MINUTES

Sustainable Green Bay Committee

August 24, 2006

City Hall, Room 604

1:30 p.m.

 

 

MEMBERS PRESENT:  Gary Delveaux, Ian Griffiths, Mayor Jim Schmitt, Kelly Wolf, Michael Finney, Jeffrey DeLaune, Jessica Garrals, Dan Roarty, Christine Fossen-Rades, John Miller, Richard Krieg, Tom Lesperance, Bill Lockery, Allison Swanson, Rob Strong, Dr. John Katers, Clarence “Wick” Wickham, (Josh Arnold & Connie Lindholm via teleconference) and Annette Weissbach (of DNR arrived late)

 

 

The meeting was called to order by Co-Chairman, Gary Delveaux at 1:30 p.m. 

 

Mayor Jim Schmitt introduced himself and shared his view of what direction he would like to see this committee take.  He said the City of Green Bay is a member of the U.S. Conference of Mayors and is one of the smaller cities in that conference, with the minimum population for membership being 50,000.  He stated that he attends two conferences a year and said one thing that is talked about at every meeting is some of the same measures that are going to be talked about at this meeting.  He said there is a book on Best Practices, which he is having copied for committee members, adding that the City of Green Bay needs to have an entry in this book, stating this is what we did.  He said we want to be a leader in the greener Green Bay initiatives and said Mayor Daly appointed a commission similar to this one and said it’s amazing what they’ve done with rooftop gardens, placing a time limit on how long vehicles can be left idling, and saved the city a lot of money.  He said the Mayor of Utah gave free parking to energy efficient vehicles. 

 

Mayor Schmitt said the city grew a couple of hundred million dollars in the past year in value and said a lot of this is due to people remodeling their homes and new construction and he said we need to educate citizens that these are things they can do like environmentally safe paint and lighting, and maybe offer incentives through our Council like waiving or discounting the building permit, or approve it in X amount of time.  He said there is a lot we can do; some easy things and some long-term building projects we can talk about.  The Mayor said he would like to see a commitment from this committee and said the committee has 100% of his support.  He said any changes or enhancements in the city, if they’re brought through this office, will be run through the City Council.  He stated that we have two good co-chairs in Gary Delveaux and Ian Griffiths, adding that they come from different backgrounds.  The Mayor asked that everyone introduce themselves and give a brief background.

 

 

 

I.              Introductions

Michael Finney, has worked for the Oneida Tribe for 15 years, started the Environmental Planning Dept. there and has been involved in the environmental area, was involved in the Sustainable Green Bay effort five years ago.  John Miller, architect with Berners Schober Associates,  WEDA Credit and professional has been working toward sustainable principles for the past five years in educating himself and incorporating the basic tenants of sustainability into the work he does for their firm and said Ian Griffiths and he have been leading the charge in their office as far as pushing forward these principles in their daily practice.  Tom Lesperance, City of Green Bay Inspection Division supervisor has been with the city for many years, Bill Lockery, City of Green Bay Principal Planner, was the project manager for the Smarth Growth Comprehensive Plan.  He said within that plan there is a goal in the land use section for sustainable urban development and said this committee will hopefully help to implement that goal.  Christine Fossen-Rades, teaches Biology and Environmental Science at East De Pere High School and has been there for 15 years.  She said they have a very active Ecology Club and are active in the community focusing on education of their students and of the community in the Green Bay area.  She is also active in the League of Conservation Voters, Clean Water Action Council, Isaac Walton League, Bairds Creek Foundation and is excited to get involved in this committee and to get her students involved as well.  Allison Swanson, Economic Development Director for the City of Green Bay, sitting in this meeting in place of Derek Lord.  She sees their role as finding a connection between what this committee would do and trying to activate it amongst the businesses in the community and trying to activate in the city’s business parks to be more energy efficient and in the city itself.

 

Mayor Schmitt welcomed Josh Arnold and Connie Lindholm, via teleconference. Josh Arnold stated that he works for Franklin Energy Services in Madison, and they have an office in Green Bay.  His company does energy efficiency consulting for a number of groups including Focus on Energy, WE Energies and WPS.  He is excited to join this group because he recently moved from Portland, Oregon where he worked for the City of Portland’s Office of Sustainable Development.  He stated that he has background to what was successful and what wasn’t in Portland, and can bring ideas that would be very specific, very achievable and very cost effective for the City of Green Bay to consider on this task force. Connie Lindholm said she is the Executive Director for the Wis. Green Building Alliance which is the statewide affiliate for the U.S. Green Building Council.  She said they will be celebrating their 10th anniversary next year and said several people around the table are members.  She has worked with a lot of people on green building and is a subject that has taken off the last three years.  She said they were part of the City of Milwaukee Green Team and had several of their members involved in Madison’s Green Team Initiative.  She is very excited about participating in Green Bay’s effort.

