North Adams Eyes Sustainability Committee Creation
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — The mayor wants a panel that can advise her on sustainability issues — but she's leaving it up to the City Council to figure the best way to do it.
Mayor Jennifer Macksey on Tuesday presented a list of objectives and how she thought a Sustainability Committee could support the administration.
These would include shaping policies and plans, making recommendations to the administration, reviewing projects through a sustainability lens, set goals and benchmarks (such as water conservation and greenhouse gases), track progress and create reports, hold public meetings and workshops, educate the public and take input, and coordinate efforts across departments.
"We already have a group doing some of this work. But do we make them official, or do we fold some of their work into one of our City Council committee?" asked the mayor. "I will leave that up to the council to decide. My biggest concern about forming another committee is, we're having a hard time filling the committees that we do have."
She asked that should the council decide to establish a committee, it keep the membership to no more than five because of the difficulty in filling volunteer board seats. She also cautioned that the administration doesn't have the capacity for a sustainability officer, though that could change in the future.
The grassroots group is the North Adams Sustainability Task Force, an offshoot of Green North Adams.
Jennifer Dunning, a member of the task force, spoke at hearing of visitors to evince support for a formal committee.
"We're trying to encourage the city administration to integrate sustainability into as many practices as possible," she said, adding two other members were in attendance. "We're supporting the adoption of a sustainability initiative in the city of North Adams. And I think, personally, establishing a commission is also a good idea."
The matter arose from a request a year ago by Councilor Andrew Fitch for the administration to consider a sustainability committee. It was referred to the mayor's office.
"The reasoning for my putting this on the agenda was to start a conversation about how the city of North Adams can better set itself up for a more sustainable future," said Fitch, adding later in the discussion that "my ultimate goal is really just wanting the city to have a strategy, to have goals for sustainability, and to have an action plan of how we're going to achieve those goals."
Some of the options were to establish a new committee, work with the grassroots committee or appoint those members to a city committee, subordinate sustainability under an existing council committee or create an ad hoc committee.
"I know this group works very hard on those things, and this is of interest to many of you, so I don't know who wants to drive the bus," said the mayor.
Councilor Lisa Blackmer said she liked the way Macksey had set out the goals of the committee as environmentally sound, socially equitable, economically resilient. Sustainability could fall under Community Development, or a joint issue with Public Services.
"We can ask for things as a City Council committee that may or may not be the same with an informal group," she said. "So I if we were going to do it, I like the idea of formalizing it and obviously encouraging some of the people that have been involved."
Councilor Keith Bona noted that some committee have difficulty with turnover and vacancies. He'd like to see it under Community Development and invite the task force members into conversations and see how it develops.
Councilor Bryan Sapienza wondered how housing would fit into the committee's purview, noting how energy efficiency and sustainable practices feed into housing; Councilor Lillian Zavatsky brought up flooding and solar arrays that go through planning, saying "it depends on how much energy there is in the community to fill out a committee that will shape what sort of structure we have."
Council President Ashley Shade suggested that the council create an ad hoc committee, through Community Development, similar to how the IDEA Commission started.
"I think that's the way to go to start this off," she said. "Because then the people getting involved can decide whether or not it needs to be a full commission or not. They can decide what direction it needs to go in, what players need to be involved."
Dunning, during open forum, said the grassroots group isn't sufficient to meet the city's sustainability goals.
"It's just very hard to keep up momentum when it's an informal group without any official standing, and we're just not in a position to set goals or to track progress, which I think are the key elements of a true sustainability initiative," she said.
Fitch motioned to refer the sustainability committee to Community Development with a return date of the last meeting in April.
"I just don't want to check the box. I really want people who are engaged in environmental efforts to really help me," said the mayor. "You know I'm the Energizer bunny being reactive — I think this is an opportunity for us to plan better."
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