County seeking public comment for the Yolo Climate Action Advisory Board

Yolo County Press Release Yolo County is seeking public comment for the Yolo Climate Action Advisory Board by March 24. Yolo County Board Chairman Jim Provenza and fellow Climate Action Subcommittee member Supervisor Don Saylor took their first action to implement the Climate Emergency Resolution by holding a public meeting on Wednesday, March 10. A resolution passed in September 2020 calls for Yolo County to form an advisory body in 2021 that delivers a plan by March 2022 to achieve a negative Yolo County carbon footprint by 2030. The selection of the advisory body members is slated to begin shortly following the April 20 Board of Supervisors meeting. At the March 10 meeting, Provenza and Saylor heard from several speakers, including Juliette Beck of Davis, who described the need for historically marginalized community members and youths on the advisory body. “They are the future and have the most to gain or lose,” she said. Robin Datel asked that the board not get overly concerned about deciding on every function of the working groups and that there could be “some who are seeking grants, some considering plans and some implementing actions.” Susan Reed of West Sacramento advised that “the stakeholders and communities the county needs to mobilize for climate action should be engaged in deciding what those actions need to be.” Climate action is not new to Yolo County and Taro Echiburu, director of community services, described the county’s current climate action plan as being focused on green-house gas reduction: “We recognized that the county needed to address the social and environmental complexity of climate change.” County departments organized initiatives into eight climate action elements (land, water, air, buildings, waste, local food, agriculture and education) which are summarized in the recently released Yolo Sustainability Plan. This plan will be a resource for the advisory body, but not limit the Climate Action Advisory Body scope. Saylor and Provenza made it clear that they want more public comment and wide Yolo County representation on the resulting advisory body. For further information, or to participate, contact the associate planner at Charlie.Tschudin@yolocounty.org. The next round of public comment is due on March 24. The next public meeting is on April 5.