In 2015, the Sustainable Litchfield Town Committee was a proverbial sparkle in the eye of Litchfield resident John Post. He had attended a symposium at the Torrington City Hall by a new organization that called itself Sustainable CT.
Post says he came away impressed by the organization’s vision of supporting sustainable practices in towns and cities across Connecticut with a focus on “being inclusive, innovative, and collaborative.” This vision was in synch with his life because he was in the process of building an energy efficient house complete with solar roof panels.
While Post found the Sustainable CT mission inspiring, he thought it was premature to ask the town to commit to its large, all-embracing mission that included “Providing a menu of sustainability actions that build local economies, support equity, and respect the finite capacity of the environment.” Instead, he joined the work of an independent group of residents who were committed to sustainable energy practices and who called themselves the Litchfield Energy Task Force. They held workshops to educate people about renewable energy.
Selectman Jeffrey Zullo later in 2015 got a call from Post looking for help to get town support for the activities of the Litchfield Energy Task Force. Zullo took the idea to then-First Selectman Leo Paul Jr., who agreed to have Post pitch the idea to the Board of Selectmen. The board had enough interest in supporting how to make town facilities more energy and cost efficient, and as a result, the Litchfield Energy Efficiency Task Force became the Board of Selectmen’s energy advisory committee.
The task force’s members included Zullo, Richard Quay from the Board of Finance, the town facilities manager, the business manager from the Litchfield school system, and two citizens at large.
The committee got started by advising the town to sign up with Eversource’s Clean Energy Community program. Membership in the program allowed the town to access the state Department of Energy website, and committee members were able to create a portfolio of the data gathered from energy audits of Litchfield’s three public school buildings, the public works garage, and the Bantam Borough Hall. Once a baseline was established for electrical and oil use in these town facilities, the committee was able to recommend ways to achieve energy and cost savings.
One outcome was that the town took advantage of an Eversource program to install LED lighting in the schools. The committee also explored installing solar arrays to provide 100% of the energy needs of the town’s three public school buildings. As the committee’s work became more visible, it garnered the friendly nickname of The Green Team. Zullo explains, “It was The Green Team with its energy and cost saving initiatives that was in essence the incubator for the Sustainable Litchfield Town Committee.”
In November 2019, with a new municipal administration that had campaigned on the idea that the future of Litchfield wasn’t red or blue but green, Post saw his chance. It was time for the sparkle in his eye to become a reality. He invited Denise Raap, the new first selectman, and Zullo, re-elected to the Board of Selectmen, to a meeting at Toast & Co. to pitch the idea of the town becoming a member of Sustainable CT. According to Post, “Halfway through the first paragraph of my pitch, they were on board with the potential of the program for the town of Litchfield.”
At the first Board of Selectmen meeting in November, Post presented the Sustainable CT program. Raap later presented the resolution for Litchfield to become a Sustainable CT member town and the board passed the resolution. In December, Litchfield registered to become an official Sustainable CT town, and the Sustainable Litchfield Town Committee was out of the starting gate with Post as its chair.
“The staff at Sustainable CT was thrilled when Litchfield decided to join Sustainable CT,” Post said. “The Northwest Corner had the lowest number of member towns in the state at that time, and Sustainable CT viewed Litchfield as a bellwether town that would raise awareness of the program and encourage more towns to join.”
In December, Post, Raap and Zullo went to the annual convention of the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities at Foxwoods casino. Sustainable CT was one of the presenters at the convention, and Post says that they were able to “take a deeper dive” into Sustainable CT programs and actions and do some good networking with other member towns. Returning from the convention, Post and Zullo set about recruiting seven more members for the bi-partisan town committee using Post’s modus operandi of selling Sustainable CT’s vision over coffee at Toast & Co. or @The Corner.
And then, just as the nine-member committee was in place and ready to begin work implementing its choices from the Sustainable CT menu of actions in its effort to earn the required points for bronze certification, the COVID-19 pandemic began. Involving the community, educating the community, hearing a variety of voices from the community, and working together with partners in the community became a huge challenge because of necessary pandemic mitigations including quarantining and social distancing. In-person outreach was understandably squelched in the interests of the safety and the health needs of the community.
In the face of the pandemic’s challenging limitations, the committee went remote. Throughout 2020 and into early 2021, the committee depended on Zoom to hold meetings and public webinar events. Litchfield.bz and WZBG helped spread the word about Sustainable Litchfield’s logo competition. Mail-in and online surveys and reaching out by email and telephone became the main ways to gather information and input from the community.
In a tremendous show of support, many partners in the community joined in to help implement chosen actions from Sustainable CT’s menu of options. One such partnership was Sustainable Litchfield member John Morosani working with the board of directors of the Oliver Wolcott Library as the board took on the action of establishing the position of a town poet laureate.
In January, the board set the criteria and publicized the competition via the OWL website. “Calling All Poets: The Search for Litchfield’s First Poet Laureate Begins.” The winning poet, Robert Piazza, made his official appearance as Litchfield’s first poet laureate reading his poem “Soldier’s Son” at the 2020 Memorial Day Ceremony on the Litchfield Green.
Another successful partnership was between Sustainable Litchfield and the Friends of the Litchfield Community Greenway. Bill Jones, a member of the Greenway board of directors, wrote in his summary for the Sustainable CT action category of Clean and Diverse Transportation Systems and Choices, “The goal of the Greenway is to connect the center of Litchfield with Bantam Borough and beyond with a safe, serene, non-motorized route that is accessible to users of all ages and physical abilities.”
Jones explained that, thanks to Sustainable Litchfield, the Greenway received two matching grants from Sustainable CT. The first grant provided partial funding for a section of boardwalk construction, and the second grant provided funding for a set of solar-powered, user-activated crossing lights.
Despite the challenges of the pandemic and thanks to its community partnerships, Sustainable Litchfield was one of only four towns in the state to complete at least one action in each of the twelve menu categories and qualify for bronze certification last May. Not to rest on its laurels and energized by Post, the committee kept up its momentum and submitted for Silver certification on Aug. 23.
One of the actions completed for Silver certification was the drafting of a town equity statement by a dedicated team of seven residents that began working in March aiming for the August deadline. According to Chuck Conn, a member of the equity statement drafting team, it can be difficult “to build consensus among a diverse group with differing viewpoints on subjects that, by their very nature, can generate strong feelings.” Selectmen approved the equity statement Aug. 3.
“The unanimous acceptance of the equity statement was a wonderful conclusion to an exhilarating and challenging six months work by the drafting team,” Conn said.
In response to critics who say Sustainable Litchfield is just about point bagging and why bother, Dean Birdsall, vice chairman of the Sustainable Litchfield Town Committee and a science teacher at Litchfield High School says, “It’s about using the rich resources and information provided by Sustainable Connecticut and selecting the actions that we believe will enrich our wonderful community. The point system gives incentives and provides structure to these community-enhancing efforts.”
Ben Buck, a local contractor and alternate on the committee, agrees. “In going for points, we are actually motivated to accomplish things that are good for the town.”
In Raap’s view, “An advantage of being a member town in Sustainable CT is that membership encourages municipal self-reflection. What can we do as a town to be better?”
Zullo adds, “We have committed to challenging ourselves to improve. It isn’t just for the crunchy granola stuff. It is about trying to improve lives in our town financially, environmentally, and culturally by working from the bottom up.”
Putting into words what it has been like working with the Sustainable Litchfield Town Committee, Post said, “I am having the time of my life! I can’t recall having such fun with any other endeavor so far. People have such enthusiasm and such willingness, and look what we have accomplished so far for the town.”
