2024-07-31 Salary Commission Minutes

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Salary Commission July 31, 2024 program, is really an opportunity for folks to get professional development but also to work with communities in need to build their capacity. And so, she's worked herself up from that position and we welcome her. She is our Sustainability Strategist for our office. And then, we also have an AmeriCorps Vista that joined our office in March and his name is Liam Birr and he is specifically tasked with implementation of our Integrated Climate Action Plan. And so, he's developed a monitoring and tracking tool, which I'll discuss as well. So, for now, this is our team. We are small but we are mighty. 1 -just a quick look at the budget. This is what was approved through Fiscal Year `24-`25 and the important take -a -ways that I want you to have from this are really—of course, we have a small budget. We're a small office and we have a small budget. But that number "886,036" I want you to think about that because we're going to talk about grants in a little bit and just leveraging that amount of budget to bring in quite a bit more for our County is something we're really excited to do. So, I want to share that with you folks as well. I mentioned our Integrated Climate Action Plan. This is our strategic roadmap. It was adopted right after the office was created but had been in process prior to that, obviously. This was a collective effort between the Planning Department and the Department of Research and Development—to develop a plan. It identifies County actions for climate mitigation and adaptation. And then, really focuses on implementation priority areas. The graphic that you see here are the targets that the plan lays out for how we will focus on reducing our greenhouse gas emissions. But I just want to highlight that this is in our Plan and things that we're striving for, but we don't have any current County policies that require us to make these efforts. This is only existing in this Plan for this moment. And the Plan really goes on to tackle, again, sort of looking at the implementation areas and the strategies that are there. It tackles everything from cesspool conversion, water conservation, energy efficiency, natural resource management. Of course, sea level rise adaptation efforts it's really a broad -reaching Plan and so it's something that we're excited to have as this office gets startedis, we already have a Plan in place and it already focuses on sustainability, climate change, equity, and resilience. So, we're able to just lean into that Plan as we set forth the priorities for this office. And then, I want to speak a little bit to our mission that I lined out for us that was "Connect, Coordinate, and Building Capacity"—and so, just want to demonstrate for you folks the ways that we are connecting currently and the future plans for this effort. When we talk about connecting, it really is about how we are connecting with our community and our County departments towards this collective effort. And so, it's about sharing the work that we're doing, being transparent, and also making connections between people. We see ourselves as a really good connector in that space. Page 10