BRATTLEBORO — The Selectboard has narrowly voted to hire a sustainability coordinator, despite a lack of consensus even among proponents on exactly what encompasses “sustainability.”
Members of the public who packed the board room for a two-hour discussion at the Aug. 20 Selectboard meeting overwhelmingly urged the board to take action.
The board eventually voted 3–2 to create the new staff position, directing staff to create a job description and recruit candidates.
That job description will likely shape how the town moves forward with its sustainability efforts.
Based on conversations before and during the Tuesday board meeting, while those in favor supported hiring a sustainability coordinator, not all agreed on what sustainability encompassed.
Nor do they agree on how to approach the myriad chicken-and-egg questions of adapting municipal policy to address the overwhelming scientific consensus of grave consequences from global climate change.
Such questions include: Should the new coordinator focus only on energy efficiency? Is the issue all about climate change? What about the town's economic and demographic struggles? How does the opiate crisis fit into the puzzle? How will Brattleboro survive as a town over the coming decades?
Which issue makes sense to tackle first?
A long road to a decision
The debate about hiring a sustainability coordinator to focus on energy issues started approximately 2{1/2} years ago, according to Town Manager Peter Elwell.
Elwell said that staff worked on the idea and, during that year's budget process, the Selectboard accepted the recommendation not to create the position.
This recommendation was based on the activities the town was focused on, such as wastewater, solid waste, and curbside composting.
Elwell said that the town was “doing well and was at the leading edge of things like curbside compost.” Staff had also noted that on the national level, sustainability was being defined beyond energy efficiency to include equity and social justice.
In December, community members again brought the proposal to the board. Elwell said that the board decided to revisit the issue after the annual Representative Town Meeting.
This revisiting would include town staff working with community members, developing a more precise definition of sustainability and a job description in anticipation of developing the position for fiscal year 2021, said Elwell.
But then, at the March Representative Town Meeting, members amended the budget from the floor, authorizing $100,000 for energy efficiency and sustainability.
The meeting body passed a motion to raise and appropriate $100,000 “to be added to the FY20 budget and to be spent at the Selectboard's discretion for energy efficiency and/or sustainability purposes.”
Elwell said at its post–Town Meeting review in April, the Selectboard decided that, by mid-summer, staff and community members should report to the board on whether to create the position.
That report was made at the July board meeting, he said.
At the Aug. 20 meeting, Selectboard Vice Chair Tim Wessel said that he wanted to frame the conversation by noting that the whole board “was behind positive climate-change action,” but that the discussion last week would be about why the town should, or not, create a coordinator position.
Members from the town Energy Committee and Representative Town Meeting Finance Committee spoke in favor of creating the position.
A community committee assembled to study the position submitted a report comparing Brattleboro to other communities that had either hired a coordinator or put money toward projects. The committee recommended creating the position.
All in favor
Many of the people who spoke in favor of hiring a coordinator repeated the same metaphor: the town needs a captain of the ship: one person to oversee the town's sustainability efforts and who can ensure that everyone is rowing in the same direction.
Without this position, they argued, the town's efforts would be weak as it tried to combat climate change and the ripple effects that are predicted to rock the town's economy, society, and environment.
By hiring a coordinator, many also argued, the town would have someone ready to apply for grants and leverage other funding.
Brattleboro Union High School student Maya King summed up the sentiments of many of the young people attending the meeting by saying climate change is about future generations' ability to survive.
“You say you're behind climate change, but you need to prove that,” said King, challenging the board to put people in charge who can make change.
During the night's comments, some focused on Brattleboro's “stature” in the state as a town “doing good work” to fight climate change.
To which Maya McNeill countered, “So what?”
“We're all contributors to climate change” and it's a “myth” that doing better than other communities means Brattleboro can do less, McNeill said. “We're investing for a future where people can breathe outside.”
Don Brown said he had experience in the field of renewable energy. A designated person would come with the knowledge and experience necessary to build an effective program, he said.
Tony Duncan, a member of the community group to investigate how other towns approached sustainability, said that every person interviewed from other towns said that Brattleboro is doing good work but also pointed out the concrete value in having a coordinator position.
Lissa Weinmann suggested starting with an independent contractor as a way to test the waters and recruit the right person. “So you don't have to commit to a full-time job right now,” she added.
George Harvey said that climate change is as much an economic issue as an environmental one. The town could either wait for this change to happen, or plan ahead, and the coordinator could fit into a bigger plan, he said.
