COUNCIL ITEM REQUEST FORM
The Council Item Request F orm is for members of the City Council to submit written requests to the City Manager’s Office for inclusion of an item on a future City Council meeting agenda. At the meeting where th e initial written request is heard, discussion should be limited to whether the item should be added to an agenda and a date, not the merit of the it em. A majority vote of the City Council is required for the item to be added to future Council meeting agenda for action.
CONTACT INFORMATION
Requesting Member of City Council
Contact E-mail
Contact Phone
Today’s Date
WRITTEN REQUEST
I, , hereby request that the following item
be placed on the City of Santa Clara Council and Authorities Concurrent meeting agenda:
Reference: Council Policy 030 – Adding an Item on the Agenda Resolution No. 23-9278
The City used to have a Sustainability Manager who reported to the City Manager. That person ended up working on other issues like public relations while still being in the role of the Sustainability Manager. We now have a management analyst who is supposedly dedicated for sustainability but is also working on a number of issues like supporting the Neighborhood University Relations Committee (NURC).
With a $1.6 billion ov
erall City budget that eclipses cities that are larger in population than Santa Clara, we deserve to have a full-time sustainability manager. Fremont, Mountain View and Palo Alto have full time sustainability managers
.
Santa Clara has a very aggressive Climate Action plan in terms of carbon emissions but we don't seem to be tracking how we are doing relative to our stated goals. Silicon Valley Power has a FY2024-25 operating budget is $909 million with electricity sales of $723 million. The total carbon emissions from electricity sales is immense.
We need a dedicated manager who is responsible for all kinds of activities like increasing recycling, reducing water usage, increasing composting and reducing carbon emissions and then tracking the numbers. Individually many departments have sustainability activities but there doesn't seem to be anyone to coordinate those activities and to aggregate the impacts.
We als
o need to update our Climate Action Plan which was last updated in 2022.