Green Committee, School Committee Work on Compromise for Vehicle Policy

With a Oct. 1 application deadline looming, the School Committee and Green Committee are close to a compromise that could salvage efforts to get Tewksbury declared a "Green Community."

School Committee member Krissy Polimeno and Green Committee Chairwoman AnnMarie Stronach will meet with School District Business Manager Jack Quinn and Community Development Director Steve Sadwick on Wednesday to iron out details and language that would make a Fuel Efficient Vehicle Policy palatable to the School Committee.

The Board of Selectmen already adopted the policy on behalf of the other town departments.

Adoption of such a policy is one of five criteria needed for a town to earn Green Community status, which makes it eligible for certain energy efficiency grants from the state. Presently, 47 Massachusetts communities have earned the Green Community designation.

According to Joanne Bissetta, the Green Communities Northeast Regional Coordinator for the State Department of Energy Resources, grant totals can range from $130,000-$900,000 and average around $200,000 per community.

However, at the Green Committee meeting Monday night, Bissetta admitted that some communities find that the money they spend to earn Green Community designation does not equate with the amount of grant funding they receive and that the program is, fundamentally, environmental in nature.

"The ultimate goal of the program is reduce greenhouse gasses," she said.

Cost effectiveness is the primary concern School Committee members have with the Fuel Efficient Vehicle policy, which states that when a vehicle is removed from a fleet, it must be replaced with one that meets certain fuel efficiency standards.

According Polimeno, this could be a financial burden on future school committees.

"We rely on hand-me-downs (from other town departments)," she said. "Under this policy, we'd have to get newer vehicles and we haven't been in the business of purchasing vehicles."

The school department owns six vehicles, all of which are used in some way or another, for maintenance purposes. Because of this, said Bissetta, they may be exempt from the requirements of the policy. She promised to research the issue and provide the committee with an answer.

If the vehicles are not exempt, there is another loophole. It had been originally thought that the state required a fleet to be replaced completely within five years. However, Bissetta explained that the requirement is only that a fuel-efficient vehicle is acquired at whatever point a replacement is needed, which could be many years down the road.

Sadwick apologized for including the five-year clause in the policy presented to both the School Committee and Board of Selectmen, saying he had used language in the town of Andover's policy and that their policy was more stringent than the state required.

The Green Committee voted that the language of the policy be changed for both the town (through the selectmen) and the School Committee so that they are uniform.

That will be one of the issues to be discussed at the meeting with Quinn Wednesday, and Polimeno said she believes eliminating the five-year requirement from the language may be enough to satisfy the concerns of her fellow School Committee members.

Other Green Community criteria includes providing "as-of-right siting" in designated locations for renewable/alternative energy generation, research & development, or manufacturing facilities; streamlining the permitting process for such building projects; establishing an energy use baseline inventory for all municipal departments with a plan to reduce energy use by 20 percent; and adoption of the stretch energy code, which requires new construction projects more than 3,000 square feet to meet certain energy efficiency guidelines.

Stronach adjourned the Green Committee meeting briefly so that Sadwick and Green Committee member Jim Duffy could make a public presentation explaining the Stretch Energy Code. Adoption of the code will be an article at the October Special Town Meeting.

In practical terms, the Stretch Code "stretches" or enhances, the energy efficiency guidelines already adopted by the state in 2009. If adopted, the Stretch Code will become an appendix to the town's building code.