04-23-2024 PRF Packet - Laserfiche WebLink

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Milestone Three: Develop a Local Sustainability Plan Develop a set of measures that enable the jurisdiction to achieve the sustainability goals. The next step in the process is to brainstorm all possible strategies for achieving the goals. Strategies are the high-level approaches to address the key challenges. Within one strategy, such as "promote green building," there can be a number of measures that are required to implement the strategy. After identifying the strategies, local governments should then create and analyze the potential measures, such as specific policies, projects, or other actions. Measures should have a clear implementation plan, including designation of a responsible department/ party, funding source, timeline, next steps, short- and long-term milestones, and indicators for measur- ing progress. In addition, the plan should illustrate how each measure helps to achieve the goals of the plan. To allow the local government to track progress during Milestone Five, baseline data for each indi- cator also needs to be gathered. In parallel to developing the plan, local governments need to engage in a significant level of public outreach to provide a diversity of constituents the opportunity to contribute ideas for the plan. Outreach can include town hall—style meetings, focus groups, and a website set up for public comment. Public outreach can last anywhere from a couple of months to a year and is an essential step in the process to ensure the public supports the plan. To complete Milestone Three, local governments need to publicly release and/or adopt their sustain- ability plan, which should include an implementationplan for each measure. Local governments should p estimate the costs for the measures in the plan and prioritize the measures based on impact, budgetary constraints, and implementation timeline. ICLEI MILESTONE THREE AWARD REQUIREMENTS E ii The completion and formal approval of a sustainability plan highlighting existing and proposed reductions for municipal and/or community emissions and measures to improve the overall sustainability of the community Submittal to ICLEI of an electronic copy of the plan Milestone Four: Implement Policies and Measures Implement the sustainability plan and track implementation progress. After the local government releases its sustainability plan, implementation should begin immediately. The various local government departments should be responsible for implementing the plan and the sustain- ability coordinator should coordinate and monitor the implementation progress. It is difficult to work on all measures at once, so local governments need to be strategic in how they utilize their staff resources to implement the plan. It is highly recommended that a local government prioritize the measures identi- fied in the sustainability plan and go after the quick wins first, while at the same time begin planning for larger-scale measures that have a longer implementation timeframe. Implementing the quick wins first will serve to maintain the momentum generated through the planning process and will lay the ground- work for implementing the longer-term measures. 15