In her second to last Town Council meeting before she rides her bike into the sunset, Julie Smith-Galvin has cemented her legacy.

She may have also sealed the town’s fiscal fate for decades to come. And not in a good way.

By pushing the Wakefield Town Council to literally buy into the latest radical climate scheme known as Climate Leader Communities she succeeded in committing the town to eliminate fossil fuel use in all municipal buildings, move toward an all-electric vehicle fleet and adopt a “municipal decarbonization roadmap” (whatever that is).

Like the MBTA Multifamily Zoning mandate, which aims to get rid of cars by crowding people around public transit, the Climate Leader Communities program is an exercise in central planning by the state.

As Town Councilor Mike McLane pointed out at Monday’s meeting, the cost of an electric fire engine alone is twice that of a traditional, diesel-powered pumper. (And electric fire engines need to have a diesel back-up for when the battery runs out.) That doesn’t even get into the higher cost of electric police cruisers, DPW trucks and other heavy equipment.

None of this was of any concern to Smith-Galvin, who has a planet to save.

“I don’t know anything about electric pumpers,” Smith-Galvin admitted.

Of the seven-member Town Council, only McLane and Ed Dombroski expressed any concern about the financial impact that joining Climate Leader Communities will have on the town and its taxpayers.

“I’m very skeptical about the costs,” McLane said.

Dombroski objected to the fact that the Town Council was hearing this proposal for the first time at the end of a four-hour meeting, adding that there has been zero public discussion of the financial and practical ramifications of the commitments that the town will be required to make.

“I think it’s a dangerous idea at this point in time,” he said. “It feels like it’s being forced through at the eleventh hour. I think it would be elected official malpractice to commit the town in this way.”

Smith-Galvin didn’t care for that comment one bit.

“To call it ‘elected official malpractice’ enrages me,” she said, “because climate change is an existential issue.”

Apparently, when you declare something “an existential issue,” critical thinking is cut off. Dissent is heresy and questions will get you labeled a “climate denier,” which is essentially what Smith-Galvin was calling Dombroski.

We are assured that becoming a Climate Leader Community makes the town eligible for more grants. That just means Wakefield will have more money to pursue even more insane and costly climate initiatives. What a deal.

In the end, it always comes down to elections. The five Town Councilors who just approved this boondoggle were elected by the people. If you ever voted for Julie Smith-Galvin, Mehreen Butt, Jonathan Chines, Anne Danehy or Robert Vincent, then you also voted for this.

At this point, the only hope is that when the bills start coming in, the taxpayers will take notice and put a stop to the madness.

I’m not optimistic.
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[This column originally appeared in the April 11, 2024 Wakefield Daily Item.]