I appreciate the many comments Ward One residents have posted on email lists or sent directly to me about the proposed climate change resolution, on which there’s a public hearing and a City Council discussion in tomorrow night’s (February 5) Council meeting. While I haven’t been able to respond to all the individual emails (I hope to, before long), I’m circulating this message to provide a sense of my current thinking on the resolution.
My overall view is that, with the climate emergency we’re in, Takoma Park should take strong action to do what we can at our local level to address the crisis. I think the resolution has the potential to put us on a positive path in that regard, but I’d like to see some changes made to it before we take a vote. Indeed, there’s no chance the resolution will simply be subject to an up or down vote in its current form -- it’s a draft, and the Council is going to amend it.
Some residents may have read my blog from last week on this topic, but if not, you can click on the following link and scroll down a bit to see what I wrote: http://www.councilmemberkovar.com/blog/2020/1/27/january-29-2020-city-council-agenda. That statement explained some of the things I thought were missing from the resolution, and also expressed my views on some of the ways I’d like to see us change it. This message I’m sending out today builds on the blog to give a more up-to-date picture of how I think we should proceed with the resolution, based in part on the many helpful conversations with, and emails from, residents in recent days.
Before going any further, though, I’d like to clarify that we're not voting on the plan in this week's or next week's Council meeting. Tomorrow night there will just be the public hearing and the Council discussion. A vote on the resolution has been tentatively scheduled for either February 26 or March 4, with a further Council discussion before that on February 19. I had expressed my preference for the vote to be delayed from the original date of February 12, so I’m glad there’s been a change to a later date. I don’t know at this point if I’d favor a further slowing of the voting date -- I’d like to hear more from staff, my colleagues and residents before making that judgment.
As noted in the blog, I was a strong supporter of the resolution we adopted last March declaring a climate emergency, setting a goal of a net 100 percent reduction in Greenhouse Gas emissions by 2035 (which aligned us with Montgomery County), and asking our staff to develop aggressive proposed strategies for getting us there. That process involved working with an outside consultant, meetings with residents, additional City Council discussions, etc. You can see details about the process through this link: https://takomaparkmd.gov/initiatives/project-directory/sustainability-and-climate-action-plan-2019/
The climate resolution we’re now considering is an expression of the staff recommendations which emerged from that process, with the idea that it would be up to this and subsequent Councils to consider the various components of the resolution over the course of the next 15 years and decide which ones ultimately make sense and how best to implement them. As I see it, among the factors that Councilmembers would need to take into account in making those decisions are: input from residents; the cost for residents across a range of incomes; short and long term financial analyses of the impact on the local economy, including the real estate market; what steps other levels of government -- especially the County -- may take; the impact on our municipal budget and tax rate; how technology continues to change; how the renewable energy sector develops; and what happens in terms of actual impacts linked to climate change as we go forward. These factors are all inter-connected, and can’t be considered on their own.
That inter-connectedness is also true of the kinds of proposals that will give us a chance to come close to meeting our Greenhouse Gas emission target in 2035. If we think about such proposals on a one-off basis, my guess is we’ll find the 15 years passing more quickly than we’d like without enough progress being made. So to me that means we should start with an overall framework containing in effect a list of possible policy changes. This is what the resolution is meant to be, but I don’t think that’s entirely evident in the current draft.
So I think the most important change we should make to the resolution is to clarify that it’s a framework for future consideration rather than a set of policies that we’re locking in now. We need to state more clearly that none of the potential policy changes will actually be adopted or implemented until whatever Council is in office at the time takes the necessary action in terms of passing an ordinance, changing our Code, etc. And that should only happen after having considered the various factors mentioned in the previous paragraph including especially community feedback.
If we make those points more explicit then I think the resolution can serve as a valuable guide for policies to help us move toward our 2035 goals, knowing that we can't literally decide today which policies will make sense to put in place over the next 15 years. This is not all that different from the Housing and Economic Development Strategic Plan recently approved by the Council. It has a lot of policy recommendations we’d like to see put into effect over the next 10 years, but again with the understanding that there will need to be a lot of staff work, Council discussion, and community engagement on the individual ideas that are derived from the plan.
Even if we approve the key clarifying change described above, I’d still like to see a number of other changes and additions to the resolution, some of which are outlined in last week’s blog. For example, the Council is in the early stages of working on a major tree initiative that will likely include proposals aimed at expanding our publicly supported tree planting effort. We’ll be talking more about that initiative in next week’s Council meeting. But the initiative should also be referenced in a more detailed way in the climate resolution to help ensure that the benefits of having more trees can be appropriately taken into account in any work that's done to explore the costs and other trade-offs connected to the various proposals in the resolution.
Other examples of issues on which we need to add language to the resolution or strengthen what’s already in it include: aligning what we do with the actions other levels of government may take; adaptation and resilience efforts we can take at the local area related especially to severe weather; linking the resolution appropriately to our other initiatives like the Housing Strategic Plan and our Public Space Plan; clarifying whether we’re seeking a net 100 percent reduction or an absolute 100 percent GHG reduction by 2035; and ensuring that racial equity and the impact on lower income residents of the proposed policies are given a more central place. Debate on whether to add such items to or incorporate them more specifically into the resolution will be easier to resolve once we clarify that this resolution is a framework for consideration and analysis as opposed to an end product that we have to implement in the precise form in which each item appears in the resolution.
That’s also true for potential changes to the key policy recommendations in the resolution. For example, on the proposed policy relating to phasing out of natural gas heating systems, I’d like to see a comparison of the costs and benefits of requiring replacement by a certain date versus only when a new system is installed. My thinking is that the future Council that will consider whether to adopt a policy on this issue should have a full understanding of the pros and cons of each alternative before taking action. So having language in the resolution calling for studying those and other options in future years strikes me as a good approach. I expect there are similar changes that could make sense for some of the other policy recommendations.
Assuming we get the resolution modified along the lines laid out above, we're talking about a 15 year process for considering policies and figuring how to implement those that have support. That of course means that future City Councils will be making most of the decisions, which in turn means that there will be plenty of opportunities for residents to weigh in going forward.
I hope the comments offered in this statement are useful to residents. As always, I welcome feedback, and I’ll make sure I’m available to discuss these matters in various settings prior to any votes.
Peter Kovar, Takoma Park City Council, Ward One