I’m excited to tell you that this week the City of Encinitas took a major step forward in meeting our environmental goals. We unanimously supported joining the regional effort spearheaded by the City of San Diego to buy electricity from a locally run organization that can maximize renewable energy sources.
The technical description of our action was to form a regional Joint Powers Authority (JPA) for Community Choice Energy (CCE). Making this decision means we’ll meet an end-of-the-year deadline and Encinitas will be a founding member of this new organization.
This action and the decisionmaking behind it was not trivial. Some governmental decisions are inevitable or simple to achieve, but this one could have gone in a number of different directions. I feel unequivocally that we made the right decision.
Choosing to join in a regional effort with other cities, such as the City of San Diego, that have ambitious and legally binding Climate Action Plans as we do aligns our environmental interests in the region and empowers us with local control here in San Diego County.
My experience with special districts in the water and wastewater world is that we’re better served by uniting instead of splintering into multiple county organizations with their own administrative overhead expenses, small amount of programming money and the required coordinating of multiple decisionmaking bodies for any project or innovation.
Together we’re facing increasingly severe climate threats, so it’s far more efficient to tackle the solutions together.
There are multiple perspectives on this topic, and they all have validity. But I’m hopeful that other North County cities who are currently ready to consider a multi-city JPA on Community Choice Energy, like Del Mar, Solana Beach and Carlsbad, will seriously consider becoming founding members of the regional JPA instead of forming their own organizations or deciding not to act for a year or more.
The time for action is now, given the urgency of the climate crisis and increasingly challenging state regulations.
Want to learn more? Here’s the Encinitas Advocate story, and this is the Encinitas supplemental staff report that highlights the reasons that the subcommittee of Councilmember Joe Mosca and I recommended to the City Council that we join forces within a regional JPA.
Teens team up to stop gun violence
Last Friday I was honored to speak and hear from members of Team Enough, an inspiring group of dedicated high schoolers who grew out of the Parkland school shootings, and are fighting for a future free of gun violence. They’re demanding action from our elected representatives. We were joined by Congressman Mike Levin, Assemblymember Todd Gloria, and Carlsbad Mayor Pro Tem Priya Bhat-Patel.
Here’s a 10News story about the event.
Continuing our commitment toward a greener and safer future,
