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Date: 1/24/2023
SHUTESBURY – Town officials might’ve made a New Year’s resolution this year: bring home a big grant from the Municipal Vulnerability Planning (MVP) program.
According to its website, the MVP program is funded this year for about $20 million. The Select Board, intent on tapping those monies, started meeting with town boards last week. One reason for expediting the discussion is that MVP administrators offer free coaching on applications until early February. That’s an unusual benefit, but suggests a winning application needs to have a laser focus on program goals to be at all competitive.
“It’s the same basic parameters as last year,” said Select Board Chair Rita Farrell, “which means we have a brief window here, between now and Feb. 3, to get feedback on our ideas…to engage with MVP staff and…hash out a couple of ideas.”
The goal of the special meeting of the Select Board was to gather initial ideas from individuals and groups who see an unaddressed need. Two committees, the Conservation Commission and Energy and Climate Action Committee (ECAC), came prepared for a general discussion. Resident Mary Lou Conca also spoke up about an education–related idea – repairing the roof of the elementary school – and as the discussion progressed saw her idea sharpen to fit the MVP program.
The elementary school roof has been compromised for quite some time. Conca began by asking just that the roof be repaired. Farrell, familiar with MVP program goals, didn’t think the project was a good enough fit. The competition for a grant is fierce and towns are allowed to submit only two projects for funding.
Michael DeChiara, chair of ECAC, began a discussion of solar generation for town buildings. Conca responded, “He was…proposing to have solar on all municipal buildings, of which I do believe the elementary school falls under. Perhaps that could be a project, and the roof could be repaired, and solar could be put up at the same time. That would really be wonderful.”
The project suggested by DeChiara, solar panels on all the town’s buildings, would fit the program goal of preparing the town for climate change. The project would also key into the dual parts of the MVP program, planning and action. The town has already received an MVP planning grant, is designated a so-called MVP Community, and has a detailed plan in place for mitigating the impacts of global warming.
This year, members of the ECAC have already been weighing the options for projects to submit, based on the town’s identified plans to prepare for severe weather.
“We looked at all the recommendations from both the MVP report and the HMR,” DeChiara said, referring to the Hazard Mitigation Report (HMR). The HMR, also paid for with a MVP grant, describes the town’s priority methods for responding to climate change impacts. “We went through a process of identifying what our top three thematic things were. The three themes are invasive species, solar and stormwater.”
Work groups were formed, each dedicated to a topic, invasives species, storm water and solar energy generation. Each group looked at the full list of recommendations in the MVP report and HMR, then decided on the top priorities this year, those projects that best fit the desired goals of the MVP program. The working groups did not have a chance to meet, prior to the Select Board meeting, however, so
DeChiara didn’t want to speak for them and get more specific.
According to DeChiara, projects given priority by his committee should probably be undertaken whether the town wins an MVP grant or not.
“My hope is coming out of this process, beyond MVP, that there might be some things that we can go forward, with Finance Committee and Select Board support, to actually fund out of the budget,” DeChiara said. “The culvert process, maybe it’s big dollar, and they won’t fund it because it’s not urgent, but it’s really important for us.”
Miriam DeFant, chair of the Conservation Commission, previously spoke about the need to protect the town’s dirt roads, which may be in greater danger of washing out, though blacktopped roads may also be undermined by heavy runoff. DeFant said Conservation Commission members routinely talk about climate impacts. They also observe and note elements of town infrastructure that may not hold up well during a big storm.
“We often encounter erosion on the roads, culverts that are broken or damaged,” DeFant said. It “is such an important issue for our town…financially and logistically, for us to manage all of that. We don’t have it in our budget, to replace all these culverts and storm water features. We don’t even have a proper inventory of them.”
The MVP program prioritizes projects with wide impact, nature-based, that build resilience and protect residents and town infrastructure. Farrell commented that culvert inventories, while meeting program goals, are seeing less favor lately, because they are not project-oriented. Project orientation is another preference of MVP administrators.
The Select Board has scheduled its next meeting to review MVP grant proposals for Jan. 31. Proposals will be due in March.