New natural gas hook-ups: killing our kids

Belmont Citizen-Herald — February 27, 2020

The Belmont Energy Committee submitted a proposed Warrant article this week to the Select Board that would, amongst other things, ban the use of natural gas in new residential construction for uses other than home cooking.  Once upon a time, natural gas was considered to be the “clean” fuel, an environmentally responsible alternative.  That view, however, was built on a comparison of gas to fuels such as fuel oil and coal.  In today’s world, the environmental and public health dangers arising from the use of natural gas in the home have been well-documented.  As Belmont Light achieves its goal of being emission-free by 2022, it is reasonable to require new construction to use electricity to heat and cool homes, and to provide hot water.

The use of natural gas inside today’s homes has been found to be of particular danger to children.  Recent research by Physicians for Social Responsibility reports that natural gas results in a degradation in indoor air quality.  This is of particular concern given that kids spend 80% of their time indoors.  Poor indoor air quality substantially contributes to respiratory illnesses for children, including asthma.

Cooking with natural gas is of particular danger to children.  According to a study by Mothers Out Front, a national environmental organization mobilized around climate change, “cooking with gas is associated with increased risks of current and lifetime asthma.  [An 11] study meta-analysis looked at the effects of indoor [nitrogen dioxide] and cooking with gas on asthma and wheeze in children.  The analysis showed that children living in a home with a gas cooking stove have a 42% increased risk of current asthma and a 24% increased lifetime risk of asthma.” It is, however, not simply cooking with natural gas that contributes to environmental degradation and indoor air quality problems.  The use of natural gas for hot water and home heating is also dangerous.

Fixing the problem, at least in new construction and substantial rehabilitation, is eminently economically feasible.  One recent study for MassSave estimated that all-electric construction results in a $754 construction premium for a 2,500 square foot single family home, compared to the same home fitted with the most efficient gas heat and hot water systems and electric central air conditioning.  This premium is less than a 0.1% increase in cost for a typical new home.

In addition, when a new all-electric building is compared to an existing home in Belmont, the new all-electric one will be significantly less expensive to operate than natural gas, due to the far better sealing and insulation required in new buildings.

The proposed Belmont ban on natural gas hook-ups in new construction is a reasoned, and moderate, proposal to address health problems and climate change.  For example, if you currently have gas heating and/or hot water, you not only can keep it, but you can replace it should you wish to do so.  The proposed bylaw affects only new construction and/or gut renovations.

Even if you renovate your home, the bylaw applies only if the renovation affects 50% or more of the total floor space in your home.  Moreover, if you add an addition to your home, the work area in the original space would have to be over 50% of the original structure to trigger the proposed bylaw in the context of an addition. Just an addition alone without major rehabilitation in the existing portions of the building would not trigger the proposed bylaw. The vast majority of additions, such as adding a porch or remodeling a kitchen, do not meet this threshold.

Belmont has made a strong commitment to address climate change at the local level.  Town Meeting has endorsed the objective of reducing emissions by 80% by the year 2050.  Achieving this objective does not occur through the pursuit of business as usual.  The Belmont Energy Committee’s “inventory” of emission sources in Belmont, as presented to, and discussed at, each of the last two annual Town Meetings, has found that the vast majority of carbon emissions in our community arises from residential buildings.  To require that new construction, including substantial renovations, not further contribute to the degradation of our environment, and to the health problems of our children, is a reasonable approach.

Emissions reductions through paper bag fees

Belmont Citizen-Herald — February 06, 2020

When one thinks of the major contributors to carbon emissions in Belmont, what immediately comes to mind are those huge sources of greenhouse gasses identified in the town’s most recent emissions inventory. Home heating and cooling, transportation and electricity lead the list.  One source of emissions, however, which is substantial simply because it is so ubiquitous, involves the use of paper bags in our day-to-day lives.  Every time someone walks out of Star Market with their groceries in a paper bag, they are contributing to the degradation of our environment.

With this past year being the second hottest year on record from a climate change perspective, lifelong Belmont resident, and MIT materials science student, Rahul Ramakrishnan, decided to do something about it.  Ramakrishnan is building support among Belmont Town Meeting Members to impose a ten cent fee for the use of paper bags in town.  The ten cent charge would be imposed at the time a customer requests a paper bag at a retail store. The resulting revenue would be kept by the merchant.

