The CAP and Political Courage

Some environmentalists have complained about the Climate Action Plan
"wimping out" on specific near-term commitments, too often
substituting "where appropriate" and "consider" language for actual
recommendations that should follow from the values expressed
(especially in the transportation and land use chapter). We know,
from personal conversations, that this kind of language wasn't in the
draft that principal authors Timothy Burroughs and Cisco DeVries
submitted for political vetting, and that the city manager's staff
deliberately softened the language.

That political dynamic has created a very weird and "backwards"
document: confident and specific on all the long-term policies/
programs that aren't yet defined and are totally unfunded; yet vague
and indecisive on the whole set of concrete issues we've been
studying to death for years, that are set up for specific decisions
soon, and that at this point don't make unexpected fiscal demands.
Examples include the Downtown Plan, BRT, and especially the central
issue of greater density near transit as a key element of reaching
CAP goals.

The CAP should be the opposite of that: Most confident and specific
on policy and program commitments we know we can make right away, and
more tentative on what we can't yet define in programmatic terms. If
the CAP won't drive these ready-to-go decisions now, why should we
think it will get any better in years to come?

Thus the CAP seems to mandate that the public-policy discussion
timeline start at zero from January 28 -- that we should take no
account of the hard work over the past decade to bring many key
specific decisions to the table in well-defined and actionable
packages. That's both unrealistic and counterproductive.

Cisco DeVries wrote to me that it "would be appropriate" in his
opinion for environmentalists and coalitions to request changing the
"consider" language to "it is the goal of the city to . . . ." This
would not tie the Council's hands unduly, but do a much better job of
linking CAP goals to specific near-term decisions. That seems to me
like the minimum we should accept.

I think this is also the process issue for which we need to hold Tom
Bates's feet to the fire. He needs to lead the charge on the near-
term decisions, not just take visionary credit for ideas that won't
be decided or implemented until years after he's out of office.

--Alan Tobey