Consultants outline outreach plan and priorities for Concord climate-action update

Consultants from Leon & Samson on Tuesday walked Concord’s Climate Action Committee through a public outreach schedule and a framework for turning dozens of draft concepts into a prioritized Climate Action and Resilience Plan.

The update, delivered by Cassie Yates and John Baldick, said consultants will hold two duplicate public workshops — May 14 in the town public hearing room and a virtual session on May 28 — and run a set of invitation-only stakeholder interviews to inform action drafting. “We’re going to talk about the climate action and resilience plan tonight and give an update,” Baldick said as the pair introduced the engagement approach and timelines.

Why it matters: the consultants are working to translate community feedback into a short, actionable set of priorities the town can advance over the next five years while keeping longer-term, enabling measures on the table. The committee reaffirmed the plan’s working goal of cutting townwide emissions 50% from 2008 levels by 2030 and emphasized the need for fewer, higher-priority actions rather than a long checklist.

What the consultants presented: Leon & Samson reported 78 preliminary concepts from earlier brainstorming and worksheet exercises. Of those, they identified 28 concepts that received unanimous favorable responses in the committee worksheets and about 40 more with majority support; roughly 10 concepts received limited backing. Items with the broadest support included neighborhood electrification (retiring gas lines), biodiversity and resilience actions carried forward from the 2020 plan, geothermal for a redevelopment site, advocacy for MBTA rail electrification, a Vision Zero transportation policy, and expanded municipal solar and storage options.

On prioritization, the consultants outlined a scoring method used in other towns that weights potential emissions reductions most heavily while also accounting for climate-resilience co-benefits, cost and ease of implementation, and equity-oriented criteria. “For now, we can categorize actions by high-impact/low-cost or high-impact/high-cost to help narrow the list,” Yates said; the committee asked that scoring be applied only after similar-scale actions are consolidated so comparisons are meaningful.

Stakeholder outreach and composition: consultants proposed a mix of focused interviews (eight initial sessions) and sector-oriented focus groups to cover local government, the light plant (CMLP), DPW, the library, K–12 school sustainability groups, private schools, transportation and planning boards, agricultural stakeholders, and advocacy groups. Members asked the consultants to swap or add planning-board representation in some interviews and to be careful to avoid leaving influential boards or committees unintentionally off stakeholder lists.

Technical follow-ups flagged by staff: the presentation highlighted a few technical areas needing more work, including a feasible approach to a single townwide forest-management plan, new ideas for landlord EV-charging incentives (CMLP has tested programs with limited results), and ongoing efforts around middle-school solar designs and battery-storage siting. Committee members asked staff and the consultants to prepare educational materials and preliminary modeling so the public and developers better understand the local case for solar and storage.

Next steps: consultants will finalize stakeholder invite lists, circulate flyers and outreach copy, schedule interviews, and return to the committee in June with prioritized draft actions. The committee agreed to help recruit interviewees and provide volunteers to facilitate small-group discussions at the public workshops.

The committee also set a small interim meeting in the coming weeks to finish outstanding agenda items; the consultants will continue work by email and a scheduled June review.