Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
All right, well, with past last month's events, thank you again, Adam, for always being on top of those.
I know we cover a lot of the ground, especially in some of those pre-event meetings.
So at this point, we'll move on to our public comments where members of the public can come in and if
they have questions, if they want to talk, if they just want to listen, we'll give them an opportunity
to do that. And so if you're interested in introducing yourself, you're welcome to share something.
Sure. Yeah, my name's Steve Stanford. I've been graduated from Miami Jail. I'm still on 85. I've been
in jail for 32 years. And then eight years ago, I moved into the wastewater.
I'll send a license channel on this and I'm a certified wastewater operator. I hope this utility is
with the industrial customers. We make sure everybody's, there's no problem for any of us.
I'm from Dalton, Hazel and my home is still there, right? I live here five days a week and then I'm
home on the weekends. But my family's saying I'm moving down here. I'm digging, being back here.
Well, great. Well, thanks for joining us in our meeting. We've got a couple of different subcommittees,
and one is specifically about water quality. And so whether or not you've met Mitchell already, or if
he's a native, you might hear a little bit more. We're definitely working on some opportunities to do
more with stormwater, and just sort of understanding sort of the health of Ianoir, specifically down
here in Numa County. So great.
Great. Well, feel free to chime in and give me questions, thoughts, and hi to you too. You're always
welcome to raise a hand if you've got thoughts or ideas. All right. So any other members of the public
in the Zoom call? Nope. Sounds good. Well, then we are going to move on to the new business of the night.
In the packet, there was a piece that was written by Norm. So Norm, I'm going to give you the floor
to just kind of talk through a little bit of what you put together, kind of what you're hoping to hear
from us and before. Sure.
Why don't I just shoot these, okay? Sounds great. A whole bunch over here, and here it's on the other
side. This is a graph for discussion. Perfect, thank you.
To give residents an opportunity to practice the management of Earth's rising temperature, this proposal
is that we encourage people to think about how often they're cutting a grass. This could be for introduction
next, late next, let next one be before the grass.
cutting season begins, possibly as a flyer of some kind that could be distributed somehow by the city.
The whole idea, as you'll see, is that out of habit and custom and wanting to keep everything looking
perfect, many of us with homes and lawns like to routinely cut the grass,
For discussion is the idea that you don't really need to cut it every week to keep it looking good.
You'll see in this draft discussion some findings from Princeton University about the effect of running
a lawnmower for an hour producing
As it says here, as much air pollution as driving a car 500 miles. So it's a serious producer at home
of greenhouse gases that we have some control over and possibly can put into place without much effort
at all and just a slight change of attitude, doing something different every week instead of cutting
the grass.
This draft is for your review and I'm discussing as the possible contents of a flyer, continuing the
work of the commission and helping residents to do stuff at home that can really affect the air, the
quality of our air. That's my intro. Great. Thanks, Ron. Thanks for putting this together.
So kind of just to summarize the goal of this conversation, it's really just kind of chat through what
we think of what you've put into the flyer, what we think about the idea of having a flyer and then
kind of maybe distribution ideas. Is that what you're? Yeah, absolutely. All right. Well, the floor's
open. I see there's more on the back about what concerns me is people like my next door neighbor who
has a contract with the group.
Yeah. Wants to mow once a week and he does, whether he needs it or not. So how do you work with these
contractors? Sure, good point. They need to make money and pay for their mowers and all that. Right.
Missing from this draft is that very consideration, which is very important and has to be included because
many of us, including where I live and our condo development on the southeast side, you know, the guys
come through every week no matter what.
and cut the grass, and they don't need to. So we have to, and I have suggested to Kerry that we bring
in for discussion a contractor to address these very points, so that they can be made part of discussion,
because it's very important to include the business.
in this business. And I think it can be worked out right so they don't lose any business, but they just
do business differently. We'll see. Other thoughts or questions to the chair of NAR? So what uses, I
haven't read it yet, but what uses the most gas in blowers or just the mowers? Mowers, blowers, anything
that burns gas. Yeah.
So if you have electrics, I guess you can give it as relaxed, except the electricity comes from a power
station over on the wall there. So what would happen with this? What do you think you would do with
this? This text with our work and your approval would be given to the city. I don't know how that would
work for printing as a flyer, you know, three page flyer, illustrated, nice looking. It could be distributed
maybe with the water bill.
I don't know if that's possible or not, but distributed somehow. I wonder if the city is currently doing
anything with this kind of education? I think there must be some, and we're all probably aware of it,
because you've walked down the street and seen in front of houses that stood the grass in front that's
let to grow wild. Yeah. There are a few of them around town.
You've seen them. That's all I can think of to bring up. I don't know the answer to that question. I
think it's really well written. So I have a couple of quick thoughts. One is, so in thinking about it,
I typically try and think like, okay, what subcommittee does this kind of fall under? Like, well, so
we're kind of keeping our buckets under control. And my assumption is that it would either be
Um, maybe the air quality working group or, which is kind of some of our, our working groups kind of
get a little quiet, sometimes get a little more active other times. The air quality or maybe the biodiversity
working group. And I would typically try and think, is there any city department that this would be
a good fit with as well? Or to Adam's point, is there anyone who's already starting anything like this
where conversations about how do we reduce resident, you know, usage of, of, or, or.
usage of their own or hired mowers. So that might be something to check in on to just reach out to a
couple of the different department representatives and ask if there's anything that they're doing that's
already in the works that we could then help create some supplemental materials. And then the third
thing that I'm thinking about that would be a little bit further down is in talking with
getting this into residents' hands. And something that I'll bring up in a little bit is talking
to neighborhood groups about the Habitat and Activity Map. And so it could be that those things tie
together. If we are talking to neighborhood associations, bringing this conversation to that table as
well, maybe not at the same time, but getting in the routine of us connecting with more neighborhood
groups, because neighborhood associations oftentimes have residents who are interested in doing what's
good for their local area. So this could be a great fit for that too.
