As discussed in the City Council meeting Tuesday night, the Ames City Council is moving forward with plans to establish an Ames Climate Action Planning Community Input Task Force. 

The task force will be comprised of selected Ames residents and Iowa State students to make recommendations and communicate with climate experts hired by the Ames government to develop a climate action plan for the city of Ames.

This meeting allotted time for a discussion amongst council members after a first pass of the plans to establish the climate action task force. This discussion included renaming the task force, altering the multi-layer structure and clarifying the expertise requested of task force applicants. 

Ward 4 Rep. Rachel Junck proposed including two to three additional seats for Iowa State students to participate in the task force, adding to the already student-allotted two of 22 task force seats.

“They could have completely different experiences, depending on where they’re living, what their major is, what their background is, for what they could bring to the table for this task force,” Junck said. 

The council members continued to focus on how to engage the Iowa State community within the task force by planning to ask Iowa State President Wendy Wintersteen to appoint a representative to the task force and to learn about Iowa State’s current climate action plans. 

Merry Rankin, director of sustainability at Iowa State, discussed the university’s current climate action plans. The Strategic Plan for Sustainability and Operation was endorsed by Wintersteen in fall 2020 and aims to reduce carbon emissions.  

“The things that Iowa State is doing are going to assist the city in reaching goals and having that carbon emissions impact,” Rankin said. “…We’re looking at our own internal operations as to how we can be more effective in goal setting that we have.”  

The complete council meeting recording from Tuesday can be found on the city of Ames’ YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGsWpQp0saM.