HomeMy WebLinkAbout2008-02-12-CAPAH-minLexington Climate Action Plan Ad Hoc Committee
Approved Meeting Minutes
February 12, 2008
Estabrook Hall
Present:
Marilyn Campbell
John Huchra
Dan Jones
JJ Krawczyk
Jeanne Krieger
Andy McClaine
Katherine Moore
Adam Sacks
Toby Sackton
Eric Senecal
Sam Silverman
1) Welcome to Katherine Moore and Eric Senecal from Tufts University!
2) The minutes for our January meeting were approved unanimously.
3) Messaging
JJ and Toby talked about a process that they (along with Ken Moraff) helped develop
within the town's Progressive Democrats chapter. This process allows a group to
discover and help understand the values that underly their position on an issue. These
values are then used as the basis for the messages that will successfully advocate that
position. The group consensus was that this exercise would be beneficial and a session
has been scheduled for Friday, February 29, 5 -7PM, in the Guard Room at the Police
Station.
Further discussion occurred over messaging, including the following topics:
- Fear, both how it can be useful and a detriment to achieving action.
- How does our message communicate that local action will make any difference?
- How do we convince the (estimated) 80% of the town that this is a real problem?
- How to make sure we do not present too much information which might only
overwhelm people.
- Highlighting the cost - saving nature of some actions.
4) Straw -man data
Andy lead a discussion of the data we have to date, what holes there are, and what needs
to be done to fill the holes.
Not surprisingly, we're seeing a rough picture where commercial and industrial concerns
consume a majority of the electricity in town, residential consumption is substantial, and
municipal only accounts for a very low percentage.
- Still waiting for data from Keyspan (natural gas)
- Heating Oil estimates - need more data points (see below)
- We should be getting data from the DMV with aggregate miles driven per vehicle class
in about two weeks.
- MWRA: Need to figure out the town's portion of energy use for sewage pumping.
- Who are the big commercial electric users? Toby will talk to Paul Chernick.
In order to get more data samples from residents, we will be asking friends / neighbors /
etc. within town to run the GWAC carbon calculator and give us the results. Their
individual results will not be publicized. Andy has created instructions and JJ is working
on a solicitation email.
5) New members from Tufts
Katherine and Eric talked about some of the things they may be able to do in order to
help the committee's work. Eric is available most Fridays and could help survey some
hard -to -reach targets (non - profits, commercial waste). Katherine can also help in this
area and she also expressed an interest in doing outreach to other community rganizations
- we're more successful if we're not going it alone.
6) Adam's warrant article
Adam's article (43) on the Town Meeting warrant was discussed in order to see if the
committee would endorse it. For a number of reasons, mostly because the committee is
not yet in a position to act as a consulting body to other town entities, Adam withdrew his
request for an endorsement.