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HomeMy WebLinkAboutConservation Commission - 10/13/2015 APPROVED MINUTES CONSERVATION COMMISSION TUESDAY, OCTOBER 13, 2015 7:00 P.M., NINE MILE CREEK WATERSHED DISTRICT 12800 Gerard Drive Eden Prairie, MN COMMISSION MEMBERS: Greg Olson (Chair), Laura Jester(Vice Chair), Prashant Shrikhande, Lori Tritz, Amanda Anderson, Gena Gerard STUDENT MEMBERS: Emily Corpuz, Rachel Buckland, Jenna Horner STAFF: Tania Mahtani, Planning Division Jan Curielli, Recording Secretary GUESTS: Kevin Bigalke, Nine Mile Creek Watershed District Daniel Woolsey L CALL TO ORDER/ROLL CALL Chair Olson called the meeting to order at 7:05 p.m. Shrikhande and Horner were absent. II. APPROVAL OF AGENDA Olson said the agenda should be changed to consider Item IV before Item III. MOTION: Olson moved, seconded by Jester, to approve the agenda as amended. Motion carried 5-0. IV. PRESENTER(taken out of sequence) A. Kevin Bigalke - Nine Mile Creek Watershed District Kevin Bigalke, Administrator of Nine Mile Creek Watershed District, reviewed the history of the Nine Mile Creek Discovery Point facility, including the heritage from the previous property owner, Barbara Kaerwar. He gave Commission Members a tour of the exterior and interior of the facility. He noted the many sustainable features included on the grounds such as raingardens, pervious paving, sustainable plantings, and a cistern used to capture and disperse runoff from a portion of the roof. He explained how the building was remodeled to use the garage area as a large meeting room facility and to modify the remainder of the 60-year old structure to accommodate its use as offices for the Watershed District and to incorporate sustainable features in the building. He said visitors may check CONSERVATION COMMISSION MINUTES October 13, 2015 Page 2 out backpacks that will provide them with a self-guided tour of the Discovery Point building and grounds. Gerard asked if the building is LEED certified. Mr. Bigalke replied it is not, primarily because it would have been cost prohibitive and would have required the old part of the building to be demolished. Anderson commented on the amazing job they did with retaining the prairie style of the building. Jester asked how they partner with the City on budgets and projects. Mr. Bigalke said they share information and programs. He works with Ms Stovring on a regular basis to develop programs. He said they take the lead on their own education and outreach activities and are working with the Riley/Purgatory/Bluff Creek and the Minnehaha Watershed Districts on a program similar to the master gardener program that will be geared towards water stewardship. The tuition for the year-long program will be $2500 per student, but the Watershed Districts will cover all but$200 of the cost. Graduates of the program will receive a Master Water Stewards Certificate and will do volunteer work on water stewardship. The intent of the program is to develop a list of trained volunteers for education and outreach for the Watershed Districts' programs. III. MINUTES A. Approval of the Minutes for the September 8, 2015 Meeting MOTION: Anderson moved, seconded by Jester, to approve the minutes of the September 8, 2015 meeting as published. Motion carried 5-0. V. REPORTS FROM STAFF A. 20-40-15 Successor Program Update Mahtani said City Manager Getschow introduced the 20-40-15 successor program at the Commission's September meeting. She said Chair Olson suggested using the Regional Indicators Initiatives (RII)to provide data to help with the choices. She noted the RII came out of the GreenStep Cities program and can be used to measure outcomes from programs. The four major categories in the RII are travel, water, energy and waste. She provided a demonstration of the RII website and an overview of the data comparisons in the RII for each of the main categories which compared data from the cities that participated in the initiative. She said staff used the RII data to help group the larger set of data from the September meeting. She passed out a spreadsheet that staff produced using the RII data to group the items from the September spreadsheet. The first step for Commission Members tonight would be to narrow down the focus by looking at the four core goals and ranking the items on the spreadsheet from 1 to 4. Olson asked if the new spreadsheet addresses behavior with respect to the City operations as opposed to that of members of the community. Mahtani replied it CONSERVATION COMMISSION MINUTES October 13, 2015 Page 3 focused on operations, but there could be other strategies that would help community-wide programs, so it would not be exclusively one or the other. Gerard noted there were two more columns on the September spreadsheet. Mahtani said a lot of the items in those columns were moved into the four broader categories. There were a couple of items that did not fit that the City will likely pursue, but not as part of the 20-40-15 successor