City to dissolve volunteer climate committee, replace with task force
Martin Kidston
(Missoula Current) While the city's energy and climate team has helped make Missoula a regional leader in addressing climate change, the volunteer team is no longer needed, city officials said.
Members of the Missoula City Council last week voted to dissolve the climate team and replace it with a task force that will address singular projects. In the end, city officials believe it will save the city money by freeing up administrators to work on other pressing issues, including housing.
The energy and climate team was created as a committee in the early 2000s and has played a fundamental role in shaping the work around climate. But when the team was created, the city had just one employee dedicated to climate and sustainability, making the committee's work more essential.
Now, the city has three dedicated employees and one staff manager, along with a number of climate-related plans, according to Anne Geiger, the city's manager of strategic initiatives.
“The city's climate strategy is now guided by adopted plans and professional full-time staff,” said Geiger. “We feel that a formal City Council appointed body is no longer necessary to guide climate and sustainability goals and workload.”
Over the last decade, the city has adopted a number of plans related to climate and sustainability, including the pursuit of 100% clean electricity, a zero-waste plan and a climate ready plan. Those plans now serve as a lens guiding decisions made by the city and a citizen committee is no longer needed to oversee the progress, officials said.
More recently, Mayor Andrea Davis also directed city staff to review all volunteer boards and commissions to “assess their purpose, continued necessity and effectiveness.” After review, the city recommended dissolving the energy and climate committee and replacing it with a project-focused task force.
“Interviewees reported that the committee had struggled to identify a consistent scope and has trouble following through on work plans and goals that effectively implement tasks as outlined in their bylaws,” said Geiger.
Task force
In place of the energy and climate team, the city would instead lean on a climate task force, which would address singular issues and projects as directed. Dissolving the committee would also free up other city resources and save staff time, according to Montana James.
Currently, James said city administrators spend roughly 20 hours a week staffing various boards and commissions, though its target is around 15 hours. The city needs to reduce its staffing workload by around six hours or hire an additional staff member.
The latter would carry a greater cost, James said.
“To effectively and sustainably staff our required City Council committee meetings and our other board and commission meetings, we need to reduce the workload,” said James. “We're shuffling our administrative staffing to the (At Risk Housing Coalition) and pulling in more programmatic staff to create some more sustainability around that.”
City officials believe the climate task-force model will also improve engagement and citizen input, and most members of the City Council agreed. With the city's budget now an annual concern, avoiding additional costs is preferable to bringing on new employees.
“Staff is one of the most expensive things we fund with tax money,” said council member Amber Sherrill. “If an understaffed department is being asked to take time away from grant writing and other work to staff a committee, then it makes sense to rethink that allocation. Having participated in this (climate) committee, its work and input would be very valuable on a task force. The task-force format is going to work really well with the skill sets I've seen on this team.”
Council member Mirtha Becerra opposed the resolution.
“I'm not prepared to say it's time to eliminate this (climate) team without a real tangible alternative before me,” said Becerra. “I feel like we were not provided with an alternative that's tangible right now.”
Chris Rowe, a member of the climate committee and past chair, also opposed the idea, saying the city has been a leader on climate change for a decade or more and dissolving the climate committee would mark a step backward.
“Right now, we have a technical board that can be available at any time to deal with any plan and issue,” Rowe said of the climate committee. “This process of trying to review whether we should exist or not has been going on for months and months, and it completely hamstrung our ability to do anything. People on the climate team and the citizens of Missoula were not unaware of most of this.”
The proposed dissolution of the energy and climate committee passed the City Council's Climate, Conservation and Parks Committee on a 7-2 vote. The full City Council is expected to make a final decision next week.