 

Rob Strong, Planning Director for the City of Green Bay, said in this position he also worked as the Executive Director for the Redevelopment Authority, Green Bay Housing Authority and Brown County Housing Authority.  Tying in with the Economic Development aspect, he will be looking at the neighborhoods; where we all live and play.  Clarence Wickham, prefers to be called “Wick” works at Solar Mining Company in Green Bay. Said they do solar hot water and hot air.  Jeff DeLaune, works for Wisconsin Public Service for 25 years and the last 15 years on new technology, technology innovation. He said he started the Solar Wise for Schools program, and have about half dozen solar electric systems on area high schools and are researching new technologies where homes can create their own heat and power using natural gas so they can offset electric purchases from the utility, plug in electric hybrid vehicles and other new technologies that play into sustainable design and architecture.  John Katers, Associate Professor at UWGB in Natural and Applied Science, is an environmental engineer.  He teaches courses in Pollution Control, Pollution Prevention, Waste Management Resource Recovery and Renewable Energy Systems.  He stated that he also works for STS Consultants primarily doing a contract with Focus On Energy as part of the Renewable Energy Program with Focus.  He said he was involved in the original Sustainable Green Bay initiative which came about through a grant from the DNR, and he was the one who made the recommendation that we should be doing this up in Green Bay and said he was disappointed to see it fall by the wayside but said there were several projects that came out of it that are still ongoing.  Jessica Garrals, Wisconsin League of Conservation Voters Institute.  She said their Conservation Advocacy Organization works to get citizens more involved with the policy process both at the state level and locally.  Rich Krieg, teaches at Green Bay East High School, said he has been concerned about and involved in conservation issues for a long time and is very energized about the new effort to revitalize cities and to revitalize cities in a sustainable way.  He feels both these things can go a long way toward solving our environmental problems, for a lot of reasons.  Dan Roarty, architect with Dimension IV and said it strikes him as interesting that they were trained in these ways in the ‘70’s and said they never really happened, except for a little flourish in the late ‘70’s.  He said to see it now becoming more mainstreamed than in the past is very satisfying.  He said his hope is to contribute in whatever ways they can but he hopes that he is constantly pushing them back to a broad, larger picture of what we’re doing.  He believes the small things are very helpful and important but said sustainable issues are beyond just the house and they do encompass things that are much broader and challenges that we can do and show our leadership at the next Mayor’s Conference.  Ian Griffiths, Berners Schober Associates said he has had an interest in this for a long time and was encouraged when Mayor Schmitt agreed to pull this committee together and said it’s very encouraging to see the immense wealth of information that we have in front of us and said we can achieve a lot very quickly and then over the long-term set larger goals that we can strive to achieve also. He is pleased to see everyone here.  Gary Delveaux, Manager of Business & Community Development for Wisconsin Public Service.  He said he sees his role as helping to facilitate and making things happen.  He stated that is very impressed with the knowledge and expertise of the group and it’s a matter of maximizing it. Kelly Wolf, Vice President of Operations for Georgia Pacific in Green Bay.  He said they have a basic footprint in energy consumption and want to do the right things as they move forward and hope to revitalize their Green Bay operations.  He stated that he recently moved back to Green Bay after living for 2½ years just outside Portland, Oregon on the Columbia River and had seen first hand sustainable green efforts and saw how people live a lot differently than we do here in the Midwest.  

 

Mayor Schmitt stated that he is going to be an active member of this group and thanked everyone for the great response and their willingness to serve on this committee.

 

II.         Define Mission

Mr. Delveaux distributed a draft of a mission statement and commented on the agenda stating that they will spend a little time taking comments or changes to the mission statement and will bring it back to the next meeting.  Ian will take the Committee through goals that this committee wants to accomplish and then they will brainstorm on ideas for small or larger projects and then will need to prioritize this list of ideas.  He said the list will be broken down to which projects can be done in 6 months, one year and which might need a grant.  The group will then be broken down into small groups to make things happen, adding that we want to be a group that identifies projects, develops a plan and makes things happen.  He would like to see future meetings last an hour.

 

Mr. Delveaux read the draft mission statement for the benefit of the people conferenced in on the telephone.  The Mission Statement read as follows:

 

“A sustainable Green Bay focuses on planning and implementing environmental enhancements as well as incentives for sustainable energy usage and building practices saving costs and improving quality of life for the citizens of our community.” 

 

Discussion ensued with the suggestion of adding the word “education” after quality of life.  Another suggestion was including “economic”, “social” and “sustainable culture”.  Mr. Delveaux and Griffiths will revise the Mission statement incorporating these suggestions and will bring it back to the next meeting.

 

III.        Define Goals

Mr. Griffiths opened the floor for discussion on goals; what the committee wants to achieve.

 

Ideas for goals:  Immediate or quick; 6 month timeline for some things and some longer time line.

 

 

Benchmarks:

Current Status/Measurable, establishing where we’re at right now, as well as where the curve is going in the future and do we need to reduce our load right now. Going forward 10-20 years, create something lasting and enduring that will be in the long-term interest of the community.  Don’t get too tied up in economics and lose sight of other long-term benefits.

