Colrain Energy Committee monthly meeting

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Tuesday, March 19, 2019, 6:00 pm until 8:00 pm
Town Garage Meeting room
A meeting of the Energy Committee

Town of Colrain Energy Committee Meeting Minutes February 21, 2019 (Next Meeting: Thursday March 21st, 6 pm, Hwy. Garage Building) Present: Elizabeth Erickson, Jon Lagreze, Therese Fitzsimmons, Rocky Lively, Lynn DiTullio Meeting opened at 6pm 1. Status of Town Garage Proposal: • Elizabeth sent the revised figure for Weston & Sampson’s Bid prep and PM work to Jim Barry for inclusion in our application for construction funding. • Jon described research he’s doing for alternate insulation and sheathing approaches; he contacted Mowry & Schmidt and will meet with them at the Town Garage on Saturday. He will coordinate with Peter. Are there other approaches worth exploring? Rocky suggested Adam Bursma of Jacksonville. • Lynn and Peter are considering making an alternate proposal to the Town for bid prep/PM services to save the $14,250 that Weston & Sampson will charge. Lynn would prep the documents, Peter would prep the Scope of Work and do construction inspections. Both would assist Kevin Fox with bid review and onsite bidder tours. Getting this done within one month is the goal. • Whether to tell Kevin Fox to hold off on awarding the bid prep work to W&S if he receives funding approval from the state was discussed (only he and Elizabeth are contacted and Elizabeth will be away). It was felt that such approval will not come soon and Elizabeth will speak with Kevin upon her return. 2. UMass Clean Energy team Audit at Colrain Central March 5th • Coordination of this meeting was discussed. As Elizabeth will be away Lynn volunteered to coordinate with: • Robin Pease regarding access to mechanical spaces and drawings • Talia re: projector and other prep for presentation to the 4th graders • Grace Bird of the Recorder re: photo op • River at UMass to see what we can expect from their audit, and when 3. Town Solar Array options: • We are ready to go out for budget estimates; Lynn will head up effort and will email everyone whenever site visits are arranged • The expected outcome is a much better understanding of feasibility and costs of the sites so that we can write a much tighter scope of work to obtain formal quotes. • More investigation into the capped landfill site adjacent to the Transfer station was discussed; this will be added to the sites for solar installers to consider. • Rocky brought up the fact that behind-the-meter sites can go up to 25 kW. Since only the school can utilize PV production in the 10-25 kW range and the Town would have accounting issues with the District in realizing those savings, we had been considering stand-alone systems. However, we could possibly do “behind the meter” systems and bank our net metering credits for several years and use them after converting various town buildings to heat pumps or other electric heat. This will be added to the items to discuss with the Solar installers. • Elizabeth shared news from her correspondence with Paul Mark’s office re: action to remove barriers to community solar (i.e. the Windsor “wormhole” issue). Jo Comerford has entered a bill in the state house to address this. What we can do to support it was discussed. 3. New Mission Statement: We did not get to this item and will discuss next time. 4. Jan 31st action items were reviewed. 5. January 31st minutes were approved unanimously. Elizabeth will upload them to the websites. 6. Next Meeting: We need to review and approve some past minutes - January 14th? ACTION ITEMS: - What can META grants be used for? - Learn more on what Fire Departments think about Solar? - Lynn to distribute DEP Guide re: renewable energy on landfills - Elizabeth will forward correspondence re: Paul Mark’s work and statehouse bill to remove Windsor “wormhole” - Peter and Lynn to prepare alternate proposal for Town Garage Bid prep/PM/Construction management, within a month.

Meeting of Energy Committee

Members:

• Bing Waldsmith. (June, 2026)
• Brian Cady. (June, 2026)
• Chris Krezmien. (June, 2026)
• David Greenberg. (June, 2026)
• Peter Brooks, Chair. (June, 2026)

See original Agenda Draft Minutes * * *

Draft Meeting Minutes have not yet been published.

The listing of matters is those reasonably anticipated by the Chair which may be discussed at the meeting. Not all items listed may in fact be discussed and other items not listed may also be brought up for discussion to the extent permitted by law.

Posted to: Energy Committee.

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