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HomeMy WebLinkAboutConservation Commission - 10/09/2012 APPROVED MINUTES CONSERVATION COMMISSION TUESDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2012 7:00 P.M., CITY CENTER Prairie Room 8080 Mitchell Road COMMISSION MEMBERS: Laura Jester(Chair), Greg Olson (Vice Chair), Stacy Bettison, Sue Brown, Kurt Lawton, Anthony Pini, Prashant Shrikhande STUDENT MEMBERS: Sara Schmit, Katie Stoltz, Siddeswari Thunuguntla STAFF: Regina Rojas, Planning Division Andrew Rotschafer, Environmental Intern Jan Curielli, Recording Secretary I. CALL TO ORDER AND ROLL CALL Chair Jester called the meeting to order at 7:00 PM. Olson, Pini, Shrikhande, Schmit, Stoltz and Thununguntla were absent. II. APPROVAL OF AGENDA Jester added Item W.A. Recyclins!Plan--Andrew Rotschafer and Item IV.B. Xcel Update. MOTION: Bettison moved, seconded by Lawton, to approve the agenda as published. Motion carried 4-0. III. MINUTES A. Approval of Minutes for the September 11, 2012 Meeting MOTION: Brown moved, seconded by Bettison, to approve the minutes of the September 11, 2012 meeting as published. Motion carried 4-0. IV. REPORTS FROM STAFF A. Recyclins!Plan--Andrew Rotschafer CONSERVATION COMMISSION October 9, 2012 Page 2 Rotschafer distributed a draft recycling plan. He plans to review it with Matt Bourne next week and later with Jay Lotthammer. He noted there is a simple budget included in the plan. Communication with City departments and residents will be very important. The plan includes education in the community through the various media resources. He suggested the environmental and art clubs at the High School might want to get involved in the education component. Brown said the Boy Scouts are doing something out at Flying Cloud fields and may be interested in this as a fund raising project. Jester said she discussed a project involving recycling in the parks with the leader of a 7th grade Girl Scout Troop. There may be other groups that can help us. Rotschafer reviewed the funding opportunities listed in the plan, including the MPCA 2012-13 Environmental Assistance grant program and the Hennepin County Green Partners Environmental Education program. He noted we can get containers on loan from Hennepin County. Jester asked if Ms Stovring has seen the plan. Rotschafer emailed it to her last Friday. Jester asked if there is a strategy for going forward, including a plan for getting some funding. She thought we may need to have more specificity in the plan. Rotschafer noted the MPCA requires that two years of data tracking be included in a proposal for their grant program. Brown asked what the purpose of the plan document is. Rotschafer said it provides a formal plan for going forward. Brown noted there is not a specific course of action laid out in the draft plan. Jester thought it is a good start. Bettison asked who would provide the labor for the recycling. Rotschafer said Parks Department employees would check the bins. Bettison asked who would apply for the grants and do the communications piece. Rotschafer replied the communications piece would be the Communications Department and Ms Stovring, and the grant applications would involve Ms Stovring, Mr. Lotthammer and Mr. Bourne. Jester thought it would be important to include a step-by-step process in the plan of who will do what and when it will be done. We might need more detail on the education and communication strategy. Lawton said he would like to have some kind of survey to learn why people are not recycling. Rojas suggested that might be something to include in a grant request. Bettison suggested adding a bullet point for "Why recycle?" under the Communication Strategies section. Brown suggested including "Why We Don't CONSERVATION COMMISSION October 9, 2012 Page 3 Recycle" as well. Bettison said we can address why we should recycle if we find out why we are not recycling. Bettison suggested including a table in the plan that outlines strategies and actions. Jester said including a Gantt chart would be good. B. Xcel Update Rojas said Xcel representatives spoke about the programs they offer in the City at last month's meeting and asked for feedback from the Commission on the programs. She provided the minutes from the meeting to the two Xcel representatives. Joyce Lorenz in Communications will do a piece about the programs in the Life in the Prairie. Xcel provided brochures for the City-wide Open House this Saturday. She noted there has not been much feedback about the program, although the City Manager did write a letter to the Public Utilities Commission about continuing the solar rebate program. Jester asked if Xcel wants to improve their infrastructure in the City. Rojas said she has not heard recent discussions about that, although there has been talk in the past that they would need to expand or add to their facilities. Brown said her impression was they were asking us to do communications on their behalf, so her point was to ask for something we would want in return. Jester suggested items like solar panels on the Community Center. Brown suggested a green roof or something with wind energy to enhance the community. Jester said such things would also provide a showcase for Xcel. She asked Ms Rojas if there is a way to ask Xcel for such things or if there is something in the 20-40-15 plan we could request. Rojas said the green roof and solar panels were removed from the 20-40-15 plan. She can bring forward the suggestions. Brown suggested we could help enlist businesses to sponsor things with Xcel. Jester said we might request grant funds to match with Xcel funds to put solar panels on an LRT station, for example. Rojas said Metro Transit manages the LRT stations, and there are project specific standards for those. Jester suggested solar powered parking lot lights. Rojas said we could provide feedback about that. Lawton said it would be a fairly short term project. Xcel really talked about efficiencies in the business sector so it would be good to have some kind of contest for that. Jester noted the city of Rochester partnered with their local energy company to put in solar and wind for water heating and power. She was not sure how much Xcel wanted to invest in the program. V. REPORTS