It's also possibly an easy thing to list as like, here's something that you could add to your pledge
for the connectivity plan. Oh, yes. What a great idea. That could be part of that. Less mowing counts
as protecting habitat. Oh, well, if you're not mowing and you're letting a more natural landscape develop,
maybe that's a herbage in. I mean, connecting them in a dosis of a can is a- So when I read it in the
packet, I didn't know what the intention was exactly, but it read to me like,
a guest column, which historically we've sent a lot of guest columns into the, um, to the HT. Yeah.
Um, uh, left on a number of them over the years. And if, uh, if you wanted to coordinate, you know,
if you wanted to know how to do that or have me help you do that, I have kind of their, um, I don't
remember what to call it, but there's essentially a disclaimer text, say written by so and so of the
EC, but not the formal opinion of the city or whatever. There's, there's texts that they want.
I thought it, not knowing the background, not knowing the context, I thought I read a lot more like
a guest column than say a pamphlet. And while we do have plenty of resources to distribute at times
that we do table, I think ultimately we only end up in front of so many eyes and it's very, it's text
heavy, not
and it's good content, obviously, but I'm not sure. My personal knee-jerk reaction here was that I'm
not sure as much as a pamphlet goes, but I would very much encourage it done as a guest column to be
able to get in front of more eyes in that way, probably more than we'd see at any tabling event anyway.
So as long as it fits in their word limit, which I can find here in a minute,
I think that'd be a really good direction to go in personally. So I'll put that out there. Thank you
for that. Is there any way to get the research on how much we would say somehow quantify if we stop
knowing this much to the Republic need? Well, it'd be great to be able to state that. I think it would
be complicated and pull a lot of variables like how many people are participating.
Yeah. And how many, how long are they using their machines and look at it and so on that stuff. Sure.
It would be great to be able to quantify it. Yeah. It might be, it might be worthwhile to say, you know,
running a push mower for one hour, you know, uses or emits this amount running a leaf blower for an
hour or whatever. And maybe, and then kind of doing like sort of setting up that map for someone to
say, instead of doing my lawn every week for two hours, I'm going to do it.
twice a month for two hours. So, and just being able to kind of like quantify for yourself, like, okay,
well, I typically use it for this long. So I know that I'm no longer producing these emissions. So maybe
just like a really basic estimate of what things produce over a period of time. Or maybe a distance
in June. We started that. Yeah. Yeah.
When I look at Austin, I think they had an electric motor program. They weren't changing it at that
time. Here's an example of what the city has done. I didn't know about the electric motor program. Do
you remember, is it the department that is in charge of all cycle law maintenance equipment for Bloomington?
Do you all remember because I know that they're in the, in the climate. Was it the climate action plan
that they're like, subbing out the, as they retire the older appliances? Yeah, that they, thank you.
They, they'll be using more energy efficient things. So whoever it is that does that, that would probably
be a good department to check into. What department sound am I better with?
Sorry, it's public works. No, I don't think. Yeah, you can reach out to Sean Nia. She's a primary contact
for all things of the Climate Action Plan. Her name again? Sean, S-H-A-W-N. And then last name is Nia,
M-I-Y-A. M-I-L. M-I-Y-A.
M-I-Y-A. Yeah, she is the, what is it, director of, no, no, the assistant director of sustainability.
Okay. The buses that are becoming electric. Yeah, yeah. So there's a lot of things in the work, so I
feel like this could very potentially land in a place with lots of other complementary initiatives.
Exactly. Yeah. And if you,
I mean, what do you all think about having some sort of contractor, and I don't know if they need to
actually come into the EC meeting or if you would just meet with them, but to think through how to make
that a productive conversation. So we're taking into consideration the impact that this will have on,
you know, individual's businesses or livelihoods or anything like that that does get a little bit
you know, more touchy when we're really suggesting something change up like that. Well, a couple of
things. I could speak to the contractor who does the lawns where I live. But also, I think it would
be good to invite a contractor, one who wants to come in, to come in and talk to us about how this would
affect the business. Because this draft suggests that landscapers
says are responding to the reduced frequency of lawn cutting by expanding to include other services.
I don't know what those services are. We need to know more about it. And if people, if contractors lose
homeowner business, are they going to be able to pick it up doing other things for homeowners?
I don't know. I'm not sure. Yeah. Nowadays it's trending towards just landscaping. So they'll also mulch
through other things. And then the winter season will shovel snow. So they'll keep something year round.
Um, yeah, I was going to ask what exactly we were trying to gain by having, say, one contractor. And
if we're trying to get an industry opinion, I feel like it might be good to reach out to quite a few.
Or if we know that there is one individual or company or something that is enthusiastic about cutting
emissions, that might be the type of person that'd say, okay, let's have them come speak to us and how
this worked for them. But I'd be hesitant to take just one opinion in.
In general, I'm a student that represents the local landscaping industry. Yeah. OK. I live next to Sherwood
Oaks Church. Sherwood Oaks, as you know, has huge acres of grass. And it looks beautiful because it's
regularly cut every week.
whether it needs it or not, depending on it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's a matter of thinking anew about
how often we're cutting the grass. Well, keep an eye on what we're going to put. Yeah, I think that
sounds great. And I think that Matt's idea of putting something together that would potentially be fifth
of the Herald Times, I think, is a great idea. Their guest columns are limited to 600 words. I'm not
sure what this draft is currently at.
But I'd imagine during the ballpark that it probably wouldn't take much editing. I can't speak to how
people actually react to any of them, but I've felt really good about previous guest columns.
Guest columns, yeah. And I have ideas for more that I just haven't taken the time to write, but I think
this is a no-brainer of something to try to fit in there, 600 word limit, and then have them run
What do you think about timing. I mean, this is the ball where all this is stopping them guest concert
early spring.
