City Adds Sustainability to Ordinance/Resolution Process

The City will be incorporating its goal of sustainability into the ordinance/resolution request process. A note in last week’s City Manager’s report to Council explains that the new question will ask “in what ways have you considered the City’s Sustainability Priorities.”

According to the report the question will ask that staff address questions on sustainability, which they already consider in their work, but asks them to do so in a more systematic, deliberate, and transparent way. The question is being considered as a response to the 2011 resolution that directs City staff and Council to consider Tacoma’s Vision of Sustainability in its decision-making processes.

By answering environment, equity, culture, and economy and questions, staff will document and explain the sustainability impacts, benefits and trade-offs of our decisions.

The question will begin to show up on the request forms “in the near future” as part of a three-month pilot.

For more on sustainability at the City of Tacoma, visit “www.CityOfTacoma.org/Sustainability”: http://cityoftacoma.org/Page.aspx?hid=14609.

For some fun sustainability questions of your own, follow the link from the City’s sustainability page to calculate your own carbon or global footprint. … eye-opening? What could we all be doing to shrink those calculations?