2006-09-27 Cities for Climate Protection Minutes

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September 27, 2006 Reading Advisory Committee on Cities for Climate Protection Program Committee Notes for Sept 27, 2006 (Next Meeting October I I (After RNR Chamber Breakfast scheduled for Oct. 11)) Present were Ron Daddario, Michele Benson, Stephanie Anderberg, Gina Snyder, Tracy Sopchak, Dan Blodgett and Ray Porter The minutes for Sept. 13 were accepted unanimously. . Reviewed business cards. Looking good, will see how useful. For more cards, Gina can include whatever info is preferred on the card (e.g., personal phone or email). Discussed Sept. 25 h Rotary lunch speech by Ray on proposed business 1-2-3- pledge. This started a process, grass roots approach, about 25 attended. Michele and Ray spoke with Pat from School afterward briefly. He seemed very receptive as did the Rotary members. Any comments on the business pledge, would go to our -QW 93 email address. Rotary motto is "Service Be Chamber of Commerce breakfas Oct 11 at 7:30 AM Hillview Country uu , North Reading. Ray is scheduled to speak, chamber board of direc ors (r-- 15 on the oar as our a pedge already. Michele will check about whether we can still sign up. Stephanie has sent a message to vendor about more bags prior to Thanksgiving since Ron got a pledge from the Atlantic to donate .$500 more for additional bags with our and their logos. Tracy will un-install the pledge display in the Town Hall and the Library and use for the local church showings of "An Inconvenient Truth" at UUCR on Oct. 1' (Tracy is leading that committee) and St. Agnes Oct. 6t' (Ron is running the projector for them). Also, UUCR committee is developing a separate handout for the movie, and will share when it is closer to final. Ron, Gina and Michele had a discussion with Peter on showcasing a retro-fit on a town building (e.g. upgrade lighting at Town Hall). Clarified that the Energy Committee (town employees lead by Mary Delai of the school superintendent's office) has the lead. The RMLD is to be a member of the committee and we are asking that our committee be invited to sit on the committee (but meetings will be during the day). Any project has to go through capital planning process. Peter would like us to identify grants that could help with feasibility of renewable energy projects (e.g. photovoltaics on Coolidge which is the town building with the largest footprint - 100,000 square feet). Meeting produced the idea of putting LED holiday lights on a couple of the trees (in front of town hall) and perhaps decorating a tree to donate to the Reading Technology Fund "Festival of Trees". Also mentioned Garden Club "Memory Tree" at the library. Ron found from Peter that the Chamber just purchased $9000 worth of trees. Ron will check to see if these can be sent back and replaced with LED. CCP Data collection leape forwar ow that Mary Delai provided the heating summary and Keyspan finally provide natural gas usage. is e e provided data summaries and bar graphs. Michele is working with the assessor to get the number of homes using oil heat and then there's a calculation to estimate what that usage would be. Michele used RMLD gasoline and diesel prices to get numbers for the town DPW vehicles. Also still have to clarify the gas numbers for commercial (does it include municipal?) and confirm where transportation data comes from and what the software model demands in terms of transportation information. Transportation dwarfs all other emissions. As when Emily had shown the graphs, the transportation is orders of magnitude above all other emissions due to high volume of traffic traveling the two major highways that abut the town (I-95 and I-93 and the interchange). We have nearly no control over this level of traffic so it will take some careful consideration on how to use the data. This milestone process should tie into the work.the Energy Committee will be doing, having the committee in town should make a great ally. Michele will continue to work with Mary. Other info: Mass Rides; Road length (is it important? / the model only uses roads of a certain size threshold); and heating and cooling degree days might be used for differing years since we haven't been able to get data for the year 2000 and not all data is for same year. The first Green Sense article came out in tonight's (Sept. 27th) paper. Only requirement according to Peter is to offer any article to both papers if we offer to one of them. Ron will be the point person for sending articles to both papers. He plans to send Sunday evening - next article by Tracy and Ron again, is ready. Gina, Michele and Stephanie offered to be a second writing group. Tracy will put the articles on our web pages. Peter also mentioned that the town is reviewing new software for our web pages and may also use a new URL as part of the re-design. Stephanie offered to host a party to decorate a tree for the Festival of Trees. Ron offered to host a holiday dessert party. MCAN is hosting a conference at MIT on November 19th. FYI, the Reading fund for Technology and Education has a web page: http://www.rtef.net/index.html