Council meets tomorrow the 2nd for a quick special session to accept Mayor Bennett's resignation, and presumably to appoint Councilor Hoy as Mayor and Julie Hoy (no relation) to the resulting vacancy in Ward six.
They will also appropriate a little over $100k for the airport design work.
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| Seattle Times, SF Chronicle, Salem SJ all on climate last month |
One consequence of all this is now Councilor Stapleton looks to have a regular seat on the Climate Action Plan subcommittee, and soon-to-be Mayor Hoy will chair it. There are still four votes only, so there is that possibility of deadlock, but they haven't been taking contested votes, so at the moment that's a moot critique of the committee. Councilor Stapleton's presence as a regular member will make deadlock less likely also.
The committee will meet on Monday the 7th, and among the laundry list of updates, mostly items with "low" potential for GHG pollution reduction, they have two meaty things to consider.
First is whether to recommend funding a Climate Action Plan manager. Hopefully Council can advance and implement this. Having one person responsible for advocating and coordinating will help greatly.
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| CAP Manager |
The second is to recommend parking reform. I am not exactly sure why they are making a recommendation, as the recent Climate Friendly and Equitable Communities rule-making now requires the reform. (Right-priced downtown parking, for which the Downtown Advisory Board has made frequent request, and which seemed to be deferred until after the election, is not directly referenced in this agenda item, however.)
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| State parking reform summary |
This is, I suppose, an instance where it is politically convenient for Council and the subcommittee to say "our hands are tied."
The other items did not seem very interesting; and, again, had "low" potential and were generally just stuff we should be doing anyway.
The next meeting for the committee is listed as TBD, and it would not be surprising if they chose not to meet in December. Hopefully in January they will reconvene refreshed and energized, ready to take stronger actions for pollution reduction, and not willing to accept merely meeting four times a year.
3 comments:
I am surprised that you did not comment on Agenda Item 4a.: "Any concerns moving to quarterly and/or as needed?" WTF!! To do this would signal to citizens that the CAP is a low priority for the Council.
You are right. Should have mentioned that. I was focused on the summary sheets and other action items. Will add a note.
I watched the video playback today and it looks like they had two "non options" that they had to discuss before adopting abolishing of parking minimums. But they are best going to forward the option 1 to city council
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