Newton started its journey to sustainability in the 1970s with the creation of the energy engineer position at City Hall, Public Buildings Commissioner Josh Morse pointed out to the Finance Committee Monday night, and the city has stepped up that effort exponentially over the past 15 years.

Now, city officials want to make an official sustainability department.

“What was once really just a focal point in public buildings has become something that is part of every department,” Morse said. “And the efforts of the Sustainability Team have certainly broadened, which I think is awesome.”

When it came to approving the department for the FY2026 budget, however, not everyone on the Finance Committee thought the idea was awesome.

In fact, most of the committee’s members ended up abstaining from the vote.

A busy year ahead

Newton has Sustainability Team already, headed by Climate and Sustainability Director Ann Berwick. The move to making a new department would “solidify this core team, give it a kind of sense of self,” Morse said.

“It will allow them to work hand-in-hand with departments to make sure we’re creating solid metrics that we can measure against that will allow us to really move the needle on sustainability,” he explained.

Morse is currently the interim director for the not-yet-official sustainability department, and he’s been doing that for free. In fact, there’s no new money being requested for a sustainability department in the FY2026 budget.

But after next year, what happens remains unclear.

The proposed FY2026 budget for the new Sustainability Department is $521,267. That includes the consolidation of a couple of positions and the creation of a BERDO administer role (to implement and manage the city’s Building Emissions Reductions and Disclosures Ordinance).

The department would have the department head (currently Morse) overseeing co-directors of sustainability (Berwick and Sam Nighman), and below them would be the climate action coordinator (currently Caroline Weiss) and the yet-to-be-hired BERDO manager.

Nighman said much of the new department’s focus will be on implementing BERDO, which is why hiring a BERDO manager is so important.

“This gives us a pathway to address over a quarter of Newton’s emissions,” Nighman said. “It’s an enormously important program, and it’s really important that we get it right.”

BERDO regulations are expected to be sorted out and implemented by next spring.

Currently, 46 buildings in Newton are required to participate in BERDO, and many more will be included next year. So, the focus of the sustainability team will be getting that started.

And soon, individual residential homes could be included in BERDO, not just commercial and large residential developments.

The team will also update its Climate Action Plan, which is set to expire this year, to include BERDO as well as the city’s electrification ordinance and future solar energy projects. And that new plan will probably be completed by the end of 2025.

Berwick said the team will continue working on the city’s 4 Our Future initiative, which focuses on four areas of effort with climate action: building insulation and weatherization, electric vehicles and bicycles, solar panels and electrification of buildings.

“Our team is working on supporting the entire community in reducing emissions and using cleaner energy,” Berwick said.

Chart showing proposed structure of Sustainability Department.. City of Newton

Pumping the brakes

If a new department is needed, then why didn’t Mayor Ruthanne Fuller let the City Council know before the FY2026 budget was proposed?

“It’s no surprise that we’re creating this department,” Newton Chief Operations Officer Jonathan Yeo said. “It’s something that’s certainly been considered for the last several years. But with the creation of the BERDO position and changes in leadership, this was the right time to do it and put these pieces together into one department.”

Councilor Bill Humphrey, who said he supports what the Sustainability Team is doing and wants a new sustainability department, said it was actually a surprise to him and like it was being suddenly sprung on the City Council weeks before the FY2026 budget will take effect.

“I’ve been in the Council for six years, and there’s just this ongoing pattern of throwing things at us that require our consent and approval, without actually talking to us about what we think,” Humphrey said.

One of those ideas would have been to include “resiliency” in the department title, which both Humphrey and Councilor David Micley recommended.

And while there’s no new money being asked for in FY2026 (the BERDO administrator job was already planned for and would be needed whether or not a new department is created), Councilor Julia Malakie noted that the proposed department’s chief, Josh Morse, is currently working that job for free and asked for a long-term plan for the sustainability director role.

Morse said the plan is for him to serve as department head until the department is established and up and running, and the mayor’s administration—be it Fuller’s or the next mayor’s—will determine when a new leader is needed and who that would be.

“That could be a promotion from within, it could be a change in the structure of the department,” Morse said, emphasizing that there is no plan to add another full-time employee salary to the department.

Malakie then announced she would abstain from the vote on whether to create the new department, citing Humphrey’s question about whether or not the mayor informed the City Council of the plan ahead of the meeting.

Yeo replied clarifying that Fuller did speak to the city council president about the idea beforehand.

Committee Chair Leonard Gentile also said he’d abstain from the vote because there’s no plan yet for a department director, and he said he doesn’t see the need for that job.

“I don’t know of a department that doesn’t end up with a department head, and I’m concerned about creating a new department right now when the current model seems to be working fine,” he said.

Gentile noted that there are still discussions about expanding BERDO to include smaller residential homes, and he suggested the city get through creating BERDO regulations before trying to create a whole new department for it. He added that it could also hinder efforts to pass a Proposition 2 ½ override in the next couple of years, which has been suggested to fix systemic deficits in the NPS budget.

“I just don’t understand why we need to move so quickly when we don’t even have the commercial part of it [BERDO regulations] up and running yet,” Gentile said.

The final committee vote was 2 in favor, none opposed. Councilors Gentile, Malakie, Micley and Rick Lipof abstained.

The item will still head to the City Council for a vote.

You can watch the entire presentation online.