2008-03-12 Cities for Climate Protection Minutes

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March 12, 2008 Reading Advisory Committee on Cities for Climate Protection Program Committee Notes for March 12, 2008 (Next Meeting - March 26`h at RMLD) Committee Meeting 7:00 PM, present were Gina Snyder, Ron D'Addario, Joan Boegel, Michele Benson, Tracy Sopchak and Stephanie Anderberg. Welcome - Chair Michele Benson opened the meeting, welcoming all present. - Minutes - A motion was made and to approve the minutes from the February 13th meeting. Minutes were approved unanimously. MPO Meeting - Ron & Carol attended the meeting. There is $650,000 available for grants and 6 towns were interested. Two have recently dropped out, leaving 4 towns in the running. It is not clear yet how many will apply in the end. The MPO is encouraging Reading to go for it. Carol is not sure if we will qualify but Rob Guptil (CTPS) has already determined that we do. The grant provides only a portion of the total program cost, reducing each year for the three year grant period (80%, 70%, 60%). The MPO wants to see a 5 year project plan, to ensure that the service would continue without grant funding. The MPO would also like the shuttle service to charge a fare to riders. Peter will set up a date to talk with us about it. Committee members will divide up the questions to begin drafting answers. ACTION: Each member should read the application and begin to think about which questions we can each cover. A discussion followed on how to staff the shuttle operations. We will come back to this question later. Maybe a partnership with another shuttle service in town could help combine efforts. MOTION (Ron): CCP moves to continue to support the MPO Suburban Mobility Grant application project and to commit to helping the town fill in the application questions for the April 16 deadline. This motion was seconded and approved. RCAP Prioritization - The subcommittee meetings provided a nice opportunity to focus on the RCAP, but it still needs individual attention - perhaps a steering committee to keep the focus on implementation of Action items. Some questions are: Do we all agree on Phase One items? How do we move forward with these Actions? Do we want to dive in and start implementation, or do we need to focus first on recruiting more help? It would be useful to continue having a group meet outside of the regular meetings. Also, there have been issues when Action items have overlapped with the work of others and multiple people have talked to the same folks about these. For example, talking with the school department about recycling and about Green Team. Michele will take a look at each Phase One item to estimate the workload, and which might be night/evening work, or which might require workday efforts. After this exercise, we'll be able to determine where and how we need help. Possibly we can get started on just a few of the Phase One items and then add more as we are able. The subcommittee will revisit this at their next meeting. Earth Day - Michele suggests a one-way flow of visitors from the front door through the halls to the cafeteria, and then out the back doors. This will give us the opportunity to use the lobby space for additional displays. Parking flow, even with the dropoff trailer, should work out fineand we will have two folks outside directing traffic.