Climate Column: Cool Petaluma celebrates success, evolve to serve community
Hundreds of Petalumans work together, creating a model for local climate action.
The Argus Courier has asked our Campaign Director, Natasha Juliana, to write a monthly climate column for the newspaper. Here is the December installment:
NATASHA JULIANA
COOL PETALUMA
December 22, 2022
What does a community-led climate action movement look like? Anyone at last week’s Cool Petaluma Stakeholder Shindig saw firsthand what magic can happen when you combine community building with planetary protection. More than 200 people gathered together with this shared purpose and filled the room with joy, hope, and camaraderie. Even Petaluma Pete was there, greeting guests as they arrived with his festive piano tunes.
It was a big night for the organization – celebrating great success in 2022 and announcing big shifts for 2023.
The event celebrated the efforts of hundreds of volunteers on the ground who mobilized their neighbors to work together, strengthening social bonds, increasing household sustainability practices, and improving life on their blocks.
“The reflections on the progress made this year made me feel proud,” said Mary Dooley of her experience that night.
In 2022, Cool Petaluma trained 163 leaders, launched 124 blocks, and reached 723 households who then reduced their carbon footprint by more than two million pounds! Even more powerful were the countless stories of new friendships and collective action, from soup nights to safe streets engagement.
“The City of Petaluma has the ambitious climate goal to be carbon neutral by 2030, which will require action and commitment from the entire community,” says Climate Action Manager Rhianna Frank. “Cool Petaluma’s community engagement efforts play an invaluable role in meeting these goals. Success is contingent on unified action and Cool Petaluma is helping to make that happen.”
It was also a chance to unveil exciting plans for the new year. Based on input from countless local experts, community groups, and program participants, the Cool Petaluma team is taking the feedback from this first year and incorporating it into a new program to be launched in early 2023.
During this pilot year, it was essential to identify what works well so that those areas can be amplified, and to identify what does not work well, so that those areas can be redesigned. Overall, people loved getting to know their neighbors and found real power in organizing around shared goals, from traffic calming to sheet mulching. At the same time, many people felt overwhelmed by the program’s time commitment and complexity.
The goal now is to create an easier-to-use version of the block-based engagement program that ties more directly with our amazing local resources. Ideally, this new version can also be translated beyond the block to schools, service clubs, faith-based organizations, and businesses, all of which have expressed an interest in participating.
As most will remember, Cool Petaluma got its start in January 2022 after becoming one of three cities in California to win the Cool City Challenge, which provided the potential for $1 million in funding over the course of several years. For year one, the Cool City Challenge grant, run by the Empowerment Institute, provided the coolblock.org platform and a total of $120,000 of restricted funding for staff salaries.
The challenge with the Challenge is that it will only fund work done within its own program parameters, making it very difficult to evolve to meet the unique needs and opportunities of our town. Therefore, we’ve decided to capitalize on our early success and begin to operate independently, which will allow us to be more flexible and responsive. Cool Petaluma will no longer receive Cool City Challenge grant funding through the Empowerment Institute, but will continue to have free access to the coolblock.org platform as a part of the array of tools available to participants.
“You are a shining star in the world of climate action,” says David Gershon, CEO of the Empowerment Institute, who praised Petaluma’s efforts. “We are proud to have been able to provide seed funding to kickstart the Cool Petaluma journey. We are also happy you have a way to build out the next stage in a more local way. This makes good sense.”
Cool Petaluma is now creating a custom community climate action program and has already raised more than $60,000 in seed funding, putting us well on our way to establishing a version of the block-based program tailored to our town. This year we have proven that lots of small actions add up to huge impact. Support through individual tax-deductible donation will be instrumental in helping us fulfill our potential.
"I think this is absolutely the right next step for Cool Petaluma,” says Ann Edminster, Chair of Petaluma’s Climate Action Commission. “In hindsight, it was inevitable that our highly engaged community would want and need to shape the program to reflect our extraordinary base of local knowledge and commitment."
To watch videos of the Stakeholder Shindig, visit youtube.com/@coolpetaluma.
Natasha Juliana is the Campaign Director for Cool Petaluma which operates as a DBA program of the Aqus Community Foundation 501(c)3. She can be reached at natashaj@coolpetaluma.org For information on how to get involved or make a donation, visit coolpetaluma.org/donate