There are many different shades to the color green. As a child, coloring would have included the Crayola green, a very respectable middle-of-the-road, darker green. When people discuss green as a movement, most picture a lighter green, more like that of Kermit the Frog, or the color of new grass. Well, Tracy is embarking on an Emerald City status, evoking images of a crystal green from the Wizard of Oz.

When it comes to sustainability, it’s not the intensity of the color of green that matters, but the commitment behind the color. Last week, Tracy residents had the opportunity to rate the color of their green with dots, signifying which sustainability measure Tracy should focus on. The event was the one and only public workshop in the process that the city has evolved to: Drafting a sustainability action plan — or SAP — to gain the city an Emerald status.

The city’s commitment toward sustainability has been slow to evolve. Although progress had already started by late 2008, the city got a kick in the pants last year: The Center for Biological Diversity sent Tracy a letter, commenting on our general plan update and its ineffectual ability to deal with sprawl as required by Assembly Bill 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006. Since the city of Stockton had already been sued for its “business as usual” sprawl general plan, the writing was on the wall that change was necessary.

To craft a direction, originally the city had plans for multi-day community sustainability charette with interactive public input. When the economy tanked, the city scraped the charette in favor of a state-run fledgling program called the Emerald Cities project. Boosted by help from federal stimulus money, the process has the promise to be more than just public talking points.

The core of the Emerald status is the creation of a citywide sustainability action plan. For business owners out there, a SAP is like a mission statement and business plan rolled into one. It’s putting in writing a commitment to sustainability, and as “action” implies, includes the steps on how to get there.

And there is a target. The city proposes that we will reduce our greenhouse gas emissions — or GHG — by 29 percent by 2020.

The first step toward a goal is to establish where you are. For that, Tracy had to calculate its baseline GHG. That part of the study was completed in December 2009.

The news wasn’t all that shocking: Tracyites spend most of their time in a car, with 63 percent of our community GHG coming from transportation.

Like all over-indulgences, it’s hard to stop bad habits cold-turkey. To make change work, sustainable reduction needed to be attacked in various areas.

Last week, the city presented 41 emission-reduction strategies and another 44 non-quantified measures defining ways we can reduce our GHG.

For those in the room, 10 sticky dots were handed out. The premise was simple: Stick the dots on those strategies that were a priority. Although I jokingly asked for more, 10 is all we got.

Not counting officials and staff, there weren’t even enough people in attendance to give half of the measures one dot, let alone a priority. For myself, with the opinion the city is languishing behind in sustainability, 10 priorities seemed a discouraging small step. But a step it is, in the right direction, though if it is with enough commitment has yet to be seen.

For a change: Recycle. Recycle. Recycle. If we recycled 75 percent of our waste, we could save a whopping 14 percent of our expenditure of local GHG emissions.

To make a difference: Reduce your car trips. Walk. Bike. Take the bus.

To take a stand: Rate the color of your green: Visit EmeraldTracy.org and download the sustainability measures. Let Kimberly Matlock know where your dots would go. Contact her at 831-6430 or at kimberly.matlock@ci.tracy.ca.us. Let your voice be counted.

• Christina D.B. Frankel is a 20-year Tracy resident, architect and mother of three. Her column, Living Green, runs twice-monthly in the Tracy Press. She can be reached at cdfrankel@sbcglobal.net.