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Home My WebLink About2024-12-17-SLC-min Sustainable Lexington Committee Minutes of Meeting of December 17, 2024 A meeting of the Sustainable Lexington Committee (SLC) was held by Zoom conference. A quorum of eight was present throughout. Members Present: Cindy Arens (Chair), Kavitha Venkatesan, Celis Brisbin, Lin Jensen, Andy Joynt, Rick Reibstein, Todd Rhodes (Vice-chair), Dan Voss, Paul Chernick Members Absent: none Staff Present: Maggie Peard (Sustainability & Resilience Officer) Other Attendees:Joe Pato (Select Board liaison), Marcia Gens, Ricki Pappo, Yiyun Huang (SustainabLY), Nishanth Veeragandham (SustainabLY), Sophie Shaw (SustainabLY), Janet Kern, Mark Sandeen (Select Board) Cindy called the meeting to order at 7:02 pm and polled the SLC members to ensure that they could be heard. Minutes were approved for the November 5, 2024 meeting with one addition to further clarify our conversation about embodied carbon with SMMA. After a request for public comments or new business, we discussed: - Todd mentioned that we have received another automated email regarding an application for any open committee position in Lexington. Not clear if there was a specific application for SLC. - The curator from the Lexington Historical Society is putting together an exhibit on climate change and would like to conduct short interviews with SustainabLY members to include in the exhibit. SustainabLY: Working on two separate projects: - Ad-hoc education sessions in the elementary schools - Increase the ease of recycling and composting within the HS specifically but also in the whole town. Could there be compost bins in more high traffic areas? Cindy said she would like to work with them on this. Considerations for other committee liaisons: - Cindy mentioned that we may be able to further promote sustainability if we serve as liaisons (formal or informal) to these other groups. Rick has offered to join the Noise December 17, 2024 Committee as an informal liaison. Lin has offered to join the Tree Committee as an informal liaison. Cindy has been the appointed Liaison to the Housing Partnership Board for the last two years and would be happy to let another member take that position. Cindy also mentioned synergies/opportunities with the Transportation Advisory Committee and the Bicycle Advisory Committee. Cindy encouraged other members to consider this and let her know of their interest. - Celis mentioned two points: 1) if you are putting in the time to be a liaison to a committee then you might just consider increasing your influence by becoming a full voting member, 2) should we consider liaising with committees that are less directly connected to sustainability to perhaps have even greater impact. - Joe Pato mentioned that some committees have increased requirements to become full blown members so a liaison role may be a more feasible solution. Capital Solar Integration Policy (CSIP) - Maggie described how she and Todd drafted this proposed policy for more formally incorporating solar planning into Town properties. Next steps are to get input from stakeholders and refine a Return on Investment model. - Cindy asked which departments have taken a look at the policy so far: Engineering, Facilities, and Recreation have provided feedback. There are more departments who will need to take a look as well. - Andy asked what types of project would likely fall under this: Probably will mostly end up being focused on paving projects or perhaps a park renovation. - Kavitha asked if the Responsibilities section should be refined to make the roles a little more specific or prioritized. - Celis asked if building modifications/renovations would fall under this scope. The answer is no. We discussed the overlap between the High Performance Building Policy, which evaluates more of the existing conditions of buildings, and the Integrated Building Design and Construction Policy covers new buildings. The Decarbonization Roadmap does address that existing buildings should be evaluated for infrastructure changes like solar on an annual basis. The benefit of this policy is that it provides more explicit direction on how to evaluate solar. - Celis commented that perhaps there ought to be different parameters for ground-mount vs. roof-mount vs. canopy. Dan commented that this is largely going to be focused on canopy or ground mount systems so we are OK not getting too explicit with types of analysis. Celis commented that it makes sense to use a simple model that has similar life cycle cost analysis that we do with other project types in the town. Celis and Cindy commented that we should give some consideration to having a policy like this that is more broad beyond solar like evaluating toxic/red list materials and transportation items (like bike racks). - Andy asked how other towns approach solar policy. Dan commented that Beverly’s mayor firmly stated that putting solar on every hardscape is a key pillar of the town. Watertown has an ordinance that all new commercial development must have solar. Andy suggested that we search for similar policies in other towns to see if it could help us improve this draft policy. 2 December 17, 2024 - Lin commented that this draft references multiple other policies and it may be helpful for the draft to more explicitly point out where this policy sits within the scope of other related policies such as Integrated Building Design, etc. - Rick commented that Melrose conducted a bulk solar purchase and installation program for small businesses that was successful. We could consider some public-private partnership approaches. - Cindy commented that as part of the specialized building code, buildings that use fossil fuels, like new life sciences buildings in Lexington, are required to install a minimum amount of solar. This building code could be one way to require solar installations on new construction. - Cindy asked that we are granted access to the appendix with the calculator. Cindy commented that we could expedite the process of feasibility and do it more cheaply if we can teach some staff how to run some basic analysis. - Immediate next steps are to refine the calculator, make some tweaks to the language, and share with more staff. Sustainability & Resilience Officer updates: - The Waste Reduction Task Force has done some further outreach to describe our current waste situation and options in the future. We are seeking options to remove roadblocks to automated trash pickup and pay-as-you-throw and, thus far, conversations with the community are supportive. The next step will occur in January in conversation with the Select Board. - BEU-D reporting cycle is starting to kick off. The fee for noncompliance is beginning to take effect. The state is also rolling out a building energy use disclosure. The Town program is 25,000+ SF and the state is 20,000+ SF. The state program largely relies on utility reporting unless the building uses delivered fuels. Todd commented that it will be interesting to see how well the state data matches up to ours. Ricki asked when we will consider amending BEU-D to focus on energy reduction. About 1-2% of Lexington’s BEU-D buildings have delivered fuels. - Maggie is making a Process Improvement Request (PIR) for a second sustainability staff member and for conducting solar assessments. - Maggie submitted an application for the climate leaders program so that Lexington can have access to even more robust grant funding. - Plastic bottle phase out goes into effect January 1. Maggie and the Health Department have sent out notices to relevant business owners and it will be included in health inspections. There will be a complaint form available and Cindy asked if the form could also be used for the Styrofoam foodware restriction. Other brief updates - The turf working group was provided information about the recently replaced Lincoln 1 field. However, they have not been provided with the lab report from the required testing and have not been provided with a “full, detailed accounting of the fate of removed turf materials” as required. Consultants have also been pushing the recyclability of plastic turf components with no substantiation of recycling happening. 3 December 17, 2024 - As a result, the group is writing new specifications for the replacement of the Lincoln 2 field to be triply clear what is required testing (procedures, reporting limits, documentation, etc) for new turf components and what is acceptable full disclosure and allowed disposal methods for the material to be removed from Lincoln 2. - Ultimately we are progressing toward a full cost and life cycle analysis that can make clear that prevention of plastic turf is the best way forward in other locations in Town. - The meeting was adjourned at 9:22pm. - Next meeting is Jan. 28 at 6pm. Respectfully submitted, Andy Joynt 4