Yeah. March, I don't know, right before it would matter when it has already started to matter. Yeah.
So yeah, early, early spring, late winter. Yeah. I think like March is when people start getting,
you know, the itch to get outside. There's also a way to know just how fast they'll run. Like I've submitted
some in the past that literally went on the website the next day, but then there've been other times
where it's taken a couple of weeks. So it's not something completely.
Reliable. Yeah. A couple of times, some of the ones get burned by them taking too long to publish it.
Maybe early 2026. Maybe talk to a contractor and find out at what point they make their feedback to
the people. That's a good point. Yeah. Great. So we'll leave it at that. Are there any other thoughts
or info that folks want to share with Nora in this moment about this draft?
Great. Norm, do you feel like you've got some good next steps in place? Thanks so much. All right. Thank
you for contributing this. Norm is only a few months into being on the ECN already. I love that you
jumped in with those feet. I love it. It's great. The next thing I want to do is just share, we've talked
a little bit about some additional outreach for the Habitat connectivity map. And we'll talk a little
bit more about that later on too. But I have, I don't remember where the other one is, but there,
I basically put together just like a few new kinds of flyers, just knowing that we have a lot of pamphlets
that we are handing out at different tabling events. But I think part of what I'm hoping, and I think
the biodiversity working group is hoping for, is that people will be drawn to not just the tool functionality
of the habitat connectivity map,
but also the idea of what it means and kind of what they can do. So I put together this flyer and I'm
very open to any edits or suggestions or input that folks have on it. This is one that is kind of like
a one sheet kind of flyer style. And then I think the other two things I have was this was just for
the table that the folks at Bugfest had, which is more or less a scannable code that takes you to the
Habitat Connectivity Plan page.
where the map is found front and center. And then the last one. So this is its own single page as well.
I'm basically just trying to like get your attention. But one of the things that I was thinking about,
which is why I'd love your thoughts on it if you have any, is we talked about different ways that we
might use our budget to kind of supplement some of the things we're doing. And so I've been really,
I was gonna say really stuck on the idea, but a bit of wordplay with thinking of like stickers that we could
have at our tables as well, so if people go through the process of going onto the map and adding their
home and what they're doing to improve habitat fragmentation, then we have these stickers that say,
thanks for adding your place, here's a sticker, put it somewhere that makes you feel proud or whatever,
but something that's a little bit more interactive and a little bit like the, you know, just a little
nudge to encourage people to get in the map and add to it.
So those are just a couple of things and we've got more stuff that we're talking through, but I figured
while the biodiversity working group has been working on it, I wanted to get in front of you all too.
Any input or major issues that you have with this that we should definitely note now before we go forward
with anything else? First normally thought I have right now is I like the sticker, but if you're going
to, and I think that design would work well as a sticker, but maybe change like map to pledge because
that's more like I did a thing.
Oh, that's a nice idea. I like that thinking. The stickers would be specifically for people who did
it right on the spot. Only if you do it. You have to do it. Or you show us your, you know, you're like,
oh, I did do it. I live right there. We planted this tree over there. But yeah, not hand out to everybody
because that's not the kind of budget we're working from. It's an eye-hogan stick. Yeah, it is. Yes, exactly.
Any other thoughts from folks on, on any of this or anything that you think is missing from the, from
the folks that are watching us? Yeah. I think that one is a lot more digestible than the other bloggers
we have. I feel interested in actually reading that one. It's not just like a wall of text.
I think for me, kind of like just trying to imagine what people, when they hear habitat connectivity
math or what the heck, or when they get to it, what the heck does that mean?
For me personally, I think that that box that says actions you can take is the thing that my brain is
looking for first, which is, I don't even know if what I'm doing counts. I don't even know what you're
talking about or if I could do it. And these may or may not be the right examples. I don't know. But
trying to give people kind of a jumping off point for what they can be doing. And there's so
many interpretations of each of these things that I don't know if you all have any ideas of things that
are missing that are really obvious or if you'd like to have
Adjusting. Yeah. Are there other groups working on the habitat plan or is it just the same? Yeah,
it's we, we worked with the city to get it onto the website and Matt can probably elaborate a bit more
on that. But yeah, I was going to say that the, not really the environmental commission came up with
the map based off of the plan, which they had done actually right around the time that I started. So
the plan itself was fairly old, but we,
Um, previous liaison, Linda Thompson and I thought that it was important to push a map just because
of its ability to, to increase engagement, to get people to participate and get excited about it and
share it. Um, because otherwise the plan is just a document that maybe no one reads. Um, and so we had
a previous attempt that an intern had worked on that was not aesthetically pleasing or the most usable.
It was a big ask. Recently we got the city GIS to help and for them it was a very easy project. Now
we have a much more visually appealing map. It's about getting it in front of people, particularly in
certain areas that we want to connect priority habitat. Is it part of the comprehensive plan?
Want to consider adding open space to the plan and future is obvious. I don't believe it's formalized
in any of their the city's documents. I don't think so. They not to in the climate action plan, but
Um, as far as the compliance with that, I don't know if they, you know, if it's anywhere in there, but
I don't believe it is. Good question. I don't think so. I know that it's been utilized, but I know Parks
mentioned that they've looked into it. We're deciding where corridors should be. Um, so there, there
is perhaps a small, um, appreciative audience, but generally we're just trying to, trying to get some
public momentum at this point. Yeah. And it just started. Yeah. And sort of the make, the made over
version was just released in July.
Maybe. Yeah, it was early summer. Yeah. And so I guess the press release went out at that point. But
this is kind of on the newer end. So we're really working through how to best get this in front of people.
And it is meant for residents of all kinds. So yes, it used to be more geared towards landowners. But
with students renting, how does it? I mean, there's plenty of opportunity to do things that are going
to be helpful for the insects and animals and everything. So yeah, just trying to figure out different
ways to get in front of people, make sense of it.
