 April 22nd with our special guest, Amherst Sustainability Coordinator, Stephanie Ciccarello. Welcome, Stephanie. Thank you for joining us. Thank you, Brie. Happy to be here. And happy Earth Day to everybody and to both of you. Happy Earth Day. This is like Stephanie's number one holiday of the year, right? Yeah, absolutely. Well, we appreciate you joining us today. In a moment, we are going to ask you to introduce yourself. And before we do that, we're going to have Paul give any general town updates he might want to share. Sure. Thanks. And thanks for being here, Stephanie. Happy Earth Day to everyone. So if this is your star turn in about 10 days, we're going to have the star turn for our finance department because that's when we deliver the town's annual budget, which includes the capital improvement program. And so that will be delivered to the town council on May 3rd with an exciting new presentation, exciting new budget format, all kinds of things happening under our new finance director, Sean Mangana, which is very exciting. There's been a lot of work by a lot of people to get to this point. Some, you know, we're still a lot of work to be done. And Brie, I was aware of that, is part and parcel of pulling this all together over the next 10 days, basically. So that's going to be the big thing that we're focused on over the next week and a half. And once that gets delivered to the town council, it moves to the finance committee. And they go through pretty much twice a week meetings to go through department by department every recommendation or they make a recommendation to the full town council, which in June, we'll take it under consideration. And they need to approve a budget, a balanced budget by June 30th. So that's that's the plan of action for that. And that's, so that's taken up a lot of our time, among other things that are happening. All right, thanks for the updates, Paul. I would love for Stephanie to introduce herself to our audience, if you would. Sure. Hi, everyone. I'm Stephanie Ciccarello. I'm the sustainability coordinator for the town of Amherst, and I'm housed in the conservation department. And how long have you worked for the town? If you feel like divulging that? If you want more, well, well, technically, I've worked for the town for going on 24 years now, but officially 21. It'll be 21 in July, July 1st. And why officially 21 and not 24? Was there a? Oh, that's a long. I had quite an interesting entryway into working for the for the town. I started very part-time inspecting silt fences for construction projects that the conservation commission was overseeing. I had been working for a wetland consulting firm, and it was during one of the economic downturns. So there was a real lapse in building and construction projects. So I was actually laid off along with a senior staff person from the firm I was working for. And this was just one of those opportunities that presented itself to at least have some part-time work. And I was a consultant at the time. So that's why those three years, those first three years are kind of as a consultant. And I started inspecting the silt fences five to 10 hours, and that led to attending conservation commission meetings, which then started to lead to more hours, you know, to 15 hours, and then ultimately to 18 hours. And I was there for a while. And at 20 hours, I was made a permanent part-time employee, but that was sort of a few years in. So actually that those first three years. So I was a consultant. And then we created the position of wetlands administrator that had been an assistant conservation director, but they eliminated that position. And so there was really only a conservation director and staff, a land manager, and then the wetlands administrator position was created at that time. But that doesn't say how I got to hear. It's always interesting to hear how the people's pathway into local government, which is something, you know, Breonna and I talk about, and she's been very involved in encouraging people to seek a career in local government and people come in it in different ways, you know, and yours came in. That's a really interesting path through the consulting world to part-time work because of economic necessities. Then you proved yourself and grew into a bigger role. That's really interesting. Right. Yeah. It was, you know, I really, I didn't apply for technically at least coming in. I didn't apply for job at the town. That just was sort of a, you know, inspect inspecting cell fences was not something that was being advertised at the time, especially back then. It's not something you would have advertised for. So it was just like, who do you know that can do this? And so I was available. And I said, sure, I'm happy to. But it did grow into a role. And then from that role, we had an intern, there was a program that the then director Pete Westover had participated in from an organization called Ickley, which was the Cities for Climate Protection Program. And so we brought in an intern to do a baseline greenhouse gas emissions analysis. And when she was done, it just kind of left the town with starting this process that wasn't going to necessarily move forward. So I asked if there was a way I could have a role in helping with that. And then we created the position of energy task force coordinator because at the time, this intern had created an energy task force to work on the issue. But then she left and there was this group of people with no one to sort of work with them. So I stepped into that role. So then we created another position that was, but this was all part time. I was for both positions, I was only part time like at 24 to 28 hours per week doing both for about nine years or so. And how did that transition into what your current role is? And can you describe a little bit about, I know it's a lot of things, but is there a little description you can give about what your current role is and does? Well, the sustainability coordinator position evolved because we had developed that climate action plan that energy task force group had created a climate action plan that was released back in 2005. And so I was sort of supporting that work very part time, but over time, there became more opportunities within at the state level actually, and even at the federal level to do more work addressing climate change. And climate change sort of at the beginning, this was kind of at the earlier part of people's awareness around this issue, around 2000 was kind of when there was a real sort of shift I think in awareness and public awareness. And that's when people started seeing all the images of the polar bears. And you know, there was just a definite movement that began at that time. So there was more opportunity to start working in this field. And once we created the climate action plan, it identified the need for a role to sort of work on this