Guest post by Gene Lawton, Coalition for Social Justice
“Why the heck aren’t we a Green Community?”I wondered aloud to myself one day early in 2014. My city, Brockton, MA, about an hour south of Boston, was doing all sorts of stuff that would help it qualify for hundreds of thousands of dollars in incentives under the state Green Communities program–serious bucks for a working class town like ours. Through my work promoting a fair energy efficiency system in MA with the Coalition for Social Justice- a member of the statewide Green Justice Coalition with Clean Water Action–I knew that in 2008, the state had passed a law called the Green Communities Act creating incentives for towns to ‘go green’ by doing things like siting renewables, updating building codes etc. But Brockton didn’t seem to even be aware of this opportunity, and might be missing the boat.
So I talked to Alex Papali over at Clean Water, who’d been helping me set up a community meeting at the library around access to efficiency programs, and he said he had no idea why Brockton wouldn’t apply. Which got us calling over to the Green Communities Division in Boston and connecting with their regional rep, Seth Pickering. We invited him over to our community meeting, and got the mayor’s community liaison in the room too, to hear about what was at stake. And at City Council a couple weeks later, while we advocated for an ordinance supporting green policies in general, we made sure to mention this great Green Communities opportunity. They liked the idea, so we called the new city planner, Rob May, introduced ourselves and set up a date with Seth and us all together to discuss.
I think both Seth and Rob weren’t used to community advocates calling them into meetings, and were more accustomed to doing things from the inside. And it might not have helped that CSJ had a bit of a reputation as rabble-rousers. Whatever it was, Rob ‘took it under advisement’ and didn’t actively engage us, and we didn’t hear anything back about what the city might do with it.
To be honest, I lost track of this for a year–until I happened to be seated next to Rob recently at a meeting about the city purchasing electric vehicles. It occurred to me again that this was something that could count towards Green Community designation, and I asked him a bit crabbily where things were on that. To my amazement, he said, “Oh yes, didn’t I tell you? We’re gonna do that- we’re submitting our proposal in a few weeks. So we should be getting the funds awarded this year.”
My jaw dropped open. I realized slowly that this quest we began as a long shot years ago had taken on a life of its own, and had wound up making a large impact for the betterment of my community. Apparently Rob and Seth had continued the conversation we began, and had been diligently working out details in the background.
At the very next meeting of the Green Justice Coalition, I told everyone the good news and got a hearty round of applause. This unexpected victory illustrates clearly for me the importance of trying- no matter how futile it might seem–to work with your neighbors and do what seems right to improve your community.
Yesterday, I saw Rob again. The state DOER announced Brockton as one of its 2017 crop of Green Communities last week, and our town will receive $526,000.
