Town Services Committee Refers Proposed Streetlighting Regulations to Town Manager. Trash Hauler Reform Still on Pause

Report on the Meeting of the Town Services and Outreach Committee (TSO), October 26, 2023

The meeting was held over Zoom and was recorded. It can be viewed here.

Present: Anika Lopes (Chair, District 4), Andrew Steinberg (at large), Ana Devlin Gauthier (District 5), Dorothy Pam, (District 3), Shalini Bahl Milne (District 5)

Staff: Paul Bockelman (Town Manager)

Also: Councilor Mandi Jo Hanneke (at large), co-sponsor of the streetlight regulations proposal, Councilor Jennifer Taub (District 3), co-sponsor of the trash hauler bylaw

Committee Chair Anika Lopes indicated that her goal for the evening would be for the committee to decide what they will act on prior to the end of this legislative term and what would go into a carryover memo for the next iteration of the committee.

Councilors Ana Devlin Gauthier and Mandi Jo Hanneke have been working with the Town Services and Outreach Committee (TSO) to revise Amherst’s 2001 public streetlighting regulations to meet current “dark sky guidelines” by  encouraging more efficient lighting, minimizing glare, maximizing shielding,  and offering a warmer light that is thought to be less disruptive to wildlife and people. The proposal has gone through several revisions and has been the subject of discussion at several TSO meetings since August 2022.

The committee voted 4-1 to refer the streetlighting policy proposal to the Town Manager with the expectation that he would assign town staff to work on addressing some of the remaining concerns.

The committee also discussed the parameters of a carryover memo on the proposed trash hauler reform bylaw so that the next council would be able to move forward expeditiously without having to re-do any of the work undertaken to date. 

The revised bylaw would move the town from a system in which each resident contracts individually with a hauler (currently USA Waste and Recycling) to one in which the town would contract for trash hauling services through a competitive bidding process. The bylaw would adopt measures to reduce the flow of trash into the waste stream including adoption of a pay-as-you-throw system, in which households that produce less trash would pay less. Under the new bylaw, the trash hauler would have to provide  curbside compost pickup as well.

Sponsors are still waiting for a distillation of data from a Request for Information (RFI), sent to area haulers and it appears unlikely that that information will be available before this council concludes its work. Three hauling firms responded to that RFI. Shalini-Bahl Milne agreed to draft a carryover memo for consideration at the next TSO meeting.

Public Comment
Tracy Zafian was allowed to offer an extended public comment, summarizing her involvement with and response to the streetlighting proposal.

She noted that the last scheduled meeting of the Transportation Advisory Committee (TAC) was canceled for lack of a quorum and that the only comments from that committee on the proposed streetlighting regulations were months old and that the proposal had been substantially revised since then. She offered personal commentary, noting her background as a transportation safety researcher.

Zafian thanked the co-sponsors for taking the time to meet with TAC and with Eve Vogel, who has offered a substantial analysis of safety concerns (see here, here and here) over the summer, and for the revisions that they made to the policy to include more consideration of transportation and pedestrian safety. She said that there is now more common ground and agreement between the sponsors, herself, and Vogel. She said that both she and Vogel approve of reducing glare, having more shielded lighting, and having more lighting that is pedestrian friendly. Good lighting, she said, not only reduces light pollution and glare, but has safety benefits, besides helping the natural environment by contributing to  attain dark skies.

In addition, she said that both she and Vogel agree with the proposal to replace Amherst’s LED street lights of over 5,000k with lighting of a lower temperature, such as lighting in the 3,000 to 4,000k range. She disputed the sponsors’ claim that exceeding a maximum CCT (color coordinated temperature) for streetlights of 3,000k is harmful to human health, noting that studies by the National Academy of Sciences and the U.S. Department of Energy found that roadway streetlighting has no negative health impacts, regardless of the CCT, because the dosage that people are exposed to is very low. The main health impacts of artificial lighting are in indoor settings. What we do know is that there are health benefits from having good nighttime lighting in terms of safety to reduce fatalities. and that better nighttime lighting can encourage more walking and biking and other healthy activities. She suggested that this disagreement with the sponsors could be further evaluated by a task force, which has been proposed. She added that she tends to err on the side of caution when it comes to safety, that our local population is significantly transit dependent, and that we have a lot of people who tend to walk and bike at night including on arterial roadways.

Streetlights Regulations Discussion
Co-sponsor Ana Devlin Gauthier said that she hoped that TSO would continue its discussion from its previous meeting on October 13, and figure out next steps to move the proposal forward. She felt that there seemed to be general agreement that the town ought to have a new or updated streetlights policy. The main sticking point seems to be disagreement over how much detail the policy ought to specify and whether the proposed regulations are too rigidly prescriptive. 

The committee spent over an hour revisiting questions that had been discussed previously with Councilors Shalini Bahl-Milne and Dorothy Pam worrying that the proposal is too technical and too prescriptive. Also, Bahl-Mine said, the sponsors had not done sufficient outreach to move the proposal forward.

