Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAboutConservation Commission - 10/09/2007 APPROVED MINUTES CONSERVATION COMMISSION TUESDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2007 7:00 PM, CITY CENTER 8080 Mitchell Road, Eden Prairie, MN Heritage Room I COMMISSION MEMBERS: Eapen Chacko (Chair), Ray Daniels, Laura Jester, Sean Katof, Rita Krocak, Geneva MacMillan, Jan Mosman CITY STAFF: Leslie A. Stovring, Staff Liaison Janice Curielli, Recording Secretary STUDENT MEMBERS: Marie Loeffelholz, James (JP) Maslyn, Ann Wachutka VISITORS: Julia, Brittany and Ashley, Eden Prairie High School Students and Jackie Brodin, Eden Prairie High School Faculty Member I. CALL TO ORDER/ROLL CALL Chair Chacko called the meeting to order at 7:12 PM. Wachutka was absent. Chacko asked the visitors to introduce themselves. Julie, Brittany and Ashley introduced themselves and said they are at tonight's meeting to observe and interact at a civic meeting as a high school class assignment. Their teacher, Jackie Brodin, was also present. II. APPROVAL OF AGENDA MacMillan added Item V.A. Report on Energy Symposium. MOTION: Daniels moved, seconded by Jester, to approve the agenda as amended. Motion carried 7-0. III. APPROVAL OF MINUTES A. September 11, 2007 MOTION: Krocak moved, seconded by Katof, to approve the minutes of the September 11, 2007 meeting as published. Motion carried 7-0. IV. REPORTS FROM STAFF A. Springy Workshop—Pond and Lake Care Stovring said she has not been able to settle on a date for next year's spring workshop. She noted the workshop topic of Pond and Lake Care was suggested at the Commission's June workshop on shoreland restoration and rain gardens. We are planning to hire someone to come in to give the workshop. Chacko noted we had a very good response to the first workshop on shoreland restoration and rain gardens. Eden Prairie Conservation Commission October 9, 2007 Page 2 V. REPORTS FROM COMMISSION MEMBERS A. Report on Enemy Symposium—MacMillan MacMillan said she recently attended a symposium at Gustavus Adolphus on the subject of energy conservation. She is going to write up a review for the League of Women Voters and will send a copy of the review to Ms Stovring for distribution to the Commission members. Chacko asked how the symposium topics were organized and who sponsored the event. MacMillan said it was sponsored by the university and then read a list of the energy-related topics covered at the symposium. B. Report on Volunteering at Minnesota State Fair—Mosman Mosman said she and her daughter, Lulu, worked with the Minnesota Renewable Energy Association at the Minnesota State Fair this year. She said the association chose to concentrate on solar energy, and trained the volunteers on that topic. She said she is getting emails about events the association is doing and she will forward them to Ms Stovring. She thought there might be events that we could advertise such as the Parade of Energy Efficient Homes that was held last Saturday. She suggested other Commission members consider volunteering at the State Fair Ecology Building next year because they provide materials and training for the volunteers. She said a lot of the people were surprised at how efficient and inexpensive solar energy can be. VI. OLD BUSINESS A. Change A Light Campaisn Update Chacko asked the students to report on their efforts to promote the Change A Light campaign at the High School. Maslyn said he talked to school district staff about the campaign; however, since it wasn't sponsored by a high school club, they were not able to hand out flyers at events such as the Homecoming game. He said they now have started a club named the "Tree-Huggers Club" for environmental issues, so future joint efforts might be more successful. Krocak said she took the flyers to Pax Christi. She also went to Menards to buy some of the CFL bulbs. She said there were no signs about the rebate, but the bulbs were prominently displayed. Katof said there are a lot of programs going on, for example Sylvania has a rebate deal and Wal-Mart has a mega-pack of 12 bulbs for $20.00. Chacko noted there is a CFL floodlight bulb available now,but that bulb is not part of the rebate program. Chacko said he checked the website and so far there have been nine pledges and a total of 54 bulbs registered. Stovring said the Mayor did a promotion on October 3, and she thought that would be in the newspaper this week. She noted the link to go to the City web page was not fixed until Friday. She said they did an intranet campaign for City employees also. Katof said he has not seen it on TV yet. Chacko said there was a public service announcement about it on the City's cable channel. Eden Prairie Conservation Commission October 9, 2007 Page 3 Chacko asked how long the pledge campaign goes. Katof said it is for one year and our goal is 500 pledges. Chacko noted that Hennepin County is listed on the website as one of the top sponsors but they had a very low target. Katof said he sent an email about the campaign to employees in his office and got a terrific response. He will forward a copy of the email to Ms Stovring, and she can distribute it so other Commission members can personalize it and send it to their email contacts. Chacko thought we should spend time thinking