Ida Rose Sylvester brings years of community organizing experience and environmental advocacy to her campaign for Mountain View City Council. Her work on the board of Carbon-Free Mountain View and as a member of the Parks and Recreation Commission has focused on raising public awareness of local greenhouse gas emission trends and pushing city leaders to act urgently in dealing with climate change. 

She notes that, due in part to her advocacy, Mountain View has “ambitious climate goals and substantial plans,” and she aims to use her term on the City Council to turn these plans into “actions with clear priorities, measurable outcomes, timelines, [and] budgets.” IdaRose identifies transportation infrastructure and energy-efficient building upgrades as two areas in which significant progress can be made fairly quickly, not just to mitigate the effects of climate change but to improve the quality of life for Mountain View residents. Expanding the City’s free shuttle service, and implementing safety measures known to be effective along streets otherwise conducive to foot and bicycle traffic, would reduce the number of cars on the road as well as provide equitable transportation for workers, students, and seniors. She plans to work with Silicon Valley Clean Energy to develop incentive programs that would allow affordable housing providers, small landlords, homeowners, and renters to make the clean energy transition “without creating displacement or passing significant costs through to tenants.” Other elements of her climate policy include:

•     Achieving carbon neutrality by 2040 and ending the flow of natural gas in Mountain View;
•     Eliminating the use of toxic chemicals in landscaping and incentivizing greener building materials; and
•     Taking steps to preserve and support biodiversity in the City’s parks and open spaces and ensuring that tree-planting goals are met.

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions, she points out, is a matter of equity: “Climate policy should improve health, affordability, and quality of life for the people with the fewest resources, not make their lives more expensive.” As a pragmatically minded coalition-builder and effective communicator, IdaRose Sylvester is poised to spur meaningful progress toward a “safer, more sustainable community” on the Mountain View City Council, and 350 Bay Area Action is pleased to support her in this effort.

Campaign website: https://www.idarosesylvester.com/ 

Volunteer some time: https://www.idarosesylvester.com/home#join-us