CB council postpones Climate Action Plan approval

Looking for more clarity

By Mark Reaman

The Crested Butte town council again expressed enough dissatisfaction with the town’s draft Climate Action Plan (CAP) that councilmembers sent it back to the tweaking board for changes instead of approving it as recommended by the staff at the March 17 meeting. 

The 126-page plan has gone through several revisions, the most recent after council sent it back for tweaks instead of approving it at the February 3 meeting. This time the council said the plan needed more clarity and focus. A subcommittee of staff, two councilmembers and a couple representatives from the CAP citizen’s committee will meet to try and work out the kinks before giving council another chance to review and approve the plan.

“The biggest opportunity to address greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions according to the plan is with existing buildings. Ninety percent of our opportunity comes with existing buildings. I’m wondering if we should have more specifics of what happens after energy audits are conducted on those buildings in town,” said councilmember John O’Neal. “Will it be a huge burden to the working class in town? What is next? What do we do specifically with the 1,600 buildings in town?” 

“It was clear to me that the council didn’t want immediate action after the assessments,” responded CB sustainability coordinator Dannah Leeman. 

“The goal was to look at possible incentives and I heard that laying it out in this plan would be a hard political push,” Leeman said.

“We can certainly come back to the council with what the next level program would be,” added Crested Butte town manager Dara MacDonald.

“It wasn’t clear to me if the assessments were meant for the building owner or the town,” said mayor Ian Billick.

“We do share the energy assessment results with the town,” said Leeman. “It can help inform future incentive programs. Obviously, a lot of community outreach would be held for these future programs.”

The council was unclear about the plan including the need for additional town employees to do climate work. The plan suggested between .6 and 2.5 full-time employees might be needed. Leeman explained that the town didn’t necessarily need to hire more people, but that that much extra work would be involved in implementing parts of the plan. She said current town employees might be able to absorb some of the extra work. MacDonald emphasized that any new employees would have to be approved by the council during budget discussions.

Councilmember Mallika Magner said that attitude “minimized” the potential need to add employees. “To say the plan requires up to another two-and-a-half extra employees and say the town staff will just absorb it, minimizes another expense we would be facing,” she said. “That’s not how town rolls. I don’t like the idea of minimizing that.”

“To be fair we asked the staff to do the impossible by estimating the additional needs but knowing it can’t be specific yet,” said Billick. 

“It’s very complicated,” agreed Magner.

Billick said he was unclear about why including the possibility of new town energy generation projects was included since Gunnison County Electric Association’s wholesale energy supplier, Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association has committed to having 80% renewable energy online by 2030. “It seems given where we are that would be taking away renewable energy and replacing it with renewable energy, that given the scale for Crested Butte, would be more expensive,” he said. “I’m a little uncomfortable with that proposed action. The real opportunity is decarbonizing existing buildings. It would be taking something like the GreenDeed program and expanding it beyond deed-restricted units.” 

“We would be supporting such local energy generation projects and support has a range of meaning,” said Leeman. 

“We wouldn’t pursue local renewable energy generation projects, but we would look for opportunities to support them,” said MacDonald. “I agree it would be beneficial to go beyond deed-restricted properties with the GreenDeed program.”

“When we get serious about retrofitting existing buildings it will require incentives for free market units,” said Billick. “But retrofitting buildings will be the real change.”

“The first two priorities in the plan are to retrofit residential and commercial buildings,” said MacDonald.

Councilmember Beth Goldstone who sat as part of the drafting committee said she was good with the current draft.

“I just don’t see the logic spelled out. It’s not laid out clearly,” said Billick. “Our goals are to decrease energy use, electrify and decarbonize. All those elements might be in the plan, but the conceptual framework is hard to understand.”

“We have talked about retrofitting at the council level and that takes money,” said councilmember Anna Fenerty. “How do we fund those retrofitting incentives? We need to be clear with the public on this. Moving there could result in an additional tax that is less and less likely to pass in this current time. This is a huge inflection point in what we as a community are trying to reconcile. How and who will pay for all this?” 

MacDonald said the council was in the midst of a long-term big picture financial analysis of town. Funding anything, she said, is always an issue.

“Someone from the general public reading this wouldn’t know that,” said Fenerty.

“We are striving for more clarity and we need to be clear what gives us the most bang for our buck,” said O’Neal.

“I struggled with the part about ‘Laying the Foundation,’” said councilmember Gabi Prochaska. “I would love some stronger language on prioritization. To me the plan lays it all out but doesn’t clearly lay out where the prioritization is. It felt like an afterthought.”

CAP draft committee member Donny Davol said the council comments were confusing him and that the priorities were clearly listed in the executive summary.

“To me that part comes across as a list of items and not a strategy,” responded Billick.

“I hear a lot of the concerns council has,” said Davol. “We don’t know all the answers yet, like the financing of incentives. It is vague because not all the pieces are there yet. What’s the saying —Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”

“Those are good eloquent points, but the plan should then state that we can’t do it all right now. We need to state those things clearly,” said Fenerty. “We need to be realistic and straightforward.”

“We also need to be cautious not to over-commit and then not be able to accomplish stated goals,” said Davol. “So being a little more vague isn’t a bad thing.”

“We can be vague in some areas but not with strategy,” said O’Neal. “I agree with Gabi that the priorities don’t come out in the plan.”

Fenerty suggested some of the bigger, trade-off type climate issue conversations that have been held in the region, such as with using “snow-melt,” be referenced so citizens reading the plan in the years to come know that elected officials are cognizant of the issues.

Goldstone initially offered that the current plan could be amended that night, but the rest of the council were concerned it would take more than a few tweaks in the moment to make acceptable changes.

Billick suggested forming a subcommittee that included two councilmembers be formed to iron out changes. He and Fenerty agreed to serve on the panel.

“I don’t want to cut out the citizen committee that has worked on this and I don’t want them to be frustrated with council, but we need some changes,” said Billick.

“I’d appreciate some specific language from council instead of my interpretations of what council wants for the next draft,” said Leeman.

“I’m not hearing any major changes, it’s almost just semantics,’ said Davol. “I’m not hearing anything the committee members wouldn’t support.”

“I feel like we are in enough agreement that we should pass this unanimously,” said Goldstone who agreed to a postponement of the vote.

“It’s a great document but not there yet,” said Fenerty.

“The council concern is that we get it right which is a hard thing,” said Billick.

The subcommittee will meet at the end of the week and then council will try again to get it right for the next time, probably at an April council meeting…