The City of Tracy recognizes that a healthy and prosperous community strategically balances economic, environmental, and social sectors of community planning. The Sustainability Action Plan is a detailed, long-range strategy to achieve sustainability in the sectors of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, energy, transportation and land use, solid waste, water, agriculture and open space, biological resources, air quality, public health, and economic development. Collectively, addressing community development through these lenses will strengthen Tracy as a place that is attractive, prosperous, and adaptive to social, political, and environmental changes.

Strategically planning for economic, environmental, and social sustainability is a challenge for many California communities. The Sustainability Action Plan provides Tracy with a guide to reduce GHG emissions, reduce consumption of nonrenewable resources, improve public health, promote economic vitality, implement the General Plan, and engage residents. These efforts will also assist Tracy in balancing local economic development objectives with the State of California’s required emission reduction targets and other environmental goals.

Through this strategy, Tracy positions itself to be economically attractive and competitive to like-minded entrepreneurs and companies. State regulations now require new development to account for its impact to the environment, specifically in terms of GHG emissions and impact on ecosystems. Mitigating impacts in these areas on a project by project basis is often difficult, costly, and time-consuming. The Sustainability Action Plan considers impacts of future development on a citywide level and provides a framework for addressing mitigation of such impacts. This strategy effectively streamlines the development process by relieving individual projects of the task to develop their own impacts analyses and mitigation measures.