The Roanoke County Board of Supervisors has made it clear: the majority of the board will not vote to fund its ICLEI membership again in the future. That means it won’t pay for software that can help measure carbon emissions and greenhouse gas reductions, comparing progress to other localities – and it won’t sponsor the citizen-led RC CLEAR Committee.
In what may strike some as being a bit late, supervisors sat down with RC CLEAR members earlier this week to discuss exactly what the ICLEI affiliation (some are afraid it is connected to a United Nations agenda) does for the county – and where RC CLEAR and ICLEI might be in the future if it spins off into a group separate from the county.
“[Help] me understand what RC CLEAR does,” asked board chairman Joseph McNamara as the work session got underway in a packed 4th floor training room. “[There is] very little likelihood of the sitting board retaining membership,” he added. McNamara suggested that without a direct connection to the county the ICLEI group could be larger, a “[more] dedicated group…without the restrictions of the board.”
Cave Spring supervisor Charlotte Moore has joined another group also affiliated with ICLEI and said she will donate the same software the county now uses to the new group expected to be formed. “I will do whatever’s in my power to support you.” She also accused Hollins supervisor Al Bedrosian of demeaning the RC CLEAR committee and said the recently elected conservative Republican had called other board members “lazy.” Moore made it clear that she is fine with bucking other board members to support RC CLEAR. “If that makes me an arrogant person Mr. Bedrosian [that’s fine].”
RC CLEAR committee leader Jesse Freedman said his group would lose “the staff help,” if separated from the county and fears that Roanoke County’s commitment to a 3% reduction in its carbon footprint on an annual basis will go by the wayside with the watchdog group pushing the issue. “I have a hard time seeing us be successful without [county support].”
McNamara was blunt: “if you are affiliated [with the county] it’s not going to work.” There has been a considerable political firestorm in recent years every time the $1200 annual membership fee comes up for renewal. Local Tea Party members and others claim ICLEI is an international organization tied to the UN’s Agenda 21 – which they say wants to force people to live a certain lifestyle.
Members of the RC CLEAR committee and Roanoke County staffers that support the group have told supervisors in the past that there is no connection to the United Nations or Agenda 21 – claiming RC CLEAR is simply an educational outreach tool that can show residents and businesses ways to save money on energy costs – also reducing their carbon footprint in the process. The group’s saveaton.org website lives on, administered now by the Roanoke Valley-Alleghany Regional Partnership.
Vinton supervisor Jason Peters would like to see some of the RC CLEAR suggestions for energy saving practices put in county building codes and be part of the planning process. “[Otherwise] we’ll be always be chasing the dog.” Peters also claimed the majority of those who received free home energy audits after RC CLEAR got a federal grant have not moved on many of the suggestions to make their houses more energy efficient.
Bedrosian disputed the notion that board members who don’t support ICLEI and RC CLEAR “want dirty air. It’s really about climate change and man-made global warming…that’s where I have the issue.” Bedrosian does not believe in global warming, man-made or otherwise. “[It’s] more a group about promoting man-made global warming. That’s why I’ve always had an issue with ICLEI – and RC CLEAR.”
Bedrosian told the work session crowd he objected to any targets, objectives and policies that would lead to the monitoring of carbon footprints. “You’re not a group that’s here just to give ideas,” he told Freedman and a handful of other RC CLEAR members that spoke at the work session. He disputed Freedman’s assertion that 97% of scientists worldwide support the global warming theory.
“It’s not warming,” said Bedrosian of the Earth; “it is,” countered Freedman. Fellow RC CLEAR member Suzi Fortenberry said she and her husband moved to the county to become green developers, “thinking it was a very progressive area.” Bedrosian didn’t like the term progressive, asking “Are we all progressives?” Countered Fortenberry: “some of the things I hear today – I don’t think you are.”
The county’s ICLEI membership officially ends this fall. Pulling the county’s carbon reduction goals out of that relationship “gutted it,” said Freedman. “Without RC CLEAR, without targets, where does that leave us?”
RC CLEAR “is not going to be RC CLEAR anymore,” said Moore, who pledged to fight on, even if the group survives as a private entity. “My goal is to lead like-minded people who believe in global warming…we can certainly help reduce it.”
By Gene Marrano
