Opinion: More Staff Needed To Accomplish Town’s Climate Goals

Local And Green

Does Amherst have the staffing to accomplish our 2025 (25% reduction from 2017 levels), 2030 (50% reduction) and 2050 (carbon neutrality) greenhouse gas emission reduction goals? No, it does not.

It has become clear that the climate emergency is already upon us. We’re seeing the effects directly with smoke from Canadian fires, unhealthy air, intense humidity and rain and devastating flooding. Yet, we don’t see actions reflecting that emergency or the urgent need to contribute to emissions reductions or to making Amherst climate resilient in the long run.

We see actions in the planning stages, but not the accelerated climate actions needed.

Leading up to the passage of the town’s FY24 budget, the Sustainability Director requested 2 additional staff for her department. Those positions are desperately needed in order to fulfill our climate action goals on time. Both the Energy and Climate Action Committee of the town and the Amherst Climate Justice Alliance strongly urged the Town Manager to fund those additional staff positions for FY 24 (and in previous years). Though the additional staff are urgently needed, especially to take advantage of all of the federal IRA and state grant opportunities available, the Town Manager declined to put those positions in the budget.

In fact, the Finance Committee report on the FY 24 budget went further to state that without additional staff, the town will not be applying for new state and federal grant opportunities because it won’t have staff to manage the programs if awarded. This is “penny wise and pound foolish” when the town could receive far more funding than the cost of the staff. Stubbornly adhering to a “washed hands” philosophy of town financing – intentionally avoiding taking on new climate action programs – is hurting the town.

Our Sustainability Director had a full plate before we even had a climate action plan so none of this is her fault. But she has to explain why delay is repeatedly needed for this or that program because she in fact is not able to implement them on time with all of her other duties. She staffs numerous committees and has other programs she is running.

Being a Sustainability Department of one, Ciccarello must slow work down to a near standstill and spread it out over years. This is how climate action in Amherst  has been for years. It took two years to create a climate action plan, ten years to accomplish the solar array on the landfill, six years to get to the point of applying for a joint community choice electricity aggregation and, so far, four years (and counting) to  research reforming our waste hauler system. We are using the first round of ARPA funding, granted more than two years ago, for a heat pump discount program, but still need a consultant to run it. Northampton implemented this program in 2017. We have been talking about conducting an inventory and transition plan for our vehicle fleet for years and somehow haven’t gotten that simple task done though it clearly should be able to be done in house. This is not normal government slowness. Amherst is an outlier in purposely understaffing our programs to save money.

Amherst  is not doing all that it can if it doesn’t provide the staff that is necessary to accelerate implementation of our climate action plan and fulfill our town climate action goals on time.

With more staff, we can find more funding. Northampton has found a way to transition ARPA funds into an account that has no time limitation on spending. Why not look at creating such a climate action fund for Amherst too by using ARPA Round 2 funds? Northampton has also funded two new full time positions for its new Climate Action and Project Administration Department.

Of course, residents can help by voting to support elected officials who promote climate action and vote out those who don’t.

An upcoming column will look at candidates for Council and their climate action stances in the 2018-2021 and 2022-2023 Council Sessions, by their votes and other actions. Each year, Councilors also had the opportunity to champion climate action in the capital and operating budgets, weigh in on the Finance Committee budget guidance and support accelerated action in the Town Manager climate action goals. Let’s see how they did – so that you can factor their actions into your voting decisions.

Darcy DuMont is a former Town Councilor and sponsor of the legislation creating the Amherst Energy and Climate Action Committee. She is a founding member of Zero Waste Amherst, Local Energy Advocates of Western MA, and the Amherst Climate Justice Alliance.