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Peekskill consultants present city government Climate Action Plan; public hearing held
Summary
Consultants from CEEP presented a government-operations Climate Action Plan based on a 2019 GHG baseline and modeling that shows municipal strategies could achieve roughly 30—3% reductions by 2030; the council opened and then closed a public hearing with no in-person speakers.
City planning staff and consultants from the Center for Economic and Environmental Partnership (CEEP) presented the city's government operations Climate Action Plan (GOCAP) to the Common Council and answered questions during a committee-of-the-whole session and a later public hearing.
Janelle Kosaric, one of the consultants, said the plan uses a 2019 municipal GHG inventory as its baseline and sets an interim target of about a 30—3% reduction in municipal greenhouse-gas emissions from 2019 levels by 2030, with an ultimate target of about 78% below 2019 levels by 2050. "to have a reduction of 3033% from that baseline year of 2019 by 2030," she said during the presentation. The plan models emissions by sector, noting buildings and facilities account for roughly 30% of municipal emissions and fleet and vehicle-related sources another large share; employee commute and wastewater also show material shares in the municipal inventory.
Emma Kaminski, a co-presenter, said the modeling was refined since August and that the suite of recommended municipal strategies increased modeled reductions from about 30% to 31%, noting that additional operational policies (for example, an environmentally friendly purchasing policy and anti-idling rules) could close the remaining gap to the CLCPA-aligned 2030 goal. "It went from 30% to 31%...you're only 2% shy of that emissions reductions goal," she said.
Presenters stressed that adopting the plan would authorize staff to investigate and pursue the strategies (fleet electrification, EV charging, heat-pump conversions, municipal solar, anti-idling and fleet-efficiency policies), but would not by itself implement those measures. They noted the city has launched a climate vulnerability assessment (June'August) that will inform adaptation work and that staff are actively pursuing grant funding for heat-pump projects.
The council opened the public hearing on the GOCAP, following the notice published Oct. 21, 2024. No in-chamber speakers spoke on the record and several remote participants were not in line or were muted; a council member moved to close the hearing and it was adjourned by voice vote. The GOCAP presentation and hearing were described as committee-level briefings and part of the standard process of soliciting comment before a council resolution on adoption.
The transcript references the CLCPA (Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act) as the alignment target for 2030 reduction goals. The presentation materials included modeled "business-as-usual" and strategy-implementation scenarios and a map of the 2019 baseline allocation of municipal emissions by source.
