Fwd: New York State Association of Conservation Commissions
Jason West
Begin forwarded message:
From: simon skolnik <nysaccp...@gmail.com>
Date: August 4, 2024 at 6:52:55 PM EDT
To: SAC <s...@albanyny.gov>
Cc: pres...@nysacc.org
Subject: New York State Association of Conservation Commissions
ATTENTION: This email came from an external source. Please do not open attachments or click on links from unknown senders or unexpected emails.
Dear Chair Violetta DeRosa of the City of Albany Sustainability Advisory Committee,
I am the president of the New York State Association of Conservation Advisory Commissions founded in 1972. NYSACC (pronounced ni-sack) represents over 310 statewide municipalities and counties that have created volunteer land use or energy use advisory commissions. We just discovered you recently through our program of mining municipal websites for information.
Who is NYSACC?
The NYS Department of Environmental Protection created NYSACC as an association of municipally appointed land advisory councils to assist the state in developing a local response to open space preservation. We are not part of NYS, and are a private 501(c)(3) organization staffed by volunteers. In 2019, reacting to the emergence throughout New York of volunteer energy use advisory commissions (such as Climate Smart Community Task Forces), NYSACC realized these new groups, although formed along the guidelines of the state, did not have an association where ideas and problems can be shared. And since climate and land use issues overlap, having both groups under NYSACC’s umbrella was a goal worth pursuing.
And this is how we can help you.
· NYSACC Annual Conference on the Environment – Our conference will be held this year in the Tug Hill region, just to the east of Lake Ontario. See our attached fliers. It’ll be virtual on Wednesday, September 18th (so you can attend from anywhere in the state), and will have in-person field trips and a networking reception on Thursday and Friday (September 19th and 20th). This year’s theme is reaching out to rural communities. The Tug Hill Commission, an arm of the NYS government, has innovative means of assisting their members meet their goals in a lower-density municipality environment, where getting volunteers can be a difficult task. At the same time, we are providing actionable information helpful to all of NYS’s municipally created volunteer land use or energy use advisory commissions. Check out this link to find out more: Youre-Invited-to-the-2024-NYSACC-Conference-on-the-Environment.pdf
· NYSACC Website (https://nysacc.org/) – volunteers and NYSACC interns have been busy this year reading over 1,500 city, town, and incorporated village websites to find information for your needs. This year we’ve found new advisory committees in all areas of the state raising our member list 20% to over 310 municipalities and counties. This fall we will be adding our newest addition to our association’s website, a library of member projects, sorted by subject matter. This will complement our existing Ordinance Library, providing our members with a great resource to provide you with what’s most helpful to your communities. Our website is being given a complete overhaul, based on interviews we’ve had with members, asking them what they wanted to see that will give them the most help in their activities. We are constantly updating our lists of chairs and coordinators, so that you can have access to neighbors to collaborate on local and regional matters. The complete list, sorted by county and municipality, with the information you need to make contact will be in our website this fall. Attached is just a brief look at what we will be providing you.
· Forming Regional or County Partnerships: (a) For the past two years we’ve been working on a three-county alliance to create a sea level rise/flooding resilience network in the Long Island region (see link to our website: CRN | NYSACC | New York State Association of Conservation Commissions. (b) Within the past few months, we have brought together Sustainable Putnam and Sustainable Westchester in the hopes of forming a bi-county partnership to develop a regional approach to energy conservation. (c) And in Westchester County, which does not have a county Environmental Management Council, we are reaching out to county-wide groups to form a steering committee to create a centralized place for the sharing of ideas and issues.
· Climate Smart Community Task Forces – NYSACC is continually working to provide these groups with a means of sharing information important to their communities, as well as providing them with as complete a list of nearby and statewide energy use committees as possible. We’ve identified over 130 municipalities that have an energy advisory committee or one that includes both energy and land use.
Our only source of funding is the annual dues received from our members. If you are interested in supporting NYSACC, please find attached our dues invoice and a form to fill in with your current members.
As our climate continues to reflect changes caused by greenhouse gas emissions, it is so important for local groups like yourself to maintain a strong and just commitment to your community, both as it creates a more resilient environment as well as a sustainable source of alternative energy. We hope you will partner with NYSACC to make this happen.
Thank you.
Simon
Simon Skolnik
President NYSACC
PO Box 356, Katonah NY 10536
Some Special Notes: (1) NYSACC is continually striving to obtain the correct email contacts for chairs of land use commissions and chair/coordinators of energy use task forces. But it’s a constant work in progress. If you have received this email and are not one of those positions listed above, please forward this on to them. (2) Also, it would help us if you could share that person(s) email contact. (3) Since chairs/coordinators come and go, if your community doesn’t already have this, please ask them to create a generic email address that stays with the municipality and the organization, not the person, and can be distributed to all members of your advisory group. (4) Finally, if there are more than one advisory group in your county, city, town, or village, NYSACC only requests one dues payment to cover your entire municipality.
