The Swellesley Report

 
Enthusiasm at the Feb. 6 Wellesley Climate Action Committee meeting over applying for a $1m state grant to cover a big chunk of the Hardy and Hunnewell Elementary School solar project costs had turned to concern by the time the group met a month later due to the possibility of a delay involving town government protocols that could put the grant application in jeopardy. (See Wellesley Media recordings of the Feb. 6 meeting about 5 minutes in and the March 6 meeting about 11 minutes in).

However, the issue was resolved at a more dramatic than usual Permanent Building Committee (PBC) meeting on March 12 (see Wellesley Media recording), and the town’s application efforts remain on track.

Going back to the Feb. 6 Climate Action Committee meeting, Wellesley Sustainability Director Marybeth Martello shared an update on solar plans for the Hardy and Hunnewell schools that opened in 2024 with what the town touted at the time for each as a “solar panel-ready, reflective roof.” The town, she said, was on the cusp of applying for a big grant from the Commonwealth’s Department of Energy Resources (DOER) that Climate Leader Communities like Wellesley are eligible for and that would help the town adhere to its Climate Action Plan.

Martello said that the capacity of arrays the town would install on the schools now exceeds that from the original designs and would generate the equivalent of 92% of the electricity Hardy uses on an annual basis and 82% of what Hunnewell uses. This would translate to annual electricity costs being $50k less than 2025 levels for the schools, plus excess capacity would go to the Municipal Light Plant’s distribution grid for community use, she said.

The total solar cost for the schools is estimated at some $5.2m. The School Committee recently voted to allow roughly $3.2m in remaining school project funds to be used toward the solar projects, and the town is seeking grant and other funding to cover the estimated $2m gap.

The Climate Leader grant could cover up to $1m and up to another $1m could come from the MLP’s WECARE program funded by customers, though that contribution is contingent upon the Climate Leader grant from the state coming through. So those two funding sources could cover remaining costs; a decision by the state on Wellesley’s application would likely be made by June.

What’s more, up to some $1.5m could come from a federal tax credit program that the town is doing all it can to comply with, Martello said.

The town would be looking to purchase solar gear by year end, install it in summer of 2027 and have things up and running by the end of that year to qualify for certain funding.

At that Feb. 6 meeting Martello sounded confident about the town’s chances of scoring that Climate Leader grant, as she cited having received correspondence from the head of the state’s Green Communities program encouraging the town to apply (the state already had Wellesley’s notice of intent at that point). “It’s important that they actually wrote to us directly,” she said.

The March 6 Climate Action Committee meeting took on a different tone, as the group voted on a Climate Leader grant application-related memo to be sent to the PBC, which is responsible for estimating, designing, and constructing town projects costing over $500,000.

 
As Martello described it, some PBC members had raised the question of whether a vote to fund the Hardy and Hunnewell schools’ solar needed to go back to Town Meeting for a revote. A presentation regarding an article at the 2021 Special Town Meeting stated that the MLP would fund and do a power purchase agreement for the Hunnewell solar array (it was mentioned this may happen for Hardy at a future time to be determined). The motions voted on by Town Meeting didn’t reference the MLP’s role at all, however, and according to town counsel at a late February meeting, Martello said, there was no legal requirement that this issue go back to Town Meeting for a revote. “The presentation doesn’t have the legal standing that the motions do,” she relayed.

(Note: The MLP determined about a year ago that a power purchase agreement model wouldn’t be viable.)

A revote—that likely couldn’t happen until a Special Town Meeting in the fall—would have been “detrimental to the application we have submitted,” Martello said, since the town had assured the state that funding was secure. Any material change to assertion would need to be reported to DOER, which could decide to dismiss the application and not consider resubmission for the current round. “It would undermine our relationship with DOER that we have been building since 2017,” Martello said.

Climate Action Committee Chair Lise Olney said she had never seen an instance of anyone going back to a 5-year-old Town Meeting presentation and recommending a revote. “Needing to go back to Town Meeting and creating that uncertainty about the funding imperils the project, it clearly puts it at risk…,” she said on March 6.

Fast forward to the March 12 PBC meeting, which featured “School Solar Panel update and discussion” on its agenda and started with a welcome from PBC Chair Michael Tauer to “special guests” who would be commenting during the citizen speak segment at the outset and then later on during the agenda item session. A couple of Climate Action Committee members weighed in on the topic during citizen speak, and then Olney, Martello, Select Board member Tom Ulfelder, and School Committee Chair Niki Ofenloch were on hand to answer questions and comment later on during the hour-plus solar panel discussion (Ulfelder pointed out there were elements included in original construction to support the eventual arrays).

Tauer emphasized that the PBC had not discussed the topic at meetings, and that his thinking on the issue has evolved over time. He found Town Counsel Tom Harrington’s memo persuasive, not so much regarding there being no legal reason not to move forward with the solar plans, but more that it might not be prudent to bring the issue back to Town Meeting (Tauer was one of several lawyers in the meeting, which did get into some legal details). “As a member of the PBC we got a directive from Town Meeting, and I think following the language in that directive should be our primary focus… I think the language of our instructions from Town Meeting is more than broad enough to allow these remaining funds to be put to these purposes,” he said.

PBC member Suzy Littlefield said the committee was approached by a Town Meeting member about whether the solar project would come back to Wellesley’s legislative body, so she researched the matter, reviewing the 2021 Special Town Meeting presentation, and the PBC got opinion on it from town counsel. A remaining question for her was whether enough funds remained to support the project, and whether counting on the state grant and associated funding to come through is something of a “leap of faith.” She described this as a different approach to project funding than getting appropriations up front, then reaping the benefits of any reimbursements later.

Fellow member Tom Goemaat also raised concerns about available funding and wondered whether the topic might even be addressed at a Special Town Meeting this spring instead of waiting for fall (the ability to schedule such a spring meeting would be highly unlikely given the logistics at this point). Further, Goemaat said it was clear from the Advisory Committee’s write-up to Town Meeting members on the article in question that money for solar wouldn’t be coming from the project funds and would be taken care of by the MLP.

Following further discussion during the meeting, Town Counsel Harrington said “I do think the article included the funding for this. In drafting these motions for these articles we purposely make them as broad as we can, because we know that PBC, [the Facilities Management Department] sometimes or [the Department of Public Works] need the flexibility to be able to make decisions along the way… so that we’re capturing not only what we know at the time but what we may want to do in the future.”

The PBC (plus Offenlach as a School Committee rep) voted 5-1 to proceed in expending remaining allocated Hardy and Hunnewell project funds to design and install solar on the buildings without going back to Town Meeting for a confirmatory vote. Goemaat cast the sole dissenting vote.

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