A climate task force needs a town willing to act

Dear Editor,

I congratulate Yorktown High School senior Henry Quintanilla on his appointment to Yorktown’s Climate Smart Communities Task Force.

I fear, however, that, given the hostility of the town’s current governance toward a transition away from fossil fuel dependency, the young man may encounter disappointment.

A case in point is the town’s failure to solarize the recently paved Stony Street Sports Complex parking lot, which solarization would have cost the town nothing, and would have given the town a share of the electrical generation revenue for years to come.

Henry need only travel a little south to admire the Ossining Brookside School parking lot solar canopy, which is on a similar scale as what “might have been” at Stony Street. Ossining’s climate initiative at Brookside School and its other schools (panels on roofs and over parking areas) will save the Ossining District hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. Obviously, the repulsion, which various past and present Yorktown leaders share toward solar arrays and electric vehicles does not even make economic sense anymore.

The defiance of the current Yorktown Town Board and Yorktown’s school districts toward ameliorative climate smart solutions is palpable. Not one town-owned building or parking area features solar panels, homeowners face arbitrary restrictions on residential solar arrays, antiquated building codes do nothing to encourage climate smartness in new construction, and the town of Yorktown and its school districts, per recent announcements, will continue for another decade to deploy gas driven mechanical equipment and diesel-powered vehicles. Besides the affront of Yorktown’s current leaders to climate smart technology, I note that diesel fuel is selling at $7.99 a gallon and climbing.

-William Stoiber, Yorktown