John Scarffe, Nederland. At the Board of Trustees’ regular meeting on Tuesday, September 2, they received a resolution to adopt a Sustainability Action Plan. Town Administrator Alisha Reis said the Board has become familiar with the matrix that makes up one major portion of the plan and is featured largely in the Board’s 2014 to 2016 goal-setting process, beginning June 10, 2014.

The Town received a $15,000 grant from Boulder County to support the work. On August 6, 2013, the BOT approved a contract with C2 Sustainability (Conor Merrigan) to review and participate in a sustainability analysis for the update of the Town’s comprehensive plan and the Master Infrastructure Plan, as well as to create the Nederland Sustainability Action Plan.

All elements of the contract have now been completed. On June 18, 2013, the Board voted to accept funding from the Boulder County Sustainability Matching Funds program to support this work. The plan was first presented in final draft to the Board for discussion on May 20, 2014. After further reviews and discussion by Town advisory boards and the public, the Nederland Sustainability Action Plan was ready for adoption.

Consultant Conor Merrigan told the Board he took the plan around to all of the advisory boards and included their input. Trustee Randy Lee said he doesn’t see a summary of what the other boards said. Merrigan said the discussions were incorporated into the matrix, and it can be modified. Part of the annual process is going back to those boards every year and including their input in an annual report.

Reis said the other boards have signed off on the action plan. Merrigan attended each of the meetings and put in their input. Merrigan said each board has specific actions they will be accomplishing this year.

“It’s sort of looking at it all and saying, ‘What do we have the budget for, and only so much staff time is available.’” By next year, the Town will have more data and will know what worked this year.

Mayor Joe Gierlach said the Board has to begin prioritizing these things and incorporating them into the budget, so they can see what they can afford. Trustee Kristopher Larsen said the Planning Commission heard this as a discussion item, and the Commission did not adopt it.

Merrigan said when he went to the Planning Commission, the discussion didn’t morph into an action item, but the Planning Commission’s portion of the matrix was agreed upon as being acceptable. Gierlach pointed out the Planning Commission has eleven items on the matrix, and they approved all of those projects on the Comprehensive Master Plan.

Trustee Charles Wood said the purpose of Nederland Planning Process (NPP) is so that, once the Board does something, the community owns it. “It doesn’t seem like the community owns this,” he said.

Gierlach repeated that all 11 items were approved, and the master plan had community buy-in. Lee said taking 160 items, throwing them in a spread sheet and asking the Board to prioritize them doesn’t work for him.

“I spent three or four hours and only got halfway through, so I haven’t been back to it,” Lee said. “If it has value for the Sustainability Advisory Board to maintain it, that would be okay,” he said, “but to expect the trustees to prioritize this is not right.”

Gierlach said the Town spent a quarter of million dollars to come up with all of these plans. Trustee Peter Fiori said that this is a fluid document. “The mayor should decide on the goals, and I think this is the best one we’ve ever done. I’m hearing the NPP process has failed, but it has been through the process twice.”

The NPP is mostly valuable for comments, Fiori said. This is an implementation of plans already passed. “We are going to be in the action phase. We have three sustainability plans. This is the next step and has been in front of us for a year.

“You will have time to debate over specific actions and fine tuning because we have an action plan. We spent $8,000 to go through the NPP. I’m calling it too late.”

Trustee Kevin Mueller said his biggest concern was hearing that Larsen is questioning whether the PC weighed in. He added that what this action plan does is put all of these recommendations and ideas and puts it in the context of sustainability.

“Now we have aspirational goals, so we can ask if a specific action gets us there,” Mueller said “We need a vision. We are at the action point of becoming more sustainable.”

Gierlach said that on June 10 the Board received recommendations from Town staff. Getting grants has to be part of the prioritization. “We need to go through the process for our budget,” he said.

Trustee Topher Donahue said: “I think the nature of this thing is a tool to do for us what we need to do, even if we have some issues. Is this plan to the level where we can leverage some funding?”

Merrigan said it was to that point. Using the goals for this year will help with the grant cycle. “We have 166 projects that have champions this year,” he said.

Donahue said it’s a matter of whether the Board is at a point to sign off on it. “It may be the most important thing we ever do,” Donahue said. “If we could do a few more hours of work and process the matrix I think it would be worth doing it. We can make it a lot better spending a little more time on it.”

Larsen asked what the process is for adding and removing items. Gierlach answered that if this Board is not going to approve a specific item, it’s not going to be on the list. Four board members can kill an item or add an item.

Mueller said, “I think this is totally satisfactory. Let’s sift this through and the aspirational goals. This is just another tool. I don’t think any one of us could come up with a better plan. I want to use this to determine how the new bridge proposed by the Downtown Development Authority can be built. Every decision we make has to be in the context of sustainability or it doesn’t work.”

Fiori said the SAB voted to manage this and be in charge of the matrix and verbiage. The SAB does own it. Lee said he wants to make several changes, but if the SAB will maintain it he think that’s okay.

Gierlach divided the issue into two motions. The first was to approve the matrix and the Board voted to approve it. The second was to approve the resolution adopting the plan. The motion passed with Larsen and Wood voting against it.

The next meeting of the Nederland Board of Trustees will be on Tuesday, September 16, at the Nederland Community Center.