Bahl-Milne then proposed separating out the policy from the regulations, with the former being more general and philosophical, and written into the bylaw, and the latter being more technical and handed off to a task force.

Councilor Andy Steinberg also objected to the highly technical specifications in the proposed regulations, but he opposed creation of a task force. He felt that the proliferation of committees was multiplying the work of councilors and not contributing to getting things done more effectively. He also felt it would be disrespectful of the next council to mandate the creation of new work arrangements and obligations, and felt that this decision ought to be left to them.

Bahl-Milne also worried that the proposal might privilege dark skies over safety, saying, “It sounds like the Dark Sky Association provided the model bylaws. But Dark Sky was not looking at the safety aspects. And so I don’t think that their regulation is complete, and I worry that the sponsors left out many of the things that Tracy [Zafian] and Eve [Vogel] brought up, and I think I think that’s a struggle many of us are having.”

Sponsors Hanneke and Devlin Gauthier protested against these objections, saying that they had completed outreach to town committees, notably TAC and the Disability Access Advisory Committee, reseearched and reported on policies in other towns, and received feedback from residents. They also reiterated that the existing regulations are 22 years old and sorely in need of updating, and that the field of lighting has become more technical in the intervening years. Hanneke said that the Dark Skies Association is working on both light pollution and safety.

Pam asked Town Manager Paul Bockelman whether the technical questions, for example for light fixture specifications or bulb temparture, should be resolved by town staff and not by town councilors. Pam noted that the revision of water and sewer regulations last year was accomplished with the technical guidance of Assistant Superintendent of Public Works Amy Rusiecki.

Bockeman replied that staff would welcome guidance from councilors and that currently there is no one on staff who has that kind of expertise, certainly not the kind of expertise that the town has with water and sewer technicalities, which  they drew on to draft those new regulations.

Devlin Gauthier observed that the committee was revisiting previous discussions and that it was time to hand this proposal off. Bockelman agreed that it was time to move forward, saying, “You’ve put a lot of time into this, and the sponsors have put an enormous amount of time into it, so I think you, as fellow councilors, should respect that work whether you agree with it or not. I think it’s just out of respect for everybody’s time for someone to make a motion so you can vote on it. ” He then offered four possibilities for moving forward:

1. TSO can say, we like this, we recommend it, and send it on to the council. 
2. TSO can say we don’t recommend it, or do nothing, in which case the existing policy stays in effect and you are saying that you are comfortable with the status quo. 
3. TSO can choose to send it to a task force to start to dig into it and say, yes, we think it needs to be changed but we need to look further into how to do that.
4. TSO could hand this off to town staff and ask them to bring their expertise to the work that TSO has already done and resolve the remaining concerns. 

Devlin Gauthier asked whether option four requires Bockelman’s permission since the Town Council cannot assign work to town employees. Bockelman replied that he would not have made the suggestion if he did not support it. 

Devlin Gauthier then moved to recommend to the Town Council that they direct the Town Manager to develop an updated street lighting policy based on the existing document, titled Street Lights Policy Version 13, with subsequent input from GOL and Finance committees after a revised proposal is returned to the Town Council.

Bahl-Milne objected to the motion, saying she’d like to see separation of policy and regulations, with a task force assigned to develop and implement regulations, using a process that would involve more collaboration with town committees and more outreach to the public. 

The motion passed 4-1 (Bahl-Milne dissenting).

Trash Hauler Discussion
Bahl-Milne, a co-sponsor of the proposed bylaw revision, asked the committee to approve a carry-over memo, yet to be drafted, to advise the next iteration of the TSO of the work that has been completed on a revised trash hauler bylaw and advise them on how to move it forward.

Bockelman reported that while the town had received responses from three area haulers to its RFI, and none had included the requested examples of contracts with other towns. He said that Superintendent of Public Works Guilford Mooring was in the process of tracking down that information. He added that the compiled information from, and analysis of, the RFIs will be made public.

Bahl-Milne proposed a handoff memo to the next council that would include a re-drafted hauler reform bylaw.  She said that she has been working with Zero Waste Amherst (ZWA) to craft that new draft. She also proposed that the Town Council create an ad hoc solid waste committee, much as they did for the Solar Bylaw Group, with this one including members of the Board of Health, town councilors, town residents, and representatives of ZWA. She also noted that she has not had an opportunity to speak with the other sponsors about this proposal.

Steinberg, a co-sponsor, acknowledged the need for an orderly handoff but said he was not ready to discuss Bahl-Milne’s proposal, given that he was hearing about an ad hoc committee for the first time.

Reached after the meeting, Darcy DuMont, a member of Zero Waste Amherst which is a co-sponsor of the proposal, said that the request for an ad hoc committee is premature because the answers to the RFI, as well as the  examples of contracts to be provided for analysis, may negate the need for such a committee.

Bahl-Milne offered to draft the carry-over memo for consideration at the next TSO meeting.