I think, Adam, even though the suggested things like local shops, like the hardware stores or the greenhouses
and things like that, at places where people who are investing in their space might be interested in
these. Exactly. Interested in these types of things, giving them, that seems we can have a flyer up,
but also maybe even like something that could be given to people who are interested, check out or whatever.
So yeah, working through it.
But yeah, this is just kind of one of the takes on how we might talk about it. Is there any other feedback
that people would like to give at this moment? You can always follow the afterwards as well, but I just
wanted to put a training. Well, it's, I see the underline, how to have pledge. So then that goes with
stickering and you see those words again, you start.
And when you click on that QR code, the first thing that happens is there's a pop-up window that says,
take the Habitant Activity Pledge, and that's what gets you to where you can add your space to the map.
If you don't go through the pledge, though, you can't add your items in the map. So it's really like,
it's trying to get folks to understand the pledge is the big, the door that opens into adding to the
map, but the map is going to exist either way.
And that's the case with the touch, what happens if they get a regular email once a month or something,
it reminds them, like, do you want me to clean it, or is it like one and done, never thinking about
it? Nothing like that. No, we're not there yet. We've been like five years from now. Yeah. At this point,
we're trying to kind of make sure that the ability to add something works well in a way that's like,
I don't know, I don't know what language reason, kind of a sort of semi-anonymously so that it's not
You don't have like a login to the map where you go in and put your stuff. It would just be like adding
to it. So that sense of like, how do you, can you edit your listing or do you just go in and add a whole
new one? So kind of talking to the GIS team to start figuring out what's the right level of privacy
and, and sort of access to it. But I think the idea of having there be sort of like an email that you
get added to, that then you can be potentially contacted about like reminders or this is the season
for planting this thing. Or like, here's when you might be seeing these natives.
pollinators or whatever. I'm not sure people want to suddenly be on email lists and there's no, you
don't submit your email or anything when you bank the pledge. Yeah. Yeah. But I think that, I think
that kind of trying to think like, is there anywhere that people can sign up for an email? Is that something
that we as a commissioner are actually able to do? Cause that might be a big question too, is do, is,
Are we able to have like a mailing list that we can contact people? But I really like the idea. So.
I know people don't like it more email that if it was once a month. I have an instrumental question,
but only from my info. Are we represented at the weekly farmers market? Is one of us tabling at the
farmers market? Yeah.
I don't know, we used to do that years and years and years ago. It's a great question. Because, I'm
never at your standard, you know, I'm just a P.D. bar, that's a great place to... If, Norm,
I'll be honest, if you're interested in tailing the farmers market, I think that would be wonderful.
Because of the number of things that we work on, I think that a lot of folks... I have to leave. Sorry.
You started coughing and I don't want to sit here and cough, so I apologize.
Thanks for being here. Feel free to add yourself to the Zoom if you wanted to sit there and watch or
anything like that. Thanks, Adam. But yeah, I mean, I think it would be great, especially with things
like this, that we have something we're trying to get out of the puddle. If folks want a table, that's
definitely happening. I don't know how one gets a table at the farmers market. They just show up, and
they have a little, like, the Parks Department has a little booth, and you just say, hey, I'm here for
the info alley, is what they call it. You just show up that morning. Yeah, you just show up. Yeah, a
table there.
Fairly often for a different thing. And you can just show up and it costs like $10, I think, which I
assume to cover my budget. Yeah. And I do wonder if because we're part of the city, they might. Yeah,
they might. I was going to say, pre-pandemic, we did somewhat regularly, like once a month, table at
the farmers market. I don't remember it costing anything. And it was in foe alley. Yeah. It might be
different. Well, if it sounds like it's worthwhile for some of the things we're talking about. I had
the foe leaguer the other day.
It's up to people's availability and desire. The farmer's market goes on for what, another like three
weeks? Is there an info alley inside? Technically, yeah, but it gets like really crowded. Another thing
to prepare for spring.
Yeah, okay. I will put it on our list of things to chat through and we'll plan for next year. Thank
you for offering that. Okay, great. And I like the idea about the mailing list. I'll see if we can figure
out like what it would take us long to do something like that, to figure out logistically if we can,
because digital communication is very complicated for us. And so figuring out the right channel for
that might be a little tricky, but I think it's a great idea.
All right. All right. Are folks comfortable with us moving on to the old business working group
conversations? Great. OK. So we have all these different subcommittees. We encourage folks to be part
of at least one of the subcommittees. You can be in more than one. But we have sort of a limit on how
many people we try to have in each one just to kind of keep things spread out and also not accidentally
tip into a full environmental commission meeting at a subcommittee meeting because the count of quorum
starts to become an issue. So we typically try to have some between two and four people on each of the
subcommittees. So we're going to start with water quality. And since we have a new commissioner, would
you give us just a quick little, there's kind of a focus on? The water quality group is one that I revived
when I joined the environmental commission, because that's like all of my work. So I like doing it.
But a lot of stuff we've been focusing on over the past couple of years, been trying to get a handle on
The biggest thing is trying to get a handle on what the water quality in the city looks like. Building
off of something that air quality group isn't up there, but Matt was leading that. And when I first
joined the commission, he and the air quality group had just finished putting together a big report
looking at what air quality data was available in the city, where things were monitored, what it said.
I've been the monitoring as I remember one of the big findings was the singular air monitoring station
that I didn't have. Little City is probably the jankiest one in the state. I think they've replaced
it. I think I remember hearing, I've worked down the hall from the air monitoring people and I think
I remember hearing them say they were replacing that kind of stuff. But yeah, trying to do that for
water quality in the city.
