| In December 2003, local representatives of the Ashland Faith community
approached the city's Conservation commission with the idea of the city becoming
a partner in the Cities for Climate Protection Program. These citizens wanted
to be involved both with initial program development and later with
implementation. The Commission directed staff to research what was entailed
o develop this program. It was determined city participation would require
adopting a Resolution agreeing to implement the five milestone included in
the program.
These steps are:
1) Conduct a local emissions inventory and forecast of greenhouse gas
emissions
2) Adopt an emissions reduction target
3) Draft an action plan
4) Implement the action plan
5) Evaluate and report on the progress
Staff informed the commission and the citizens making the request, existing
Conservation staff would not be able to spend much time on this project and
therefore implementation of all steps would take a considerable leng6th of
time.
At the next commission meeting, at her request of the citizens, SO&U
professors Greg Jones and Eric Ditmer, attended the meeting offering SOU
Environmental Education Graduate Students and their capstone projects as
a way to speed up implementation of the steps.
In early April, staff attended the initial SOU spring term class of these
students and explained what Phase I of the project would entail. Three students
from the class agreed to choose this as their project and have been working
with City conservation Staff to begin the data gathering needed to conduct
the local emissions inventory phase of the project.
There is an initial $600 fee payable to ICLEI that provides forms for collecting
data and software for conducting the emissions inventory as well as determining
co-benefits, cost savings and criteria for our pollution prevention. Also,
sample action plans prepared by other participating cities, are available
to participating jurisdictions. The conservation Commission agreed on April
28th to fund this $600 out of this year's commission budget.
The list provided by ICLEI showed that 146 cities are participating in this
program. This list and other explanation documents from ICLEI have been included
with this communication.
Discussion with SOU students and their professors indicated that each phase
of the programs could potentially use a different set of students to work
on that phase. Right now, it is expected that Phase I would be completed
by the three volunteering students this spring. Subsequent classes would
work on the other phases.
Staff feels this is a worthwhile program, which can be achieved over the
next year or so with the help of the SOU graduate students. Many of the action
items will probably involve existing City Conservation programs and this
initiative would allow another opportunity to emphasize and market those
programs. Because the local faith community has committed to reach out to
other local congregations and service organizations, the City will have anew
way to spread the word about the City's efforts encouraging the wise use
of resources. |
