Our guest at this very lively meeting was City Councilmember Veronica Jacobi. She said that she is delighted with many of the environmentally helpful things that Santa Rosa is doing, but feels overwhelmed by the enormity of the climate change problem facing us.

Most of our discussion centered on maximizing progress in energy efficiency, and how to do this. Specific comments were:

Fred Kreuger: When there are difficult decisions to be made, members of the public who understand the issues should coordinate support to the Council.

Willard Richards: On home retrofits for efficiency, he’d like to see a voluntary program with contact numbers and service information made readily available. It was said that Solar Sonoma County is doing some of this information packaging.

Jim Wilkinson: We need to remember the special cases of homes in historic neighborhoods, with regard to technologies available that can preserve their historic natures.

Veronica hopes to issue a Green Challenge to Santa Rosa businesses and residents, to achieve a 50% reduction in their carbon emissions or levels lower than Mexican families. She also wants a strengthening of the tiered rate structure for water use, to discourage overuse and meet the needs of a likely upcoming drought.

Julie Combs mentioned that the city will do a water audit and provide low flow faucets at no cost.

Willard Richards presented the case for a lower parking requirement for future bidders for development of the White House site – 200 rather than the more than 500 spaces that have challenged previous bidders. He requested a letter from CCSR in support of this idea to be sent to the Councilmembers. After some discussion, Anne Seeley said she would write the letter in CCSR’s name.
Anne E. Seeley