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HomeMy WebLinkAboutClimate Council Meeting Summary - 11-21-19 Orange County Climate Council Meeting Summary November 21, 2019 3:30pm - 5:00pm OWASA Community Room, 400 Jones Ferry Road, Carrboro Attendees: Mark Marcoplos (Chair), Brennan Bouma (staff), Brooke Bauman, Cathy Cole, Patricia Clayton, Tyrone Fisher, Hongbin Gu, Stephen Halkiotis, Caroline Hansley- Mace, Laura Janway, Kathy Kaufman,Adam Long,Jonas Monast, Anna Richards, John Richardson, Donna Rubinoff,, Sammy Slade, Mary Tiger, Stephanie Trueblood, Joshua Van Mater,Jenn Weaver,Jody Eimers (alternate), Owen Ryerson (alternate), Bill Ward (alternate), I. Call to Order- Marcoplos called the meeting to order at 3:35pm. Council members introduced themselves for the benefit of new members. II. Approval of Draft Meeting Summary from Sept 24, 2019 —A motion was made to approve the meeting summary as written by Ward, and this was seconded by Cole.The meeting summary was approved unanimously. III. Selection of Vice-Chair— Kauffman, Ryerson, and Tiger presented briefly on the process they followed to reach out individually to each named Climate Council member to ask their preferences on Vice-Chair.The Vice-Chair nominating committee completed their work and having spoken to every Council member they reported that a majority expressed appreciation for both candidates and wished Melissa McCullough to serve as Vice-Chair for this year. Halkiotis moved to accept the recommendation of the Nominating Committee and Ryerson seconded.The Council voted unanimously to approve the recommendation of the Nominating Committee for Melissa McCullough to serve as Vice-Chair for this year. It was confirmed that the Council intends the Vice-Chair to become Chair automatically in or around September 2020. Tiger also reported that the Nominating Committee heard from several Council members when deciding on the succession plan for the Chair and Vice-Chair that there should be a succession plan for support staff. Marcoplos asked staff to gather more information on this for consideration at a future meeting. Council members identified the week of December 16th as their preferred week for the next meeting. Based on their desire to stay open to evening meetings in their desire to be inclusive of the student and professional members, who could not attend during business hours, Bouma said he would create a poll for those dates that include evening times. IV. Discussion of Climate Council Mission and Vision —Hansley-Mace, Weaver, Richards, and Rubinoff facilitated a discussion and process to solicit input from the Council on the mission/vision statement that will be drafted for the December meeting.They began with a review of the 17 Principles of Environmental Justice that were adopted in 1991 at the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit. Weaver said that racial equity needs to be with the Council from the beginning, and that slowing down to be thoughtful about racial equity would improve the Council's work and save time in the end. After reading the principles, there was a brief discussion. Richards said that she felt that on the whole the principles held up well given their age, and that while these principles covered a lot of points that would take more time to digest,there are some fundamental statements here that could guide the Council's work. Slade agreed,thanked the committee for their work, and expressed that climate justice calls for for those with resources to act even more quickly on climate change to help balance those who do not have the resources to act. Slade moved to adopt the 17 principles, and Hansley-Mace seconded. Rubinoff offered the idea that the Council might want to adopt something broader to serve as guiding principles, and that it was worth having more discussion. Other members expressed that one or two of the principles seem out of date or less relevant to the Council's work. Hansley-Mace expressed concerns about amending these principles given that they were long-standing and created by people of color.Trueblood asked how these principles would serve the Council. Richards and Weaver clarified that these guiding principles would provide a values framework to guide the creation of our mission and vision statements, and Slade clarified that his intention for the motion was to adopt these principles as the Climate Council's guiding principles of Environmental Justice.The vote was called and the motion was passed unanimously. The Mission and Vision Committee then led the Council through a series of survey questions and turned live online feedback into word clouds which provided a quick visual representation of the most commonly used words. With the Council's feedback collected, both in full text and in Word Clouds, the committee said it would draft a Mission/Vision statement for review and approval at the December meeting. Donna Rubinoff also said that she would send out a framework to structure climate policies that is used around the world.The Council can use this as a resource in formalizing our actions. Bauman and Cole affirmed the benefits of working from a framework. V. Identifying and Categorizing Joint Project Ideas— Marcoplos introduced this section by briefly walking the council through an initial analysis he had conducted of the initial project ideas. Marcoplos had identified 4 characteristics of each project idea: 1.)Those that would require funds; 2.)Those with a relatively quick turnaround; 3.)Those with a longer turnaround, and; 4.)Those where the Council has the power to complete them. Marcoplos said that these 4 characteristics reflect some of the identified strengths and challenges of the council e.g.-expertise, information sharing, no budget, little staff time. With time being limited for further discussion on these initial project ideas,the discussion turned to a sample framework that staff had created based on the Council's desire for a climate action gap analysis.The aim was for a gap analysis to communicate what's being done to address Climate Change already across the County and identify areas where we can help accelerate each other's actions. Trueblood agreed that this would be useful and recommended that members be arrayed across the column headers with climate actions going down for easier navigation of the table.Josh Van Mater volunteered to jump-start the work of creating a climate action gap analysis and potentially a committee to carry this work forward. Bouma said that before the next meeting he would work to fit the contents of the initial report of the Ad Hoc Climate Committee into the framework we discussed. Bouma asked for all members to provide him with updated lists of climate actions. VI. Adjournment—Marcoplos asked for a motion to adjourn the meeting and this was provided by Kaufman and seconded by Halkiotis.The Council voted unanimously to adjourn the meeting at 5:00pm.