Reading through the “Full Plan” for Climate Ready Oak Park, I was intrigued in particular by one item: “Update building inspection and permitting processes to reflect net zero criteria and well building concepts.” (Action Item EE05)
Currently the village undertakes building inspections but not the kind that would encourage me to reduce fossil fuel use in my home, let alone ensure that I put into place “net zero criteria.” I am free to live in one of Oak Park’s pre-World War I, inadequately insulated houses and not do a thing about it.
Not so, an aesthetic transgression. In my case, I received a letter that a “Neighborhood Walk” had discovered that the “soffits” and “fascia” on my garage needed sprucing up. The concept and the vocabulary were new to me. Was the state of my garage really bothering anybody? My friendly neighbor directly across the alley could see my weathered fascia when taking her items to her recycling bin. In a brief chat, I found out that not only wasn’t she offended by the soffits but she had received a similar letter about her garage.
I eventually did address the violations related to the appearance of those soffits and fascia. The amount I spent on the garage contractor happened to be similar to the amount I had spent on a different contractor who had worked on my attic. That project had improved the air-sealing in my attic and blown in recycled cellulose. This project had yielded compounded benefits for comfort and appearance. Looking at those two projects, I know which one I found to be more rewarding.
What if the village inspection and citation process was applied to the urgent problem of climate change instead of alley-way aesthetics? Some residents in Oak Park are consuming energy at exceedingly high rates that are of no benefit to themselves or to others. Knowing the source of the highest emissions is specifically a matter between a household and the utility company, but there are tell-tale signs. On any given block, you can see roofs that lose their snow blanket faster than the others. You could say that those homes have less aesthetic appeal than those that keep the soft blanket of dazzling white crystals longer. What if we could cite such aesthetic and climate-change deficiencies? The homeowner should also have the chance to rebut any citations by showing home utility data demonstrating low energy consumption.
The village’s tools to address problems that are discovered via the subjective process of a Neighborhood Walk presumably does not depend solely on voluntary compliance but has legal teeth.
“The Village has the right to abate violations and/or nuisances at the cost of the property owner and to lien the property to recoup those expenses pursuant to Ordinance 2015-0-181 section 106.”
What if we used these tools to elicit a significant, positive change in the world? It’s interesting that the Ordinance dates from 1973, coinciding with the year of the OPEC-induced petroleum shortages. The oil embargo stimulated far-reaching energy efficiency programs at that time but more so in Europe than here.
Residential energy use is Oak Park’s number one source of local emissions, but we do not have a significant plan for reducing emissions related to existing residences, which make up the vast majority of Oak Park’s housing stock. Fifty years on, Oak Park has a climate plan but is not exactly climate ready. We have tools to address climate change that have not yet been used for this purpose, but first we need to agree that some things are more important than appearances.
