Beloit consultant previews climate action plan, survey open through Aug. 10

A consultant working with the City of Beloit told the City Council on Tuesday that a new climate action plan will combine baseline research, collaborative planning and public engagement to guide both municipal operations and community-wide actions on mitigation and adaptation.

Ted Redmond of Pale Blue Dot said the planning team has completed foundational analyses — a vulnerability assessment, a greenhouse gas inventory, a ground-cover (heat-island) survey and a renewable-energy potential study — and has summarized those into a baseline assessment to inform goal-setting with a collaborative team of city staff and volunteers.

“The plan is essentially a road map, a strategic vision document that will help guide municipal operations and also community-wide action to address climate resilience,” Redmond said.

Redmond described a three-phase process: compiling baseline research; working with a collaborative planning team to explore goals and actions; and producing a draft plan for public review. He said community engagement will occur in two main phases — initial input before the draft and a second review after the draft is published — and will include surveys, storytelling opportunities and a set of community meetings. The consultant said the current public survey is open through Sunday, Aug. 10 and encouraged broader participation.

As of the council meeting, Redmond reported 323 survey responses. He cautioned the survey is voluntary and not a probabilistic sample, but said results aligned with benchmark survey questions for Rock County. “When we asked about how concerned people are about climate change in general, 68% of the respondents indicated they’re moderately, very, or extremely concerned,” he said.

Redmond outlined preliminary, starter goals the planning team is evaluating across sectors: transportation (reduced vehicle miles traveled, more transit, zero-emission vehicles), buildings and energy (efficiency, fuel switching, on-site or purchased renewables), waste (reduce/reuse/recycle, organics diversion), water (reduced consumption, wastewater energy capture), local food and agriculture, green space and tree canopy increases, health and safety (reduce vulnerability), and economic opportunities tied to local job creation. He said preliminary modeling suggests those starter goals could lower Beloit’s emissions by about 39% below 2023 levels by 2033, putting the city on a path toward longer-term net-zero goals by about 2040 if those and additional measures are implemented.

Redmond emphasized that the plan will include recommendations that, if adopted, could require further public review or changes to ordinances and budgets. “Anything that’s in the plan as a recommendation that might have impacts to staff or budgets would of course go through their own process following the planning effort,” he said.

Next steps described to the council include wrapping up the first phase of engagement through August, working with the collaborative planning team through November to develop a full draft, publishing the draft for public input in early 2026, and returning a revised final plan to the council in March or April 2026.

Council members and staff briefly discussed survey access during the meeting; Redmond said a link is available on the city’s website front page leading to the project site with baseline documents and the survey. City staff who gathered key data for the project were acknowledged at the meeting.

The update was presented as item 11(a), which had been moved up on the agenda earlier in the meeting; Redmond took questions from councilors and from staff during and after the presentation.