Climate Council meeting summary 102219 (draft)

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Marcoplos agreed with making an additional push for diversity and also cautioned that there is a limit to the number of representatives that can productively join a meeting in this format. Richards also amplified the need to clarify the vision for this group and include racial equity in that mission and volunteered to join the committee that will be drafting the mission statement, values, and priorities. Richards recommended having everyone on the Council participate together in a structured visioning process so that then everyone can own it as it sets a framework for the way forward. Rubinoff and Hansley-Mace backed up Richards’ idea as being worth spending the time on here at the start of the Council’s work. Hansley-Mace offered once more to form subcommittee to work in the interim and draft something to bring back to the group. Weaver asked if this was what Richards had in mind. Richards agreed that a subcommittee was important to come up with a format and process, and said that she liked the idea of working to craft a vision before the end of the year. It was agreed that the Council would need meetings in November and December to meet this goal. Hansley-Mace, Weaver, Richards, and Rubinoff volunteered to form the agreed-upon committee. McCullough recommended that as a part of the creation of the Council’s mission and vision, we include a silent brainstorming element or ask people to send in ideas. Gu said that this could be done through a survey as the Chapel Hill Town Council had done previously. Cole recommended Slack as a platform for communication and Kaufman agreed. Bouma highlighted the need to maintain transparency and public records and said that he would ask about the use of tools such as Slack and Google Drive within those constraints. V. Discussion of Strengths/Challenges of Climate Council – Marcoplos introduced this discussion with an acknowledgement of the challenge faced by the Climate Council as well as an appreciation for the will of Council members to engage this challenge. He said that this discussion would help the Council “admire the problem” before attempting to solve it so that we could increase the clarity of our approach. Bouma began the discussion of the inherent strengths and challenges of a group such as the Climate Council to serve as context for evaluating the proposed joint projects. He highlighted that in the last meetings the Council had highlighted information sharing as a strength, both among members as well as out to County residents. A challenge was shared by Gu in reference to the previous discussion that the Council does not represent all of the key interests and diverse perspectives we’ve identified, including the private sector. She offered that perhaps a survey could be used to help the Council make an inventory of the expertise of the members. Marcoplos agreed that engagement with the private sector was a challenge for the Council. The Chambers of Commerce were previously considered, but had not yet been contacted due to concerns about the influence of Duke Energy.