issue, like a very separate staff position. And honestly, at the time, it was a very aspirational thing to include, we didn't really think it would ever happen. But around 2012, the town decided to participate in the green communities program. And that really required a real focus on addressing climate change through energy efficiency measures and things that we could do on the municipal side. And it was going to it was just going to require more hours. And at the time I was the wetlands administrator position had fully evolved into supporting the conservation commission, we had other staff at one time that had been doing things like taking minutes. But that position basically went away or evolved so that it wasn't doing that supportive role for the commission any longer. So the wetlands administrator took that on. So it was just so much, it was just too much to be able to do both jobs. So we kind of cleaved them off and created the wetlands administrator is a separate job and the sustainability coordinator job evolved out of the need for participating in green communities. I'm going to take a quick moment for those of us who are watching us on Facebook live, feel free to drop a comment and we can ask your question to Stephanie or to Paul, as well as those joining us live in Zoom. Feel free to pop your question into the Q&A or raise your hand so we can hear from you live. We'd love to be able to invite you into the room. So you talked about your trajectory and how that kind of built up but in the last few years there's been a lot of developments in this field and how was the focus of your work changed over time or especially recently over the last few years? Are you seeing different trends, different areas to focus on? I think there's a lot of things that I've seen. The shift, as I said, was really in the beginning. There was just this kind of baseline level awareness of climate change and I think there was a period of time where people were talking specifically about climate change and it became very overwhelming and I think people felt like it was so much that they didn't know what to do with it and I think there was a shift at the state level with the Green Communities Program and how we present this. It became an alternative way of looking at it through efficiency as something like that's a win-win. If you're becoming more efficient with your energy use you're basically helping to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. That's kind of one of the pathways of getting there so you're still doing that but you're not calling it addressing climate change. You're more focusing on it as energy efficiency and so it was a more positive spin on it that made it I think a lot more palatable for communities to get on board so that they could do the things they needed to do to address climate change but sort of do it through the lens of efficiency in a way that felt easier. It was kind of an easier sell if you will and it saved money so those efficiency measures saved money so it was just a really I think a really brilliant strategy at the state level to really find a way to present this and so the focus was shifted but I think we're getting back more now to really talking about climate change is the real issue because we are at such a tipping point and the worst case scenarios that we used to see presented 10, 15 years ago we're actually heading on that trajectory. At the beginning it used to be sort of the most that we can do to address this. This is where we'll be the least we can do will be here and we are following the sort of the worst trajectory unfortunately so I think when people call it a climate emergency now like we've moved beyond climate change we're talking about climate emergency now and that's really the level we're at and we really need to look at it and focus on it at that level. And so you know with the change in form of government in the last couple years here in Amherst and the new committee the energy and climate action committee ECAC for all of you who are in the acronym know can you talk a little bit about your the staff liaison for the ECAC can you talk a little bit about what that the role of that committee is and some of the initiatives that that they're handling right now. Sure so that committee was formed through the through our new town council and their their focus is really to address climate change and reducing carbon dioxide emissions and there's also an element of resilience that their looking at as part of their their work as well. They've done quite a bit of work just in the last couple of years in which they convened where they're trying to do some real broad community outreach to really get a sense of where people stand you know on this issue what they're aware of what their concerns are where what they'd like to see happen so they did a lot of polling and outreach at the beginning and now they're working with town with the town on developing a climate action plan we hired a consultant Linnean solutions out of Cambridge Mass who has been a great partner and we've been working with them for just about a year now on on developing this climate action plan so we had a very interesting process for that that the committee was very much behind in terms of really engaging people and community members that typically aren't at the table and we did a real concerted effort to to bring people in to have a voice in our what we call task group sessions we looked at specific sectors of the town in terms of transportation renewable energy land use and we we had specific groups that gathered on those specific topics and people really had an opportunity to to have a voice and to talk about you know the things that were most concerning to them in in relation to climate change in those given sectors I was impressed by that the kind of purposeful outreach you did to look at who's not at the table at these discussions because we have a very engaged community but usually the same groups of people and the people who don't have time or don't come to meetings and I think that your group especially Linnean I think we learned from Healthy Hampshire about how good things you went to those meetings you saw wow they had a really diverse group of people and I know our staff when they would go to these meetings well would say these are folks I've never seen at a public meeting before and is exactly what was needed for this plan so I thought that the thoughtfulness that you brought to that in that ECAC said was a value was really important to the end product that that you're going to be releasing pretty soon right yes it should be completed by the end of June we'll probably release it you know when we present it to the council will probably be like the the official release and that will be some time towards the end of June what was the thing that surprised you most about that process in relation to