Governor’s Initiative Bay Area Stakeholder Meeting Notes
I. Current and Future Goals
II. Current and Future Gaps and Needs
III. Program Development and Organization
IV. Program Delivery Method
V. Potential Work or Projects for AmeriCorps Members
VI. Possible Metrics of Success
VII. Additional Stakeholders to Include at Future Meetings
VIII. Possible Meeting Modifications
I. Current and Future Goals
· Distributed generation and megawatt installation as part of Sonoma Clean Power.
o Expand resources and financing to accomplish this work. Leverage this work with the work of other organizations, including schools.
· the grid with RPS and augmenting with local solar.
· Electric Vehicles
· Utilizing Energy Portfolio Manager, including managing and tracking.
· Creek restoration and rehabilitation in Sonoma County.
o Expand their summer work program into a year round program. Engage with other water agencies and flood control agencies to develop a statewide creek restoration and rehabilitation program.
o Someone that can track and manage the creek restoration program.
· Implementing the Bike Master Plan in Sonoma County.
· VMT reductions through bike infrastructure improvements and TOD.
· Climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts.
o Meeting ambitious climate reduction goals in Sonoma County.
o Updating and writing CAPs. A model similar to the Green Communities Program from PG&E may be effective.
o Climate change goals beyond 2020.
o Climate Change Adaptation in terms of livability, resiliency and desirability
o Adaptation’s connection to public health.
o Engaging the public in climate action planning.
o Communicating climate action planning and results.
o Implementing programs related to reducing GHG emissions associated with building, transit and waste. This could include programs like Clean Power SF, congestion pricing, undiverted waste.
o Inventory updates, tracking, implementation, and fundraising
o Mapping out and coordination in regards to adaptation in the Bay Area. Someone needs to determine areas that absolutely need to be saved, such as sanitation districts, etc.
o We are very deep into the process of conducting an updated analysis of the GHG reduction potential of our CAP strategies. We’ll be presenting on the analysis to our City Council on 11/13. Along the way, we have put a lot of emphasis on documenting how we’ve done what we’ve done. We’ll have a written narrative of our process along with the actual calculations/estimates. I think our outputs and the documentation could be useful to other communities moving forward. I’d be interested to work with OPR/LGC to help make our experience of value/available to others. I’m assuming we’re one of a relatively few communities to take on this effort, especially to take it on in-house, so we should work to get our lessons learned out, perhaps in the form of a case study or something similar.
§ We need to reevaluate priorities; we have data over several years showing trends and the difference between where we are and where we need to be to achieve targets. We are going beyond visioning and into implementation. We are actually measuring what we are doing. We are only now recently seeing the impact of what we’ve done to date.
§ In order to export the City of Berkeley’s models, they would need to clean up their templates and make them more accessible and intuitive. There should be guidance attached to the template. It could address year 1 and where to start, starting a team, developing metrics, measuring trends (broad guidance on designing evaluation and monitoring and then actual metrics and data sources). To be the most useful, it would require time up front, Intern assistance for that would be useful. It would take about $50-$100,000 if a grant source was identified.
o We would like to continue to make improvements in measuring and communicating progress to the city council and the community. We want to impart a sense of urgency but also celebrate good work/successes. It can be difficult to tie back individual measures to our overall climate goal.
§ We have used interns for doing ongoing quantitative analysis (aggregated trends- total energy consumption, VMT, waste to land fill) on an annual basis and updating progress on the city’s website. We also developed a report on local strategies- how many bike racks installed, waste diverted, # of people at farmers market. Hopefully over time we can connect these micro trends to macro trends.
§ We use a template for tracking. Every metric tracked has an excel spreadsheet and a word document. Timothy spends about a day to train interns (person to contact, data source, what the next year is)
§ It takes staff a while to get staff from other departments on board to get the data. This can be staff intensive up front. It can be challenging coordinating across city departments and getting their input on what they are going to measure.
§ Tools, resources, education, lessons learned, case studies.
§ Lessons learned from Santa Monica’s tracking- Sharon Perry.
§ There is a local government program at the EPA which has a webinar on monitoring and reporting . The webinar was released last year. It is on the state and local website. Neelam Patel is the contact.
· Communicating and sharing climate adaptation information, best practices, and current goals and activities across municipalities and agencies within a region.
o It would be helpful to have someone travelling between different agencies to share this information.
· Integrating regional plans into local plans. This could include work such as communicating regional housing allocation needs and possible changes needed at the local level to meet those needs.
· Making tools and modeling available to local governments.
· CEQA streamlining. Developing a guidebook on how to get through the CEQA streamlining process.
· Using CAPs for CEQA streamlining requires defensible estimates, quantifying impacts is required.
o There is no reason for other local governments to completely reinvent the wheel. It is very time and labor intensive.
o Formalizing CAP for CEQA purposes. It is a new frontier to be able to use CAPs as regulatory documents- streamline vs. broad policy goals (OPR developing guidance- combine with local govt real experience- SF, Santa Rosa, San Rafael)
· Supporting priority development areas and determining what it will take to implement each priority development area. This was a popular idea.
· Energy efficiency efforts in existing buildings and using performance based strategies to achieve this.
II. Current and Future Gaps and Needs
· Administrative and coordinator support is generally missing at the local level.
· Funding for other pieces of Climate Action Plans (CAPs) is needed; utilities only fund the energy efficiency portion of CAPs.
· Funding for climate change adaptation efforts.
o Technical solutions are not a problem. The challenge is institutional, motivational and economic.
· Lack of redevelopment funds
· Not enough funding for reducing VMT and promoting alternative modes of transportation. Alternative modes of transportation need to run more often and bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure needs to be improved.
