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HomeMy WebLinkAboutConservation Commission - 01/13/2015 APPROVED MINUTES CONSERVATION COMMISSION TUESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2015 7:00 P.M., CITY CENTER Prairie Room 8080 Mitchell Road COMMISSION MEMBERS: Greg Olson (Chair), Laura Jester(Vice Chair), Margaret Powell, Prashant Shrikhande, Lori Tritz STUDENT MEMBERS: Ashray Manipalli, Anthony Polyakov, Sophia Modeas STAFF: Regina Rojas, Planning Division Jan Curielli, Recording Secretary GUESTS: John Fedora Amanda Anderson I. CALL TO ORDER AND ROLL CALL Chair Olson called the meeting to order at 7:00 pm. Polyakov and Modeas were absent. Powell left early. II. APPROVAL OF AGENDA Olson said John Fedora is at the meeting tonight to present a request to the Commission. He suggested we add that as Item V.A. and move the agenda item up to follow approval of the minutes. MOTION: Shrikhande moved, seconded by Jester, to approve the agenda as amended. Motion carried 5-0. III. MINUTES A. Approval of the Minutes for the December 9, 2014 Meeting MOTION: Jester moved, seconded by Shrikhande, to approve the minutes of the December 9, 2014 meeting as published. Motion carried 5-0. V. REPORTS FROM CHAIR(taken out of sequence) A. John Fedora CONSERVATION COMMISSION MINUTES January 13, 2015 Page 2 John Fedora said he is a resident of Eden Prairie with an interest in composting and organics recycling. Organic Disposal of Chaska had been picking up his organic waste until last December when they no longer offered that service. He researched alternatives for organics disposal and found that no other hauler does residential organics in Eden Prairie. Carver County has a drop-off facility but only takes organics from their residents. Hennepin County has a drop-off facility but it is located in Brooklyn Park. He thought it makes sense to have some sort of organics program or to provide a way to deal with organics. He noted Hennepin County plans to put some effort into dealing with organics, but not until 2016. There needs to be some effort made to bridge the gap to provide organics recycling. He noted Organic Disposal uses the Arboretum for their disposal site. He suggested the City change the contract with their hauler for waste disposal from City buildings to include providing drop-off bins for organics. Olson commented he had not thought about having a drop-off site. Mr. Fedora said the simple way would be to do a drop-off location and add a budget item for a hauler to pick up organics. Rojas said the Conservation Commission plans to invite Hennepin County to a future meeting this year to understand what they are doing on their long-range plan. We would also invite representatives from the current haulers. In the fourth quarter of 2015 City staff would come to a meeting to describe what they plan to do. Ms Stovring is the staff member that manages that area. She is the main contact for yard waste, recycling and organics. Rojas noted residents could reach out to their haulers to ask for the service. Mr. Fedora said he would like some way to jump start the organics service. One thing he hears from the haulers is that this is a catch-22 because there is no demand. Jester noted the organics collection was not marketed. Mr. Fedora said there is a pent-up demand, and he thought people would jump on it if it were presented as an option. Olson noted there is also demand on the other end for the product. Mr. Fedora said with a little advertising effort a simple drop-off program would enable the City to show Hennepin County and the haulers there is a market and a demand for organics pickup here. The City could then hand off the customers to the haulers at some point. Olson believed the prevailing sentiment of the Commission is to be open to the idea of organics. He liked the idea of setting up a drop-off point. Rojas suggested we list it on the PowerPoint for the Council presentation next week. Jester thought we could bring it up to the City Council and then get residents interested. Mr. Fedora suggested doing a survey of people at the Chamber's Home, Landscape and Garden Expo. IV. REPORTS FROM STAFF A. Draft Work Plan CONSERVATION COMMISSION MINUTES January 13, 2015 Page 3 Rojas said she did not make any changes after those the Commission discussed at the last meeting. The work plan will not become until final after the City Council workshop presentation in case the Council has something they want us to add. Jester thought the Commission had some comments and changes at the last meeting. Rojas said she added those during the meeting. The work plan will be handed out for the presentation at the workshop. Jester asked why it is not given out beforehand. Rojas said there is no Council packet for the workshop; however, the Council Members will receive the final version in their Friday report. B. Draft City Council Workshop Presentation Rojas said she made a PowerPoint presentation based on the work plan that has some bullet points regarding 2014 accomplishments. She reviewed a slide with the top accomplishments for 2014 which included such items as the Ecopalooza, Step 3 of the GreenStep Cities program, and feedback and recommendations on the Eden Gardens development. Rojas reviewed the list of 2015 goals by quarter. Jester asked the meaning of the point to provide recommendations on Stormwater and Erosion Control code amendments. Rojas said any code amendment the City is looking at that has an environmental angle would come to the Conservation Commission for input and feedback. Olson believed the Commission would be very open to acting as a task force to answer questions and do research as staff gets involved with such topics. Jester said the City is looking at changes to the local water resource management plan and this amendment would be code to set the controls we would use to implement the plan. Olson asked if Commission