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HomeMy WebLinkAboutClimate Council Meeting Summary - 6-18-2020 Orange County Climate Council Meeting Summary June 18, 2020 3:00pm - 4:30pm Online Meeting Attendees: Mark Marcoplos (Chair), Brennan Bouma (staff), Cathy Cole, Ray DuBose, Caroline Hansley-Mace, Laura Janway, Kathy Kaufman, Adam Long, Jonas Monast, Sara Pitts John Richardson, Donna Rubinoff, Sammy Slade, Stephanie Trueblood, Robb English, Hongbin Gu, Tyrone Fisher, Dan Schnitzer, Public comments received by advertised deadline: Kunal Parthak indicated an interest in composting and said that he would be sending questions and materials in time for the next meeting in July. He has been added to the interest list. I. Call to Order, Additions or Changes to the Agenda - Marcoplos called the meeting to order at 3:06pm. Bouma offered an update on letter to Governor Cooper and sending – He noted that an Orange County Commissioner was about to object that it had been sent ahead of their approval. There appears to be confusion over status of Council as an Advisory Board. He also presented a summary of how this letter relates to the new Executive Order 143. Bouma also made an announcement that there is a bill moving forward now that should clear the logjam in Phase 1 Volkswagen Settlement funding. II. Approval of Meeting Minutes from May 28, 2020 Bouma referred to Kaufman’s comments offered on the May meeting minutes that she emailed before the meeting and apologized for misspelling her name. Bouma said that he would fix that spelling and would spell out the “CARD” acronym the first time it’s used in the notes. Kaufman motioned for the minutes to be approved with these changes, and Janway seconded. The minutes were approved unanimously. III. Update from Climate Action Reporting Committee Bouma reported that the committee had met and was proposing to push members to complete the CARD and make it public-facing ahead of the September event. This proposal was met with general approval by the Council. As a status update, Bouma informed the group that Tiger had surveyed the completeness of the CARD and that it appeared to be at least halfway complete given that several of the actions would not apply to non-governmental members. The committee would be working with members to post “N/A” in these cells and color them grey, so they would not show up as gaps. The committee has also added a new column to align the actions listed with the appropriate category in the new LEED for Cities and Communities Standards, and has invited the Policy committee to join with them to explore alignment of the Policy list and the CARD. IV. Update from Communications Committee Marcoplos the newly formed committee is poised to meet in the next week. The committee plans to send an update as needed afterwards. V. Update from Policy Committee Trueblood updated the Council on the work of the Policy Committee, saying that Janway and Richardson had joined the Committee and that they had met recently. They were working through the Policy Ideas spreadsheet shared at the last meeting. They announced that they would be breaking into small groups to cover low-cost relatively straightforward items highlighted in green to create explanatory language and any model verbiage that could help to launch a project or policies. They hope to share this at the August meeting. The other group will tackle harder items highlighted in blue and yellow, thinking through regulatory issues and projects with costs. They aim to develop ranking criteria to help make clear which are most worth the effort. Likely it will take another month or two to work through the spreadsheet and create sample language. Marcoplos said that this could be a topic on the agenda in August to deliver recommendations if the committee wishes. Trueblood then said that different combinations of actions will work better in different situations, so they desire to leave the rankings open enough to local interpretation and not limit the spreadsheet options. Marcoplos referred to the Climate Tax and the plan to distribute the next round. He said it might be good to share this notification with others. Bouma shared the background on the current thinking about the Climate Action Fund grant program and offered to send out the criteria and eligibility guidelines after this meeting. Slade then said that gathering policy ideas may be useful for grant applicants and the policy committee may benefit from seeing the criteria. Trueblood recommended that the grant be announced soon to give organizations extra time to prepare in the first round. VI. Discussion of Succession planning Bouma introduced the item saying that succession plans should be discussed in light of student members and leadership who would soon be cycling off. Trueblood recommended that the Chair be an elected official. Monast agreed and said that it would be good to have an elected official as either the Chair or Vice-Chair. Schnitzer also agreed, saying that it would help give legitimacy when seeking approval for future actions and communications. Kaufman asked how much work is it to be a leader of this group and how much should we expect going forward? Marcoplos answered that it does take time, but the time investment should not be a major concern. He also said that he likes the idea of having a non-elected official represented in a strong way, so that elected officials don’t dominate the discussions. Trueblood offered that the Chair and Co-chair