Memorandum 07-118

TO:                 MAYOR HORNADAY AND HOMER CITY COUNCIL

FROM:          FRANCIE ROBERTS, COUNCILMEMBER

DATE:            JULY 17, 2007

SUBJECT:     REPORT - ICLEI CONFERENCE

Arriving in Fayetteville, I was immediately struck by Homer’s involvement in ICLEI circles. On the shuttle I met Jim Duffy, who knew Mayor Hornaday from last year’s Conference of Mayors meeting in Girdwood. I also met Chuck Tooley from Billings, Montana who had met our previous mayor, Jack Cushing, at another such event.

The first night I attended the welcoming ceremonies and met people from all over the country with so many ideas, interests and concepts. One person was involved with innovative commercial waste management systems and another a council person from Texas with her own unique take on the upcoming issues. Several attendees had been to Homer and others knew Homer residents.

I was also introduced to Amy Shotzkin, who is the ICLEI area coordinator for Homer. She has already worked extensively with Chris Ellington, the Global Warming Task Force intern, Anne Marie Holen and Alan Parks, the Global Warming Task Force Chairman. She hopes to come to Homer this fall to present some ICLEI information to the City Council and the Task Force.

To begin the conference, attendees were briefed on the most current climate change information by Ann Waple, a NOAA Climate scientist. She presented information on CO₂ that validated the emissions need to be reduced to prevent major climate change in the future, stating that the statistics are way out of the range of variation.

The emphasis of many speakers was on the economic benefits of local climate action. To the end, the EPA presented a lot of useful information on their programs, such as EnergyStar and SmartGrowth, which local communities can utilize. Following the EPA presentation, 3 mayors of small U.S. towns spoke about the sustainability actions their municipalities had undertaken.

Nationally known speaker, Ed Mazria, presented a compelling speech emphasizing the importance of Americans beginning to take action or the nature of our country will change dramatically in the future. He advocated for no more coal fired power plants and urged citizens to consider the need to act to protect future generations.

I then attended a round table discussion regarding green building practices which are money saving in the long run. One of the presenters represented a Municipal Utility District and another of the speakers was a builder of a whole subdivision of energy efficient homes.

During the afternoon, all the elected officials attending the conference met in a round table discussion. Attendees ranged from mayors of mid-sized cities to council people from small New England towns. Conversation focused on successful methods of implementing sustainability plans in municipalities. I was impressed how similar the issues were for the wide variety of municipalities involved in the conversation.

The climate OSCAR nominees introduced themselves. The 4 activities presented were using LED lighting in street lights to save energy, developing a fare free city-wide bus system, a non-profit group which assists local to learn to live green and finally a city which has developed a “green asphalt” which saves money by recycling old asphalt and simultaneously improves fuel economy for vehicles traversing it.

The last activity Wednesday was a visit to the new Fayetteville Public Library, also a LEED certified building, but 4 times larger than Homer’s wonderful library. It was interesting to exchange information and compare their library to ours.

Thursday began with more information about programs and tools communities can utilize. Coolmayors.org is a website where information can be found, regarding various municipalities in the ICLEI network. Another program is the national conversation on climate change, planned for October 4^th, 2007.

There was a moving presentation by Oliver Thomas, New Orleans City councilperson, regarding issues of Hurricane Katrina and climate change.

Dr. Kristin Dow presented more information about climate change and cautioned communities to be aware that climate change just does not cause only direct changes but there are indirect effects that must be accounted for in long term planning. An example would be if corn no longer grows in Iowa, how does Homer get the corn. These indirect effects can be local or distant.

The last group of workshops I participated in was about ICLEI’s new Climate Resilient Communities Program, of which Homer is one of 4 communities selected to participate. I met representatives of Keene, Vermont and Miami-Dade County, Florida who were also selected participants. Keene is just a bit ahead of Homer in the process, and was willing to share what they have done to date.

AmericaSpeaks was also a component of this conference. This is a system where attendees can be polled immediately and anonymously to give feedback on a wide variety of issues. Questions can be relayed to a speaker rapidly and addressed in an efficient manner. It is an excellent method of giving many people a voice in community issues.

There was a high degree of interest in the City of Homer from many conference attendees and residents of Fayetteville. The local ABC TV affiliate interviewed me and the local newspaper ran an interview with me.

I intend to make myself available to the Global Warming Task Force to relay specific information they would be interested in learning. All the Power Point lecture slides from many presentations are online at www.iclei.org. I also received a memory stick, which contains 15 different tools, which anyone is welcome to download on their computer.

Thank you for the opportunity to attend this workshop. It was worthwhile and I hope other citizens of Homer are able to participate in such a gathering in the future.

Francie Roberts

Fiscal Note: Carbon emissions for this trip were offset by traveler.