I met with Ramakrishnan recently to discuss his proposal.  People should listen to what he has to say.  Town Meeting should adopt the proposal he is advancing.

According to Ramakrishnan, the notion of a paper bag fee is neither new nor revolutionary.  For example, the City of Cambridge has long employed such a ten cent charge to reduce the use of paper bags.  That city has found such a charge to be an effective strategy.  Rather than consumers simply paying the increased cost, Cambridge has found that the city’s ten cent charge has prompted consumers to instead increase their reliance on re-usable bags, thus reducing the use of paper bags by 85%.

From an emissions perspective, such a reduction is very important.  Ramakrishnan notes that Belmont recently banned the use of light-weight plastic bags in town.  He cites statistics revealing that American shoppers use more than 100 billion such bags a year.  Emissions from plastics production globally would account for roughly 56 gigatons of carbon between now and 2050.  To place that in context, that is about 50 times the amount of annual emissions from all coal-fired power plants in the United States.

From an emissions perspective, paper bags are even worse than plastic bags.  Paper bags produce from three to four times as much carbon as the same quantity of plastic bags.  Plastic bags, however, have received more attention, Ramakrishnan observes, because they are not merely a carbon problem, but they are one of the most visible litter problems as well.

Ramakrishnan rejects out-of-hand the suggestion that addressing global warning by directing attention to the use of paper bags in a small town such as Belmont would result in an insubstantial impact on reducing global carbon emissions.  He asserts, and I agree, that reducing the use of paper bags is a classic example of the maxim to “think globally, act locally.”  If one were to adopt the view that individual actions are too insubstantial to make a difference, he says, no-one would ever do anything.  No individual decision to turn off a light switch, take the bus to Harvard Square, or walk rather than drive to Belmont Center to shop would be undertaken. Standing alone, each individual decision makes no difference. However, he rightly continues, just as making recycling or composting a “habit” for each household will collectively help address global warming, so too would each individual decision to rely on reusable bags rather than getting “new” (and environmentally damaging paper bags) at each trip to the store collectively do so.

Ramakrishnan is moving his proposal forward to present at Annual Town Meeting this spring.  When given the opportunity, Town Meeting should favorably act to approve this proven method of taking one more bite out of the carbon emissions that are killing our planet.

Before the override—a unified program of assistance

Belmont Citizen-Herald — November 14, 2019

While the notion that “if you build it, they will come” may apply to fantasy baseball parks, it does not apply to Belmont’s programs offering financial assistance to lower income residents. As the town moves toward an expected operating override in the next year for property taxes, now is the time to ensure that residents can access those programs that would ease the financial burden of supporting the operations of our community.

Three primary Belmont programs exist, eligibility for which should be tied together.  Under a Belmont Light program, low-income customers have their monthly fixed “customer charge” set to $0. In addition, their total energy charge is discounted by nearly 30%. The total savings for a typical customer is $485 per year.  Under the Belmont Water program, eligible customers receive a discount of 30% off both their water and sewer bills.  For a typical Belmont residential customer, who uses 3,000 cubic feet (30 hundred cubic feet) per quarter, the discount offers a bill reduction of roughly $240 on the water bill and $460 on the sewer bill.  Between our two municipal utilities, in other words, income-eligible customers can pocket bill reductions of nearly $1,200 a year.  Add Belmont’s property tax deferral program to these utility discounts, and it cannot be disputed that the town devotes a fair amount of effort to helping our lower income residents.

However, a problem exists.  Despite the fact that each of these programs is offered by a municipal office (Belmont Light, Belmont Water, Belmont Tax Assessor), residents who need these programs must submit three different applications to three different offices in order to access the programs.  That makes no sense.  In particular, the issue of whether Belmont should offer a unified system of financial assistance to its lower income residents will soon gain a hearing before the town’s Water Advisory Board.  That Advisory Board should approve the proposal that is being advanced.

If Belmont’s programs now have different eligibility requirements, surely Belmont officials should be able to work together so that all town programs are seeking to reach the same populations.  It might be understandable if two private utilities could not agree on which “low-income” populations to serve through their discounts.  It would be inexcusable if two of Belmont’s municipal offices could not reach such an agreement.

