Seward Neighborhood Group Environment Committee Minutes

Seward Neighborhood Group Environment Committee Minutes

Monday, August 10, 2015 Matthews Center Art Room

Attendance: Doug Wise, Mark Sulander, Mike Trdan, Ben Walen, Alexis Troschinetz, Jim Scheidt, Brian Major

Legend: Action Items, Motion

Meeting called to order: 6:12 p.m. Troschinetz chairs meeting.

1. Approve Agenda: Since Ben could only stay until 7 pm, moved Home Energy Conservation Workshop topic to follow Minutes and expand this topic to include the Home Energy Visit buy down program. Also, moved Lake Street Challenge up to fourth on the agenda. M/S/C Trdan and Sulander.

2. Approve Minutes: May 2015. M/S/C Walen and Trdan.

3. Home Energy Conservation Workshop: Related to the workshop is the price of the visits that CEE conducts and would be promoted at the workshop. SNG has committed funds in the past to buy down the cost of the visit from $70 to $30, making the visit accessible to more people. CEE currently has an outstanding $1,000 balance to the City for these visits. (Within days of this Env Comm meeting, the $1,000 balance was resolved.) As a reminder, the Env Comm approved moving $1,500 funds from outreach to the home energy visits by CEE. Going forward, Env Comm would prefer to have CEE invoice SNG board directly. Doug will call Hannah and Nate with CEE on Aug 11 to discuss the option of funding directly and get the proper paperwork in place. (Within a week of the Env Comm meeting, Doug worked with CEE to ensure that the mechanisms are in place for SNG to pay CEE directly and visits are available for $30 again.) The Env Comm wanted to host the energy workshop regardless of the price of the visit. The last workshop hosted in the neighborhood might have been 4-5 years ago and folks recalled 45 people attended. We know that we got about 20 attendees at the raingarden workshop in June. Env Comm would be satisfied with attendance in this range of 20-40 people. Mark Sulander wondered whether the workshop could be recorded to get broader participation in the neighborhood. We would need a volunteer to coordinate with CEE about whether they would be okay with that and someone to also record it, process the video, etc. to prepare it for sharing. Alexis comments that just on August 8th, TPT premiered a video regarding home energy. This video could be posted on the SNG Env Comm website. Alternatively, there might be something similar already produced and provided on the CEE website to which the SNG Env Comm website could link. Env Comm picked a date for the workshop: October 8th. Alexis suggested “Save the date, October 8!!! Come celebrate Energy Awareness Month with Seward!” for some promotional language. Alexis will include article in Profile, adding to events calendar in Southside Pride, facebook posting, SNG website feature, and Seward e-democracy posting. Franklin Ave Open Streets on Aug 16 would be a good way to do early outreach. Alexis will coordinate with CEE to get a poster to the SNG office in time for open streets and possibly make small reminder sheets that folks can take with them. Alexis will check with CEE regarding registration or RSVP requirements. (Following this Env Comm meeting, Alexis learned that CEE does prefer RSVP: “To reserve your spot contact Hannah Strong at 612-335-5828 or .”)

4. Lake Street Energy Challenge: Doug shared opportunity and brought supporting documents to share. This challenge dovetails nicely with activities committee was already pursuing, such as the workshop discussed. Participating in it means the challenge will provide some resources, including money to host a “party.” The 17 neighborhoods that border Lake Street and Midtown Greenway are invited to join. Partners include Xcel Energy Partners in Energy, Midtown Community Works, CEE. The plan was finalized in June so they are a bit behind schedule. Focus of the plan is residential (SF & MF) & commercial. Plan has goals for reduction in energy and they will be tracking the change at an aggregated level. Plan is very detailed and organized, but the culture of the team is more flexible, not rigid; team is inclusive, wanting folks to help out with outreach. Next SNG board meeting is Aug 26th. Questions Ben sees – what will the neighborhood be accountable for by being a participant? Will this overwhelm already busy staff? It will be an add-on to activities already underway. The Env Comm is already offering outreach on Energy and this could provide a structure. The intern offer is promising for alleviating staff workload. Who would be the point person from SNG? The board could appoint an Env Comm member to do any reporting out. CEE point person: Emma Strauss. The SNG Environment Committee supports the Lake Street Energy Challenge and recommends that the SNG board adopt the sample resolution provided by the Challenge (attached). M/S/C Trdan and Troschinetz. The Env Comm will continue to review challenge information and get questions answered by the challenge point person at CEE.

5. Recap of Rain Garden Workshop June 22: Mike gave an update. There were 20 plus attendees. A professional level presentation was delivered by a landscape architect. A polished powerpoint is available, as well as a hefty folder of resources available to everyone in attendance. Focused on rain gardens for residential sized lots. Metro Blooms deals with many 40 ft size lots like in Seward and also had examples of larger suburban lots. Main goal is to reduce water running off into the streets and to the river. At Sustainability Fair, someone asked about wouldn’t it be better to just have a cistern – at the workshop this was addressed – on an average residential roof (1,200 sq ft), 1 inch rain, generate 300 gallons of runoff. Another issue with rain barrels – actually have to be using the water for there to be capacity. They distributed an evaluation survey – Alexis will ask for results. May do follow-up to attendees if MB finds that helpful.

6. Recap of Environmental Walk July 8: Alexis and Mike gave an update. 45-50 people attended. It was a good line-up. A map was made to accompany the walk. Folks were very interested and participative. Mark suggests announce GGY at Annual Meeting. Alexis will add to October agenda what to do with GGY 2014 and possibly honoring other energy actions, as well as in general planning outreach at Annual Meeting.

