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Town of Reading
Meeting Minutes
Board - Committee - Commission - Council:
Climate Advisory Committee
Date: 2014 -02 -12
Building: Reading Town Hall
Address: 16 Lowell Street
Purpose: bimonthly meeting
Attendees: Members - Present:
Time: 7 p.m
Location: Town Hall Conference Room
Joan Boegel (chair), Ron D'Addario (Member), Ray Porter (member),
Michele Benson (associate), and Gina Snyder (associate)
Gina Snyder
Members - Not Present:
, David Williams (member), Laurie Ann Silva (member)
Others Present:
Bob LeLacheur, Bob Connor, Mike Scola
Minutes Respectfully Submitted By: Ron D'Addario
Topics of Discussion:
Welcome to everyone.
• Minutes were approved for January 22, 2014.
• Bob Connor, speaking of Sustainable Winchester, asked if they could publish our
Green Sense articles in their local newspaper. They would use our by -line in the
article recognizing our committee as the source. The committee voted unanimously
to allow them to print our articles, and Gina gave Bob a chip with many of our past
articles.
• Bob LeLacheur spoke of LED street lighting. He said that he was in favor of it and
that Coleen O'Brien, RMLD general manager was also in favor of making a total
conversion of our street lights to LEDs. He added that Coleen informed him that
before she could act, she needed the results of three studies underway at RMLD.
Their results would likely give her leverage to act on various initiatives.
• Bob also referred to a DOE bulletin which would provide funds for various types of
healthy community projects. Because of this funding, the south Main Street project,
to change it to a three lane road with a bike lane, was back on the table. His staff
referred to the project as the South Main Street Diet. The project would include new
pavement, water pipes, trees and possibly gas pipes by National Grid. Bob stated
that coordinating the project was a challenge.
• Bob discussed bike paths for north Main as well as with a three lane approach. The
difficulties of the task were discussed. Ray suggested minimally we could use a
bicycle presence road sign without an actual path. Bob said he thought this was now
illegal in Massachusetts. Bob added that Jesse Wilson has put together a major bike
path proposal for the town. He added that Walker's Brook Drive was also a candidate
for a bike path.
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• Ron mentioned the idea to put in a bike path on any major road work. Bob replied
that this was not possible in most situations. He added that Jesse Wilson has worked
on a major bike path plan. Walkers Brook Drive is a possibility.
• Bob mentioned that a boy scout came in for a volunteer op ortunit . Would we want
him to help us? Get back to Bob on this. m fo
• The town manager mentioned that he is in favor of a recycle bin in the MF Charles
parking lot. He said that the town would have some leverage to make this happen
when the developer asks for his trash permits. Perhaps we could negotiate a recycle
trash bin into this plan. Bob also stated that he supports business recycle bins in
other parts of the town.
• Bob also mentioned that the town is doing much in terms of recycling energy, trash
collection, health insurance and savings, with our ESCO contracts, but town
employees are too busy doing their jobs and don't have the time to publicize these
cost saving actions. The committee responded that they could help to publicize these
important town actions.
• Mike mentioned the use of an energy "dashboard" on the town's website that would
report ongoing energy usage by town buildings.
• In regards to an electric charging station for plug in vehicles, Bob felt that we needed
to solicit the wishes of the business community before making any decisions on the
placement of such a unit.
• We also spoke of the Green Community equivalency idea which would enable us to
improve our building codes using programs such as the Stretch program which would
strengthen our code by 30% over present state building codes.
• Bob thought that we should keep our March 18th date with the selectmen. He
thought it would be fitting to give the presentation to Jim Bonasoli and Ben Tafoya
who will soon be retiring from the board.
April 5th Earth Day Faire: the committee decided to duplicate the theme of last ear's
faire. Michele volu
Michele her data from last ye
• Gina will contact Will Finch in
award.
• The Mattera cabin has been reserved by the committee for April 5th, for our E.D.
• Bob agreed to preview our Adaptation Report. He seemed to view it positively. He
further stated that he wanted to more fully utilize our committee in other town
issues.
Feb 26tth our next meeting;
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