FROM CHAIR CONSERVATION COMMISSION October 9, 2012 Page 4 VI. REPORTS FROM COMMISSION A. Environmental Education--Sue Brown Brown gave a PowerPoint presentation on "A Green Legacy--The Importance of Environmental Education" which was based on an article she wrote earlier in the year. She outlined the benefits of providing environmental education, noting it is hard to get a grasp of what environmental education is. She said environmental education helps children to understand the natural world, builds their interest in the environment, prepares them to live in an environmentally-challenged world, prepares them to be more competitive in the global workforce by providing Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education; and reconnects them to nature. Brown said she incorporated a lot of research and synthesis of information in her presentation. She noted the West Coast is far more advanced in environmental education. East Coast students are quite involved in environmental activities. However, in the middle of the country many adults and parents are not aware of a problem. In addition there are funding pressures when school systems consider adding another subject. Jester asked what the next step would be. Brown said she wanted to talk to more people about this. People don't necessarily understand there is a problem, and teachers are overwhelmed. She was not sure where to go from here. Jester noted all 5th grade students in Eden Prairie have a STEM curriculum,but that could mean a lot of things in science and not necessarily environmental education. Rotschafer said Life Sciences are taught in grades 5-12, and more environmental education is being incorporated into that curriculum. Brown said environmental education requires creative thinking on the part of teachers. Our teachers need tools and ideas to teach environmental education. Jester said the teachers she works with have environmental curricula,but it is often difficult to fit in something else. Brown noted there are no guidelines for this, so a lot of the responsibility falls on teachers to develop it. Jester noted a lot of students go to the Long Lake Conservation Center for three days, and that may be what serves as environmental education. There are so many competing subjects to teach about our world and so much ground that must be covered. Brown noted a lot of those subjects come back to the environment and our natural resources. CONSERVATION COMMISSION October 9, 2012 Page 5 Rotschafer noted Prairie View Elementary has a garden project going on at the school, and one of the teachers put together a curriculum for that. He thought there may be grants available for environmental education. Jester noted this is good information and asked if it could be posted on our web page. She thought it might be good to add the list of references used. Bettison thought the challenge is to find ways to get it into the traditional education system. She thought the hands-on example is good. She noted there was no observance of Earth Day last year, and that presents a good opportunity for environmental education. We might have a goal to sponsor an Earth Day event. Lawton asked what the City Council's involvement would be in the schools. Rojas said the Council is not involved in schools. Staff members who are asked to go to a classroom always talk about Eden Prairie and what is being studied at the school and relate the discussion to their job experience. Jester said she will be doing a classroom demo about stormwater pollution and will try to learn where the STEM curriculum is coming from. Jester asked Ms Rojas to email the presentation to Commission members. B. LRT Community Advisory Commission Update Brown said she attended the last meeting. There was a lot of fighting going on and a lot of talk about the Draft Environmental Impact Statement(DEIS) and an education process for how to look at the DEIS. There is a 60-day window for comments. She asked for the information one person on the commission offered to provide on how to understand a DEIS. She said there was a lot of time spent on the freight tracks issue. The LRT commission decided there will be one hour spent on discussion of the freight tracks at the next meeting. She noted she is not sure what she is supposed to do as the Citizen Representative on the commission. Rojas said the City Planner has had discussions with the City Manager and the Community Development Director about having sessions on how to respond to comments or questions. She said she will bring up these issues at tomorrow's debrief. She noted the role of each LRT commission representative is to provide feedback. She thought the representative-at-large could talk about environmental, traffic or noise issues and any concerns as an Eden Prairie resident. Jester noted she and Ms Bettison are the representatives from the Conservation Commission. She thought the proposed workshop could help. Bettison noted she received an email update that the President has issued a proclamation that the LRT line is a priority and that will expedite the EIS. She CONSERVATION COMMISSION October 9, 2012 Page 6 said they have also received bids or proposals from engineering service firms for two pieces of the preliminary engineering element. Those firms will be interviewed and evaluated, and a contract will be awarded in December or January. Lawton asked what is included in the DEIS. Bettison said it is a huge document, and she plans to look for portions that involve Eden Prairie. She noted the meeting she attended was very unruly, and some of the issues raised seemed petty and inappropriate. She thought the best thing for Eden Prairie representatives is to focus on where the line is coming and what the impact will be. Rojas said each city along the LRT line could provide representatives to the Community Advisory Commission. Eden Prairie selected city commission members as representatives and alternates. Bettison said there are a lot of topics covered that don't impact Eden Prairie, and we might want to cut down on the number of people that attend the meetings. Brown said she felt like Eden Prairie representatives are way behind the learning curve on this while other cities are so much more aware of what is going on. She thought we