By Patrick Adrian
EAGLE TIMES STAFF
CLAREMONT — The Claremont City Council aspires to improve communication and collaboration with local energy advisory groups as future topics such as community energy aggregation and electric vehicles grow in relevance.
The Claremont City Council decided last week not to discontinue the city’s Energy Advisory Committee after a conversation with the committee’s chair, Derek Ferland.
On Wednesday, Jan. 12, Councilor Nicholas Koloski suggested that the council retire committees that it determines unnecessary.
Koloski, the longest-serving member of the council, said that unneeded committees can add a layer of bureaucracy to the governing process by diverting issues to a committee that could be better handled directly by the council.
One committee mentioned was the Energy Advisory Committee, a five-member group created to facilitate the city’s study and development of energy policies and action plans.
“I can’t tell you that we are better off from having started the committee,” Koloski said. “We really don’t need a committee to make [a] decision that is still going to come back to this council.”
On Wednesday, Jan. 26, Koloski apologized to any committees whose members were offended by his previous comments and explained that he was not criticizing the members of the committees.
“The real issue I have concerns defining the actual role of the committee itself,” Koloski said.
Koloski said that existing descriptions of the Energy Advisory Committee were “semi-vague” and did not adequately explain the committee’s function, expectations, and working relationship with the council.
According to Ferland, the Energy Advisory Committee formed in 2018 under the recommendation of the city’s master plan approved the previous year.
The committee’s role, according to Ferland, is to help implement the city’s energy goals outlined in the master plan’s energy chapter.
The chapter is comprehensive and broad, with goals ranging from “saving the planet to how we can save the city and its taxpayers money,” Ferland said.
The committee has worked closely with Claremont city managers and city Planning and Development Director Nancy Merrill to relieve some of the energy taskwork that would normally fall upon city staff.
“I’m just not sure what the operational arm of the city would be [to address those goals], unless you want to add staff to the [Planning and Development Department],” Ferland said. “Though I imagine that would be a non-starter from a budget perspective.”
The committee’s work has included drafting the original city ordinance for solar energy, which was later expanded to incorporate other renewable sources, according to Ferland.
“And that may not seem like much but it actually took a lot of time,” Ferland noted. “Especially given that we only meet once a month.”
The committee is also developing a plan to facilitate the acquisition of fast charging stations for electric vehicles.
According to committee member David Lucier, these stations would be DC, or “direct current,” which can charge an electric vehicle up to 80 percent as fast as 15 minutes.
Regarding communication with the council, Ferland said the committee has done “the best they could over the last three years” to keep the council updated. Though city boards and committees rarely meet in-person with the council, the groups are expected to submit periodic reports.
In addition, the city council is expected to appoint one councilor representative to serve on the Energy Advisory Committee. According to Ferland, the committee did not have that representative during one year, which likely contributed to the drop-off in communication with the council.
Ferland clarified that the Electric Aggregation Subcommittee, which the council authorized in 2020, is a separate group from the Energy Advisory Committee, though some Energy Committee members also serve on the subcommittee.
In 2019 the New Hampshire legislature passed Senate Bill 286, which enables local municipalities and counties to purchase electricity from an alternative electric supplier. This option, known as Electric Aggregation or Community Power, allows municipalities to have more control over their electric sources, whether to increase the community’s usage of renewables or to increase energy savings.
The council has not decided yet whether it will continue the Electric Aggregation Subcommittee. Koloski asked Interim City Manager John McLean to bring a report and recommendation to the council next month whether the city should pursue a community power plan.
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