The Wallowa County Board of Commissioners won’t be voting on the county’s Community Energy Strategic Plan at its meeting on Wednesday, Dec. 6. The matter has moved to the commissioners’ meeting on Dec. 20.

That’s fine. It won’t hurt anything to put this off for a couple of weeks.

And it would be fitting if the commissioners made the decision to approve the plan at what almost certainly will be their last meeting of 2023.

Years from now, it could be that Wallowa County residents will look back at 2023 and point to the commissioners’ approval of the plan as a red-letter day in the county’s history — the day that the county took a big step toward a more resilient future.

Of course, it’s also possible that the plan, once approved, will be delegated to a dark corner of the courthouse to gather dust alongside other county plans, sitting forlornly in their three-ring binders.

Our guess is that the first possibility is much more likely than the second.

The Community Energy Strategic Plan represents more than a year’s worth of work from a community leadership team. The overall idea is simple, yet ambitious: to ensure a reliable, clean, resilient and secure local energy system.

The leadership team creating the plan identified 34 recommended actions, and selected seven of those to take precedence. One of the seven, creating a “Microgrid Resiliency Corridor Project,” has caught much of the attention thus far, and you can see why: The notion of “microgrids” built around the cities of Wallowa, Joseph and Enterprise, all powered by renewable sources and designed to increase the county’s energy resilience, is promising.

Rural communities often face a lack of energy access, high energy prices and can be subject to prolonged power outages. The microgrids could serve as an insurance policy.

Some of the remaining six recommended actions in the plan could lead to quick victories, such as the idea of creating a mobile countywide weatherization team to go to households and tackle basic projects to use energy more efficiently. Installing solar-powered crosswalk signals and streetlights also could save energy. And another idea listed among the first seven — to help irrigators understand the benefits of modernized systems — could save water (and money, considering the power bills that go along with irrigation).

As you might have gathered, however, the plan has created a bit of a stir in the county. Some of the buzz is useful: For instance, it’s fair to say that the plan can be a little vague in places. But that’s understandable, given that it’s just a roadmap of where we’d like to go. It can’t predict every detour or, for that matter, every unexpected opportunity.

Some of the buzz is not useful. For example, it’s almost a perverse misreading of the plan to argue that it’s a Trojan horse to allow federal agents to slip unseen into the county and seize the reins of power. In fact, as Commissioner Susan Roberts has pointed out, the plan’s intent is to facilitate local control of our own power.

The fact is, as Commissioner Todd Nash has noted, the plan doesn’t force the county to do anything. The county doesn’t have the money to implement the plan’s suggestions — but approving the plan could help clear the way to line up grants and other investments to help pay for the plan.

It’s a low-risk proposition. But the payoffs could be huge.

The commissioners should approve the plan. If they do so on Dec. 20, they could call it a Christmas present for the county. Given time, that could be a considerable understatement.