Just looking through, like, what all day has been collected in the past. I get an idea of what the state
of. Even just the state of knowledge and the water body in the city is seems like we found some really
big gaps, but also been working with the storm water in the city utilities office.
to kind of get an idea of what they're doing, how we can help them, and just kind of keeping each other
up to date on what's going on. And that's actually the big update for water quality right now is I got
Liz Carter and Evelyn Gordon, the intern. Liz Carter is the coordinator for the stormwater group, and
they will be coming to the next water quality meeting on October the 2nd at whatever room Rachel looks
for us when she gets back from vacation.
We just got everyone on board for the meeting this week. So we'll get some updates. The stormwater group
was trying to do some intensive city-led monitoring this year. So kind of hopefully getting an idea
of how that went because field season is kind of winding down. See how the big changes in the legislature
have impacted things with stormwater this year.
Um, and also hopefully Eric, can you make the second? Okay. Uh, also looking at potentially trying to
apply for some grant money for the city for, um, non point source proof and remediation, rehabilitation,
things like that. Um, so should be a fun meeting. I haven't had a meeting in a while because there hasn't
been a whole lot going on in the holding pattern for a little bit because I've been wanting to see how
The monitoring for this year went before doing a lot more. So, yeah. What kind of control do eyes or
resident have over water? It's not necessarily going to make a huge amount in like the
huge amount of difference in the, like, bigger streams and rivers that have a lot more flowing into
it. But, uh, even stuff like you're kind of saying, like mowing your lawn less will have an impact on
stormwater that runs from, uh, your lawn, um, or planting more trees, bushes, shrubs, instead of just
like turf grass. Um,
Because turf grass basically works like asphalt in terms of like water runoff. Or that you report the
non point source reporting. Yes, there's a the stormwater group in town has.
reporting mechanisms, it's called viewer report. And I think you can get to it through the city website
of just like, if you see something that's like someone's discharging pollution that they shouldn't be,
or your, the limitations on construction stuff have been, um, sharply curtailed by our state government
this year. So there's not as much, uh, as many construction projects that you can report on. Like if
you see them doing some things they're not supposed to be, or just like leaving bags of
like piles and piles of unguarded hair by a stream bed or something like that. If it's a project that
is greater than one acre, you can report it. Does it have to do with what's flowing into Lake Monroe?
So Lake Monroe is an interesting case study because nothing we do in Bloomington impacts Lake Monroe.
None of the water that comes from the city. We get all of our water to drink from the city, but none
of the water that flows out of the city goes into Lakeland Road. We get all of our drinking water from
the lake, but nothing goes in. That's interesting. All of the water from Bloomington either flows into
Peer Creek, which merges into Salt Creek downstream of the dam. Just below the dam. Or it flows into
Bean Blossom Creek, which then goes into the west fork of the White River.
So we're affected by Brown County. Brown County. Brown County. Yeah. Clowning Monroe, just not city
limits. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, a lot of Eastern Monroe County and Brown County is where most of the water
for like Monroe comes from. I agree. I think that's a great update. And then the last thing I was going
to have you add is the Hoosier River Watch option? Yes. Hoosier River Watch, we have
been discussing, like bringing people in to come and chat and share expertise with us on things. I talked
with Dylan, the Hoosier Riverwatch coordinator, who, if you went to BuckFest this week, he was co-running
the booth with me. He was the tall one. And he said he had
be more than happy to come talk to us and anyone in the community. We wanted to drag out to learn about
Hoosier River Watch in our December meeting, whether I think currently it's Pennsylvania for the 19th,
but I don't know if we have frequently bumped the December meeting up a week because of final exams
and the semester and stuff. So he said it would be good for, it's all his thing about bumping it up.
But yeah, he will come and talk to us about volunteer water quality monitoring.
how to do it, how you can learn to do it, what that data goes to, how you can access that data. Tell
me some of the stuff that would be cool to go into. But yeah, there's a lot of data there right now
that's actually really cool to look through. So even just learning how to access that kind of stuff
is very neat and interesting. So yeah, it should be a cool presentation. And if December sounds good
to you guys, then you can go with that.
Cool. Great. Well, thanks for the update. The ECPC is the environmental commission planning committee,
and it's basically our opportunity to talk through any development plans or variances in Bloomington
that have environmental impacts associated with them. So Rachel will sort of flag anything that has
a decent environmental element to it. And then this subcommittee will sit down and kind of talk it through
and potentially come up with a memo that we'd like to send to be considered with that, like with the
BZA or whoever it is that's hearing that request. So the meeting for the same Remy, Remy, Remy project,
that got pushed to the next meeting, right? So no meeting on that at this time.
What was it that happened with that? I remember looking at the email, but I haven't looked at the documents.
I saw they did some wetland delineation, but not enough. Do you know what's going on with that? I'm
not sure what Billy used to do. Okay. Because I know, I remember Rachel said that they had submitted
some documentation, but they were unhappy with what had been submitted. Okay.
And so part of the idea is that we would be able to say before it's in its final stages, here's what
we're concerned about, or here's what we think are opportunities, and then potentially adjust their
proposal. So yeah, it's kind of a nice way to be aware of what's happening in the city too. The light
pollution working group. I'll pass it over to Adam. Oh yeah, so the light pollution working group is
pretty new. As someone found earlier in this group, they've said it off
pretty self-explanatory thing. We're just kind of looking at where light pollution's coming from in
the city and what we can do to reduce it and that kind of thing. We haven't met in a while, so I don't
have much of an update, but while data is here, camera away, I wanted to ask about some language in
the UDO, if you don't mind, that I found annoying. Perfect. So this is, like I said, in the UDO, this
is the section about light trespass.
Says all light fixtures shall be installed so that light trespass from any property line except a property
line abutting a public street shall not exceed one foot candle. To me, that sounds like the light trespass
regulations only apply if the light is like not on the other side of a street, which would imply you
could shine as much light as you want across the street into your neighbor's house. Yeah, that's pretty much it.
