Show your support for the Corvallis Climate Action Plan by coming to the next City Council meeting.
Tuesday Jan. 20th 2015 6:30pm
Corvallis Firestation upstairs meeting room
400 NW Harrison
A little over a year ago a small group of climate concerned community members gathered in a basement meeting room at the Corvallis public library. Several local organizations were represented, including 350 Corvallis. The meeting was called to explore the idea of writing a Climate Action Plan (CAP) for Corvallis with hopes of eventual support from the city. Many in the group felt this to be a necessary step seeing that other cities have adopted such plans, but as of yet, Corvallis has not. The plan was announced to the public at the Corvallis Climate Summit in January 2014, and several community input forums were conducted in Fall 2014 with further input collected online.
The city has taken important steps in the past, but still has far to go. In 2000, the city joined the Cities for Climate Protection (CCP) (Council Resolution 2000-15), in 2005 Mayor Berg signed the US Conference of Mayors’ Climate Protection Agreement, and in 2008, the city became a member of ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability. So far as a result of these past commitments, the city has completed Greenhouse Gas (GhG) inventories for both municipal operations and for the community. Other commitments not yet met include setting reduction targets and developing a climate action plan.
The municipal GhG inventory was completed first, and then the community GhG inventory was completed in Spring 2014. The community GhG was announced at a city council meeting in which members of the CAP group testified on the importance of taking the next steps. Follow up on the issue was sent to the Urban Services Committee (USC), and at this point the CAP group became the Climate Action Plan Task Force (CAPTF). Members of CAPTF include representatives from the Corvallis Sustainability Coalition, the Corvallis League of Women Voters, the Mary’s Peak Group of the Sierra Club, the Natural Step Ministry of the First United Methodist Church and 350 Corvallis. This was still a community lead group, without any official city funding or resources. The group continued to work on the CAP and reported it’s progress to the USC.
A final draft of the CAP was submitted to the city council in December 2014 and CAPTF is currently drafting a request for action to be taken as part of the new council’s goals for the coming 2 year term and will be presented at the next city council meeting.
