HomeMy WebLinkAbout12/5/2023 Item 7a, Smith
carolyn smith <
To:E-mail Council Website
Subject:Energy Retrofit Study Session - 7a
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Madam Mayor and council members,
I am writing urging you to halt consideration of an ordinance requiring residential retrofitting of homes
at time of remodel and/or sale. While this may be a lofty goal for your climate action plans, it's going
to again cause severe consequences to the middle- and lower-income residents. This plan will be
extremely costly and only the wealthy will be able to afford to comply. Even with incentives and
rebates, this will be out of the financial reach of most residents who work and live here, causing
severe hardships. It certainly won't be equitable to force this plan on all residents of all income levels.
It also appears to be hypocritical in that the city is encouraging more and more tourism into the city by
building more hotels and advertising our city's greatness, which brings more jet traffic. There are at
least a dozen flights a day flying over our city with flights going to Seattle, Phoenix, San Francisco,
LA, and Dallas, raining down carbon emissions all over us. Additionally, the push for more housing
has caused our vehicle traffic to increase tremendously which is also increasing our carbon
footprint. Since vehicle and jet transportation are the biggest sources of greenhouse gases in
California, perhaps it would be more prudent to stop encouraging more vehicle and jet traffic by
promoting more tourism and work on limiting those emissions rather than going after residential
appliances whereby us "little guys" are going to suffer the consequences.
I recall a number of years ago when a climate concerned council member was leaving the dais, he
said that he couldn't reconcile the climate action plans the council was promoting because it didn't
address the biggest polluters, air and vehicle traffic caused by tourist promotion. This is a sentiment
many in SLO are expressing.
Please do not go forward with this ordinance or, at the very least, make sure there has been equitable
outreach to all who will be affected by this ordinance--not just the climate change groups who are
whole heartedly in favor of this.
Thank you.
Carolyn Smith
Brett Cross
1
SLO City Residents
2