Adrian Bankhead <[email protected]>
Public Comments from the Board of Directors Meeting
1 message
Susan Silber <[email protected]> Wed, Nov 19, 2025 at 9:16 PM Reply-To: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Cc: JP Ross <[email protected]>
My name is Susan Silber and I am a resident of Berkeley, with the nonprofit organization Collective Resilience, and have been working for the past several years to support and develop resilience hubs here, including helping to write the case study about resilience hubs for Ava Community Energy. I am also a member of the People’s Clean Power Alliance.
As a leader in this field of resilience hubs, I want to emphasize that Ava Community Energy is one of the many governmental agencies, nonprofit organizations and who are ready to prioritize and invest in resilience hubs. The Alameda County Food Bank, StopWaste, Bay Area Climate Adaptation Network, Healthcare without Harm and mutual aid groups are just a few of the many organizations I have met or collaborated with around resilience hubs. I have made this request before and I would like to ask it again: please look at this initiative and your agency as part of a potential network that is supporting the development of resilience hubs. Clean energy is but one aspect of resilience hubs.
I personally believe that Ava Community Energy could and should lead the charge in asking a plethora of organizations, as well as private funders, to fund and support both the resilience hubs sites and the development of a network to support their capacity building, their infrastructure, their programming.
I also want to offer some other recommendations:
First, we ask that instead of your own definition of resilience hubs, that you honor the hard work of community partners with the one that they provided, which is focused not just on clean energy solutions but is more holistic and centers other community priorities as well.
As well, we ask that you develop an equity matrix to ensure that this program prioritizes frontline, and energy-burdened communities, rather than a first-come, first-serve model.
Lastly, based on the huge enthusiasm for resilience hubs, Ava Community Energy needs to provide much more funding assistance, accessible solar financing options and flexible funding for hubs of all sizes, including considering a community grants program which San Diego Community Power has successfully implemented.
Sincerely,
Susan Silber
11/20/25, 3:01 PM Ava Community Energy Mail - Public Comments from the Board of Directors Meeting https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ik=703fa6ea73&view=pt&search=all&permthid=thread-f:1849285210085794485&simpl=msg-f:1849285210085794485 1/1