about some different ways to get the information out to people. He said he will talk to the High School to see if they can do something. Daniels thought people may have already replaced all their bulbs and could not take the pledge so it might be wise to include a survey to get data from those people. Mosman said the event at Dunn Bros. will be held on October 20. She said there will be students from last year's environmental club at the event, and they could hand out information. We could also have information available at the two Parade homes on Eden Prairie Road that are sponsoring the event at Dunn Bros. Daniels asked if we could put up a permanent display at Dunn Bros. Mosman thought the current owner would be very favorable to that idea, but she didn't know what the future of Dunn Bros. will be in the next few weeks. Chacko asked if the High School has a Science Club and if that might be a way to get into the High School. Ashley said she is a member of the Science Club and could ask about it. Stovring noted the flyer does not promote any specific business and is very generic. Ms Brodin suggested the Commission consider buying a page in the programs for school events. Mosman thought that might be a good way to advertise, depending on our budget. Stovring thought we could probably do that. Chacko thought there are a lot of educational aspects to the campaign that would be interesting to schools,but he didn't know how we can tie these things in. B. 20/40/15 Program Update Chacko said this is an initiative of the last Mayor to increase the efficiency of municipal buildings and operations by 20% and increase the efficiency of the City fleet by 40% by the year 2015. He said this Commission will be a forum where the consultant and staff can report on the program. He noted the engineering firm, McKinstry, was selected as the consultant for the program. Stovring said the City distributed a postcard to all employees and launched a campaign on the intranet asking them to submit suggestions for energy savings at City Hall. Several suggestions have already been implemented including such things as adjusting light timers to shut off earlier and relamping fluorescents to lower wattage. C. Chamber of Commerce Update Chacko said he has nothing new to report. He has called, emailed and written to all the people involved about having someone from Liberty Property Trust speak at a Eden Prairie Conservation Commission October 9, 2007 Page 4 Chamber meeting about how a commercial project might get payback from energy saving efforts. So far he has not heard back from anyone. D. Purpose Statement Revision/ E. Work Plan for 2008 Stovring asked if any of the Commissioners had developed any ideas for revising the Purpose Statement. She said she included two versions of the Purpose Statement in last month's packet with the idea that Commission members would look at those two and decide either to make revisions or leave it as is. Chacko thought it is easier to respond to suggestions than to ask in the abstract and it might be good to develop a broader menu to select from. He thought we should select items that are important to the community. Stovring asked if the Commissioners wanted to rewrite a new draft of the Purpose Statement. Chacko said he has ideas but struggles with how to write it. Stovring suggested using the two drafts and purpose statements for other commissions to make revisions to ours. Jester asked if the Council would have to approve a revision. Stovring said they would have to approve it, but they are open to the idea if we come up with a new statement that is reasonable. Jester thought the introduction to the Commission's Annual Report is the mission statement. Mosman suggested leaving time at the next meeting for a discussion about replacing the goal to encourage a community designed for walking, exercise and recreation. She thought we may need tangible things we can do so we could put into practice some of the major initiatives that are happening in the City. Stovring thought we should make them a little broader and noted the intent of the Work Plan is to take the broad goals and make them tangible. She said the Commission is an advisory body, so we can only recommend things. Chacko thought there are a lot of ongoing issues about water quality, such as the impact of growing corn for ethanol production on water quality. Topics such as these might be good as part of the public education, but he thought the question is what to educate people on. Jester thought it would be nice to know if there are particular documents we are advising on. Chacko thought we could make recommendations about topics we are going to look at such as storm water management and goose management. He thought we should have the broad goals and then develop a program that fulfills those goals. Stovring said it needs to be broad enough for continuity but not too broad so little gets done. Chacko thought we could do more with recycling and reduction of solid waste, but he thought there is a question of what we can do or how broadly we can educate. He thought the goal to promote establishment of targets for reduction of greenhouse gas emissions needs to be evaluated. Daniels thought we should clarify it by setting targets for reduction, such