The Global Warming Solutions Act requires the Vermont Climate Council to recommend tools for municipalities to use to assess their climate preparedness, assess financial capacity to increase infrastructure resilience, and prioritize investments in that infrastructure. In early 2022, staff in the Climate Action Office began convening a task group with membership from three of the Climate Council subcommittees, to start the design and stakeholder engagement for the creation of a Municipal Climate Toolkit that would help Vermont municipalities act on climate change. The task group includes representation from municipal government, regional planning commissions, State technical assistance providers, and non-profit partners.
The intent of the Municipal Climate Toolkit is to provide a hub for existing tools, resources, and information, relevant for designing and implementation climate action measures or strategies at a municipal level. The task group has worked over the past year to host stakeholder input sessions with municipal officials, regional planning commissions, and State staff; has presented and held input sessions at various conferences and summits; and meets regularly to refine the design of the toolkit to ensure its usefulness and accessibility for municipal officials. The task group has developed a list of resources that will be shared in the toolkit and has decided on a set of climate action areas, by which resources will be organized. The group has been working hard to ensure municipalities at varying levels of readiness to take climate action feel empowered and reflected in the design of the Toolkit.
Moving into 2024, the task group is working to further refine how resources are reflected and updated in the Toolkit and will shortly begin working with IT partners to design the Toolkit, which will ultimately be housed on the climatechange.vermont.gov website.
The project scope can be viewed here. The goal is to have the Toolkit finalized by Winter 2024.