Conversation creeps into the Milford City Building’s main hallway on a July morning. Pass the hazmat training happening in a room on the right, walk toward the tax office and arrive at the source of the sound – a small conference room where every seat around the long, mahogany table is filled.
A teacher sits near the mayor across from a few local business owners and city employees, who are comparing notes about a recent storm.
Though most know each other outside of this room – Milford is a town of about 6,500 – these Climate Action Steering Commission meetings are the first time many of the elected officials and residents are talking about climate change and how their town should plan for it.
“Beginning all of this work will put us in the position to actually establish commitments… and hold the rest of the city accountable,” said Ella O’Maley, the commission's founder.
The Xavier University student started working with Milford in June through a three-month-long fellowship led by the regional environmental nonprofit Green Umbrella.
RELATED: Covington, Milford and Oxford receive support to plan for effects of climate change
The program aims to get local governments ready to do climate action planning – whether mitigating flood risk from the Little Miami River, protecting residents from extreme heat or developing strategies to reduce climate change-creating carbon emissions. Assembling a Climate Action Steering Commission of a dozen people was one of the ways O’Maley helped Milford do that.
“My hope for the city of Milford is credited to the longtime residents who also have hope, and who are dedicated to seeing their city be healthier and more resilient,” O’Maley said.
Until this summer, Milford took a piecemeal approach to sustainability: starting a curbside recycling program, changing lights in City Hall to LEDs and establishing some no-mow areas.
“They are in (the) very beginning stages of this and I think that’s exactly where this work needs to be,” O’Maley said.
As effects of climate change get more intense, O’Maley says leaders can take action.
“Local government plays a huge role in climate action because they have the word of the people and they have the power to make change in their cities,” O’Maley said.
In bigger municipalities, governments have been able to implement more far-reaching policies in attempts to offset their environmental impacts.
In 2020, Denver raised its sales tax to fund projects that would address the causes of climate change, according to Colorado Public Radio. And, last year, Cincinnati updated its climate action plan that established goals to increase tree canopy to cool hotter neighborhoods, get more electricity from non-fossil-fuel sources and promote local food production.
In smaller cities like Milford, those initiatives do not exist yet. The Climate Action Steering Commission could set the agenda for their creation.
'Finding a wheel that works for you': climate action in another Ohio city
Milford is not unique as a Southwest Ohio city without a Climate Action Plan. According to Green Umbrella, just two have them: Cincinnati and Oxford.
Oxford published a climate action plan in 2023. A year prior, the municipality was in the same position as Milford. City staff and a climate action steering committee were getting the process started and looking to other places for inspiration, said Oxford Sustainability Coordinator Reena Murphy.
“Sustainability is not about reinventing the wheel,” Murphy said. “It's about finding a wheel that works for you, blinging it out for your community and keeping it rolling.”
Oxford’s plan lays out steps for the community to achieve carbon neutrality and to ensure the city “remains a thriving place despite the changing climate,” according to the city’s website.
It has taken initial steps by implementing a citywide renewable energy aggregation program and replacing streetlights with LEDs.
While the government is able to make some of those changes, Murphy says residents play a big role in climate action too.
RELATED: This youth green workforce gets teens outside — and into conservation
“There's not a single person who climate change won't affect, so there's not a single person that can't be a part of the solution for climate change,” Murphy said.
Take, for example, how an Oxford garden club does pollinator-friendly planting by the pool.
A connected effort
When local realtor Tara Means learned about Milford’s Climate Action Steering Commission, she was surprised.
“I think that we all like to live in our little bubbles,” Means said. “The truth is that a lot of people in the Milford community are thinking this way – maybe they're just not talking about it,” Means said.
She focuses on sustainability in her work selling houses, talking to clients about pollinator habitat in lawns and energy efficient appliances. Means didn’t realize how many other people in Milford were trying to reduce their environmental impact too, until attending her first commission meeting this July.
“It's not a group of people sitting around saying what we can't do,” Means said. “It's a lot of people asking, ‘OK, what can we do? And how are they doing it somewhere else? And, oh my gosh, a neighboring area is doing this. How do we do that?’”
She says climate action in Milford is important to sustain the city long-term.
What’s next?
Milford’s Climate Action Steering Commission started as a group of volunteers. It became an official city body Monday night, when Milford City Council voted unanimously in favor of its establishment.
Councilmember Kim Chamberland said the commission could function like the existing Parks and Recreation Commission, meeting and proposing ideas to council.
The commission will include a city council member, residents, city government officials and environmental experts, according to its bylaws.