(Editor’s note: This story was amended on March 22 to include updated links to the original and revised versions of Article 31.)
A citizens’ petition on the warrant at Town Meeting asks residents to support the first step in a process that would allow Lincoln to restrict the use of fossil fuels in new buildings and major modifications, though the motion was later trimmed after getting pushback from the Select Board.
Lincoln’s motion would not generally require retrofitting existing buildings, although the new bylaw could be applied to “major modifications,” which some other towns have defined to mean gut renovations that redo at least 75% of the building floor area, according to a GEC blog post. The exact wording of the local measure would be discussed later and voted on at a future Town Meeting.
Green Energy Committee chair Paul Shorb outlined the proposal at the March 7 Select Board meeting. Brookline, Acton, Arlington, Lexington, and Concord have filed similar home rule petitions but the legislature has not acted on any of them yet, he said. If approved by Lincoln voters on March 26, the measure would authorize the town to file a home rule petition with the state legislature, which is required for a town to exercise such authority.
The original motion under discussion (Article 31) proposed a vote on both the home-rule petition and specific bylaw language (“Act Authorizing the Town of Lincoln to Adopt and Enforce Local Regulations Restricting New Fossil Fuel Infrastructure in Certain Construction”) that the town could adopt if the legislature approved the petition. Ideally, Shorb said, the legislature would pass a bill requiring these limits on fossil fuel equipment in all new Massachusetts buildings, and such a bill is pending, “but we think it’s appropriate for us to jump in line as well,” either to win home-rule approval or show town support for the bill. “We chose the more aggressive approach, ‘get to the nitty gritty right now’ approach.”
“I fundamentally have a problem with this sort of method,” Select Board member James Craig said. “I’m not arguing against the cause in any way — it’s more the process.” He added that he might have been more receptive “if this were something that had been in the works for a longer period and had outreach done earlier” to show that the measure had been “really discussed and vetted.”
Arlington has taken a more “vanilla” approach by approving only a home rule petition that lets the town draw up its own bylaw at a later date, bard member Jennifer Glass observed.
Shorb responded that the more specific version including the bylaw would “send a strong political signal” for the state to approve certain updates to the 2009 “stretch code” that lays out energy-efficiency requirements in the building code. The Department of Energy Resources is in the process of updating the stretch code and writing a new “Municipal Opt-in Specialized Stretch Energy Code” in the wake of the Climate Act of 2021. Environmentalists are hoping that the “stretchier” code will allow towns to ban fossil fuel hookups (which they currently may not do), though the initial draft does not include that option for towns.
Debating and amending wording of motions such as the proposed bylaw language on the floor of Town Meeting “is really something we ought to avoid trying to do,” Town Administrator Tim Higgins said. “The Arlington approach may [allow us to] be able to thread that needle to create the pressure you’re looking for but give us more time to work up a bylaw.”
After getting similar feedback from the Planning Board, the GEC subsequently removed the proposed bylaw language from the Article 13 motion (the updated wording is here).