Millicent Cooley urged the town to use the $100,000 for both a new hire and for projects, as towns larger than Brattleboro pay their sustainability coordinators less than $100,000.
Cooley also said that many philanthropic organizations and other networks require that a town have a coordinator as a condition of awarding grant funding. Without such a person, “we are leaving money on the table now,” she said.
Abby Mnookin said the situation shouldn't be viewed as a choice between personnel or projects. The town can hire a coordinator who can leverage funding for more initiatives, she said.
“Sustainability is also about resiliency and the type of community we want,” she said, and the town can lift up people impacted disproportionally by climate change. “I really want to commend all the work that's being done and let's do more,” she said.
Creating change by using the money differently
Members of the audience who spoke in favor of using the $100,000 differently, cited the town's other challenges, such as opiates, food insecurity, and the economy.
Jane Southworth said that, on an emotional level, climate change is urgent but that on a local level, sustainability in the community requires more effort.
In her opinion, Brattleboro has fewer financial resources than communities such as Amherst, Mass., which employ a coordinator. She asked the Selectboard “to look at the big picture” - especially when other town staff aren't making livable wages.
Dan Jeffries read a statement where he asserted that the town doesn't have a large-enough population to contribute to climate change.
Brattleboro itself does not have a climate emergency, but it does have an economic emergency and been on a “spending spree” for several years, he said.
He urged the board not to let a small “group of passionate people” influence its efforts.
Prudence McKinney said that town employees could accomplish many of the duties needed to increase the town's sustainability. She believed the town could address its problems without adding to the payroll or the tax rate.
The vote
Board members spoke briefly before voting 3–2 in favor of creating the position.
David Schoales, who made the motion to create the position, saw the coordinator as necessary to meet the “unprecedented scale” of challenges.
In his opinion, the town needs a person who can build capacity, build relationships, and make progress. He added that town staff are already “overstressed” and had too much on their plates.
Chair Brandie Starr and fellow board member Daniel Quipp agreed.
Starr said she went back and forth on the issue, eventually deciding that the position is a “slam dunk.” In her opinion, working on a few projects won't move the town into the sustainability zone.
This community has a lot of hurt and confusion on some of the big issues, Starr continued. “It's overwhelming and its paralyzing” so people need to be in the room together.
“When we get overwhelmed, we need community,” she said, asserting that a designated person can help provide this direction.
She added that some of the money could go toward a position and some toward projects.
Quipp said he felt “proud” of the town and the community's level of engagement, regardless of how people felt about the issue. He thanked the town staff for their work around energy efficiency and the projects they'd already completed.
He also thanked the community members for showing up and his fellow board members for speaking on the issue.
“We have a vibrant democracy, and I believe it is one of the ways we will continue to be a vibrant committee,” he said.
Quipp said as a “climate person” and activist it would seem obvious that he would favor creating the position - which he did - but he added that as an elected official he needed to think about how the town spends money.
Creating the position would mean an ongoing financial commitment beyond the $100,000 allotted for the current fiscal year.
But, he said, the position can be seen as a worthy investment that will add “value to the town's work,” he said.
Wessel also took a faction of the audience to task for, in his view, changing the motion's meeting to reflect what they wanted it to reflect when they insisted that the RTM vote was a mandate for the board to hire a coordinator.
That's not how democracy works, he said.
“We are charged with actually making it work; we don't have the luxury to speak on a passionate level,” he said, noting that board members “need to figure out how to make it work for everybody in our community.”
Wessel said he didn't like the feeling that the town, feeling good about having made this hire, would be handing the keys to someone and sitting back.
Right now, the town staff make “collaborative” decisions about what projects will save the town money and energy, such as improvements at the ice skating rink that the board approved at its Aug. 6 meeting.
Selectboard member Liz McLoughlin agreed.
“I would imagine that when a committee for the sustainability coordinator started their work they were not aware of the multitude” of efficiency projects the town was undertaking, she said. [See sidebar.]
McLoughlin suggested that the $100,000 first be applied toward the list of energy audit projects and then see where to focus next, she said.
“It's prudent, it's the best spending of our money, and its based on a well-coordinated plan,” she said. “We are in the middle of a coordinated sustainability program to the tune of $1.4 million.”
During the short recess that followed the vote, audience members celebrated.
And meeting observers got a small and inadvertant glimpse of the work that will face the soon-to-be sustainability coordinator.
In celebrating the decision to recruit an employee tasked, in part, to move the town's efforts beyond them-versus-us, a cheer arose.
“We won!” one person exclaimed, amid proponents hugging one another and calling their friends to share the news.