Job Description for a Sustainability Officer (SO)
It is critical to have a job description for the Sustainability Officer (SO). All cities, no matter what size, will have a long list of tasks for making both their operations and their community more sustainable. These tasks need to be assigned to staff and volunteers. The SO will be quickly overwhelmed unless there is some assessment of the most important tasks for them to complete versus those that will be completed by other city staff, elected officials or community volunteers. The job description, along with an annual work plan, is the document where this assessment of responsibilities should be clearly outlined.
This sample job description, based on review of positions in a variety of cities, is patterned after the description from the City of Corvallis. Each city will need to decide which of the “special project activities” are priorities and will be included in its SO’s job description.