what you learned from community members and engaging new audiences was there a key takeaway there that kind of impacted you I I just think really how much it takes to really engage members of the community you know the way that things have traditionally been done through no fault of anyone's really it's just sort of a systemic issue right how we have meetings when we have meetings where we have meetings um you know you you sort of get into a sort of pattern of doing things and you don't realize how exclusive it is right because it's just the way well you always have meetings at night and we always have them at town hall and that's just how it is but it excludes so many people and I think going to that those meetings it was really the meetings through the collaboratives healthy Hampshire initiative that was just like a life-altering experience for me I I commend them so much on the work that they do and I also am so thankful that I had that opportunity to participate in that process the meetings were and um held at noon they were held in a church basement there was food provided um and people were so engaged and there were people who um you know there were you know sort of there was English translation at the meeting so there were people who didn't speak English at all um and that was kind of great to be able to be in that situation where I was trying to engage with people where we didn't speak the same language but somehow we were able to communicate with one another um I really I just really valued that experience and it just but like I said it was very life-altering sorry my my audio fell off for a second there um one thing that we talked about a little earlier Stephanie was you know we have the energy climate action committee which is comprised of mostly community members and I believe some counselors are on that as well um that's one way to get involved what what can other people do to get involved in climate action here in Amherst on the local level do you have any suggestions um well I do I think there's you know there's there's so many opportunities I think we're in an area where there's kind of there's like an overabundance of choice of how you can get involved um but there are certainly organizations um like um Mothers Out Front is one of the leading organizations in our area there's a very organized group of moms and also I believe some men are involved as well um who really are are really taking the mantle of this at the community level and they've partnered with the town on several initiatives and I would say that that's definitely one way people can get involved um I think even people attending ECAC meetings right now they're virtual sit in on an ECAC meeting I think there's going to be opportunities um in the future especially as we once we start to implement the climate action plan one of the things that really has to happen is you know um residents really have to sort of take on and embrace um their role in uh addressing this issue of climate change and I think that's something that you know there'll be opportunities as this moves forward and the plan is unveiled and programs are unveiled I think there'll be opportunities for people to get involved at that level I could see for for instance one example might be at some point we'll probably do some programming around um air source heat pumps where we'll probably advocate for residents to install air source heat pumps and that might be very that might look very similar to the Solarize campaign that we did a few years back where we had a team of residents that really kind of were the ones that went out and did the advocating for it um did signing up you know helping people get engaged in and how they could sort of follow up and install solar so we'll probably do something similar to to that kind of initiative and I would say there'll be opportunities like that moving forward and is that all part of you know you're thinking about what the town is going to be doing in the next five years or 10 years is that really part of that climate action and resilience plan that you were speaking about earlier that's coming in June will that be a road map for the town on how how they should move forward with the work there's a section of it that's you know so the the town council passed three goals if you will the first one is to reduce our carbon dioxide emissions 25 percent by 2025 then to reduce them by 50 percent by 2030 and then ultimately to be carbon neutral by 2050 those are very lofty goals so our plan can't it we don't know what's on the horizon in terms of what kind of technology or opportunity will lend itself so it's hard to go all the way to 2050 with a road map so we really kind of have focused on the road map piece of this being to 2025 and the rest of it is just sort of bigger aspirational suggested things that the town should do in terms of policy in terms of advocacy in terms of like some practical things we might be able to do down the road so the road map is to 2025 but the rest of it is really sort of like here a list of all these other things we want to look at and then as we move forward you know we'll come back to this and we'll you know maybe create another road map as we go forward it's kind of hard to tell that far far ahead I think folks in the audience if they if they have questions no good already do it could be this or anything all right yeah so we do have a hand in the room so Ken if Ken if you could unmute and introduce yourself thank you I'm Ken Rosenthal I live on Sunset Avenue Stephanie I think what you're doing is terrific it's so important for us now and for the future and I think we should all be grateful I may be wrong but I think that in the healthy Hampshire initiative I don't think I've seen named participation from the University of Massachusetts if I'm wrong please correct me if I'm right what I would really like to ask you is since it's such a major player economically and with its assets and resources and with its activity and commuters in this in this area how are you engaging them in the work you're doing thank you that's a great question Ken and thank you for the compliments I appreciate them so UMass is has developed their own climate action plan but we do have representation from the University on the Energy and Climate Action Committee so there's a liaison it's not specifically that what we're doing with the EZAC is directly partnered with the University but there is that connectivity if you will so that so that there can be more dialogue I do work with Ezra Small who is their sort of equivalent my position at the University level and we are partnering on like for instance the the Valley Bike Program is something that the University partnered with the town on so so there are sort of individual initiatives that we pursue together but I think in terms of the you know the specific goal of reducing carbon dioxide