7. Planning Environmental Walk Aug 26th 7pm: Planning up to 5 stops for the walk related to our work plan/activities this year. Keep to 1 hr to 1 hr 15 min because of how early it is getting dark. Handouts: map, energy workshop fliers, CSG 101, organics sign-up brochure, Community Solar Garden survey. Ideas to pursue with Env Comm support:

· Gravity fed furnace 2501 34th Ave. South (Doug has provided info about the loan programs but right now we are out of money) Opportunity to talk about CenterPoint rebates.

· Solar on top of homes – Carol Greenwood’s home; 2 years ago – Minnesota Renewable Energy Society (25th Street across from Matthews Park); (Alexis pursued the home south of Matthews and they are unavailable the evening of the walk.)

· Solar panel manufacturer Itek Energy 2746 31st Ave South (just outside of Seward’s borders) – fine but may be too late in the evening and may be too long. Alexis may call if a stop is needed.

· Organics Mike Trdan’s 2524 35th Ave S

· Hub of Heaven (26th St and 28th Ave) Jim if in town. Other Hub of Heaven coordinators include Zoey Winegarden, Audrey Boyle, and Mehmet. Alexis and Jim will work together to solicit a speaker.

· Subscriber to Northern Sun’s CSG?? Alexis will call. (Alexis did call and the developer, not Northern Sun, knows who the subscribers are. Also, the garden is not up yet.)

Other ideas discussed included zero energy home (no one could identify one), homes that did an energy conservation project recently (however, the two featured in the SNG Energy Profile was over a year ago), geothermal home (suggested by Dick Westby – not an exact alignment with work plan topics, however, after the meeting, Alexis called and learned that this home has also put a down payment on being a part of the Bethel Community Solar Garden), and someone that has taken action since the June workshop (Alexis asked Metro Blooms, but never heard back).

8. Kings Fair Planning: – Theme “Back to the 60s,” but not sure Env Comm will be able to adjust our plan to do something creative to match the theme. Bring: Home Energy Conservation Workshop interest sign-up, Hennepin County’s nice organics poster, and Kellie Kisch’s bill stuffers), Community Solar Garden (CSG) survey, CSG 101, clipboard. Mark has a 10x10 shelter if inclement weather arises and could make it available for our use on Sept 19th. Mike will try to get a 33 gallon organics bin from Kelly to display so that we have an accurate sized bin for the demonstration. Alexis has asked about a table, but hasn’t heard anything back. It would be ideal to have a table of our own and right next to SNG so that we can borrow Doug to talk energy related matters for the Env Comm outreach. Putting together a game with organics of what goes into bin would be fun. Another take on this is that kids could draw on a paper plate items they can put in the compost bin. The reward for participating could be a compostable bag. It could be good to have at the annual meeting a loop of the little video ad on organics (on the City’s website). The team decided that the poster-sized CSG survey could include the following questions: Do you know what a Community Solar garden is? Do you need more info? Would you subscribe? How important is it that it is in the neighborhood? Would you pay more for it to be in the neighborhood? There will be two colors of dots = one for folks to use if they are filling it out on their own, another for filling out if they’ve talked with a rep at the table (indicating that they are a little more informed). Alexis will try to make large buttons that say “ask me about [topic]” have a couple extra of each for stop-in committee members to wear and talk to folks about the topics.

9. Environment Committee Chapter in Seward History Book – Mike shared his efforts to compile a chapter on Seward’s history on environmental issues. He had planned to use arsenic content already developed outright and the history book committee suggested 20 possible topics in addition. Mike wanted to focus on how this neighborhood became environmentally aware locally and onto the national scene. Jim offers to have an interview with Mike to provide input.

10. Organics Program – Trdan noted the City is implementing Phase One of the Residential Organics Program in mid-August. By the end of August, Seward residents who have signed up for the program will receive new, 32 gallon green wheeled carts for organics collection. All Seward residents who are enrolled in the program will also receive a “welcome packet” in the mail that will include additional information on how to correctly participate in the program as well as a supply of 3 gallon compostable plastic bags for storing organic items until pickup. As of August, Kellie Kish, the City Recycling Coordinator, reported that overall the Seward Neighborhood ranks third citywide in the number of residents registered in the Organics Program with a participation rate of 53.08%. Linden Hills with 62.15% and ECCO with 56.24% are ranked number one and two.

11. Hub of Heaven Update – At the May meeting, it was mentioned that SNG requested 5% of collection for books management. Jim said that 5% sounds reasonable, but isn’t positive of what they are taking, if any cut. Jim will ask Diann or Kate. The garden is the best it has ever been since 1997, which is why it will be great to have it as a stop on the Aug 26th Environmental Walk.

12. 34th Ave Rain Garden – Alexis shared an excerpt from the final summary from Andy Martinson, who along with Doug Wise, attended a meeting with the City only a day or two following the May 11 Env Comm meeting (the last meeting): “The MWMO is no longer interested in funding this. They are the main source of cash for gardens around here. Therefore gardens are out of the discussion. Doug Wise, Rolf and I are going to talk about how to best get the block together to process the closure of this. The more important aspect of this is we created some awareness about on-street raingardens and other ways of managing water. Since we started working with the MWMO, these have been installed in St Paul and in a few suburbs. Four years ago, there wasn't one in the metro. While we clearly didn't influence those projects, we can now point to this work when our City does things like build buffered bike lanes or put in traffic calming bump-outs on streets, asking to consider alternatives to current storm water management.”

13. Meeting Adjourns 8:01 p.m. M/S/C Trdan and Sulander.