||| FROM SUE BAUER |||
Please research then consider joining me in supporting the CRC proposals, especially Proposition 3 which creates a “Climate and Environment Commission.” This body would be made up of 11 of our neighbors each appointed by County Council but from these crucially important and currently unrelated groups:
- Solid Waste Advisory Committee
- Agricultural Resources Committee
- Marine Resources Committee
- Salmon Recovery Committee
- A rep from an SJC environmental non-profit
- A contractor with experience in residential building
- A youth active in environmental protection and/or climate change
- A member of a Coast Salish nation or tribe, and
- 2 members at large.
By passing Prop 3 we ensure these currently unrelated groups pool their understanding of climate change threats and then contribute oversight to the newly created Department of Environmental Stewardship. The commission is also able to recommend legislative measures to the Council itself and our hard-working county staff.
The Council has issued two climate-related resolutions – one in 2008 and another in 2020 (13 years later). Resolutions are only a beginning and their ideas are not enforceable.
County Council is busy each meeting with our day to day cares: vacation rentals, indoor tennis facilities, requests to redraw land-use maps in county resource zones, etc. While some of the Council debate on such topics is in regard to their individual impacts on the natural environment, we have yet to have a group which looks at the crisis of the planet’s warming climate and the general degradation of our natural environment as their first concern and across all endeavors in our county.
Please support CRC Prop #3. Thank you very much!
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As an a conservation researcher who works on climate change and plant communities in the islands (and a former freeholder and having served on the previous CRC) I do not support this charter amendment. I am concerned about the creation of a 9-member super-committee made up largely of members already appointed to county advisory committees. This is not oversight or transparency, and it builds layers of bureaucracy between the voting public and decision making (including putting these advisors in charge of searching for and vetting a department head). Why does the proposed committee composition include no climate scientists or environmental engineers? I also take exception to the claim that these groups are unrelated. The MRC, for example, is supposed to include (and currently does) a Tribal representative, as well as conservation and environmental interests (most often an employee of Friends of the San Juans), and affected economic interests. I have been unable to find out what the “Salmon Recovery Committee” is, but maybe the CRC means the Lead Entity–which is made up of a Citizens Advisory Committee (CAG) which in San Juan County is the MRC, and a Technical Advisory Committee (TAG) which is appointed by the MRC. These groups are by no means unrelated and are already talking to one another. I don’t see how elevating some members of these groups to a further advisory committee is going to increase our understanding of and ability to address urgent environmental and climate matters. I support electing Council Members who are well informed and act on environmental and climate issues and who we can vote out if they just talk and don’t take action. I oppose creating and funding more unelected advisory boards, particularly ones that concentrate power from existing appointments.