Just a short while ago the Brattleboro Selectboard voted 3-2 to kill the Peak Oil Task Force. The recent electees, the slate of O'Connor, Corum and Allen split the Selectboard and carried the decision. Ms O'Connor, running under the self-decribed title of "The Uniter" did not consider a compromise solution in which the Committee would have been given another six months under the auspices of the Brattleboro Climate Control (BCC) Committee headed by Paul Cameron. Degray's recommendation was to provide time for the Task Force to study the findings that the Task Force previously brought before the SB and create an action plan. Cameron was not present at the SB mtg but according to SB Chair Dick Degray, who spoke to Cameron earlier about this issue, the BCC would have welcomed the task force. The Task Force itself distributed a written proposal in which it was committing itself to fulfull this recommendation.
Town Manager Sondag led the move to kill the committee with claims that BCC and thus by extension the Town is doing quite enough in the general area of energy conservation and that she feared that the Post-Oil Task Force would bother town officials with redundant questions. Tim Stevenson, spokesperson for the Task
Force, assured Ms Sondag that they were in total agreement with her in that they definitely did not want to duplicate efforts or bother town officials.
The five year old BCC climate plan calls for a 10% reduction in air pollution by 2010. We are now only one and a half years away from the target date set in 2004 and there is no indication that air pollution has been reduced at all in Brattleboro.
Neither Ms Sondag nor any of the majority offered any examples of redundancies between the Task Force and any other group working on energy issues. The Task Force proposal for a continuing charge did not indicate any duplications of efforts with other groups.
The members of the disbanded Task Force will meet at a later date to decide about further activity.