MINUTES
3:00 p.m.
City Hall, Room 604
MEMBERS PRESENT: Gary Delveaux,
Ian Griffiths, Annette Weissbach, Rich Krieg, Debbie Lindgren, Karen Kohlbeck,
Nancy Nabak, Crystal Osman, Lisa Evenson, Sandy Stokes,
Andre Jacque, Mark Foht, Erik Hoyer, Peter Schleinz, Nick Reckinger, Tina
Quigley, Paul Rentmeester, Mary Haupt
The meeting was called to order at 3:00 pm by co-chair Gary Delveaux.
Introductions were made and new member Paul Rentmeester of, Merrill Lynch was
welcomed.
Business/Marketing Plan - Lisa Evenson
updated the members on the Communication and Marketing Plan that she drafted
and said it’s a work in progress and asked that members contact her with
comments. She referred to the strategy sections in the back and said those tie
into a lot of different projects and said media wise, we need to communicate to
the public what is going on for each small and large project. Mr. Delveaux inquired about the process for a
news release with Lisa responding that she thought the city would be weighing
in if they want to be the PR contact for the entire group. She thought it would be best that the Task
Force first adopt the plan and then hold a news release. She said whenever the
Food Group or any group is ready to go with their initiatives,
they can contact her and develop a plan for a news release. Nancy commented that the plan had a good
format and said we should be holding press releases on the small projects and to let
her or Lisa know. She said we need to
keep up with the exposure.
Lisa reviewed
the pharmaceutical collection results stating that over 500,000 pills were
brought in by 300 people. She said with
the two collections, over 2 million pills were collected. She said she, Derek Lord and Wes Damro are in the process of putting an educational brochure
together which will be written in English and Spanish and will include general
information about how you should keep your drugs until the next collection and
not to take on too much medication if you’re not going to use it all. She said this collection of medications is
going to St. Louis. Two annual collections will be held each year, the third
Friday in April and September. Lisa said
WPS offered their incinerator for disposal of the medications and said they
held their public comment regarding an air permit, and nobody commented. Karen
said while the collection was a huge success, she’s questioning if we met the
sustainability initiative and wondered if some of these drugs could be used in
other parts of the country? Brief discussion regarding
concern with the medications being tampered with if they get into the wrong
hands. Karen commented that some of the drugs collected were still in
their original packaging. Lisa said the narcotics would need to be separated
out and a pharmacist would need to be onsite.
Rich commented that that the majority of the pharmaceuticals that get
into our water comes from urine and said in our
country 80% of pharmaceuticals are going to factory farm animals. Tina said she
had a conversation with her pharmacist a couple of years ago, who said there
are very strict regulations and she put her in touch with Wes Damro to talk about a possible pharmaceutical collection. Discussion on putting out a news release regarding the success of
the collection, with the thought that this was Wes Damro’s
project and Lisa will check with Wes about that. She stated that the project didn’t receive
much coverage in the newspapers, but it was announced on the radio and TV
morning shows.
Annette
suggested that physicians and hospitals should stop accepting medication
samples, stating how many samples were collected in individual packaging. Gary
commented that many low income people cannot afford to purchase medication and
rely on getting samples. Sandy commented
that she was instructed to send one pricey medication that was prescribed to
her, back to the pharmaceutical company if she was not going to use it. Nancy suggested printing an educational blurb
on the bottom of the water bills about reducing the amount of pharmaceuticals
or some such educational message, and said Utility Manager,
Bill Nabak was on board with this. Lisa
will contact him. Annette inquired about
possible grants through the pharmaceutical companies? Lisa said she was not
aware of any and said they are going through the Department of Agriculture next
year and to the Dept. of Commerce for another grant.
Gary
mentioned that the demolition that was done on Broadway was 97% recycled.
Food Group - Rich updated stating that they have
been meeting monthly and have been working on supporting community gardens and
will work with having people use reusable bags at the Farmers Markets rather
than the plastic bags. He said they
would like to work on encouraging people to use the farmers markets and said a
recent speaker at the Urban Frog gave them ideas for ways to improve the On
Broadway Farmers Market and they will work to make some changes to improve the
Saturday downtown market as well. He
indicated that their next meeting is scheduled for October 2nd at
4:00. Rich said they are encouraging
lower income people to use the market and educate them on opportunities to do
this. Nancy said part of the lower
income project they are doing relates to a survey from WIC to try to find out
how they can increase their program to get usage higher. She indicated that she will offer advice to
change the layout and design of the application to make it more user friendly. Discussion regarding the
cost to join WIC, which is currently $15, and may be increased to $30 per
person. Nancy said WIC is looking
at allowing their coupons to be used in grocery stores but said the downside is
that people will not necessarily be conscious of buying locally grown
food. Sandy stated that tomorrow she is
going to Richmond Elementary School in Appleton, which has been named by Health
Magazine as one of the ten healthiest schools in the United States. She
indicated that she is writing a chapter for a book on school lunches and said
she would be conducting a lot of interviews and will report back at the next
group meeting. Karen said Hidden Valley
Farms have a program that schools can tap into, she
will provide information if anyone is interested.
City Hall Building and the City
Leading by Example –
Andre said Debbie has enlisted Amy Kox and they were
going to be reviewing the City Hall blueprints with City Engineer, Ed
Wiesner. He said we received a
spreadsheet from Honeywell with the cost savings that have been achieved as a
result of the different phases of the city hall projects that have been
done. Andre said there were guaranteed
utility savings as part of the Honeywell contract and said we have exceeded
those savings. Jim Krol
of Honeywell will be attending the October meeting to give a brief presentation
outlining what’s been done. Andre said
we’re looking to firm up our carbon footprint calculations and we needed more
specific information such as what percentage of our energy costs were from coal
and from various other methods.
