HomeMy WebLinkAboutAgenda - Energy Committee - 04/14/2021
South Burlington Energy Committee
575 Dorset Street
South Burlington, VT 05403
(802) 846-4107
www.SouthBurlingtonVT.gov
facebook.com/SouthBurlington
Energy Committee
MEETING AGENDA
Wednesday, April 14
6:30 pm
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6:30 PM Convene meeting, select scribe, review agenda
6:32 PM Comments and questions from the public not related to the agenda
6:35 PM Approve draft minutes from March 17
6:40 PM Elect new committee chair
6:50 PM Committee openings and reapplication for expiring terms
7:00 PM Discuss comments to the CC on I-89
7:20 PM CCACP CAP update: Paul and Melanie
7:40 PM City manager - plans for intro meeting
7:45 PM Facebook page - renaming and ongoing plans for maintenance
7:55 PM Internships - recap and next steps: can community intern survey others outside of
schools? (question from CCRPC)
8:05 PM GMP car charger and electric lawn mower programs
8:15 PM Electric busses for schools? Update from Marcy
8:20 PM Updates on ongoing Actions/Projects
8:30 PM Adjourn meeting
Draft committee feedback on I-89:
The SBEC recognizes the tremendous amount of work that has been done to arrive at metrics and to
score those metrics. Ultimately, though, we believe that the scoring leads to "false precision" and -
while the scoring may provide some relevant indicators - we don't really think the metric scoring should
be the principal means of decisioning around this project.
The metrics and scoring are false precision for a few reasons.
One, the differences between the metrics projected out to 2050 are likely - in most cases - too small to
be statistically significant. It is likely the case that the differences are simply not bigger than the
uncertainties in the inputs. Placing discrete scores with meaningful differences on small differences
significantly amplifies those small differences beyond what is likely appropriate.
Also, the ultimate score is (in a sense) pre-determined by the particular goals that were chosen, and can
be significantly biased by how those goals
are weighted. For instance, if more goals are "environmentally sensitive",
there may be one result, whereas if more of the goals are "development oriented", they may be a
different result.
One neutral way of weighting all of the criteria would be to "dollarize"
every criteria so that there is an apples-to-apples comparison of each criteria, eliminating the bias that
would be introduced by weighting (ie., figure out the dollar value of preserving an acre of wetland,
reducing a certain of traffic, reducing GHGs, etc...). But, this may not be practical for this exercise.
So, how should this decision be made? It's a question of what is consistent with the City's vision.
Putting aside the particular criteria, it would seem clear that building 12B will induce demand around
that exit, creating demand for more dense housing around that exit and creating pressure to extend
Swift Street.
Conversely, the Exit 13 construction will make travel easier for existing residents - fixing an exit today
which really does not work too well - and induce less demand City-wide.
The SBEC prefers neither of these alternatives. We think the money that would otherwise be spent on I-
89 would be better used on enhanced biking and pedestrian mobility. Biking and pedestrian mobility
will enhance the health and safety of residents, promote tourism, provide equitable access to
transportation for all (not just those who own vehicles), reduce GHG emissions and reduce
congestion/noise in the City.
If we had to choose between the two, we prefer exit 13 to be re-done to be a more sensible exit, rather
than building a new exit at 12B. If feedback on metrics is desired, we would prefer to weight the
"environmental stewardship" goal more highly than the other goals and would elevate the fuel
consumption and bide/ped connectivity and safety metrics to provide more weight to those metrics.