The City of Edmonds is in the process of distributing a Budget Priorities Survey on a variety of aspects of living in Edmonds, which comes on the heels of the initial community survey distributedto randomly selected residents. The list for feedback is long, and mostly includes how residents view the importance of each city service, and if they are satisfied with the work that’s being done.
While both questions are relevant and offered to gauge the opinions of the public before entering into the next round of budget discussions, one thing is clear: Residents need to have some knowledge of each of the items in order to provide the city with their feedback. Let’s just take one item as an example.
When the Climate Action Plan (CAP) was being developed, it was identified in a survey in 2021 as being very concerning to residents. The CAP was later adopted by the council on March 21, 2023. The survey, as analyzed in Appendix C of the CAP, showed a high degree of concern about increased wildfires, poor air quality, loss of habitat and species,loss of regional snowpack in winter, drought/water security, sea level rise and coastal erosion, and increased temperatures and heat waves, among others.
In the published results of the initial community survey distributed last month, preparing for the impacts of climate change saw 64% of the respondents identifying the issue as important with only 13% answering that they don’t know or are unsure. When asked if they are satisfied with how the city is preparing for the impacts of climate change, only 32% were satisfied while 53% did not know or were unsure. This indicates that while a majority of residents find climate important, they don’t know what the city is doing in preparing for its impacts.
If you are interested in completing the survey, which has a deadline of Aug. 26 for submission, it will help if you know where to find the data on what the city has been doing to implement its CAP. Googling “City of Edmonds Climate Action Plan” is the best way to find all components of the plan.
The official CAP that was adopted in March 2023 is almost 100% focused on lowering greenhouse gases (98% of which come from the community, and 2% from the municipal sector). To date, one action item out of three was completed in 2023, with the remaining two items being rolled over to 2024’s list of action items, making 19 in all. So far, zero have been completed this year. By December 2025, an additional 12 items are scheduled for completion, which would account for 31 items, a little over 50% of the total of 61 action items in the CAP. For verification, this information is contained in the CAP’s Appendix D.
To add to the burden of implementation, the Comprehensive Plan update will include a Climate Resilience Sub-element that hopefully will become an action plan so that the health and safety of residents is safeguarded, and the city’s economy and natural resources are adequately protected.
The CAP was last year’s signature policy for the city council, with several members declaring they were “All in on the ‘Call to Action’” — the CAP’s title. Such a rally cry implied that it would be a priority for the city.
Implementation, however, is proving to be challenging. Acquiring this level of information as you answer the questions on the “importance” and “satisfaction” questions on preparing for climate change will help better prepare you for giving the city some idea of how you feel based on the evidence.
We look forward to seeing more progress in climate action in 2025 as we all strive to be onthe same page in understanding what is and is not being accomplished.
The Budget Priorities Survey, with a deadline of Aug. 26, is available in three languages:
www.surveymonkey.com/r/CQM7GV5
www.surveymonkey.com/r/ResidentSurveyVietnamese
www.surveymonkey.com/r/ResidentSurveySpanish
— By Georgina Armstrong
Georgina Armstrong is president of the Edmonds Climate Advisory Board.
Thank you for calling people’s attention to the importance of the city survey and for pointing out the need for increased action regarding the climate crisis. The city will utilize survey results for guidance moving forward. If citizens want to see better focus on environmental protections, they need to make that known in survey responses.
Thank you Georgina for your thoughtful summary of the current status of the Climate Action Plan. I feel that surveys can be misleading as they pit different issues against each other, for example, if you are asked to prioritize safety versus climate. You can be concerned about both! This is something to consider when responding to this latest survey.
Excellent letter, Georgina.; thank you. It has been than difficult for me to complete some of these questions in this survey since information necessary to answer some of the questions is not always available. I am most interested in what the city is doing regarding the serious issues around the climate crisis. However, I can find no information on the city’s website or at other meetings I have attended about what the city is or is not doing. to address the issues. I know the City Council passed a Climate Action Plan CAPlast year, but since then, I can find no report or discussion by the City Council on the CAP and no real updates on the City’s website. Just because it is not readily available does not mean that nothing is being done. But,since I have NO information, it definitely makes me skeptical – wondering how I can find out what Bellingham, Shoreline, Bainbrige Island, Port Towned and Whatcom County, and Bothell (and others)are doing regardin climate (from their websites and other information), but cannot find such information for my own city. It is not only embarrassing, and also makes it rather impossible for me to accurately answer the survey I just completed.
Georgina Armstrong and the respondents make excellent points about the challenge of relying on surveys to set priorities for the City. Some of the options are basic civic activities and services: housing regulations, public safety services, bike lanes, sidewalks are all in this category. But the environment and climate preparedness are not civic activities. They are overriding conditions–and existential conditions at that–affecting ALL the other areas in the survey. They should be part of the context in which the City makes all its decisions about its priorities. In other words, they shouldn’t be in the survey at all but should be incorporated into every other area the City chooses to address. If you mess them up you can’t repair the damage in next year’s budget.