More than 50 people participated in City of Powell River’s first sustainability roundtable event held at Willingdon Beach on Saturday, June 4.
Organizers said the hot weather helped draw people over to the shade of the Rotary Pavilion bandshell, where the process of dot democracy was unfolding.
Participants were asked to indicate which action points for each strategic area of the Integrated Community Sustainability Plan (ICSP) they believed were the highest priority.
Created by the sustainability steering committee, the ICSP was completed in 2015. This roundtable is the first of a series of roundtables focusing on the four pillars of the city’s community strategic priorities: sustainability, social planning, economy and community engagement.
Councillors CaroleAnn Leishman, Russell Brewer and Rob Southcott each moderated a station and had members of the public approach them on a number of different topics.
“If a process isn’t fun, it is going to be a little harder to buy into,” stated Southcott in a city media release. “We are not just out to survive, we are out to thrive.”
A number of environmental and social justice groups participated in the event, including Climate Action Powell River (CAPR).
“One of the reasons we formed CAPR is that while the city is looking after the corporate aspect of climate change by encouraging energy efficiencies within and on city property, they are not doing anything about community carbon reduction,” stated CAPR member Michael Gelber. “That is where we can take some of the projects the city approves that they want to have done at the community level.”
CAPR has offered to pursue one of the actions in the “Our Environment” section of the ICSP to adopt a climate change adaptation/mitigation plan.
“The scope of climate action in our community needs to be broadened from the municipal level to the regional level. We need to look at the larger Powell River Regional District, because we need that broad a scope to address carbon emissions,” stated Jack Anderson, also a CAPR member. “We need a clear structure for this action; a unifying organizational plan.”
Professional facilitator Christien Kaaij will be taking the data collected during the event and creating a report to be presented to council’s committee of the whole meeting on July 5. Council approved Kaaij’s fee of $1,615 at its Thursday, June 2, meeting.
The report will inform the city on which actions the public have prioritized. It will then be up to city staff to decide upon resources for implementation.
