Meet Sonoma's Community Service and Environment Commission

Inside Sonoma’s Community Service and Environment Commission|

The physical world is constrained by its limits. There’s only so much of each thing. The business of government is to manage those assets, to sustain what’s available for the long term. In Sonoma, that task is shouldered by the seven members of the Community Service and Environment Commission, who advise city councilmembers how to make good things last.

Like the Plaza, for instance, with its rotation of events. All those fundraisers and festivals take a toll. The other parks and public lands within city limits require stewardship, too, and the CSEC’s job is to protect and conserve all of it. Following the November reconstitution of Sonoma’s city commissions, the CSEC was reformulated. The mayor and councilmembers each made one appointment, and the other two members of the committee were appointed by quorum.

“Like they do with the Pope,” commissioner Ken Brown explained. “If they get enough votes, they get in.”

Fred Allebach, CSEC chairperson, is a dedicated environmentalist, deeply committed to sustainability. “Ever since I was a kid, I’ve cared about the environment. The movement was part and parcel for our generation,” Allebach said. He gestured toward Brown, his CSEC co-chair, a man whose environmental bona fides have been public record for decades. Neither man looks like he keeps a barber on speed dial, and chronologically, they’re both on the outer edges of middle age. But they share a certain optimism and fire in the belly. They are men on a mission they are determined to see through.

“In order to last into the future, we have to cultivate the ground that we’re on societally, environmentally, and economically so it will yield benefits into the future and not just use everything up,” Allebach said. “You can’t just keep growing, keep consuming, keep going on with no thought of how it’s going to last. We don’t have an endless frontier. The CSEC would like to have a work plan that has climate issues addressed, that has a zero-waste future.”

Because the committee was re-seated in November, its prescribed agenda is still somewhat fluid. Allebach and Brown have high ambitions, but their final instructions must come from the council. With that said, it is an exceedingly well-qualified commission, whose members have experience with the forest service and the EPA, among other things. To limit their purview might be to miss the forest for the trees, as it were. At least that’s how Allebach and Brown see it.

“The current iteration of the commission is very competent. The city is moving us toward meatier purposes,” Allebach said. “To have that caliber of people and have them just reviewing special events is not really the best use of their time.”

For now, the commission has identified three main areas of focus: climate issues, waste issues, and bikes. They’ve already begun moving the needle on at least two.

The city has adopted the 21 climate measures of Climate Action 2020, the only city in Sonoma County to do so. “We’re cutting edge,” Allebach said. “We’ve made a difference.”

And in 2019 a new special events policy will disallow single-use plastic at Plaza events. “We don’t like single-use plastic,” Brown said. “For events on the Plaza we have some say on that. The city council decided beginning 2019 there would not be single-use plastic containers at Plaza events. They’re going to buy some water dispensers.”

But on the subject of bikes, consensus has been harder. “We’ve had a difficult time to get the city to dedicate even a couple of parking spaces for bikes. And the bike sharing thing? I’m not sure that fits the scale of this place. There are some infrastructure things that need to be done to make the city more bike-friendly. It’s like anything,” Allebach said. “A balance of different interests come into play.”

Diplomacy and compromise seem to come easily to both men. “We’re doing the people’s business,” Allebach said. “You’re supposed to be presented with a body of information and deliberate on it in public. You’re not an advocate. The public drives policy, they put the wind in the sails.”

Wind on the Plaza pushes policy differently, with overflowing trash containers after large events a thorny issue for the CSEC. They don’t have a concrete path forward for the immediate future, but the CSEC feels the city has a long way to go in respect to waste generation and management.

“You have these big events that are fundraisers for local charities but they rely on consuming a whole bunch of stuff that creates a lot of waste,” Allebach said. “So that’s a cost to society and the environment. We’re supposed to be balancing cost and benefit, so we’re proposing stricter recycling parameters in the new special events policy. Maybe events have to spend a little bit more and the local charity gets a little bit less, but they’re environmentally responsible,” Allebach said.

Environmental responsibility requires comprehensive accounting, according to Allebach, a calculus that totals the economic, social, and environmental bottom line. “We’re in the middle of the 6th Great Extinction, we can’t keep going this way as if there’s no tomorrow. Nationally, our president is pulling us out of the Paris Climate Agreement, so these things have to be done locally. We have to use full-cost accounting. It’s the only way we can act.”

Allebach and Brown both feel the gravity of their task, and the seriousness of the outcome that hangs in the balance. Keeping cost and benefit balanced is complicated math, with more moving parts behind scenes than most people realize. It’s a lot for seven people to manage in one monthly meeting.

“Once a month doesn’t cut it,” Brown said. “We certainly have enough business to meet twice, but to get to that reality might be an interesting process.”

Allerbach rolled his eyes. “That’s Ken’s favorite word: process.”

“Stay with it!” Brown said cheerfully.

Despite the encouragement, doubling up on the schedule to get it all done seems unlikely for the CSEC for the time being. The chairman smiled at his co-chair and folded his arms. “Two meetings a month? I’m kind of agnostic on that.”

Contact Kate at kate.williams@sonomanews.com

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