

Absolutely.

All right. Well, thank you all so much. I feel like we blitzed through that. I was worried that the 67 pages would destroy us tonight. Thanks for all of the advanced comments and the pre-work, which I think really made it a lot easier for us to get through it tonight. So massive thanks for everybody. All right. Well, expect to hear updates from me. And then for those of you who can make it to the select board meeting, we'll see you on the 13th. And then can we have a motion to adjourn?

I move to adjourn. I'll second.

All right. John?

Yes.

Emily? Yes. Dawn? Yes.

Yes.

Libby? Yes. Margaret?

Yes.

Sarah? Yes. And that's a yes from me as well.

Thanks, everybody. Have a great weekend.