Canton Sustainability Minutes August 3 2020

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Canton Sustainability Committee
Minutes
August 3, 2020
Members Present: Tim Calabrese, Erin Connor, Carolyn Elkort, Patti McDermott, Christine Smith
Review and Approval of Minutes from July 2020:
Motion made and seconded to approve the minutes from July. Unanimously approved.
Library Grant Update:
Carolyn reported on a grant that the Canton Library is applying for through the American Library Association. The purpose of the grant will be to educate residents on climate change
with a focus on flooding and storm water, and how that affects residents locally. The grant would provide funding for programming. Carolyn hopes to have a program for Climate Preparedness
Week, which is the week of September 21-28. In addition, the library has reached out to local groups such as the Neponset Valley Watershed Association for collaboration. They also
plan to host a film screening focusing on climate.
MAPC Accelerating Climate Resiliency Grant:
The grant discussed at the July meeting is open. Applications are due August 31. Christine and Tim reported that they discussed the grant with Town Planner, Laura Smead. Laura was
unable to attend tonight’s meeting. However, after reviewing the grant, Laura felt that we should focus on a manageable grant for our first grant application. She noted that the MVP
Action Grant has an education piece around flooding and 2 interactive webinars and suggested building on that theme. The grant funds could be used to host interactive webinars focusing
on climate resiliency at home, what can be done both inside and outside the home. Perhaps viewers could get a climate resiliency kit – one focusing on renters and one focusing on owners.
 Working with other town departments and committees to reach at risk populations would be important. The Committee voted unanimously to support this approach. Christine will reach
out to Laura to let her know and to find out how else we can support the grant. Laura will likely need to present to the Select Board for approval and members of the Committee can attend
in support.
PAYT Discussion:
Patti reported that she heard from Charlie Aspinwall that the RFP for the construction contract will be posted sometime later this month. When available, we could look at it to determine
scope and see how PAYT might work with any new bid. Our next step would be to send out the survey to residents. Questions have been drafted but we need to determine how best to send
out. Patti will reach out to Laura Smead, who has done surveys to residents before to get feedback. Erin said she had looked at the questions and would do so again and could assist
Patti. We would need to run by Select Board so if we are going to be on their agenda later this month for the grant application, we could add that to our agenda. Kathi Mirza at DEP had
provided a link to all the municipalities that use PAYT so we could pick some relevant towns to use as comparison. The model seems to be an annual trash fee that gives you a certain
size barrel (either owned by residents or owned by town or owned by trash provider) and then any trash beyond that is additional cost through the use of PAYT bags or stickers. Costs
vary town to town. 
Rain Barrels:
Christine reported on a program from the Great American Rain Barrel Company in Hyde Park. They are a company that repurposes barrels that had been used to import olives into rain barrels.
They have been doing this for 20 years. They have partnered with numerous municipalities to offer rain barrels to residents at a discount. This can be done at no cost to the town.
 Great American Rain Barrel handles all the ordering, answers questions, handles payment and delivers the barrels to a location in town (specified by the town). We would need to provide
volunteers to unload the barrels and also load into customer cars. This has been done during COVID with no-contact options. Customers order and pay in advance online. At delivery,
they pull up in their cars, do not get out of the car, but show their name or email order. A volunteer then puts the barrel either in the back of their car or in the backseat. We would
not need more than a few volunteers to do this. We would need to pick location and time. Saturday would be difficult as they would have to deliver barrels the day before so would need
storage – but if a weekday afternoon/evening no storage needed – just a distribution location. Barrels sold through this program are sold at a 40% discount. The Town could subsidize
if needed/wanted to make them more affordable but it is not necessary. We would be responsible for getting the word out so would need assistance of various town departments to get the
word out. The company has many resources on its website about installation, the benefits of rain barrels, etc. This could also be brought up to Select Board when we get on the agenda.
We could do this in the fall or if time does not allow then move to the spring.
Next Meeting:
Since the first Monday in September is Labor Day, it was decided to hold our next meeting on Monday, August 31st at 7 pm. 
Adjourned at 8:15 pm.