Considerable work has been performed in recent years to identify enrollment barriers to a whole host of public assistance programs, including federal fuel assistance (known as LIHEAP), Medicaid, CHIP, Medicare, Food Stamps, and other similar programs. Barriers that have been identified include: (1) lack of information about the program’s existence and benefits; (2) lack of information, or erroneous information, about a household’s eligibility; (3) complicated enrollment processes, including income verification; (4) enrollment processes and locations that are inconvenient in time and/or location; (5)  the social “stigma” that accompanies a view of benefits as “welfare”; and (6) the confusion inherent in the need to access different benefits through different offices, filling out different forms, and meeting different eligibility requirements. Belmont would be well-served to take notice of these barriers and to seek to overcome them in its outreach and enrollment processes.

Each of these barriers can be addressed by allowing a resident to visit a town office –be it Belmont Light, Belmont Water, the Tax Assessor, the Council on Aging, or some other office—and filling out a single form to apply for all three programs in one sitting. No new program is created. Existing programs are simply made more accessible. If someone qualifies for the Belmont Light discount, why should they not also qualify for the Belmont Water discount?

Before Belmont heads into discussions about who can, and who cannot, afford an operating override to support fundamental municipal services such as educating our kids and paving our streets, the town should make those decisions to ensure that the financial assistance that is offered to residents in need is available in practice, not merely on paper.  In light of the foreseeable need for increased property taxes through an override in the near future, creating a unified system of eligibility and intake for Belmont’s electricity, water/sewer and property tax programs is not only good politics, but is good public policy as well.

Time to Rescind Belmont’s Minuteman Withdrawal

Belmont Citizen-Herald — October 24, 2019

One need not second-guess the decision that Belmont made just a few years back to leave the Minuteman Tech school district to agree that, today, the best way forward is to remain a member of that vocational and technical high school.  Town Meeting will discuss the issue of whether to leave or stay in November.  Even without making any snide references to Boris Johnson, the decision should be to stay.

In 2016, a Special Town Meeting decided that the lowest risk option for Belmont was to start the three-year process of withdrawing as a Minuteman member.  The reasons at that time seemed compelling.  Minuteman was proposing a new school that appeared to most Belmont folks to be over-sized and over-priced.  The tuition structure between member and non-member communities appeared to be punitive to members, imposing an unfair proportion of the costs of the school on Minuteman members.  The school was under-enrolled, which would place even greater costs on member communities as the fixed costs of the new (over-sized, over-priced) school building would be spread over fewer and fewer students. The administration of Minuteman appeared, at best, to be tone-deaf to the concerns being expressed by Belmont.

Today, however, the situation has improved.  The new Minuteman school was ultimately down-sized.  The new school was just recently completed, on-budget and sooner than expected.  Not only is enrollment at the school increasing (partially due to the introduction of new programs), but the enrollment from Belmont this year is far higher than it has been in recent memory.  Minuteman has (finally) addressed the major inequities in tuition costs between member and non-member communities.  Given these considerably improved circumstances, Belmont should stay.

In contrast, the decision to continue to withdraw poses real risks to Belmont today.  By law, Belmont is required to provide technical and vocational education to students who seek such education.  In this fashion, Minuteman Tech should be considered another “public high school” serving Belmont families. Families who enroll in Minuteman, in other words, do not pay a special “tuition” for this education.  If Belmont kids cannot attend Minuteman, however, the Town would be required to find (and pay for) another alternative to provide such education.  One problem is that there is no other alternative, no Plan B.

Given that the new Minuteman school facility was down-sized, the enrollment is running at almost equal to, if not exceeding, capacity. Students from member communities are enrolled first.  Students from non-member communities can enroll only if, and then only to the extent, that space permits. This year, there was a wait list for the incoming ninth grade class. If Belmont students cannot attend Minuteman, to craft individual solutions for Belmont kids who want vocational and technical education would be difficult and expensive.

From a strictly financial point of view, remaining a member of Minuteman appears to now make sense.  Non-member tuition for Minuteman students is not determined each year by the time Belmont is establishing its annual budget.  And non-member tuition fluctuates from year-to-year. To build this volatility into an already tight Belmont school budget would impose unreasonable demands on our school district.