program. Jester asked where land use would fit in. Mahtani said it would fit in all four categories when appropriate. Olson asked for clarification of the numbers next to the strategies on the new spreadsheet. Mahtani said the individual boxes are from the September spreadsheet with the number of City Council votes included. Olson asked about the red categories. Mahtani said those are the GreenStep Cities strategies that staff felt could provide a metric for the categories. Gerard asked what kind of input Ms Mahtani is looking for. Mahtani replied the goal tonight is for the Commission to rank each of the four broader goals, using #1 as most important and#4 as least. Jester asked if the strategies listed under the broader goals are an exhaustive list. Mahtani said these are the ones that staff generated and the Council discussed. There will be ongoing sessions about those strategies. Jester noted the City used a consultant for the 20-40-15 program to help single out the best way to proceed and asked if we plan to hire a consultant this time. Mahtani said it may depend on the focus and scope of the program. Gerard asked how the City would get information on a specific topic. Mahtani said Commission Members can send information to her. She anticipated there will be discussion at future meetings about more specifics. Jester said Mr. Getschow mentioned a title of"Sustainable Eden Prairie," and asked if that title has been discussed more. Mahtani said it would depend on whether there will be just one topic being focused on because "Sustainable Eden Prairie" connotes multiple programs. Jester asked if the City Council used the time they had in the workshop to brainstorm areas of focus or if staff supplied a list of possible topics. Mahtani said a list was provided to them, but they may have added some during the discussion. Gerard asked if there will be performance measures attached to these topics to see if we have accomplished these. Mahtani anticipated there will be but was not sure what they will look like. Anderson felt like we are shooting at random ideas, and she would feel better if she had an understanding from a high level what the benefits and costs are. The more information we can get, the better the results will be. She thought it would CONSERVATION COMMISSION MINUTES October 13, 2015 Page 4 be informative to look at our neighboring cities to see their best practices. Olson thought that would be part of the process whatever we focus on so we can see what is working and what isn't. He said his hope was that our focus would be on how we can improve on our past performance. We would want to see what we could do to create results five years down the road and then see if that worked. He would want to look at how we have improved rather than just comparing ourselves to other communities. Anderson said she was suggesting a comparison of best practices to see how we could benefit from another community's experience. To her, it felt difficult to deal with a category such as reducing the vehicle miles of people traveling through the City because that would involve more than just our community. Mahtani said she encouraged members to look at the definition as a way to measure the topic but not to limit it to that. Gerard asked if the goal to reduce vehicle miles traveled is meant to reduce emissions from vehicles or to reduce congestion on the roads. She wanted to know why we are setting our priorities in order to see the bigger picture or vision. Anderson noted she thought the new spreadsheet is a response to our request at the last meeting. Gerard said the RII website showed five topic areas and asked why we did not plan to set up five categories to align with those. She believed some of the travel and energy issues could be put under the category of emissions. Mahtani replied greenhouse gas emissions are captured under travel, so staff did not see that as an independent category. Olson said it seems like the City is in a very strong position to impact water consumption because the City is the sole provider to residents and businesses. The City can also have an impact on how solid waste is handled. He felt drawn to those objectives where we can have the greatest impact given the level of effort we intend to spend. Jester agreed and said it seems like we have tackled the energy consumption goal through the 20-40-15 program. While she hoped we would continue to address that goal, it may be time to tackle other categories. She was concerned that many of the items under the goal to reduce water consumption deal with water quality rather than water consumption. Anderson was concerned about choosing one of the four goals if we believe the bottom strategies don't seem to align with the top goals. Mahtani said the Commission will be talking about that at a future meeting. Olson commented it is how the process would evolve after we have submitted our ballots to staff. Jester said we should continue to try to work on all of them even if we pick one as