as having a certain percentage of the City committed to wind source energy. He thought we could also look at the building codes since Eden Prairie Conservation Commission October 9, 2007 Page 5 houses are becoming larger energy users. We could look at the codes and see what we can do to promote alternative steps for conservation during construction. Mosman thought we could set up some practical goals and perhaps review city ordinances and codes to see if there are items that could be modified. She thought this might be something we can suggest to the City Council. Stovring noted that the Council agreed to the Green Building code work item in the Commission's 2007 Work Plan and that the Commission can continue this in the 2008 Work Plan. The Commission could look at other cities to see how and what they are doing. Chair Chacko recessed the meeting at 8:15 PM and reconvened at 8:20 PM. Chacko suggested everyone on the Commission put their thoughts about next year's plan for the next meeting. Stovring suggested that she write down what individual Commission members want to commit to working on for the coming year. Items could be something that is on the current list or something new. Krocak noted she would like to help develop some educational pieces to mail to the residents within Nine Mile Creek Watershed District regarding the status of the lake improvement projects that will be starting this winter. Daniels thought education was important and suggested developing pieces for a display board for various community activities. He thought also we should hand out materials at the Chamber's Yard & Garden Expo and noted the State of Minnesota has lots of information we could use. Daniels also expressed that he thought the Commission could work with science teachers on promoting energy efficiency, such as placing ads in the student activity programs. Daniels also asked if the Commission should promote the planting of native vegetation in more city-owned areas. Stovring noted that the Commission does have funding next year for rebates for private shoreline restoration and native planting projects. She stated the Commission could work on an application for the rebates. Daniels said he would also like to have the Commission discuss the use of City bonding capacity to assist in financing of energy conservation. He thought we could sell City bonds and use the proceeds to finance energy conservation initiatives through rebates or loans. MacMillan said she would look into the funding for water conservation through irrigation systems rebates. Stovring said she would send her what resources she has found on irrigation systems. Mosman said she would like to help promote recycling at City events. Jester said she would like to work with the Blue Thumb initiative and also evaluate the green building codes in other cities. She said she and Mosman are also working on developing educational materials to promote green roofs. Eden Prairie Conservation Commission October 9, 2007 Page 6 Jester state she would also like to review City ordinances and suggested we take a few meetings to go through them and see if we can update and improve them. Stovring thought it might be a good idea to split it up, for example work on one section every three months or so. Katof said he would like to continue with the Change a Light Campaign into 2008. Katof also liked Commissioner Daniels' idea about promoting WindSource. He thought that was an easy way to participate in alternative energy because it is not a costly program for residents to participate in. He also would like to help with the green building code review. Stovring suggested working to finish the code for requiring recycling in multi-family residences. The piece that is left is to inform the multi-family complexes that it is being considered and to ask for comments. Jester thought we could also write a newspaper article about it to help promote the idea to the residents who live in multi- family dwellings that might be impacted. Daniels requested a copy of the draft ordinance. Stovring said she will get it to the Commission members. Maslyn noted there are no recycling bins in the Parks and asked if we could put some there. Stovring said that issue was brought up last year, and the Parks Department has tried but had very poor success. The Commission is looking at how to incorporate it into City events. If that were successful, we might be able to convince the Parks Department to try it again. Mosman noted David Seymour did some work on that. Stovring said Hennepin County will provide bins free of charge for events, but someone would have to pick them up. MacMillan asked about the presentation of the SWPPP. Stovring said that could be a memo or possibly a PowerPoint presentation to the City Council or perhaps the Planning Board also. It would be a way to interact with the City Council, but we would also need a way to say we met the City's goals. VII. NEW BUSINESS VIII. INFORMATIONAL MATERIALS /HANDOUTS /COMMUNICATIONS A. Environmental Times—Winter 2007 IX. UPCOMING EVENTS A. Presentation at City Council—December 11, 2007 X. NEXT MEETING A. November 13, 2007 XI. ADJOURNMENT MOTION: Mosman moved, seconded by MacMillan, to adjourn. Motion carried 7-0. Chair Chacko adjourned the meeting at 8:50 PM.