Home Energy Audits – Mark reported that he met with Doug
Meek and said they would like to write an introduction paragraph to be sent to
Task Force members and for them to forward on to others. He said the audit costs $300 and the homeowner
will get a $25 rebate, with the Task Force receiving $75 for each audit. He said there is a list of energy savings
materials you can purchase that will give rebates as well. Mark will tweak the
introductory paragraph and send it to Doug for final approval and it will then
be sent to Task Force members. Nancy
said the communication plan included meeting with the Press-Gazette and getting the buy-in from them, with Lisa
suggesting selecting members of the Task Force to be interviewed by the Press-Gazette. Mark suggested if enough money is collected,
possibly starting a scholarship to assist low income families with energy
costs.
Gary said he
has seen storm water drain stencils on curbs.
Rich said Derek will choose a date in October and will enlist the
assistance of students from East and West High for this project. Peter said about one-third of the stencils
have already been stolen.
Crystal said
their Greening Events Chair, Tina Quigley is present and Tina addressed the
Task Force. She said they recycled at Artstreet, used recyclable paper, bio-degradable food
containers, used soy based ink, tee shirts were from
organic cotton. She said they want to
educate other groups and events on the How-to’s and
they are planning to put on a model event and are in fast full speed mode right
now. She said Arts Events has the staff and resources to put on an event; a
food, wine, street festival, which would be all local and would be a green
event; a zero waste event. She said they are working in conjunction with DGBI
and On Broadway and said the Task Force is a necessary partner in this
event. She said they look at this event
as bringing people together socially with an educational element to show them
how easy it is to live green. Karen said
another component they are looking at is a behind the scenes event to educate
outsiders, telling them who our contacts are and holding seminars with
speakers. She said right now they’re thinking big—both sides of the river. Tina said DGBI is talking about holding a big
event in fall of 2009 for the CityDeck, which is the
timeframe she was looking at for her event and said maybe they could piggyback
the two events. Karen said UWGB is going
to be having a lot of things for their anniversary in 2009-2010 and they could
maybe be brought on board. Tina said many partners need to be identified.
Erik said he
was successful in having the City Parks Committee approve having the city pick
up recyclables at the city band concerts in St. James Park and he said this
could be the start of the city picking up recyclables at other events. Tina said they are in possession of 100 clear
stream containers that they would loan out. She is planning to loan out these
bins to the two area farmers markets next year to use for the season. Annette
suggested selling souvenir reusable cups at events rather than bottled water,
with Tina adding that to have zero waste events they would need to pour wine,
beer, soda and everything in compostable cups.
Tina invited members to join their core committee for this event and
said subcommittees will be formed as well.
Gary inquired
about the Transportation Summit, with Nancy responding that the summit was
moved from November to February 2009 because Ed Begley got an acting gig and
was taken off of their circuit. She said they have a different outlook and may
concentrate on solving local transportation problems rather than spending money
on a celebrity. She indicated that the group has been meeting on a weekly basis
and they are trying to find out how to come up with the best topics for the
day. Suggestion was made to have Mr.
Begley in the form of a video conference, which Nancy said they have considered
as well. Crystal updated the group on a
joint shuttle service and said Green Bay Metro and Appleton Valley Transit were
trying to work on a grant application but said the time period for the grant
has passed. She said it is still being worked on and she will bring
updates.
Rich inquired
about the trestle trail at the end of Porlier Street
and said the Parks Committee has voted this down because of the cost estimate,
which went from thousands to millions of dollars. He asked for input and
inquired if he should contact Bill Landvatter, Director of Parks &
Recreation for the city. Andre responded
that Bill had a lot of interest in this project and was told that the cost
would be over one million. He said there
has been a couple of fires on the bridge which made it structurally unsound and
the DNR suggested starting with something new rather than attempting to fix the
existing structure. Rich suggested
someone starting a private fundraising effort, with Andre stating that it still
exists as a request with Cong. Kagen and Sen. Kohl’s
office that if the funding comes through, we could earmark it for a unique
Green Bay project. He said we were successful in getting money earmarked for
other projects.
Annette
reported on the Green Building subcommittee and said they are thinking about an
educational event next year too and said it may be worthwhile to tie in with
Tina’s event and make it one large event. She said there in interest from many
builders in green building. Tina thought it would be a good idea and said green
building would be a hot topic and said it could be a two day event or even
evolve into a week-long event. Andre
said there is a green built house at 501 Fifth Street and the Mayor toured that
house with members of the Redevelopment Authority.
Nancy said
she belongs to Leadership Green Bay and they are celebrating their 25th
Anniversary with a sustainability theme.
She said everyday that the class goes through the program they are going
to have a portion of the day on sustainability and a how it relates to history
and government. She stated that she is
chairing the environment day which will be in November and said they will have
a speaker and someone else talking about local food and how they can start
working on becoming sustainable. Nancy
said the LGB class will have an entire year of sustainability with promotions
throughout the year and suggested doing a press release with LGB teaming with
the Sustainable Task Force. She stated that it is important that the Chamber
and the city work together on a sustainable theme. She said the group will be touring the DNR
building and will have a local food day and will compost their waste at the DNR
building. Nancy said in the small food
group, the groups are assigned to buy local food and they are given a list of
where they can buy the food and then have to share how easy or difficult it was
to get the food. Karen suggested doing a
co-event with LGB and said there is a challenge out there where you actually
have to carry your waste that is not recyclable.
The next
meeting of the Task Force will be held on Thursday, October 23rd at 3:00 pm in
Room 604 of City Hall.
Mary Haupt
Recording
Secretary