The Bloomington City Council will discuss ending the current climate committee this week in favor of other city bodies.
Councilmember Matt Flaherty chairs the Climate Action and Resilience Committee and has recommended disbanding it. He says it largely accomplished its original mission of developing an action plan and accountability trackers, such as the city’s climate dashboard.
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“All of those things are kind of systems and structures that we set into place that are largely self-sustaining,” Flaherty said. “We don’t need to repeat those efforts in focus of the last four years because the work’s been done.”
Flaherty said the committee, which includes Hopi Stosberg, Sydney Zulich, and Dave Rollo, has occasionally stretched council resources thin.
Scheduling conflicts led to canceled public meetings, and some councilmembers developed climate legislation on their own and brought it to existing committees/commissions for further development.
Flaherty said council resources would be better spent developing climate policy within those existing city bodies, such as the new Transportation Commission.
Read more: City council votes to establish Transportation Commission
“My view is that this will allow better and more productive action on climate change than we were able to achieve with the committee,” he said.
The council will hear the resolution to end the committee Wednesday.