members had any themes they would like to stress to the Council. Jester asked if we plan to meet with the Nine Mile Creek Watershed District at their new office. Rojas said she requested that for both the Nine Mile and the Riley-Purgatory-Bluff Creek Watershed District meetings. She asked the Commission for feedback on keeping the "Other Goals" slide separate or adding the points to the list of goals by quarters. Jester noted it seems like a lot for 15 minutes, and the list of other goals seems more important than the quarterly list. Shrikhande said most of the quarterly information relates to things we will be doing while the other goals are things we think are important. Tritz said we should start out with the ones on which we want feedback if that is our goal. Jester suggested having a couple of slides with goals, list the meeting with the watershed districts once, and get rid of the quarterly format. Olson said we want to understand what the watersheds' agendas are in our community. He thought we want to learn from them what the best practices are CONSERVATION COMMISSION MINUTES January 13, 2015 Page 4 that we, as a city, can adopt. Shrikhande suggested we look at some of the recommendations from the Urban Land Institute (ULI) and include some modifications to our goals to include those. Olson said we saw data from the ULI at the last meeting. He was not sure what was actionable from that meeting. Olson suggested we condense the information down for the Council presentation. Jester said we could have a couple of bullet points and then talk about those. Olson suggested an item of interest to establish composting and organics recycling. Rojas said the top items are meeting and learning from the watershed districts, organics waste collection and the GreenStep Cities program. Jester noted the GreenStep Cities program dovetails somewhat with that of the ULI, so she thought we should learn more about how the ULI program could be integrated. Olson said our central role is to educate the public as to what the City does and what we want others to do in terms of sustainable practices. We also want to encourage more people from the public to look to the Commission as a place to express ideas. We serve as a point of contact and can bring new ideas to staff for further work. Jester asked if we know the next step after the completion of the 20-40-15 program and if we are celebrating the completion. It would be good to be able to do a knowledge transfer from the 20-40-15 program to other large entities in the City such as the School District or the shopping center. Promoting the program to the rest of the community would seem to be the logical next step. She noted the Conservation Commission was put together because of the 20-40-15 program. Shrikhande said he would like to see something stronger regarding the use of water. We still have relatively high usage levels so we have not changed much. We could work on some ideas around the target to promote reducing water use through education and get suggestions from the watershed districts. Jester thought we should continue to learn more about water consumption and the current efforts of other agencies. Shrikhande said we should have a more objective goal than just monitoring water usage. C. Landscaping Feedback Rojas said she forwarded questions from the Utilities Division to Commission members. The Utilities Division is making amendments to the landscaping in areas around fire stations and some well houses. They are looking at ways to promote use of native landscaping to the public and have reached out to the Commission for additional feedback. They specifically asked about the best way to interview residents about sustainable landscaping. They also asked for space in the Living Green section on the website and for help to identify businesses that might be interested in a partnership to create native landscaping. Olson said any business that wants to project an image of sustainable landscaping to the public would be interested. Jester said it should be a business with a lot of CONSERVATION COMMISSION MINUTES January 13, 2015 Page 5 exposure. Shrikhande suggested the International School. Olson suggested car dealers. Tritz said churches might be interested as many of them have community gardens. She asked who sent the request to the Commission. Rojas responded it was Rick Wahlen, the manager of the water plant. They plan a demonstration for residents to see what changes could look like with native landscaping. Mr. Wahlen is looking for feedback on how the City could reach out and talk to residents and businesses. Olson said there would be an opportunity to work with the School District and with multi-family complexes. Jester recommended against surveying residents because there is enough information available about misconceptions of native landscaping. There are other organizations that help with native landscaping that would know what those misconceptions are. Powell commented it would not make sense to spend time and money to get information already out there. Tritz suggested it would be good to hook up with the group, Wild One. Jester said the watershed districts should have a handle on communicating with residents. Jester offered to help with this request and to pass on any information to Ms Rojas. D. PACE Update Rojas said the Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE)program was developed as a result of State legislation that allows property owners to work with communities on a loan program that includes a special assessment on their property to cover the installation of sustainable features that will reduce energy consumption. Cities that are interested in the program have to make a commitment to support the PACE program. Olson noted Eden Prairie did so under a joint powers agreement with the St. Paul Port Authority. Rojas said staff received an application from