emissions they're sort of developing their own plan and I think ours will reference that and I think once our plan comes out there may be more opportunity to do more together I think we you know once our plan is unveiled and once we have an opportunity to have them take a look at it there can be more dialogue around some of those things thank you you're welcome thank you Ken for your question and I think something that kind of relates to that is you know you know what are other surrounding communities around Amherst doing are we on par with them are we ahead of them and are there regional collaborations that you know especially in Western Mass it's important to have those collaborations can you talk a little bit about some of that sure sure so so we are Amherst is a member of a network called the New England Municipal Sustainability Network and Northampton is also a partner a collaborator and a member of that group and so that group has given an opportunity for us to have to sort of be around the table where everyone sharing ideas about what they're doing at the municipal level and we share our challenges we share our aspirations we share our initiatives and so we've been able to have conversations like again to bring a valley bike but it really is one of the greatest examples that sort of evolved from a car ride to one of our NEMS network meetings so Wayne Feiden who's the planning director and Chris Mason who's the energy officer for Northampton and I were together and just talking and we both identified that having a bike share program was something we both wanted to sort of advocate for within our communities but it was so difficult and challenging to do and then we said well what if we try to do this together and then it just sort of evolved into this bigger effort it's huge and now it's really huge and the game changer for that that was so smart that you did was to make them assisted so that you know it's a hilly area and and it's sometimes people like oh I can't climb that last hill up by Emmer's College or whatever it is and but with the with the motor assist electric assisted motors it makes it so easy right exactly and you know it's funny because that was not what we were necessarily proposing or looking for we had always considered having at least some electric bikes as part of the program but we didn't think it would be entirely electric but the weekend came along is like this sort of fairy god company out of nowhere you know that bestowed upon us all of these electric bikes and it really it was an entirely and a game changer I'm not sure how well we would have done without without them that's great and great and now it goes all the way to springfield and the whole pioneer valley yeah right exactly I mean that was the goal really when we started we were five communities and the university and now I think we're up to nine or ten maybe and it's continually growing you just brought on another community right west springfield west springfield just came on yep east Hampton joined chickapee joined I believe Agawam so it's you know it's it's exciting and then exciting to be part of something and watching it grow so and again that was you know a collaboration that started with a conversation in a car I miss those days yeah right exactly that's right so we we are coming up at the end of our half hour I told you it goes really quick Stephanie so I'd love to invite one last time any any questions from our multiple channels of audiences here feel free to put that into the chats or the comment or raise your hand now but while we're waiting for that I'd love for you know any calls to action that you have for people our community members or things that you didn't get asked yet that you want to leave people with especially on on earth there sure yeah well happy earth day I can't believe I didn't start with that but um yes I think that the one thing that we are realizing especially with our climate action plan is that when you look at you know the emissions pie if you will in the town the municipal sector is really small and the university is a big piece of it but so is the residential sector and buildings especially so we really need to find a way for people to um get engaged and be committed to addressing climate change sort of at the individual level so we really are advocating for people to try to do what they can in their own homes um and hopefully the programming that the energy and climate action committee will participate in or advocate for um will will sort of help our residents be able to do that and homeowners be able to do that and businesses as well and how about you Paul any any last questions or thoughts from from no I mean I'm I know the group is working the ECAC has been working so hard and I'm really excited about the the level of detail they're getting into and I think you know the other thing I always think about is you know Stephanie and the town had done this 15 years ago right I mean the climate action plan that was on the forefront of what cities and towns and messages were doing so the town has always been working in this area it's a it's a new phase now but I don't I don't think I think we still want to honor what has recognized the work that was done previously by other people so and it really is immense all all of the different um projects and programs you have going on and grants and just like you said earlier it needed to be a person but maybe it needs to be five people who knows but um we appreciate the updates on yeah and all this important work one thing I want to add was you know that in the council did have this as a major goal and what they're important the important message from the council was that they wanted us to look through every every issue through the lens of climate action and sustainability and what's the greenhouse gas emission you know we're looking at pomeroy village what kind of intersection what's the greenhouse gas emission for the different options so everything we do and we're trying to build our budget that we're going to be presenting on May 3rd with this as part of the deliverables so that we can start to practice what we preach and doing it in our own operations well and I have to say that you know we did this 15 years ago but there wasn't this kind of commitment as there is now I mean they're really and I think because there is more understanding of really what the stakes are and so I think you know a credit to you and the council and and staff you know and the residents of the community who really know that this really is something we have to do it's really an imperative it's not really a choice anymore well we want to thank you for your time today Stephanie we know you're very busy we hope you enjoy the rest of your earth day and thank you for all the updates sure thank you so much it was really a pleasure thanks have a nice day bye everybody bye all