Council adopts nation-leading climate justice commitments - The Ithaca Voice

Council adopts nation-leading climate justice commitments - The Ithaca Voice

ITHACA, N.Y. — In a unanimous vote Wednesday, Common Council adopted what city officials are calling a nation-leading climate justice policy.

Justice50 sets out a framework that city government is supposed to direct financial investment towards “climate justice communities,” or communities that were historically or currently marginalized. The legislation will include major changes in the city’s budget process.

Rebecca Evans, the city’s sustainability director, said before council’s vote Wednesday that approving Justice50 would make Ithaca the “first city in the United States to operationalize climate justice.”

Evans described Justice50 as an essential policy framework to equitably implement the Ithaca Green New Deal, the city’s sweeping climate initiative. Adopted in 2019, the green new deal has the lofty goal of reaching carbon neutrality by 2030 and to ensure that all the benefits of the initiative are shared equitably.

The city council adopted a definition for climate justice communities in 2022 that includes a wide range of criteria, including residents who are experiencing food insecurity, homelessness, or who make less than 65 % of the county’s median annual income.

The Justice50 policy, which is based on but goes beyond the federal Justice40 program, commits the city to using 50% of the Ithaca Green New Deal program funding to serve climate justice communities. Evans said during an interview the program funding totalled about $3 million, more than half of which comes from earmarked federal funds.

The policy will require that 40% of the participants in any future city workforce programs fall under the definition of climate justice individuals, and reshape how the city utilizes its budget process for capital projects, like large infrastructure and facilities investments.

As a part of Justice50, 10% of the city’s capital budget will become open to “participatory budgeting,” which would allow city residents to have a more direct say in how public dollars are spent, and that the city will be required to commit 50% of its capital project budget to serving climate justice communities.

Evans said about 40% of the city’s capital project budget has already been directed to climate justice communities for the last three years, according to reviews of census tract data. Council authorized over $10 million in capital projects in the 2024 budget.

“I think this is an opportunity to put our money where our mouths are. If we really are interested in creating equity and furthering justice and access, then this is what we need to be doing,” Evans said. “We need to be investing equally or more in communities that have been historically underserved.”

Scant discussion accompanied what was supposed to be a momentous council vote Wednesday. The policy was moved and approved by council in less than two and a half minutes.

Asked why he thought the policy passed with such little discussion, Alderperson Pierre Saint-Perez said after Wednesday’s vote, “When something is a good idea, sometimes it’s so clearly what we should be doing that it passes quickly.”

He added, “I also want to note that the city — the city as an entity — has spent a lot of time and resources designing Justice50 as a thorough and well thought out policy. A lot of that hasn’t been in front of council, but council has received presentations on that process.”

Justice50, or a policy similar to it, has been discussed for years as a goal in the Ithaca Green New Deal, but a formal policy proposal only appeared before a committee of council last month.

Mayor Rob Cantelmo said, “The stereotype is government moves slowly, but in reality […] the administration has been making incremental progress on adopting these changes. This has been something that’s been in the government’s DNA since 2019, and we are at the point where we are ready to move forward with formal adoption and making that commitment.”

With the vote on Justice50 settled comes another major set of green new deal goals local leaders have committed city government to meeting. The city has a long way to go before fully decarbonizing its economy by 2030, and progress towards that goal has been mixed.

City Manager Deborah Mohlenoff, who was a member of Common Council when the Ithaca Green New Deal was adopted, said she knew the Ithaca Green New Deal was “quite aggressive and aspirational” when she voted to adopt it in 2019.

“Sometimes you push yourself to, perhaps do what is a seemingly unreachable goal, because if you’re all pushing for that very aggressive goal, you might actually get there a little faster or be a little bit more innovative,” Mohlenhoff said.