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City staff outline ADAPT DSM climate plan and shift focus to household actions
Summary
At a work session staff reviewed ADAPT DSM'the 2023 climate-adaptation/action plan'detailing seven focus areas and 35 priority tactics, and said current conditions have prompted a temporary refocus toward household- and family-level engagement while the city continues infrastructure and policy work; staff will return with benchmarking cost figures and a greenhouse-gas inventory.
Emily Harris Percelli, government relations manager, presented an update on ADAPT DSM, the city's climate action and adaptation plan, telling the council the plan contains more than 100 tactics and a 35-by-35 list of near-term priority actions. She described seven focus areas: building and infrastructure; energy supply and distribution; transportation and land use; natural systems and water resources; waste management and reduction; food systems and security; and climate preparedness and resilience.
"We're gonna take a little bit of a deeper dive into each of those focus areas and address some of the work that has currently or is currently happening or has already been done to address some of those tactics," Percelli said.
Nut graf: Staff said that, given shifting external conditions and fewer state incentives, the city will temporarily emphasize household- and family-level engagement and education alongside continuing municipal projects (for example, LEED-certified municipal buildings and the Harriet Street solar field). Consultants will complete a 2025 greenhouse-gas inventory using ICLEI's ClearPath tool and will prepare annual reports on progress.
Councilors asked about energy- and water-benchmarking work the city paused; staff said the city manager chose not to allocate staff time to enforcement after the legislature preempted certain enforcement options, but that consultants had proposed doing benchmarking work if contracted. When asked about the investment so far, staff said consultant work and related efforts were "just over a $100,000" and agreed to provide exact figures.
On resilience planning, Percelli said staff are exploring "plug-and-play" resiliency-hub plans that could be placed in municipally accessible buildings and activated as needed to provide services and information following extreme weather or displacement.
What's next: Consultants and staff will complete the 2025 greenhouse-gas inventory, the newly relaunched green team will track 35-by-35 progress, and staff will return with exact cost numbers and implementation timelines for benchmarking and related work.
