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City Takes Charge of Greenhouse Gas Reduction

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Fund for Local Reporting! A $100,000 process to write a plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, approved by the City Council in February, will be carried out inside city government—with staff hired for the purpose—and not outsourced to Sustain-able Berkeley, as the Council directed last month.

“There are some legal questions [on the relationship] between Sustainable Berkeley and CESC [the Community Energy Services Corporation],” Neal De Snoo, energy officer in the city’s Energy and Sustainable Development Division, told the Energy Commission at its meeting Wednesday evening. “The implementation is on hold until there is a legal interpretation,” he said.

However on Thursday, City Manager Assistant Arrietta Chakos told the Planet the city “would be taking a look at Measure G [the voter-approved advisory initiative asking the mayor to work with the community to develop a greenhouse gas emissions reduction plan] programs across department lines.” Chakos called back to say a person hired for a new position in the city’s energy division would be working on the plan.

Sustainable Berkeley is an organization whose steering committee is made up of nonprofit corporations, healthcare professionals, UC Berkeley staff and consultants. It is not incorporated. The organization’s fiscal agent is CESC, a nonprofit that partners with PG&E and other entities and was created by the city. Its board of directors is the Energy Commission, selected by the councilmembers and mayor. Commissioners (and therefore board members) serve at the pleasure of appointing councilmembers.

The new interim executive director of Sustainable Berkeley is Catherine Squire, who moved from the Sustainable Berkeley executive committee into the position of interim executive director. She is a recent employee in the city’s energy division. While affirming that the position is salaried, Joel Kreisberg, Sustainable Berkeley chair, declined to disclose Squire’s rate of pay. “Kate is working on a grant to make this thing go,” he said.

Kreisberg is the executive director of Teleosis, which describes itself on its website as “A leadership training program guiding health professionals towards greater sustainability in their health care practice.”

Writing the Measure G plan will no longer be under Sustainable Berkeley auspices because the organization is still “building its infrastructure and capacity,” Kreisberg said.

One of the questions that the community and the Daily Planet had asked those involved with Sustainable Berkeley was about the degree to which the organization, most of whose meetings are closed to the public, would be transparent. The questions were raised because writing the plan to implement Measure G, authorized by council and funded by the city, would have been executed behind closed doors with staff hired without a search process.

“We’d like to be transparent,” Kreisberg said. “We’re trying to get ourselves organized.”

Sustainable Berkeley never got the $100,000 that was originally to have been directed toward it (through its fiscal agent) to write the plan. Still, the group hired Timothy Burroughs to begin work getting community input on the plan, the Daily Planet was told at the time. Since the contract was never executed, Burroughs has been doing other work with Sustainable Berkeley, Kreisberg said.

Among the questions that had been raised was the appointment of Burroughs to the post without an open process. “Timothy Burroughs was hired by Sustainable Berkeley without a recruitment process since he is a nationally recognized expert in GHG [greenhouse gas] Reduction and the position is temporary through December 2007,” Kreisberg said in a letter to the Daily Planet published on March 16.

The city will release a job description today (Friday) for a person who will execute the plan, Chakos said. The job description forwarded to the Planet is vague, however, saying that the six-month temporary position is for an “Associate Management Analyst” in the energy division. It says nothing about the candidate having special expertise in greenhouse gas reduction—or even about the need for training in environmental questions.

The city’s new Public Information Officer Mary Kay Clunies-Ross told the Planet that according to City Manager Phil Kamlarz, it will not be necessary for the council to execute a new vote to have the $100,000 redirected to the new city position, rather than the Sustainable Berkeley position.

“The council does not have to act separately,” she said. In April, staff will go to the council and inform them of the change, she said.