are being drowned out by all the cities that have agendas. The station design is something we could impact. There are a lot of questions about access to stations and the impact on traffic. Jester asked if there is a technical work group for the LRT that staff members attend. Rojas said there is. Rojas said part of the goal of the proposed workshop would be to provide an overview of the process for the representatives and staff. Lawton asked if staff is looking at planning and traffic. Rojas said the Public Works, Engineering, and Economic Development staff meet weekly to discuss LRT. Jester said she would like to look at the DEIS. Rojas said it will be posted on line and there will be one copy available at City Hall. Jester asked that next month's agenda include an item about the issues in the DEIS. VII. REPORTS FROM STUDENTS VIII. NEW BUSINESS IX. CONTINUING BUSINESS A. PACE Legislation Rojas said there was an internal staff meeting to identify the key point people if the program were to be implemented. Staff wants to continue to monitor the CONSERVATION COMMISSION October 9, 2012 Page 7 program in Edina and also to see if our business community is interested in doing this. Mr. Olson, Mr. Kaplan, and Dave Lindahl will speak at the Chamber of Commerce on November 20. The Finance Director questioned doing third party financing. She thought it would be easier to use a local bank. She also said it would be easier to manage and there would be fewer steps if we could finance this ourselves,but in order to do that the legislation would have to be changed. B. GreenStep Cities Program C. Comunication Strategies--Website,Life in the Prairie, Facebook, etc. Lawton said there will be some things about Xcel's presentation in Life in the Prairie. Bettison said she doesn't see a lot of activity on the Facebook page. She suggested the City put little factoids of information about environmental issues on Facebook. It would be simple things that would get people thinking about a topic. Jester asked if there are guidelines about what is posted. Rojas said the Communications Department does the Facebook page. They have done quizzes in the past. Bettison thought Ms Lorenz could email the various departments to ask for informational tidbits to post on Facebook. It would be a way to start enhancing the Facebook presence and could help implement a social media strategy. Lawton thought we might help put together a social media strategy. We could put a link on Facebook to the Living Green section on the website. Lawton questioned if our environmental interest list is growing. Rojas will look into that. She noted our goal is to have one landing for information. D. Upcoming City Projects and Development--Project Profile Lawton asked about the Home Depot project. Rojas replied the project will expand the garden center and provide an area for their truck rental. Bettison asked if the City's comprehensive plan provides guidelines for property changes from rural to residential. Rojas said the Planning Department looks at two maps when reviewing a proposed project: the Comprehensive Guide Plan which is a long range vision for the City that shows where development of commercial areas, parks and open spaces and low and high density residential will occur; and the zoning map that should be closely matched with the Comprehensive Plan. She said any area zoned rural has never been zoned. Thirty years ago most of the City appeared as rural. As developers came in with proposals, the City was rezoned in compliance with the Comprehensive Plan. CONSERVATION COMMISSION October 9, 2012 Page 8 Jester asked if there are parcels the City wants to keep as conservation easements. Rojas said the Comprehensive Plan shows a trend that areas near creeks or lakes will be guided parks or open space. Bettison asked if the Comprehensive Plan dictates open spaces. Rojas said the Comprehensive Plan outlines areas to be reserved for parks and open space; however, there are some areas that are not specifically pinpointed. Staff takes a close look at a project to see if some of it should be reserved. Bettison then asked if we are being mindful to keep every area possible for natural development. She was concerned that Eden Prairie has only one area of native prairie. She asked what the City can do to help with preservation of natural areas. Rojas replied private owners have a right to develop their property, and we can't take property for our purposes. We work with the developer to dedicate part of the property for conservation easements to protect some areas. There are measures within City code for protection of natural resources. Jester noted we have had workshops with the City Council where it has been made very clear that the Conservation Commission cannot get into the review process. Rojas said the Conservation Commission can make recommendations regarding changes to the City code. Jester commented there is an amazing amount of parks and trails in the City as a whole. Bettison said she wanted to understand what our Commission's role is when looking at the Project Profile. Jester said we ask questions of Ms Rojas particularly when waivers are requested for a project. X. INFORMATIONAL MATERIALS/HANDOUTS XI. UPCOMING EVENTS A. Sustainability Workshop--Thursday, October 11, 2012 (6:30 - 8:30 PM) Jester said it was great some of the Commission members can attend the workshop. She asked that any information from the workshop be sent to Commissioners before the next meeting. B. City Wide Open House--Saturday, October 13, 2012 (11:00 AM- 2:00 PM) Rojas said the Commission will have one table located straight ahead when people come in the front door. Ms Jester will be at the table for the Open House. We will have reusable bags, handouts from Xcel, one board with panels, and coupon books available. Jester asked if there will be an interactive display. Rojas said there will be a demonstration of the low flow shower head outside because it is too big to bring inside. Low flow shower heads will also be given away. CONSERVATION COMMISSION October 9, 2012 Page 9 XII. NEXT MEETING--November 13, 2012 XIII. ADJOURNMENT MOTION: Bettison moved, seconded by Lawton, to adjourn the meeting. Motion carried 4-0. Chair Jester adjourned the meeting at 9:00 PM.