could consist of one elected leader and one community leader. Marcoplos said that the Co-chair or Vice-Chair role has participated in behind the scenes discussions and is an important role. Trueblood said that she is not sure we need a nominating committee, just make nominations the month before. Make nominations and vote. Especially now that we have so many committees. Especially since we are defining elected officials and community members. Marcoplos respectfully offered an opposing view, saying that the committee could be and was an effective way to take away stumping for positions, and avoids people getting only few votes at a meeting, while still reflecting the will of the Board. DuBose offered that in last few years OWASA Board has decided that their whole board is nominating committee instead of a smaller group. This makes for a more awkward process but gives more transparency. That said, they are not as large a group. For this group it could be more awkward. The nominating committee worked well. Marcoplos responded saying that process is what the Council did list time, and maybe what he is proposing is a polling committee instead of a nominating committee. The Council overall could nominate in a public setting and then this committee could work to determine who has the most support before the Council then votes to adopt their recommendation. DuBose and Kaufman agreed that this process worked well for the Council. Trueblood indicated she would be happy to go either way. Marcoplos said we would try this process again this time. DuBose asked and Marcoplos clarified that the Council was discussing the Chair as an elected official, and the Vice-chair as a community member. Kaufman said that for her co-chairs are better since the work divides equally. DuBose then asked whether we should shoot for an elected official and a non-elected official to be the two co-chairs. Monast said that the Council shoul make that a goal and not binding since there are so few elected officials who can participate regularly. Marcoplos agreed, saying that any elected official can chime in during a meeting and make their points. Having it as a goal to have an elected official as a co-chair is a good weighting factor. He asked for agreement that everyone thought co-chairs was the way to go and he received confirmation from Council members. Bouma then asked to clarify whether the Co-chairs would both cycle off at the same time. Richardson offered the idea of having staggered co-chairs, extending one of the terms by one year. Marcoplos and DuBose said that they liked that idea and asked if anyone disagreed. No one spoke up. Bouma then asked about the succession planning for student members and wondered whether he should reach out to AP Science teachers to try to identify a successor for Josh VanMater from Orange County Schools. Pitts said that it would be a good idea to ahead and reach out to teachers. Bouma said that students who were not moving on or had not yet moved on could continue in their roles. Bouma then shifted to comment on the upcoming online public event and Slade said that a potential speaker for the public event might be someone representing a place in the US that is leading in implementing emergency climate action. Kaufman mentioned that Rubinoff has strong ideas about this topic and the Council should get her feedback. Rubinoff then said she likes that proposal. A year ago, she had initiated contact with the coordinators of David Wallace Wells’ speaking engagements and had started assembling funding to bring him in. At the time it fell through, but it might be easy to pick back up, and that he had recently tied climate change into racial equity and COVID issues. She was also thinking it could be helpful to link the elements of the event to any goals we might have for the event. Marcoplos said that this has been a good discussion and indicated his desire to ensure we take the opportunity to highlight the Council’s own work and potentially have a separate event for a nationally renowned speaker. He then suggested that the Communications Committee take a first pass at outlining the event and then the Council could continue the discussion in future meetings. Bouma and Kaufman supported that process as members of the Communications Committee. Monast also said he’d be happy for the Communications Committee to take the first pass and said that a high-profile speaker may not have the same effect of keeping people participating on an online event. He recommended that we match the speaker to the goals of the event. Kaufman then recommended a speaker that sticks to the art-of-the-possible and positive solutions, instead of someone who focuses on the negative. Hansley-Mace then said that the Sierra Club events have taken a big hit in participation once everything moved online. 50 people in the audience might not be realistic. She would be fine if one of the Council members might be the speaker. Trueblood recommended that young voices and EJ speakers are also compelling voices and agreed with the idea of making sure we are representing the Council’s work. Marcoplos said that the Communications committee would synthesize these ideas and come back with recommendations potentially having a separate open meeting if needed. The Council agreed. VII. Adjournment – Marcoplos asked for a motion to adjourn the meeting and this was provided by Hansley-Mace and seconded by Slade. The Council voted unanimously to adjourn the meeting at 4:35pm.