PORT ANGELES — The City of Port Angeles hopes to incorporate a climate resilience plan, which addresses a range of issues from greenhouse gases to food insecurity, into its comprehensive 2022 plan amendment.
“As an appendix to the overall plan, it would serve as an ambitious document that could be used to inform implementation efforts with stakeholders, the capital plan, and integration into the periodic update of the overall plan. in 2025,” said interim Emma Bolin. director of community and economic development.
The first reading and the public hearing took place on Tuesday during the ordinary meeting of the municipal councils.
A second reading and public hearing are scheduled for June 21, when the plan is expected to be considered for adoption. The public can submit comments to City Clerk Kari Martinez-Bailey at [email protected]
The public can join the meeting virtually via WebX https://cityofpa.webex.com/cityofpa/onstage/g.php?MTID=ec2d0d5f267fe9daa7ccdabc1c8526d15
Changes to the overall plan must be adopted by June 30.
Details of the plan can be found on the city’s website at https://www.cityofpa.us/1010/Climate-Resiliency-Plan
“This plan represents a multi-year collaborative initiative with the Climate Action Volunteer Group, Cascadia Consulting and our planning commission,” Bolin said.
The plan includes several tasks, such as the completion of a greenhouse gas inventory measuring both government and community emissions as well as a multi-criteria analysis process.
“The multi-criteria analysis is meant to be a tool the city can use in decision-making as well as a demonstration of its commitment to a carbon-neutral 2030,” Bolin said.
The plan is divided into five sections: Community Health and Wellbeing, Ecosystem Health, Transportation, Buildings and Energy, and Consumption and Waste.
Each section includes goals focused on the general interests of that section, the city’s progress in that section, and the community-wide progress in that section. Each section offers two strategies with actions that would determine success.
There are 70 stocks in all, but Cascadia Consulting, using the multi-criteria analysis tool, Cascadia Consulting analyzed and evaluated 40 stocks.
Cascadia Consulting was hired in November 2020 to do this work.
Port Angeles resident Bob Vreeland encouraged everyone to read the draft climate plan and listed some of his favorite actions.
“Action number two, food security by supporting local agriculture and farmers markets. Number four assesses climate mitigations and impact with a forecast every five years. Action number nine, the city budget request for a full-time resilience plan coordinator and an annual climate bulletin including high school students in the work,” Vreeland said.
Planning Commission member Ben Stanley urged council to approve the plan, but also urged members to tighten it up.
“Many of us on the planning commission would like to narrow the focus of this plan,” he said.
“I see the plan as it stands as essentially a menu of options to choose from and I think we recognize that we can’t act on all of them right now with current levels of funding,” he said. -he adds.
“But I think we would all like to work to come up with a narrower, more focused list of recommendations in conjunction with the cost-benefit analysis that we mentioned to be realistic about how we can implement these things,” said Stanley.
Board member Lindsey Schromen-Wawrin noted that this is something the board has been working on for many years.
“We’ve wanted to do this planning for a number of years, and during that time we were dealing with staff shortages in our management team and Nathan (West) said ‘wait’ because we want to make sure it’s a plan. that we can implement and not just something we do to tick a box and put it on a shelf,” Schromen-Wawrin said.
“So it’s been a commitment from our staff and this council and the challenge of course is to make it real.”
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Journalist Ken Park can be reached at [email protected].
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