Dear friends of Green Buildings Now,
With your help, the future South Beacon Hill Resilience Hub has moved much closer to reality. Your contributions funded the recent insulation of the main building, and we have sufficient funds to begin weatherizing and decarbonizing additional buildings.
We’re writing to you today to share the exciting news that the Seattle City Council has adopted a 2023 city budget that includes money to accelerate decarbonization, substantially increase battery capacity, and purchase emergency supplies for the Resilience Hub on the campus of Bethany United Church of Christ. Many of you wrote or called the City Council to voice your support for this appropriation, and we thank you.
Prime sponsor Tammy Morales told her colleagues this Resilience Hub is consistent with the Green New Deal Oversight Board’s call for more safe places for residents of marginalized communities during episodes of life-threatening heat, cold and smoke. She also noted that leadership has come from the community, significant progress has been made, and this can serve as a model for other resilience hubs.
Morales’s budget amendment designates $455,000 for the South Beacon Hill Resilience Hub, with the understanding that the Hub partners will raise $280,000 by the end of next year. We’ve raised most of that amount, and we’re continuing to raise funds. Please consider an additional gift to Green Buildings Now to support building weatherization and decarbonization.
We are grateful to Councilmember Morales and the City Council for their vote of confidence. We are grateful to partners Bethany UCC, Got Green and Spark Northwest for envisioning a South Beacon Hill Resilience Hub. And we are especially grateful to you, without whom this would not have happened.
We’ll write you from time to time about further developments. In the next few weeks, our volunteer leadership team will post updated information at greenbuildingsnow.org about the city funding, along with news and photos about the work recently accomplished on-site. If you want to ask how you can be more involved in our mission of partnering with frontline communities for a just transition to fossil-fuel-free buildings, please reply to this email.
Gratefully,
Patrick Barredo
Joan Davis
Cindy Ervin
Keith Ervin
Paul Finley
Nora Langan
Nancy Maranville
Carol Nelson
Ben Pfeiffer
The Rev. Meighan Pritchard
Dave Ramsay
Sharon Victor
Linda Zaugg
The Green Buildings Now leadership team