I just didn't know if you have any thoughts on this, because it seems kind of absurd to me. And I think
I can show you this later, too. Yeah. I have not encountered this. Since I've been here, I've not encountered
issues of like, best pass. Yeah. Another thing, the regulations are kind of weak. So I think they should
be restricted. My interpretation of this is that there's basically no regulations on like, across the
street. Only people who like, share your article if they saw it.
Yeah. You know, we had one enforcement case where neighbors were complaining about a property that had
a lot of issues, including a lot of environmental issues. One of them being super bright outdoor lights
that they can use to shine in their party area. They didn't issue a violation, and they did. It actually
applied to the Americans.
But that's the only times that I've been here in a year and a half that we've had light trespassing.
That was a UDF issue. But I wasn't aware that there were the street sort of bumps. The main issue with
it, I think, is streetlights, like along the street, because those typically are on the property line
above the public street. So that would mean the streetlights could shine any amount of light on your property.
it would still be within the standards of the UDO. So I think if I'm reading this right, in order to
do anything about streetlights, really, this would have to change. And that's, are you familiar with
the UDO or kind of what that? Unified development ordinance. I was gonna, David, yeah, I was gonna say,
I don't know, David, if you kind of want to put into words sort of how we think about the UDO, but I
was thinking about
our role in proposing if we'd like to see some change in language or we see a bunch of hate. Would you
mind just kind of describing how we think about the UDO kind of just as a planning department? Sure,
UDO, inside development ordinance, is our zoning ordinance and our subdivision ordinance combined. And
so it is the document that directs all development on property and all use of property. So it tells
you if you're building a structure,
setbacks required, how high architectural guidelines, things like that. And then it also dictates what
you can and cannot do on property. That's a nutshell because it's super long and super complex and at
times contradicts itself. And we're always in the process of refining it and trying to, it's kind of
whack-a-mole because as soon as you not take care of one thing, another five problems crop up.
But one of the things that I think this group is helpful for my department is to advise on environmentally
oriented requirements, restrictions, regulations that can be fine-tuned, improved, made better. So I
think Anna brings up just the sort of thing that we want to hear from the Environmental Commission.
Typically, we have an omnibus set of amendments to the UDO once a year, and sometimes there's
half a dozen changes. Sometimes there's almost a hundred changes. And so we would fold in the
EC recommendations into those, into that basket of amendments that we take first to the planning commission
and then to the council ultimately for ratification.
What's, I can't remember the timeline for when they sort of do the internal collection of those ideas
then get to the planning commission. We keep a laundry list and then we grow it all year long. And then
I think we start in earnest looking at what we're going to take in the spring. And then sometime by
summer, hopefully we have our whole set of them in front of the decision makers. So does the legless
ordinance only affect
Residential areas or those businesses there? Well, there's different standards for different zones in
the city. So residential zones have a different standard than the commercial zones, which is different
from downtown. But I think most of it is controlled with sound. I'm guessing also that the Public Works
has a manual, a guidance manual they're using too.
This is treating light as a potential nuisance. It's more from a zoning perspective. But I imagine there
are other guiding documents that, if you ever had a chance to talk to Chris or Nalek. So I've talked
with, oh man, I'm blanking out your name, someone on the public works specifically about streetlights.
That would be Chris. Yeah, OK. Kind of the problem I ran into was this line in the UDR because most
of the streetlights are on the public street.
you know, panel limits, what you can do in that respect. But they do have standards that are stricter
than what is in the UDO for the most part, at least for the public stuff. And David, is this on? Seems
like we used to also have a noise pollution group. Did we not? And what happened to that? And that's
related to the mowers and things and the leaf blowers. It seems to me we have suggested
that the EDL make at least gasoline-powered leaf blowers illegal. Now, we've suggested that to the city
council and it hasn't come, I think, but we have suggested that as this group in the past. So, I don't
know if we actually had a noise pollution group, but it seems we would have.
Formally had one of the time that I've been on. I know it's been proposed and I know we had a speaker
come talk to us about the two stroke, uh, gas leaf blower specifically. Um, I know we had a conversation
about, man, can we at least cap the hours? So someone isn't doing that while someone else is trying
to sleep or something like that. But I don't remember any actions, um, formally put forwards. I think
one of the bigger concerns was no.
enforcement mechanism, who's gonna respond to calls if they're using their gas-powered blower after
seven, or whatever it would be. So I remember conversations, but at least in my years on, there was
never an attempted action. Okay, I was reminded of this by listening to Living on Earth last Sunday,
and there was,
Their specialty that day was talking about noise pollution and the difficulties for people's health
as a result, and also wildlife reacting to noise. They were interviewing a guy who had written a book
called Flemur, which I recommend to anybody who would be an interesting book about noise pollution.
Yeah, that's a good note. And Matt, to your point, the idea of enforcement, I think that's always a
really helpful thing for us to keep in mind is anything that we are asking for there to be some change
to the ordinance or any kind of regulation on things, knowing that the flip side of that is someone
has to enforce that being done or not done. And that is this
Something that we are asking of our city services, which at this time are spread very, very thin. And
there are a lot of places that need a lot of things. And so kind of keeping in mind, if there's stuff
that we're asking to say, you know, if somebody's doing this, it's breaking this rule. So you need to,
you can call and tell us and we'll go find them. That is an important tool.
to be able to access, but also knowing that that's something that if we cut it to a thousand pieces,
that's a lot of, a lot of requests of the city's services. Right. There are other issues, both environmental
and otherwise, that we're having the same problem with that enforcement of whether it's someone agreeing
to plant trees at another site in order to reduce canopy below a certain percentage. And I'm just never
following up and planning with another site or agreeing to, to our UDOs.
agreed upon plant lists of native trees, and then they just bring in their landscapers and they plant
whatever. Well, the trip commission and the city foresters keep a watch out the back. Yeah, but I've
heard as recently as earlier this week, conversations involving council members and others about some
of this stuff. Invasives ended up being put in and we don't have an enforcement arm for certain things.