 

Research Sustainable

 

IV.        Brainstorm Potential Ideas

Ideas for Projects:

·         Develop a Statement of Support for Urban Renewal and Revitalizing Downtown

·         Electric trolley running in downtown Green Bay

·         Less Dependency on Auto - offer incentives, community car program

·         Rain Barrels to collect rainwater – Milwaukee and Madison implemented rain barrels and require them in residential areas

·         Efficient light fixtures in our homes

·         Energy friendly permit process/speed up process

·         Flood Community with information, educational material with bills, emails, save energy & healthy living tips on internet

·         Collaboration public/private partnership, take a look at city’s own footprint, city operations, purchasing, staff, i.e. re-cycle paper, hybrid cars, energy audits; Lead the way as a City

·         Lead by Example, Rooftop gardens

·         10% of Energy from Renewable Energy – low sulphur bio diesel, try in one city bus

·         Create financial incentives for businesses to become a carbon neutral operation, carbon neutral events, carbon footprint in homes, Start with schools, Green & Healthy schools program, spread to other schools, energy audit reduced lighting cost in auditorium, students take ideas home

·         Recycling – Larger recycle bins at home like Allouez, place at Bay Beach and other parks

·         Change light bulbs in homes, 4 or 5 most commonly used, save $60 annually. Focus on Energy National Program; Change a Light, Change the World. Focus on Energy held a light bulb sale 4 or 5 years ago at the mall, make it easy for citizens to purchase.

·         Research/Development through UWGB, cost efficient/environmental.  Looking at several different things now; LED lights at Botanical Gardens, making electricity as a by-product and save several hundred dollars a year.  In Portland, the businesses followed the lead of the city regarding green and sustainability. New North talked to Wind manufactures, should be a goal of the New North initiative to bring research teams to this area and solar.

·         Mayor’s Awards for most energy efficient or most green building; a Green Award from Green Bay. Example Brown County Recycling Awards, Builders Conference in Wis. Dells, Madison knows who the environmental builders are. Get Conferences in Green Bay to discuss sustainability.  Cost of energy and storm water are issues driving the trend.  We now have the technology.

·         Announce that we are a walkable and bikeable community.  Appleton writing ice tea grants, walk to school programs, walk trails, make downtown walkable, promote active lifestyles, trestle trail in Menasha.  Milwaukee tearing down warehouses in downtown and it is lively at night now.  Mayor stated the city is working on several of these things such as the Kress Trail, which should be done next year.  Need to seek funding, add more bike racks.

·         Review document that was done 6 or 7 years ago

·         Facing the river, walk Broadway and the Farmers Market, encourage Farmers Markets, organic markets, Consider the low income also, look at how to save them a few dollars.

·         Press-Gazette commit one page per week to sustainable Green Bay, Best Practice of the Week or the Month.  Distribute list to people to the media, who can talk to all the issues

·         Time Warner Cable do cable shorts, looking for time to fill, plan outtakes, communication plan.  Concern expressed about flooding people with too much information. Choose a couple of messages.

·         Teach environmental education in social studies, not science classroom. Consider ecology and our actions as part of the environment/social interactions. Environmental education is part of the curriculum of K-12, but is not happening.  Work with schools and define more

·         Storm water – work with developers to save maintenance costs, almost happened in Bairds Creek to get one less detention pond at $750,000.  Public Works already has a committee to develop a plan to reduce storm water runoff and treatment of it, which needs to be completed in two years.  New business park trying to consolidate storm water management ponds for all the businesses on a regional basis.  Go beyond meeting the state mandates as in Dane County, work with Brown County Builders Association to get models of storm water sensitivity; be leaders and exceed the codes.  30 acres near the jail owned by Brown County would be receptive to get in hands of a developer.

 

“Wick” stated there is an active renewable energy cooperative in Green Bay with 200 members, installed 70 residential solar systems and put out 52,000 square feet of solar thermal the past two years.  A good application to go forward would be to put up a system on a fire station or the jail.

 

Mayor wants to start with changing out the lightbulbs this fall and have an idea for each month; something hard hitting like larger recycling bins.

 

Mr. Delveaux wrapped up the meeting stating that he and Ian will categorize the lists of goals and projects presented today, prioritize them and bring them to the next meeting.  The Mayor will have information on number of city vehicles, how many gallons of gasoline are used in a year, etc. for a meeting in one month.  A copy of Best Practices will be included with the minutes from this meeting.

 

The committee will meet again on September 7, 2006 at 1:30, and may break down into smaller subgroups at that time.

 

Mr. Griffiths thanked everyone for attending and invited members to welcome knowledge from other people who would be good resources.  Mr. Krieg welcomed members to take a copy of GREEN STREETS, a magazine of the Sierra Club.

 

 

Respectfully submitted

 

Mary Haupt

Recording Secretary