Sustainability, Energy, & Resiliency Committee

Meeting Minutes - Final September 25, 2019 – 6:30PM City Hall – 98 Washington Street In Attendance: John Hayes, Jeff Cohen, Rick Nye, Brittany Dolan (staff) Not in Attendance: Chris Cantone, Gail Kubik, Phil Koch, Lisa Peterson (councilor), Jenna Ide (staff) Public: Esmeralda Bisono (Community Solar Coach), Pat Gozemba (SAFE), Douglas Bowker 1. Introductions 2. Public Comment o Pat Gozemba – The event Making Salem Thrive, Bright Future for Salem will be taking place on Monday, November 18, 2019 (instead of October 1, 2019) from 6- 8:30pm at the CLC at 401 Bridge Street in Salem. o Jeff Cohen – Pat and Jeff had a SAFE/SERC meeting with City Councilor Lisa Peterson about the Benson Bill, H2810 Resolution. ▪ The bill has 108 co-sponsors, and almost all local environmental groups support it. ▪ Lisa Peterson is reviewing it, then SERC can review it. ▪ The Benson Bill will allow money from a carbon tax to be given back to the City for sustainability, renewable energy, and resiliency projects. o Pat Gozemba – The “Making Salem Thrive” event will be the first that will be a visioning session about what can be done with that money to make Salem more sustainable and resilient. ▪ It will involve a presentation, a round-table discussion, and then a reconvening of the ideas that were discussed. Sonia Hamel is going to be running this visioning session and after this, more programs like this will be run in communities across the state. ▪ Residents near Salem Willows usually talk about building bigger seawalls. Pat would love to have this event to discuss other ideas that may help in different ways, and to engage the community in discussing these ideas and fears that they may have. ▪ Professionals and those knowledgeable in the field, i.e. SERC members, will help facilitate the round-table discussions. ▪ As we saw in the gas leaks event last week, the Point neighborhood is the most endangered area and it is also one of the lowest points in Salem regarding sea level rise. We will be working with the Point Neighborhood Association for the event. ▪ Will ask League of Women Voters to co-sponsor.  ▪ We will hopefully get Marjorie Kelly to go a 5-minute speech at the event o Jeff Cohen – Will we have a slideshow presentation about what SERC does? o Pat Gozemba – SERC and SAFE are major co-sponsors, so a few slides from each will be playing in the background as people come in. Perhaps Salem Sound Coast Watch as well. 3. Review & Approve Meeting Minutes o Did not meet quorum tonight therefore the vote will be postponed until the meeting next month for both the August and September meeting minutes. 4. Solarize Mass Plus Next Steps o Installer interviews this week ▪ Installer(s) selected by Friday September 27, 2019 ▪ Official announcement early next week. o Volunteer information: ▪ Haunted Happenings Parade – October 3, 2019, 6:30-8:00pm ● Meet at Salem Common to line up for parade. o Contact Esmeralda Bisono at ebisono@salem.com to volunteer for future events. 5. Project Updates o Brittany Dolan – ▪ Jenna Ide had a meeting about the Bertram field project. Project is almost getting ready to go out to bid, probably around November. Construction will start over the winter. ▪ Forest River project is moving into the next phase of design for the pool. ▪ Salem Willows – focusing on redoing the hill where the carousel used to be near the entrance. Putting up a better barrier now to keep people/cars out, then next year we will apply for more grants to design and reconstruct the parking lot area. The grant we applied for got denied because it’s not completely “nature-based.” o John Hayes – Any updates on the O’Keefe center parking lot? ▪ Brittany Dolan – Not sure about updates on the O’Keefe center parking lot… Engineering department may know. 6. Finalize Resiliency FAQ o There is one more question to finish (#8). John Hayes will work on it. FAQ’s will be finalized during the next meeting. 7. Next Meeting – Wednesday October 23, 2019 at 6:30pm 8. Adjournment Meeting adjourned at 7:55pm. Minutes respectfully submitted by Esmeralda Bisono.