2008-06-25 Cities for Climate Protection Minutes

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June 25, 2008 Reading Advisory Committee on Cities for Climate Protection Program Committee Notes for June 25, 2008 (Next Meeting - July 9th at Town Hall) Committee Meeting 7:00 PM, present were Gina Snyder, Michele Benson, Ron D'Addario, Tracy Sopchak, Dave Williams, Bing Xia, Sophie Gellot and Stephanie Anderberg. Meeting opening - Chair Michele Benson opened the meeting. Minutes - A motion was made & seconded to approve minutes of the 6/11 meeting. The motion passed. Friends & Family Day - Michele gave the 2008 pledges (175) to Tracy after the event. Tracy will set up an excel spreadsheet for the web and then we can each do a share of the data entry. As a tangent, it was mentioned that Tracy was appointed to RMLD Citizens' Advisory Board, representing Reading residents and businesses. Following up on discussions which came out of the newest pledge, Gina brought in info on the "Blue Line Powercast Monitor". This is another option for checking how much power your household devices use. It works similarly to biofeedback. Once installed on your outside meter, if you turn on a new appliance or electric device within the house, the indoor monitor will read the difference in power demand and will display the estimated cost to run that device. Cost of this kind of meter is approx. $140, but a Kill-a-Watt reader is in the $18- 25 range. Dave also brought info on these devices & a sample was available for the committee to look at. We have an upcoming Green Sense article about the current pledge and will try to post a PDF of the pledge on the website for readers to access. There was a discussion on simple URLs to redirect to the existing longer URL. Also online, Michele can make graphs comparing energy usage between years, and update the data quarterly. We'd look for average savings of 72 KwH per year for each of the approximately 175 pledges thus far. On a related note, Greenhouse Acres (90 condos) is considering installing a windmill and is currently looking to build community support should it prove feasible. The committee may want to provide support. RCAP Subcommittees Updates/ Assignments/Reading Cares -Reading Cares is a new effort to match volunteers with opportunities in town. We could put our info on their website, looking for help to implement Action Items, and then follow up with a Green Sense article highlighting their site. Reading Recycles might also be interested in a listing on this site. There were some questions on how the Reading Cares website links to ' organizations or whether you can add details about the specific projects needing help. A motion was made to look into getting our info posted on the site. The motion was seconded and passed. Regarding action items updates, Gina reported that she had talked with Pat S. at Family Day regarding a kickoff of MassRides/no-idle/related items in the RMHS area this fall. Pat seemed enthusiastic about just going ahead and having the kickoff. Gina is working with Joan to put a packet together on no-idling. We want to avoid the idea that this is something the schools will be enforcing, so signage would be more of a request than an order or a reminder of the law. They also have a sample pledge and a letter which could be printed on the back side to save paper. There is a nice info sheet from a Boston program, which we might be able to use. At elementary schools, we could have some small incentive for kids who return a completed pledge, such as a bumper sticker. The MassRIDES effort is in the works. Eliot came in for a presentation to dept heads. This overall effort is in concert with the effort to include climate change education in the curriculum. Gina is willing to be Pat's contact on both efforts, to minimize confusion. The whole subcommittee for each effort will still do the legwork. Subcommittees will meet with Peter in a few weeks & we'll ask for the goahead to work directly with Pat. We may also want to meet with PTOs on items such as no-idling. Or we could present the ideas at a school committee meeting, which would be on RCTV. The school committee could also sign the pledge, and we could ask the PTO presidents to sign the pledge. These would be photo opps, like they are for the Selectmen and RLMB. For youth outreach, we could enlist the help of the Eagle Scout who had visited us earlier. And there is an environmental club at the high school, which we could try to connect with. For bylaws, no updates yet but Stephanie & Gina worked on comments on the Jacob Way development's environmental notification filing. Subcommittee needs to check in with Ben Tafoya to see if he'd asked town counsel to gather relevant bylaws & policies for our study. Dave is also willing to help with this effort as he has had similar experience on the solid waste committee. MPO Update - this item was skipped as there have been no developments since our last meeting. Cable TV Outreach - John Surrette is willing to help with our first couple of episodes until we're more comfy with all the steps. Tracy has sample slides for the proposed show's opening page. The committee narrowed