CC Minutes - 09/15/10 Work Session

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Ms. Solomon said the plan covered six areas that were inclusive of most areas the council addressed. She asked if every future plan or decision would be filtered through the plan. City Manager Ruiz did not think so. He suggested that the City Council would want to go through the triple bottom line analysis for many decisions. Mayor Piercy hoped the plan encouraged the community to work together to move in certain directions, but she pointed out the City could not force anyone to do something they did not want to do. Ms. Ortiz thanked Mr. McRae and the commission for their work on the plan. She said the City could not demand that people do the things called for in the plan, but the actions represented best practices if the community wanted to do good things for the environment. Ms. Ortiz suggested a tie between the plan and the fact that residents living along the Highway 99 corridor lacked a place to buy fresh food and vegetables. Mr. McRae said that "20 minute neighborhoods" was about that topic specifically, and was a topic of discussion through the Envision Eugene process. Mr. Clark said he would support the proposed motion because it was worded to support the plan goals and called for specific items to come back to the council for later discussion. He believed the essence of the goals were around energy use and its costs and what the community should be prepared for. He said he thought the community needed to be prepared. He did not think that people would be driving cars that burned gas in 20 to 30 years because the cost of gas would be prohibitive and people would have alternatives. It was smart to help people to transition to change. Ms. Taylor asked how the community would become aware of the plan. Mr. McRae anticipated that education campaigns would be prepared for actions calling for consumer behavioral changes. City Manager Ruiz anticipated that the City's Web site would be employed to spread word of the plan and suggested that those who participated in the development of the plan, including the Sustainability Commission, would be ambassadors for the plan. He also thought the neighborhood associations could play a role in getting the word out. Ms. Taylor encouraged the neighborhood organizations to schedule general meetings devoted to the topic, and encouraged Sustainability Commissioners to attend those meetings. Mayor Piercy observed that many neighborhood organizations already had sustainability committees and many association members participated in the plan's creation. Ms. O'Sullivan reported that the Sustaina- bility Commission's work plan included a task specific to outreach and messaging, and the commission was actively seeking opportunities to network with the neighborhood associations and other community groups. Mr. Clark, seconded by Ms. Taylor, moved to direct the City Manager to implement ac- tions that support the Community Climate and Energy Action plan goals and objectives, subject to best practices, resources, collaboration with community partners, and approval by council of future policy changes. Mr. Zelenka asked Ms. O'Sullivan about her perspective on the plan. Ms. O'Sullivan found the plan to be on the cutting edge. It tried to achieve several objectives that were related but frequently missing in other plans, such as the combined objectives of planning for climate change and adaptation and trying to reduce greenhouse gas impacts by tying those issues directly to fossil fuel use. She thought the connection to public health was another important innovation. MINUTES— Eugene City Council September 15, 2010 Page 5 Work Session