Commission on Climate Action and Sustainability – Jun 17, 2026

Climate Action & Sustainability Commission Agenda

Wednesday, June 17, 2026 5:30PM City Hall Room 113 215 Pleasant Street Malden, MA 02148

Roll Call (1 min)

• Councilor Carey McDonald - Absent
• Staff Liaison Rebekah McPheeters - Present
• Diego Maldonado* (Secretary) - Absent
• Noha Haraz* - Absent
• Bob FitzPatrick* - Present
• Rachel Surrette* - Absent
• Lipin Ji* - Present
• Amanda Treat* (Vice Chair) - Present
• Auka (Christina) Mui* - Absent
• Ron Cochran* - Absent
• Ricky Ma* (Chair) - Present
• CELT Fellow – William Sheppeck - Present
• Malden Director of OSPCD – Alex Pratt

Minutes to be Approved

Commission voted to approve minutes from May 15 meeting.

Energy Coach Program Memo

Julia and Will presented and overview the Energy Coach memo to group. Will received the top CELT prize for his work on Malden's Energy Coaching program:

• Will conducted multiple interviews with cities and towns with existing energy coaching programs.
• Towns had multiple models for running their programs. Their findings recommend that Malden runs the program with a partner organization for training the coaches. They recommend having a Program Manager, and Outreach Coordinator, Coach Coordinator and a Legal Reviewer.
• Ricky said that CASC should have a role in standing up the future Energy Coaching program, and then let it grow beyond the scope of this committee. Fitzy agreed that the CASC is well positioned for this role. CASC members would need to commit to the time required to make this a success.
• Discussed recommended scope for Energy Coaches – need to make sure volunteers do not have conflict of interest. Coaches will learn about assisting residents with paperwork & contracts, application processes; they will not, however, fill in paperwork. Coaches also need training on following up with residents and providing encouragement. Recommended to have customer relationship management. Coaches will not provide energy audits, and will not provide legal or tax advice.
• A variety of other cities have run similar programs and could provide templates for paperwork.
• Discussed that there were multiple definitions of success for a program like this. We do have data from Action on their outreach and results. We would like to collect the Malden outreach metrics for our own lessons learned.
• Discussion about stipends – pros (involves people who might not normally participate) and cons (might lose the neighbor-to-neighbor feel of the program, would require grant funding). Medford has a paid coaches program; we are unsure of their funding source. Julia will reach out to Medford for more information.
• Rewiring America and HeatSmart Alliance were identified as potentially good partners for Malden. Both have good access to other community programs.
• Looked at NEEP's templates for marketing materials, applications, meeting agendas, etc.
• We are encouraged to read Will's section of the memo on equity for renters and non-native English speakers, as well as the other sections of the memo that we did not have time to cover in the meeting.
• We will discuss plans in the July meeting after all Commission members have read the memo and Julia has spoken to Medford.

Project Updates & Announcements

• Rain barrel updates: Bekah shared the pick up date of Saturday, June 27 from 8-2. Malden has a distro list to email everyone who bought one. We sold 154 rain barrels in 2026.
• Bloomberg YCAF grant update: Amanda shared that preparations & outreach for the Youth Climate Action Fund grant are underway, and when/where we will need CASC support.
• Amanda and Bekah have attended the Bloomberg trainings, and have been given access to the YCAF portal. The YCAF team says the earliest we can open the call for applications is July 15. We must close the application window by October 14. Grant money gets distributed on November 15. Winning teams have until April 15 to finish and document their projects. The YCAF team said would be to receive at least 16 applications and reject approximately half. With minimum 3 kids per team, we need 48 kids involved and "financial sponsors" aka non-profits for each team.
• Outreach Amanda and Bekah attended the Youth Action Collaborative end of year presentations and Amanda attended the Malden High gardening club meeting. At both, we announced we will be running a contest with the call for applications starting July 15. We have email chains with the Malden High School teachers and the city of Somerville, who is also a YCAF grantee.
• Support needed from CASC: we need help with outreach efforts over the summer. We need a website, a presentation, event scheduling. Also, we would like the CASC members to judge the submissions in October/November.
• We have started a spreadsheet of outreach. Emails to CASC to follow.
• Discussed CASC terms – we believe our Youth Members have reached the end of their 1 year terms. Bekah will check with City Hall.
• June newsletter Amanda shared that the draft of the June newsletter needs updates and edits. Julia will share the link to the Heat Relief map to include in newsletter. Discussed how to distro the Heat Relief map. Need to add sign up for the newsletter.

Annual Progress Report

• Working session to finish filling out all sections of the annual report
• Julia showed us the draft report and the spreadsheet where we are tracking progress – CASC members worked section by section with a focus on the Accelerate Sustainable Transportation and the Achieve Net Zero in Buildings & Energy slides.
• Assigned slides for final edit – Bob to take Transportation, Julia to work on final slides including Community. City to provide updated photos.
• New Deadline for finalized report is week of July 6.

Bob motioned to adjourn; Ricky seconded the motion.

Adjournment – 7:02PM

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