But it is, it is helpful when it seems like, like what happens bringing up words like, can we just change
the language altogether of how we think about how things are structured and those kinds of things. Yeah,
those make a lot of sense. And versus yeah, when a development happens and two years from now, some,
you know, their natives die. And so they plant something that is, you know, not a great choice and who's
going to be the one that stumbles past that location and says, Hey, that's not what we agreed to six
years ago or whatever. It's really, yeah, it's really complicated.
Yeah. Adam, other things you want to share? A couple follow-up questions. So the language in the media,
if I wanted to sort of get the correct interpretation of that, is there someone specific I can go to
to ask? Yeah, that specific language. Yes. Yeah. I would say send me the email, and then I'll send it
to one of our preeminent
And then if we did potentially want to change any language in the UDOS, how would we start that process?
Probably it's going to be, what would be ideal is to craft something close to what you would consider
better language.
And then we'll forward that to Eric Grulick, who is the keeper of our laundry list of things that we're
going to be looking at, which you can send out to me. That's all I had. I don't know if you had something.
It gives us a lot of time to consider better video. Maybe that'll be one of the topics of our next meeting.
OK, well, thanks for the updates. Biodiversity working group, well,
Matt, do you want to share anything about anything in particular before I kind of just bulldoze some
other things? Shannon is typically kind of like the point person on that working group. So Matt's at
our service. I was going to say, we just kind of what happened. We did carry especially presented in
front of the city council and they approved our BC to USA resolution. So pending.
acceptance from the Bee City folks. We will officially be a Bee City, which is cool because that is
the conclusion of a project that a former commissioner who graduated in winter and rolled off the commission
that really wanted to see us become the Bee City. That also includes the Parks Department. The Parks
Department is going to handle a lot of it. It turns out that they were independently trying to work towards
the exact same thing as us, we just didn't realize we were both on that path. But yeah, fortunately
we coordinated with them and Joanna Sparks is going to handle a lot of the stuff that's good that the
city should handle just because you know, boards are commissioned to volunteer and there's turnover
and it's good to have someone within the city handling things like a report or initiating meetings.
We also discussed in a biodiversity meeting, the Mayor Monarch pledge is something we had done in the
past. They've changed their criteria and we were going to try to determine as a group at some point,
whether that was something we wanted to pursue. And I signed up for the updates. It's been closed for
the 2025 year. And so, yeah, we should get an update whenever they open the application. Yeah, you're
glanced at it. And it looks like they take applications
from December through March, like it's an early year thing and you have to state at least three actions
from their list of 30 actions that you intend to do and then you have to do them and submit an end of
year report saying what you did. Which my
Again, my gut reaction as a city that's doing a lot of great stuff to support monarchs and all the native
insights, that feels like a lot of work to get a certain accreditation. But I'm not going to make that
call. We and also the city can decide whether that's something we want to pursue based on who's going
to handle all that, the applications, reports, et cetera.
That is sort of where we stand at the moment in biodiversity, as far as I know. How did Bugfest go for
you guys? Bugfest was great. We needed to print a lot more Bug Bingo in the future. Oh, good news,
good news. It was very popular, whereas the other pamphlets were hit or miss. The insects were very
popular again.
We let people touch the bugs at our station, so it was a big hit with the kids. But yeah, trying to
send them off with the homework assignment of bug bingo, finding these bugs in their yard or apartment,
whatever it is, was great. I remember at least one parent saying, fill that out and I'll get you a reward.
He didn't say what it was.
I wonder if we can use the bug bingo sheet to sort of spread more information about it. This is what
you can do to get more data both. Have you had trouble finding a bingo? Yeah. You guys have any luck
getting people to sign up for the Habitat 2.0 Play Store? I definitely had some people scan the QR code,
but it's tough to know since everything has to run through GIS. And if they did the pledge, it might
take days to appear. So it's inconclusive.
Yeah, a couple people kind of enthusiastically took the pamphlets, a couple people maybe more reluctantly
took the pamphlets. If they were down on some people scanning the QR code, I think from a tabling standpoint,
the big QR code and visuals are a plus. Cool. Hey. I was going to add one extra thing about the habitat
activity plan that I alluded to is that
Yeah, the farmers market on October 18th is the Blooming Neighborhoods Celebration Special, which is
like all the different neighborhood associations getting all these different tables in this big group
and then you can walk around and find yours or stock others, whatever you do with that information.
But Matt and I were talking about how the websites that the city offers and also the various websites
that each of the associations have are really outdated or
completely defunct or don't exist at all. But these organizations obviously are getting together, or
these groups are obviously getting together because they're fee-delaying and they're meeting and all
that. So I'm planning to, if anyone wants to join me, you're welcome. But I'm planning to make some
time to go to that farmer's market and talk to different tables just about our group doing some kind
of information sharing about the Habitat Connectivity Plan and that and pledge.
so that at some point in their conversations and meetings, they can say, hey, here's something that
the city is trying to help make happen. So in our area, if you have the ability to plant these things,
if you have the ability to add a birdhouse or whatever it would be, those conversations are happening
in smaller groups and groups of people who know each other, might wanna work together, that sort of
thing. So I stumbled across that and was super excited just because getting in touch with neighborhood
associations is really, really hard in this town because they're all so spread out
not easy to find. So October 18th, it's the universe making it a little easier. But yeah, I'll be happy
to show up and chat with some folks. Okay, the last thing on here is special projects. And I'm actually,
one of the things that I will do for this next meeting is share with you all some proposals for a new
tablecloth. And also the other thing, oh, a presentation board. We talked about having more like
a board that has all the ECs, you know, little things that we're doing and examples and stuff versus
just being like a pile of flyers that we hand out. So doing something that's a little bit more showy
and interesting. So I'll share that with you all next time we get together.
