Dear MP Town Council Members:
As a licensed architect practicing in the Bay Area for over 20+ years, I support the recommendations of the Menlo Park Environmental Quality Commission in adopting the following three agenda items up for discussion this evening:
1. Enact an ordinance prohibiting the installation of new gas equipment in homes & buildings throughout the city (e.g. stop making the methane/fossil fuel problem worse);
2. Protect low income residents through equity Guardrails (a full home electrification program for 1500 LMI households funded by the UUT or other funds); and
3. A suite of programs to ease and assist home- and building owners with electrification.
Building decarbonization is one of the tools we have NOW to immediately have an impact on climate change: we don’t need to wait for future technologies to be developed; they all exist at this moment. Huge swaths of this country (mostly the south eastern US) exists on electricity only and WITHOUT gas. We can do it here in California too.
Lastly, climate change and the effort to decarbonize our building stock is so important that my professional organization, the American Institute of Architects of California, recently came out with the below compelling statement on August 5th with a mandate for all architects to move to net-zero built environments.
California, and more specifically Menlo Park, is a laboratory for what the world can achieve in addressing climate change. I urge you to move forward adopting these measures immediately.
Best,
Hilary Bates AIA
LEED Green Associate
Hilarybatesarchitecture.com
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