Sustainability Plan Stirs Community to Action

For nearly an hour on Tuesday, a stream of speakers stepped up to the podium in the Redlands City Council chambers to either praise the city’s sustainability plan or pan it.

Some feared the plan was expensive, invasive and short sighted. Others said the plan was needed to protect Redlands future.

In the end, the council voted unanimously to adopt the plan, calling it a good plan.

“I think a lot of the people that are against this are afraid that this is just a camel’s nose under the side of the tent,” said Redlands councilman Jerry Bean. “And that while it’s voluntary now, that next year or 20 years or whatever, we’ll have draconian mandates from state or federal or even local government.”

Not so, officials said.

The plan is being called a framework by which the city can begin to draft future green policy, city officials said.

Recommendations in the plan include improving public transportation, improving air quality by finding ways to cut the number of miles private vehicles travel, reducing demand for water by establishing programs to increase the use of recycled water for irrigation or other non-potable uses and cut the dependence on carbon-based fuels.

Redlands Tea Party Patriot members and a segment of the city are opposed to the plan. Some have called the plan a job killer that will send businesses fleeing to Loma Linda, Highland or San Bernardino.

City officials say there are not plans to start regulating lives with this plan or increasing costs for businesses.

The plan is still evolving said Danielle Garcia, Quality of Life Department Project Specialist for Redlands.

“Much more input will be required from the others,” she said.

Residents who spoke during Tuesday’s council meeting were almost evenly divided.

“I’m here to tell you energy efficiency is good for business and it strengthens the community and it’s good for the environment,” said resident Stephen Guthrie. “It created four times more jobs that building a nuclear power plant.”

And the jobs and eventual savings would pump in billions over the next decade, he said.

Not everyone was as confident in the plan or even in the state of climate change.

“In the 50’s, when I was in school, I was told about the growing of the polar ice cap and that by certain time we going to be in a panic because it was it was going to overtake NY City,” said resident Esther Ringer. “Now I’m being told that the oceans are rising. But we actually have weather cycles that happen. Weather experts say these things are cycles. But we’re going to restrict our lives. We’re going to become a nanny state. I urge you to table this matter.”

Cost kept the Redlands Chamber of Commerce from supporting the plan. According to Peter Lehmann, Chamber president, the plan does state there could be a cost, but listed it as undetermined.

“We feel that businesses down the road starting now and in the future can’t really get their hands on what that means exactly,” Lehmann said.

City staff are now tasked with identifying two projects that should be addressed to bring before the council.