There is a process advantage as well.  By remaining a member of Minuteman, Belmont would continue to be represented on the Minuteman school committee.  As part of that governing body, Belmont would have a voice in how the school is operated, and in how the school is funded. The school committee, not surprisingly, is charged with looking out for the best interests of member communities.  Belmont should retain that voice.

Unquestionably, there is an up-front cost to rescinding our withdrawal. When Belmont chose to withdraw, it stopped making its annual capital payments toward support of the Minuteman system.  If we now rescind our withdrawal, we would be required to make-up those payments we skipped.  That is neither surprising nor unreasonable.

When Town Meeting considers whether to rescind Belmont’s withdrawal from the Minuteman school this November, it should vote to have Belmont stay.  Whatever the justification for the withdrawal decision three years ago, conditions today now differ.  The best decision for both our kids, and for the Belmont community as a whole, is for Belmont to remain part of the Minuteman system.

Wait for 8th—a campaign to heed

Belmont Citizen-Herald — September 19, 2019

When’s the right time? That’s a question we never had to deal with. Our daughter grew up in an era that preceded “smart phones.” Given that the IPhone was not released in the United States until 2007, my wife and I were never presented with the question of how young is too young for a child to possess a “smart phone.” Today, however, life is different.

I readily admit that I may simply sound like the old fogey that I am. My nieces, nephews, and indeed, my daughter, do not hesitate to suggest that I am “out of touch with contemporary thought and activities.” So be it. I plead guilty. Nonetheless, I grew up in a medium-sized city (250,000 people). And, I grew up in an era where my two brothers and I would leave home on our bicycles in the morning with firm instructions from Mom to “be home for dinner.” The extent of our “screen time” was a half-hour of Yogi Bear before dinner, and, of course, a Saturday morning of cartoons, Sky King, The Lone Ranger, and a horse named Fury.

So, it’s no surprise that life has changed, right? That’s the nature of things. Nonetheless, some Belmont residents believe that the availability of some technology devices in today’s world should not be in the hands of younger kids. More specifically, the “Wait for 8th” movement advocates not making “smart phones” available to our kids until those kids  reach the eighth grade. And, I have to say, I tend to agree with them.

According to the “Wait for 8th” website,” “playing outdoors, spending time with friends, reading books and hanging out with family is happening a lot less to make room for hours of snap chatting, instagramming, and catching up on You Tube. With children spending anywhere between 3 to 7 hours daily in front of a screen, many childhood essentials are pushed aside for online amusement.” And that’s not healthy, emotionally, physically, or from a developmental perspective.

The “Wait for 8th^” campaign reports that “Studies show that the use of smartphones and other portable devices with screens affects the quantity and quality of sleep in children and teens. Adolescents are likely restless because they anticipate receiving texts and social media messages from friends, which affects their nighttime routine. Some children even wake up in the middle of the night to check texts or social media. Sleep disturbance in childhood is known to have adverse effects on health. . .” Moreover, the campaign says, “Children are not emotionally equipped to navigate tricky social media waters at such an early age. . .Research shows that the more time someone uses social media the more likely they are to be depressed.” Another report demonstrated that “adolescents’ psychological well-being decreased the more hours a week they spent on screens.”

Accordingly, the “Wait for 8th” campaign promotes parents taking a “pledge.” Signing the pledge involves a promise not to give your child a smartphone until at least 8th grade. That does not mean that kids would be denied any phone. Many parents who sign the pledge find that a basic phone that just calls and texts provides the security links that they seek. Nonetheless, a basic phone does not present the same dangers as a smartphone at a young age.

The “Wait for 8th” movement does not try to tell you how to parent your child. If you do not share concerns about access to smartphones, you can ignore the campaign. However, if you do share concerns, the campaign provides that as soon as 10 families from your child’s grade and school sign the pledge, the campaign shares the names of those signing the pledge within that group. The belief is that such a social support network is helpful to parents with concerns.

The “Wait for 8th” campaign seems to have a place in Belmont. A more public ongoing conversation about parental practices with the use of smartphones by young children is merited within our community. Parents can find more information about the campaign at waituntil8th.org.