The plan, containing more than 200 specific actions to make Westmount more sustainable environmentally, was created from input provided by residents and other stakeholders during public consultations held last year, and from best practices developed by innovative cities elsewhere.

It is scheduled to be adopted by city council in early October. Municipal staff will then calculate the personnel and resource costs of implementing the priorities. However, not all the ideas can be put into practice immediately.

While real concerns are listed in the plan, the city has an obligation to maintain its infrastructure, parks and lighting, while ensuring the effectiveness of current waste management practices in a sustainable manner. From the many actions listed in the six chapters of the plan, city council developed a short list. The Sept. 10 meeting will focus on prioritizing some of these starting next year.

Residents will also be given time to discuss more long term actions. Those who cannot attend the meeting will be able to respond to a survey on the City of Westmount’s web site. The short-listed issues include energy and greenhouse gas reduction, water conservation and usage, nature and biodiversity, public health, wasted resources and transportation.

“The priorities will be used in the budgeting process for 2010,” says Joshua Wolfe, Westmount’s sustainable development coordinator. “After council adopts the plan with these priorities, then the admnistration will look at the budgeting implications and figure out how it can be done, and hopefully some of them won’t have any budgetary implications. Hopefully a great many can be accomplished during 2010.”

While volume one of the action plan takes an eco-system approach, volume two, according to a public review draft of the plan, “will build on these natural systems and cycles in a more abstract, human-created sphere.” The document notes that not all aspects of a sustainable community are under the direction of a city government. For some challenges, the focus of effort will have to be with the residents and other stakeholders of Westmount.

“In order to make Westmount sustainable, and realize the promise described in the Vision Statement, members of the community will need to change their attitudes and actions,” it says. The municipal government can support this work, but much of the effort will need to come from members of the community itself.

“Some of those may be taken on by citizens' groups like the Horticultural Advisory Committee and the two Healthy City Project subcommittees – Environment and Community Support. Completely arms-length groups such as the schools might implement others. However, at some point, to fully implement the Sustainable Development Action Plan, there will probably be a need to create new mechanisms of community outreach. Otherwise, change is unlikely to occur.”