· Lack of capacity and lack of understanding of the need. The power of communication.
· There is still a need for inventory assistance in many communities
· There is uncertainty around the legality of CEQA. Will local governments get sued? Effective, defensible in lawsuit? Rigor in analysis is required in order to streamline. When quantifying strategies there is no standard. It would be useful to have more guidance for prioritizing.
o Community protocol for inventories will be helpful.
o Additional guidance for actual measures.
III. Program Development and Organization
· Why don’t we just utilize the existing Climate Corps Bay Area AmeriCorps program in the Bay Area?
o We have additional resources to expand coverage throughout the state.
o Existing programs don’t meet every need. We are trying to meet unmet needs.
o We want to make sure that programs are complimentary with each other. This program needs to leverage with ClimateCorps.
o ClimateCorps is currently reapplying. They are actively revising their model and determining whether they should expand into different regions of the state. They would like to expand their program.
o There is a concern that the Governor’s Initiative program runs the risk of duplicating strong programs already offered by Climate Corps, New Sector and Conservation Corps Watershed Stewards Projects.
· It is important that the program is flexible to fit what a member is capable of and what each agency wants them to work on. Put as little pressure/requirements on local governments as possible.
· There needs to be clear defined roles in the program to help the AmeriCorps members feel part of something bigger.
· AmeriCorps members should reflect the ethnic diversity of the state.
· The program should involve mentorship and grooming for future jobs.
· Ensure that projects have long-term durability and leverage existing efforts.
· The program could be used as a reward for cities and counties that have put certain things into place.
o How do we also support those that have not taken the first steps due to political or monetary challenges?
§ Incentivize them to take action and give them tools to help them succeed.
o There could be two parts to the program, an advanced and beginners program. Find ways to reward agencies that are ready to act.
§ Possibly reward larger/more advanced cities with money but also have them mentor a struggling government. A mentor community can help speed up a slow learning curve.
o There seem to be two types of underserved communities: those that don’t have the money to accomplish work and those that have not taken on climate/energy work yet.
· Members need specific training before they go down to the local level.
· At the end of each year, bring everyone together (members and local agencies) to share accomplishments etc. Each AmeriCorps member should write up a report with this information. This can also serve as a job fair for potential employers. People were supportive of this idea.
· Ask AmeriCorps members for a two-year commitment.
· The program developed by PG&E’s Green Communities provides some insights and a model that might help avoid duplicating ongoing efforts. Through their Green Communities program, PG&E provided resources throughout their service region for counties to hire interns to work with local jurisdiction staff to complete Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventories. PG&E was very flexible in the structuring of the program and let their local agency partner plan an intern program that best suited the needs of their county. Some counties hired students from their local universities to work part time during the school year, our agency hired relatively recent graduates to work full-time for the duration of the project. The innovation that PG&E brought to the internship program model was their training program offered in partnership with ICLEI.
o Both Climate Corps and the New Sector program provide excellent introductory 2-3 week trainings and monthly daylong trainings that cover a range of topics.However excellent they might be, these are "undergraduate" level trainings as they suffer the limitation that they have to be relatively general in nature. Because both organizations place interns in a variety of situations/topic areas they have to limit their training topics to issues/content areas that are common to most interns. By in large, these trainings/workshops do not provide interns with the knowledge/skills to tackle "graduate" level problems/issues.Climate Corps and New Sector get around this limitation in part by relying on the previous experiences/educational training of their interns or on-the-job training offered at the interns' placement sites.
o By comparison, the ICLEI trainings were entirely focused around the process of conducting greenhouse gas inventories. They took the more pedagogically appropriate route ofproviding the trainings in a sequence that tracked the work of the interns as they progressed through the inventory protocols.
o For the Governor's Initiative to avoid duplicating present endeavors the Initiative needs to develop a "graduate school" level program. My suggestions to the Governor's Initiative staff include the following:
§ Pick a specific issue/skill set to focus around.
§ Develop a strong training program (or partner with someone that can offer that training). It should provide the next level of experience/content knowledge for recent Climate Corps/New Sector/Masters Degree students and leverage the skill sets they developed through participation in such programs.
§ Figure out a way to pay the interns more than the current AmeriCorps rate and would be more appropriate for recent grad students and more livable.
§ Offer local agencies/jurisdictions the opportunity to take on AmeriCorps interns not as a placement for 1700 hours but as a resource to tackle a specific, relatively high-level problem. Examples may include writing or revising a component of the Climate Action Plan.
§ Require the agency/jurisdiction to provide a liaison/collaborator for the project along with desk space, wireless access, etc. for the intern but keep responsibilities for day-to-day supervision within the Governor's Initiative staff (note that given geographic challenges, said supervision might be via phone, email, video conferencing, Google docs, etc.).
§ Follow PG&E's model of keeping interns together as "teams.”
· Corps after Corps
o A consulting team could be set up with AmeriCorps members who just completed their service. They could be sent out as consultants to governments to accomplish certain tasks. They would be a mobile, well-trained crew of former AmeriCorps members. They would be paid slightly more than AmeriCorps members.
o Serves as a transition or bridge period for AmeriCorps members and a stepping stone for a more permanent job.
o They could also help train the new round of AmeriCorps members.
o It may be possible to bring in foundation funding to cover this type of model.
· Sources of volunteers
o Most universities have a service learning coordinator. Identify classes that have required internship component. Capacity building to train interns and members.
o Masters planning students are required to do a client project.
· How will this program be sustained in the future? Jobs/jobs creation would be a huge selling point for the legislature, etc.
o Possibly align with OJD money, although this may not work as well in other regions of the state.