World Auto Imports on Martin Drive for $71,000 to install solar panels. The City Council will have to approve the assessment on the property. She did not have any specific details on the request. Powell left at 8:00 pm. E. Ecopalooza Update Rojas said last year was the first year for the City-sponsored Ecopalooza event. The Commission was involved to help plan and select exhibitors as well as to select the Green Crawl locations. We partnered with the Solar Regatta at Lake Riley for the event. Staff decided the event would be partnered with Arbor Day this year in order to better gear the efforts to City residents. The Arbor Day event started out with the Parks staff handing out seedlings. Last year there was an Arbor Day walk. Staff hopes to make it a bigger event this year. She said the Parks and Recreation Department would manage and budget for the event. The event will be held the end of April or the beginning of May at Round Lake Park. CONSERVATION COMMISSION MINUTES January 13, 2015 Page 6 Olson asked if this Commission would be concerned with the event. Rojas said she will be involved with the event, and there will be opportunities for Commission involvement to select the exhibitors and to work at a Commission booth. Olson believed the Commission would have an interest in cooperating on the event. Jester asked about the history of the City's Arbor Day event and if there would be a Green Crawl this year. Rojas said it started as a celebration for being named a Tree City, USA. The event started out small and we are now trying to make it bigger. Jester noted the proposed date for the event is near Earth Day. She would much rather have a City-wide Earth Day event to coincide with Ecopalooza as that message would be much closer to the concept for Ecopalooza. Olson asked about the process for exploring a change from Arbor Day to Earth Day. Rojas said it needs to be an Arbor Day event in order to keep the Tree City designation. She thought it could be added onto but would need to confirm that. Olson said he would like to know what opportunity there is for broadening the event. Shrikhande said he has attended the Arbor Day event in the past. There were people from different organizations with information about how to plant seedlings. He suggested designating an area and getting volunteers to plant trees. Jester suggested an organized buckthorn removal. She was not sure how appropriate the Ecopalooza name is for this event. Now would be the time to change the name to an Arbor Day/Earth Day event. F. Commission Engagement Rojas said we had to cancel a number of meetings in 2014 due to Commission members' attendance. At the last meeting it came up that Commission members don't feel as engaged with topics or with the progress made. She suggested she put together a survey for Commission members to identify reasons for not attending the meetings. Olson said that is a great place to start. He believed our work has never been more important than it is now. Environmental considerations are going to be more prominent. The Commission members want to be a resource for staff as much as staff is a resource for us. Shrikhande said that sounds more like being a sounding board for things going through the system. He would like more understanding of what the cycles are on a five or ten year plan and how the Commission can provide support and knowledge. Jester commented a survey is a great idea. She asked if the intent of the City Manager or the City Council is to get the Commission back to being a seven member commission. Rojas thought that would be a goal. The more people present, the more opinions, and that is good for the City. CONSERVATION COMMISSION MINUTES January 13, 2015 Page 7 VI. REPORTS FROM COMMISSION Jester said the Riley-Purgatory-Bluff Creek Watershed District is holding an open house on Wednesday, January 21 from 5-7 pm at their new office. Shrikhande said there will be a Minnesota Clean Water Land and Legacy Anniversary Forum this Thursday from 12-5 pm. The program will include a panel discussion by legislators and others. Rojas will send out an email about the event to Commission members. VIL REPORTS FROM STUDENTS VIII. CONTINUING BUSINESS A. Communication Strategies--Website, Life in the Prairie, Facebook, etc. Olson asked about the next Life in the Prairie. Rojas was not sure of the date but they are published quarterly. Olson asked how active the City is with Facebook. Rojas said it is updated weekly or sometimes several times a week to advertise a Parks & Recreation event or to link to a blog. She said we could give something to the Communications Department to post on Facebook Olson thought we should post upcoming events like the Expo. IX. INFORMATIONAL MATERIALS/HANDOUTS A. Upcoming City Proiects and Development--Project Profile Rojas said the High Point at Riley Creek project will go before the Planning Commission next Monday night. Jester asked if it is a conforming project and if it must abide by the new watershed infiltration rules. Rojas said the developer must send their plans to the watershed district in which they are located. If there are no waivers or exceptions requested, the project falls under our local water management plan. That does not mean they can't build to the watershed standards, just that they are not required to meet those standards. X. UPCOMING CITY EVENTS A. City Council Workshop--Tuesday, January 20, 2015 (5:00 pm) Jester asked if we know what our number is to present to the Council. Rojas said she did not know at this point but will let everyone know when she gets the information. She noted all Commission members are invited to attend the workshop. CONSERVATION COMMISSION MINUTES January 13, 2015 Page 8 XI. NEXT MEETING-February 10, 2015 XIV. ADJOURNMENT MOTION: Shrikhande moved, seconded by Tritz, to adjourn the meeting. Motion carried 4-0. Chair Olson adjourned the meeting at 8:28 pm.