a priority. She commended the City for wanting to do something else after 20-40- 15. CONSERVATION COMMISSION MINUTES October 13, 2015 Page 5 Gerard noted she was not comfortable doing a ballot without having cost/benefit data. Jester was not sure how we would get that data. Olson thought that information might become better known as we proceed further into the project. Mahtani said at this point staff doesn't have the capacity to provide the level of cost/benefit analysis needed to thoroughly analyze the goals. They are looking for the Commission's first reaction to each of the topics. Jester noted the country is running out of potable water and fossil fuels and asked if we should consider that when we look at priorities. Gerard commented we are part of the bigger world and it was hard for her to narrow that down to Eden Prairie and then apply that to this type of recommendation. Jester said Hennepin County has significant solid waste goals and the State of Minnesota has water consumption goals. Gerard suggested it would be helpful if we knew the County and State goals in each of these areas. Jester said at the last meeting Mr. Getschow also talked about a separate City initiative to raise a feeling of community. Mahtani said in the recent City survey a resident commented about wanting to see a greater sense of community and to see and promote the broader goals with a variety of initiatives. After the ballots were collected from Commission Members, Mahtani said staff will tally the ballots and will bring more information on the Hennepin County and State goals to the next meeting. VI. REPORTS FROM CHAIR Olson said he received information from John Fedora about an upcoming State event on October 22 at the Science Museum to promote Clean Energy Resource Teams. He could see such resources tying in with our discussions about the 20-40-15 successor program. He said he would email the information to the Commission. VIL REPORTS FROM COMMISSION Tritz said she revamped the educational materials and asked the Commission Members to review the graphics one more time before sending them off to Ms Mahtani. She will start work on the material for water quality next. VIIL REPORTS FROM STUDENTS Corpuz said the Justice Council at Pax Christi is sponsoring an Earth Day Retreat/Symposium on April 23, 2016, from 8:30 to 2:30 pm for the purpose of discussing environmental issues. Jester suggested if Ms Corpuz would like to represent the Commission, she could take some of our educational materials to the event. IX. CONTINUING BUSINESS A. Educational Outreach Materials CONSERVATION COMMISSION MINUTES October 13, 2015 Page 6 (See Item V.) X. INFORMATIONAL MATERIALS/HANDOUTS Mahtani said going forward the Project Profile will not be part of the Commission's standard agenda. It takes a large amount of staff time for preparation and follow up of the discussion. In addition there are a number of other Commission work plan items that will be important and will take time to pursue. Staff is proposing discussion of the report be eliminated to provide opportunities to put effort to other initiatives. Anderson asked if the report will be withdrawn from all the commissions. Jester said she thought this is the only commission that requested it. She was concerned that the Planning Commission members may not consider environmental issues during their discussions. Mahtani said projects are looked at from a sustainable perspective, and staff will continue to bring individual items to the Conservation Commission for discussion. Jester said she was disappointed in this decision because the Commission's review of the report gave an opportunity for the City to get some feedback on development they would not otherwise get. She felt we have been very sensitive to the amount of staff time we request, but there has not been a lot of feedback to the Commission on the questions we have asked. Olson said his perspective is that it will be put more on Commission Members to follow through with the Planning Commission minutes for projects that are coming through. He believed the Commission can still raise questions or concerns about the projects under the agenda item, Reports from Commission. Mahtani said the Project Profile will continue to be sent to Commission Members each month. Olson commented it is incumbent on Commission Members to raise questions. Anderson said it seems we are being asked to focus more on our agenda items. If the Commission is perceived as not being focused on the right items, then she would want to make room for the work that should be done. Mahtani said the adjustment to the agenda is not a statement that meetings have not been efficient, rather that the Commission has a number of very important initiatives coming down the pipeline on which to concentrate. XI. UPCOMING EVENTS XII. NEXT MEETING-NOVEMBER 10, 2015 XIIL ADJOURNMENT MOTION: Tritz moved, seconded by Anderson, to adjourn the meeting. Motion carried 5-0. Chair Olson adjourned the meeting at 9:00 p.m.