By Vinny Spotleson
At a recent meeting of the Toiyabe Chapter Executive Committee (ExCom), Vinny Spotleson was selected as our new volunteer Chair. We thank our past Chair Tina Davis for her service, and are excited that she will continue serving on our ExCom.
Vinny started his career with Sierra Club in 2009 where he worked on the Beyond Coal Campaign. He is proud to have been a part of the effort to close the Reid Gardner coal fired power plant in Moapa, and he helped get three different national monuments designated in Nevada: Tule Springs Fossil Beds, Gold Butte, and the Basin & Range National Monument. After leaving Sierra Club, Vinny worked several years on staff for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Congresswoman Dina Titus before switching careers to become an educator. Vinny now teaches World History at Valley High School in Las Vegas.
As Chair, Vinny’s priority is to hire a new Chapter Director to guide our climate work going forward. Sierra Club is going to continue to advocate for mass transit like light rail, as well as alternative transportation options such as safer bike routes. We know we need to transition to clean energy, especially solar in Nevada and Eastern California, but this does not have to mean we sacrifice our public lands. The Toiyabe Chapter is going to push even harder for distributed generation. We should be already getting 100% of our daytime electricity from solar on rooftops, parking lots, warehouses, and other damaged and disturbed lands. Over the next two years Sierra Club will be working on formulating policies on both transportation and solar to guide our endorsement process in the 2024 elections and our legislative advocacy in 2025.
There is a lot of work to be done, and we need both staff and volunteers to make it happen. Please consider volunteering your time and donating to the Toiyabe Chapter today!