The Parks and Recreation Committee met 08/08/2022 and took up the Sustainability Advisory Panel resolution which, if passed, would create an Advisory Panel on Sustainability & Climate Resilience to advise the mayor and Common Council on related issues.
The committee discussed the purpose of the panel and the value it would bring and eventually voted 3-1 to recommend the resolution for approval with Alderperson Sheri Hartzheim (District 13) voting no, after questioning the use or value of a sustainability advisory panel in a city that was already well focused on sustainability.
Alderperson Denise Fenton (District 6) was not a member of the committee but she was a sponsor of the resolution and had served on the recently disbanded climate task force which in its final report had recommended the creation of a climate advisory committee.
Alderperson Fenton said that a sustainability advisory panel would be a valuable resource much like the other advisory boards in the city.
Alderperson Israel Del Toro (District 4) who had served on the climate change task force before he had been elected alderperson, asked Alderperson Fenton what she envisioned as some of the goals for the committee. Did she see it simply as an extension of the climate task force or would there be new goals they would pursue?
Alderperson Fenton responded that the climate tasked force had completed its report by submitting an action plan. The city had not, however, adopted a Sustainability in all policy. “In my mind the advisory board would I think really primarily provide insight because I think the city’s doing a great job. When I met with Steve Schrage I was just so impressed with the ideas he has for ongoing projects. But if—in the resolution it specifically talks about things that maybe we don’t think of in our everyday jobs. Is the city, like, considering equity in, you know, our plans about, you know, where we’re going to put a storm water pond or where we’re going to do things like that? So, I would—my vision is that it [would] kind of be a bridge between the general public, and I would hope that people who are experts in the field, like the people who were on the task force, would apply and be those people.”
Alderperson Hartzheim said in her initial reading of the resolution, it sounded like a fine idea. There was nothing in it that was egregious or expensive for the city. However, she had two questions. The first was what could this advisory panel do that the Common Council, the Parks and Recreation Committee, and city staff could not already do? The Parks and Recreation committee already oversaw director Gazza’s staff, including the sustainability manager. She was concerned that creating an advisory panel would take away from the committee and Council and potential create extra work for no reason.
Her other question was where was the city on implementing the action steps presented by the climate change tasks force? Did they need an advisory panel right now given that they had a long list of recommendations they were working through.
Director Gazza said that the city had made progress on the recommendations from the task force. He noted that the task force’s recommendations included some recommendations that had already been 100% implemented before the report was even submitted. So there had been no need for those specific recommendations. Additionally, the city had already been well underway in implanting some other recommended items prior to the report. There were other things recommendations that were worth doing. There were other recommendations that were possibly not feasible. They needed to go through the report and prioritize what needed to be done.
One thing he liked about the sustainability panel was that it would be an outlet to get the word out to the public about what the city was doing. It would allow the sustainability manager to report to the group and let them know what the city was working on, and perhaps the panel could share some information back about things that were happening in the community.
His department was conformable with the way the resolution was written that the panel would not be overbearing and that his department would not be reporting to the panel and receiving diktats from the group which they had to follow. Rather, it would just be an advisory panel.
As an example, he spoke favorably about the benefit of being able to bounce ideas off of the Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee.
Alderperson Hartzheim asked if those things could not be done without creating an additional governmental body.
Director Gazza answered that the city did not need a sustainability advisory committee. They had many very intelligent staff members working on that stuff at this time. But they could still benefit from extra advice, intelligence, and idea-sharing.
Alderperson Hartzheim asked if they could do that without an advisory panel.
Director Gazza said it depended on who was on the advisory panel and what value they brought. He said that city staff went to a lot of conferences that revolved around sustainability. So, staff already had a lot of information and was learning quite a bit, but another source of information could bring value.
Alderperson Del Toro said that what he was hearing from both Alderperson Fenton and Director Gazza was that the sustainability committee would really serve two purposes.
One would be to delegate some of the responsibility currently held by the Parks and Recreation Committee and the Municipal Services Committee so the advisory panel could think about those from a broader perspective and cone up with solutions that involved the citizens of Appleton. He pictured the committee being comprised of teachers, lawyers, librarians, scientists, and members of private industry. The confluence of their thoughts would generate the best possible solutions for some of these problems.
The other purpose of the advisory panel would be accountability. One of the recommendations from the climate task force had been to maintain an advisory council, so its creation was necessary for accountability purposes and also to generate novel solutions that staff might not be able to think of internally.
He felt it was a relatively low-cost volunteer effort and he did not see the harm in bringing more voices to the table to hear broader ideas for problems that required creative solutions.
Alderperson Hartzheim thought accountability already existed for city staff and that Council members were accountable on election day. She did not think that an advisory committee was necessary to maintain that accountability.
Alderperson Del Toro agreed they were accountable on election day. The report that had been created by the task force. Every generation of that report created a track record demonstrating what the city had done over the last two years, helping them remain accountable to their constituents by demonstrating that they were hearing their concerns and tackling problems.
