Climate Costs Debated As City, State Weigh Actions

The city plans to spend $60,000 on a new sustainability-focused staffer.

Local climate activists are pushing city government to dedicate $1.1 million to promote reduced emissions, clean energy jobs, and climate education.

And a state legislative committee advanced a regional climate and transportation accord that could see hundreds of millions of dollars spent over the next decade on cleaner public transportation in air-polluted communities like New Haven.

Those first two climate crisis funding pitches came Tuesday night during a five-hour public hearing and departmental workshop hosted by the aldermanic Finance Committee on Zoom and YouTube Live.

The public meeting marked the first opportunity for the Finance Committee alders to take a department-by-department look at Mayor Justin Elicker’s two proposed Fiscal Year 2021 – 2022 (FY22) general fund budgets—a $589.1 million ​“crisis” version and a $606.2 million ​“forward together” budget.

During the departmental workshop on the Mayor’s Office budget, Chief of Staff Sean Matteson described a planned new sustainability specialist/analyst position, to be funded by $60,000 in special fund grant dollars and to focus on a range of climate-related matters, including how best to promote energy efficiency and clean energy at City Hall and across New Haven.

That contrasted in size and scope with New Haven Climate Movement activist calls during the public hearing portion of the budget meeting for a new $1.1 million local Climate Justice and Green Jobs Fund, which advocates see as a necessary route to break the city’s ​“fossil fuel addiction and invest in electrification, bike infrastructure, green hubs, and climate education.”

Both of those local climate-related moves took place against a broader statewide and regional push to have Connecticut join the Transportation and Climate Initiative (TCI), a regional emissions cap-and-invest program endorsed by the governor and local environmental advocates.

On Wednesday, the state legislature’s Environment Committee voted 17 – 9 in support of moving ahead a proposed bill associated with that pact. That proposed legislation, Senate Bill No. 884: An Act Reducing Transportation-Related Carbon Emissions, now advances to the State Senate floor for further debate and a potential final vote.

“If New Haven fails to take progressive, urgent action, we condemn ourselves to an unsafe, uncertain future,” Co-Op high school student and New Haven Climate Movement organizer Kiana Flores (pictured) said during Tuesday night’s city public hearing on the proposed budget.

“We can’t wait another year for adequate climate funding. The youth of New Haven are looking towards the city for action we so desperately need.”

$60K For Sustainability Specialist

Matteson told the committee alders Monday night that the mayor’s proposed budget(s) include $60,000 for a sustainability analyst, in keeping with aldermanic recommendations that also led to the creation of the Climate Emergency Task Force.

This staffer, to be paid for by special fund grants and other non-city operational dollars, will be charged with ​“working with city departments specifically on the climate emergency, working on efficiencies around emission reduction, community programs, green workforce development, and waste management.”

“A lot of the role of this job will be working with constituent groups and community groups,” he continued, ​“and building coalitions to achieve these environmental justice objectives.”

This role was included in the current fiscal year’s special fund budget, Matteson said, but the city was unable to find outside funding to fill the role.

“We were unsuccessful last year in identifying a funding source. But we believe we will be successful this year in identifying and filling the position.”

Although this position is slated to be funded through outside grants for the coming fiscal year, asked Westville Alder and Finance Committee Vice-Chair Adam Marchand, what about in the years to come? Would this become a part of the general fund and a permanent role in the annual city operating budget?

“It’s hard to say on the grants,” Matteson said. ​“Some run a period of years. Some are just a single year. It all depends. You’re constantly looking for other grant dollars at the same time to add to it.”

There’s always the potential to move a special fund position over into the general fund. That would require future aldermanic sign off in order to take place.

$1.1M Climate Justice & Green Jobs Fund

During the hour-plus public hearing that preceded Tuesday night’s departmental workshop, the alders heard from a handful of local climate activists who urged the committee to think big and be bold when it comes to funding a local climate crisis response.

“Climate bombs” are going off across the country and the world all the time, said New Haven Climate Movement organizer Chris Schweitzer (pictured above, at center).

From Hurricane Maria to the recent, infrastructure-destroying cold spell in Texas to flooding in Nashville to Category 5 hurricanes in Nicaragua and Honduras and Guatemala, ​“these bombs are just making life horrible for impoverished people” across the globe.

