Melrose Earns State's 'Green Community' Designation

Melrose is among the first communities in Massachusetts to earn a 'green community' designation from the state, Gov. Deval Patrick announced on Tuesday this week, availing the city to energy-related grants only available to those communities that earned the designation.

The city now has until Friday, June 4 to submit an application to the state and seek its share of the $8.1 million pool of grant funding available to the 35 cities and towns designated as green communities through the state Department of Energy Resources (DOER). That deadline is an extension; the original deadline for grant applications was today, but Melrose City Planner Denise Gaffey said she believed the state received more green community designation applications than they expected, resulting in this week's announcement coming a little later than expected.

Even though only roughly 10 percent of Massachusetts cities and towns earned a green designation, Gaffey expressed a measure of surprise that Melrose will face that much competition for grant funds.

"What's funny is it's more communities than we thought (earning the designation)," she said. "We jumped in pretty late in the game; we didn't even start working on it in earnest until early March. When we were working with the consultant — a program that DOER also funded to help communities with technical assistance — she was theorizing that maybe a dozen communities would get it all together and apply and get green status.

"Lo and behold," she added with a chuckle.

The state's 2008 Green Communities Act established the Green Communities Division within the DOER, which then established five criteria for communities seeking a green distinction; among the criteria are purchasing only fuel-efficient vehicles and developing a plan to reduce baseline energy use by 20 percent within five years.

The projects the city will seek funding for through its grant proposal are pulled from that 20-percent reduction plan, which identified millions of dollars worth of energy-related projects that would enable the city to meet that goal, Gaffey said.

"We have no idea much funding will come our way," she said although noting with a chuckle that she liked the $8.1 million figure announced Tuesday, as that figure is higher than earlier estimates. "In our proposal, we'll probably just throw out a bunch of projects. We're being encouraged to do that and give (the DOER) a range of projects. As they're evaluating, they can pick and choose what they think best meets the goals for the program."

Among the major projects identified in the city's energy use reduction plan include installing high-efficiency boilers and energy management systems at the Hoover Elementary School and Horace Mann Elementary School, Gaffey said. A new roof for Melrose High School — which Gaffey said contains ineffective wet and saturated insulation and has been identified for years by city officials as a priority — is also included in the plan.

"The nice thing about a project like that (the high school roof) is if we do a replacement roof, that sets the stage for a project in the future like a solar installation, which works well on a new roof," she said. Melrose Veterans Memorial Middle School next door has a solar array that generates 5 percent of the electricity used by the school annually. "It probably wouldn't do on a old roof, especially if later on you have to replace the roof."

The fifth criteria set by the DOER — and the most contentious in most communities — required cities and towns to adopt a more stringent energy code known as the "Stretch Code," which was developed by the state's Board of Building Regulations and Standards. The code is technically an appendix to the state's existing energy code and requires higher efficiency levels in new residential and commercial construction and major homeowner renovations.

Gaffey noted that the stretch code didn't face the same level of concern in Melrose as in other communities, mainly because Melrose has a relatively low number of new homes built each year; renovations and additions have more relaxed energy guidelines than new homes in the stretch code. The Melrose Board of Aldermen unanimously approved the stretch code earlier this month along with a change; the code goes into effect on Jan. 1, 2011.

Also, as noted at a public forum held in April with the city's green community consultant Eliza Johnston of ICF International, and Mike Berry, an account manager at ICF who works in Massachusetts on the federal Energy Star program, the state's baseline building code will likely match the standards set forth in the stretch code by 2012, Gaffey said.

"Some of the things required in the stretch code, for example, like Energy Star windows, those are sort of the only things you can find anymore at stores," she said. "A lot of it (the concern) was just perception."