• Prism Consulting has completed an energy audit of the Warwick public buildings. Janice reports that they are very backed up at present, with a long waiting time.
• Janice has received various free materials from National Grid, including pens and compact fluorescent bulbs. She and Steve have been working with the elementary school in Warwick on energy awareness projects; the students are taking considerable initiative in pushing the administration on things like switching off computers, etc.
• NESEA may start the regional energy group meetings in Greenfield again soon.

MREC building projects
We talked about the difficulty of engaging with MREC people on energy-related projects. There are several possible small things we could work on, but we would want to do them in conjunction with others who use and make decisions about the building. There was discussion about whether to continue to pursue this, or use our time elsewhere. We decided to see whether we might support this as a project to be done by the new Athol town energy committee when it is convened. Janice and Steve will contact David Ames to see how things are going on forming the committee, and will share information about both National Grid and DOER (Mass. Dept. of Energy Resources) audits. Cathy will send Janice the notes from the walk-through we did at the center earlier this year.

GreenStart
Pat has talked with Rick Kwiatkowski, the Town Manager in Orange, about the GreenStart program administered through the Center for Ecological Technology (CET). Rick is interested in trying to get funds for Orange through this program. Pat is going to make a presentation to the Orange Selectboard on Dec. 12 at their 6 p.m. meeting at the town hall. She has put together a packet and letter to present to them. We will also work on perhaps getting onto Managers' Corner on AOTV in the new year. We talked about coming up with some sample figures to show what the typical additional cost is for a household to sign up with GreenStart to obtain either half or all their electricity from renewable sources; we will also try to show what simple conservation measures can be taken in a household to offset this additional cost.

Energy expo (March 29 and 30, 2008)
Tom met with Steve Raymond at the Chamber of Commerce today and reports that 150 packets were mailed out to potential vendors at the Home Show and Energy Expo, including 30+ from us. Three vendors (not ours) have signed up so far. The Chamber has bought yard signs for the weekend of the show to increase visibility. Starrett Memorial Church will provide lunch both days; Steve R. is approaching clubs who may want to cover breakfast. We divided up our list of potential vendors and decided who would make follow-up calls or visits (either later this month or first thing in the new year). We also determined who will work on which parts of the Energy Expo:

• Vendors: Tom and Steve
• Speakers and program: Cathy and Janice
• Children's activities: Jane and Don, with others t.b.d.
• Liaison with food vendors: Pat
• Publicity: Cathy, with help t.b.d.

Film series
We will discuss this at a future meeting.

Other business
Peter Gerry of Pete's Tire Barn visited the meeting briefly. He is interested in getting support to add zoning regulations to Athol zoning so that it is possible to have residential wind power, something that cannot be done currently. We discussed this and other projects he is considering.

Next meeting
Thursday, January 3, 7 p.m. at the Millers River Environmental Center.

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