The local climate movement is calling on the city to invest ​“2/10ths of one percent of the operating budget”—or $1.1 million in total — to hire staff to work on energy efficiency, create local green jobs, promote alternative transportation, and fund climate justice education and youth leadership.

“Climate change is extremely dangerous, deadly, and sad,” he said. ​“We think there’s a lot of programs” that could both address the climate crisis and hit on the alders’ key legislative priorities, like reducing poverty and creating good-paying jobs.

Sunrise New Haven organizer Eluned Li (pictured above, at left) agreed. She warned that wildfires, floods, poor crop yields, sea-level rise, and new and more deadly diseases are all associated with climate change — and will all affect New Haven, and the rest of the world, if government does not step up.

“Our choices in this crucial time” will be critical for whether or not future generations can survive on this planet.

Wooster Square resident Aaron Goode (pictured) urged the committee to consider ​“unit-based pricing” for managing solid waste as a way to reduce tipping fees and ​“get organics out of the waste stream.”

He noted that the city is slated to pay $300,000 to $500,000 more next fiscal year in waste disposal fees.

“This is going to bleed us dry if we don’t do something.”

And he encouraged the alders to support a statewide effort to allow for community choice aggregation, which would permit municipalities to negotiate lower electricity prices for their residents.

“It would save us 1 to 2 cents per kilowatt hour, which adds up to a lot of money.”

Regional Climate Pact Advances

And on Wednesday morning, a majority of state lawmakers on the Environment Committee advanced one of the more ambitious and contentious climate-related initiatives under consideration in Hartford this session.

That’s the Transportation and Climate Initiative, or TCI. The regional initiative seeks to curb urban air quality harm by capping greenhouse gas emissions and investing in more sidewalks, bike lanes, and electric buses — a move opponents say will only hurt Connecticut residents in the form of a higher gas tax. If the bill is adopted, starting in 2023, fuel suppliers would have to buy permits for carbon emissions related to the fuel they sell.

On Wednesday, Environment Committee Co-Chair and Guilford State Sen. Christine Cohen described a substitute version of the bill as requiring the state to adopt regulations that ​“establish a declining cap on greenhouse gas emissions and auction reserve and set-aside emissions allowance.”

The proceeds from those emissions allowances sold at auction would then be deposited into a special account in the state’s Special Transportation Fund.

The substitute bill requires that ​“at least 50 percent” of the proceeds ​“be invested in communities that are overburdened by air pollution or underserved by” the state’s public transportation system.

It would also establish an Equity and Environmental Justice Advisory Board that would advise the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) and the state Department of Transportation (DOT) on ​“equitable outcomes” regarding how this money should be spent in communities like New Haven that suffer from disproportionate levels of air pollution and related health impacts, like asthma.

She said the initiative, which Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Washington D.C. have also pledged to join, would not take effect until 2023. The Lamont Administration projects that it would cause gas prices to increase by 5 cents per gallon in the first year. The bill would cap gas price increases at no more than 9 cents per gallon in the first year.

And it would generate an estimated $1 billion in new revenue for the state over the next decade.

Brookfield State Rep. Stephen Harding Jr. (pictured) pointed out that that 9‑cent cap is only in place for the first year. Per the bill, gas prices could rise by 26 cents per gallon over the course of the next decade.

“At the end of the day, no matter how we examine it, this is going to be a tax on consumers and constituents. We are voting today to implement a gas tax,” he said.

“It’s an extremely regressive tax,” he continued. ​“You have to pay for gas to get back and forth to work.” While electrifying public buses and building out more sidewalks and bike lanes and electric car charging stations are worthy goals, he said, ​“I believe there are better ways we can be addressing our emissions.”

Westport State Sen. Will Haskell (pictured) pushed back on that criticism.

He said that young people across the state are ​“earnestly looking to the state government and wondering whether or not we’re going to stand up for their future, their right to drink clean water and breathe clean air.”

“It would be a real shame if we decided to return to the old normal,” he continued.

“Let’s not just accept as a fact that urban communities are going to see higher asthma rates.”

More info on related issues, organizations:

• Save The Sound
• New Haven Bioregional Group
• Six Times More Plastic Waste Is Burned Than Recycled
• Environment Connecticut
• Plastics For Change
• DEEP Municipal Wastewater FAQs
• America’s Public-Health Sewage Crisis
• Save The Sound
• Best Practices — Improving Sewage Treatment