Lafayette residents will have the chance to weigh in on the city’s plans to combat climate change tonight at a town hall meeting.
Lafayette Mayor Tony Roswarski proposed drafting a climate change resolution at a city council meeting last month. This evening's event is the first in what could be a series of community forums.
“We’re going to do a brief kind of overview of what other cities have done--those specific goals they’ve identified and kind of have been working towards,” says Purdue student Iris O’Donnell Bellisario, who helped coordinate the event.
She also helped draft West Lafayette’s climate change resolution, which passed last October. O’Donnell Bellisario says some people might think Lafayette isn’t moving fast enough to mitigate climate issues, but the meeting represents a first step.
“The city is trying to make sure that whatever they do is going to stick, and it’s going to work,” O’Donnell Bellisario says.
She says the broader issue of global warming impacts Tippecanoe County directly, from higher air conditioning bills to unpredictable growing seasons for area crops. While tonight’s meeting will address how the city currently addresses the impacts of climate change, O’Donnell Bellisario says input from attendees is key to Lafayette’s next steps.
“The focus is to get people who are really—who either have questions about what climate change is and how it’s going to impact them, or to get people who are really passionate and want to see the city doing something, get them involved and kind of in the process,” she says.
Lafayette’s climate change discussion will be held tonight at 6 p.m. at Lafayette’s City Hall.