Alderperson Fenton said that one of the things she appreciated about the original climate task force had been the amazing array of knowledgeable people who volunteered their time. There were talented and smart people who worked for the city and they had a lot of resources like conferences they could go to, but there was also a wide range of experts in the community who were willing to volunteer their time and share their expertise. They knew what the city was doing and where it was at, but private industry had different resources and different needs and may have found solutions that the city had not thought of yet and that could be scaled to a city. She thought that they should take advantage of this opportunity to bring in free volunteers.
Alderperson Chad Doran (District 15) was not a member of the committee but he was in attendance. He asked Director Gazza if he could give an overview of the work staff members not only in the Facilities Management Department but in other departments as well did to promote sustainability issues. How would he rate the work toward those goals that staff did? Was it something that was on the top of the mind for departments or was additional assistance in that area necessary?
Director Gazza responded that some other municipalities or organizations tried to put sustainability into one person’s hands. Former Mayor Hanna, however, had been very deliberate about saying that, just like financial responsibility, sustainability was the job of everyone within an organization so when they were making decisions they should be thinking about that. He noted particularly Ron McDonald at Valley Transit and Chris Shaw of the Utilities Department as technically-minded individuals who dug in and got excited about things like this.
City staff were focused on hitting the trifecta of social, financial, and sustainable goals instead of only one or two. A lot of times the projects the city did were driven by dollars in that upgrading equipment might result in saving considerable money. At the same time, making those upgrades was beneficial to the environment.
He thought the city was in a good position in that they had a lot of technical people who were all sustainability-minded.
Alderperson Doran said one of the concerns he had about adding this advisory panel was that it was just going to be making recommendations that had already been made by the climate task force before it. He would hate to see the group come together with big ideas and ambitions and then recognize that staff was already on top of all that stuff already and was taking care of that work.
He was also concerned that the panel was going to be a permanent panel but did not have any specific goals. In that situation, he didn’t think making it permanent was a good idea, and he didn’t know what mechanism they would have in the future to disband the panel if they found it to be ineffective or if they reached a point where nobody was actually applying to be a part of it anymore. He suggested that the Parks and Recreation Committee consider striking that language from the resolution.
Alderperson Nate Wolff (District 12) said that everyone in the Facilities Management Department has and always would care about sustainability and had done great things. Some of the things in the task force’s recommendations had already been done, and he was proud of that fact. He didn’t see any reason why people would feel let down knowing that city staff was already doing some of those things.
He thought the panel should be permanent mainly because climate change was always happening and new things would come up. It was nice to have a group of people to fall back on, bounce ideas off of, and get a new perspective from. He also thought it should be permanent because climate change could get much worse in the future.
Alderperson Del Toro thought the climate change was an issue that was going to affect the city for the rest of our lifetimes and had long-lasting ramifications. Sustainability wasn’t just a goal to shoot for once but was instead an iterative process of adapting to a changing situation. He thought that believing the panel would not be necessary in few years was short-sighted because climate change was going to be a perennial problem for at least the next 50-100 years. If they didn’t want to make it permanent then he recommended having it be reevaluated after 50 years. “Worst case scenario, we need to reevaluate this in 25 when we figured out all greenhouse gas emission controls and everything is perfectly energy efficient and there are no additional need for these. I look forward to that day, but until that day happens this needs to be in place.”
Alderperson Doran reminded the committee that their purview was the work of city staff, not the city as a whole, so there were limited things within their control related to city facilities. He was not sure the panel needed to be permanent, but he pointed out that simply not mentioning that the group was permanent wouldn’t prevent it from be made permanent if that became necessary. “And to the idea that climate change is gonna be a problem for 50 years, we have no idea. I’m not sure that anyone has any idea about that. So, I just don’t see the need for having that in there. But as a reminder, there’s limits to what our authority here is just related to city facilities.”
Alderperson Wolff responded that although they may not be certain what was in the future, “I’m not a scientist and I just listen to them and kind of do what they tell me to do because I would rather be wrong and have a planet to live on then—I mean, wait, yes, I would rather be right about supporting it and have a planet to live on then be wrong and not have a planet to live on. It’s beneficial to do these things because, you know, if you did all of this and you were wrong you still have a planet and if you didn’t do any of these things, you may not have a planet to live on.”
There was no further discussion and the committee voted 3-1 to approve the resolution with Alderperson Hartzheim casting the dissenting vote.
[I would think there is value in having an advisory committee to deal with long-standing and intractable problems. The points about the benefit of bringing in outside voices was well made. It would be kind of cool if the city started doing this with other issues as well. I think it would be particularly beneficial were the city to create a task force of financially-minded community members to brainstorm ways to deal with our ongoing financial issues and create a report of recommendations much like the climate task force did. Although I’m sure city staff is routinely keeping finances in mind, there is truth in the argument that an outside perspective is beneficial. It wouldn’t hurt to use the climate task force which has now resulted in this advisory panel as a model for a similar task force that could focus on how to position the city to be able to pay for the maintenance of its roads and other infrastructure in a more efficient way than it currently is.]
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=978111&GUID=14919953-DD13-4643-948A-D8E6D562EFB8
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