The ego heroes awards are going to be here before we know it and it always feels like we are behind
the ball on this. So I wanted to share that with everyone and say, or is there anyone who knows they're
interested in helping to plan the theme or wanting to pull together ideas for like resources and outreach
and things like that.
for this coming year. The Eco Heroes Awards happen in April. It's typically the big award ceremonies,
typically around Earth Day. And we invite little tiny children all the way up to college students, adults,
retirees, anyone in the community who wants to submit some kind of art expression. It's Eco Heroes Art
Contest, artistic expression around the theme that we have for the year. And so last year it was Bugs
in Bloom, how native insects help
Bloomington Thrive or something. I forget what the really, really long subtitle was, but it was about
native insects. And so we put together the theme, we put together some imagery, we do a call out, we
send things to teachers, to educators, to different education groups. And we also ask for donations
or support from different businesses in town. And then all of this comes together over the course of
the first few months of the year.
We typically do a big ceremony where we announce the winners of the different age groups. And it's a
very exciting moment for everyone. But coming up with this theme turns out to be one of the hardest
parts of all of it. So I am inviting anyone who is interested in being in that conversation to let me
know. And I will also reach out to folks who aren't here right now to see if they want to be in it.
I was just going to say, I already have a first donation picked up. Oh, yes. Good for cooks. We were
a little late this last year, but we'll get it happening. I love it.
Hopefully it's not food related. It's like a little bag of cookies. It's like going to be a rough next
spring. Matt, thank you as always. Awesome. All right. Is there anybody else who is certain that they
want to be in the subcommittee for planning anything? You can always join later. All right. Well, stay
tuned for that.
Excited to get that off and running early because it always gets a little wild at the end. Yeah. Okay.
Last thing on the old business is presentation schedule. We talked last month about potentially having
people do different presentations on things and I just wanted to run through the notes I have from last
month so you all kind of know what's out there. We don't have any official presentations scheduled for
this coming October meeting.
But in November, we talked about Nadia, who's one of our commissioners. She said she was going to, I
think have her maybe senior thesis that she wanted to, she would need to be presenting for school purposes
a little bit, like maybe a couple of weeks after our meeting. So she wanted to have a chance to share
her work with us in the November meeting. November is also our annual planning meeting. So we'll talk
a little bit more about that and make sure everybody's ready for that. But that's typically a,
a big kitchen, sort of dinner and snack situation. And we spend the majority of that meeting talking
about what we want to do in 2026. So it's usually just kind of a, it's a much more casual meeting. Our
agenda doesn't have many of these points at all, but it'll be nice to hear from Nadia and then have
a brainstorm sesh. We also have some notes about Cassie who is doing a project on something with solar.
I can't remember what it was specifically, but she's one of our commissioners too.
So she was hoping that she could present her work that she'd been doing probably in the beginning of
2026. We've got Dylan from Hoosier River Watch who will potentially be our December person once we confirm
that meeting date. Nadia does work with the DNR deer hotline. And so she had suggested getting in touch
with Joe Caudill who was the state deer biologist to talk to us a little bit about sort of the status
of deer in Indiana, kind of like the,
deer management, deer impact side of things, maybe in like February or so next year. And then Adam had
suggested that he'd be happy to talk about invasive animals and their impact in Bloomington, which I
think is super interesting. So we'll find a time that he can give a little presentation on an area that
he's specialized in. And then if we end up having something more than we want to do about the mowing
stuff, that can be something to make time for too in the early next year.
I forgot Adam had suggested that one or I didn't know about it, but on that kind of thing, would it
be useful to have, try and get somebody from like MCIRs to come out and do invasive plants or something?
This idea? Oh yeah, I'm sure they'd be happy to do that. That's a good idea. Okay. On the list and then,
I think Rachel usually goes to the MCIRs meetings, right? So we can, oh, do you normally go to the MCIRs
meetings? I don't go. You do not go? No, Rachel goes. Okay. So I'll see if Rachel wants to bring that up.
Okay. Great. Anyway, those are the things sort of on the horizon down the road. So I just wanted to
keep you all up to speed on all these notes. Staff update, we received this email. David, would you
like to share this email that we received? Yeah, I don't have much to add about it. Rachel received
it on September 8th from Michaela Owens, Communications for Marketing Contact from Indiana University Cinema.
showing a documentary called Seeds. She can read the little capsule and middle paragraph there about
what that's about. And Michaela is asking if the Environmental Commission reviews such a media platforms
to note this movie presentation and send out some information about it. And that's it.
Sounds good. Does anyone have any? So typically, we have a Facebook page for the EC. So typically, if
there are things people want to post on our social media account, we'll send them through Rachel, who
will then make sure they get posted. So does anyone have any strong thoughts on including or not including
this in our social media feed? I have no objection to sharing it. Yep. OK, I feel the same way, too.
OK, great. Well, then we'll make sure that Rachel gets the note that, yeah, we're happy to.
Have them share. Thank you for putting that up there, David. Okay, this is where our team now reports
on meetings that they went to of other groups in the city. Some are permissions, some are different
organizations, but they're mostly relevant to what we're doing here at TC. So I'll pass it over to Mr.
David Parkhurst for TC in Iraq. Yes, the True Commission met this past Monday
Usually our meetings start with what we're doing right now, reports from other groups. And so we start
with the city forester's report. And this time, instead of a city forester report, he gave us a quarterly
tree risk assessment and reporting document. And just to pick a few things off of that,
his progress report for 2025. He's pruned a few more than 1,000 trees, removed about 100 from along
the tornado damage. Lidded 142 trees, inventoried 3,500.
and added 1,100 plus trees in the inventory that hadn't been seen before, I think. And that's most of
what he reported. So I'll then go on to other parts of the two commissions meeting. The next part is
for me to tell them about what the environmental commission had done in its last meeting, so I don't
need to tell you about that.
Then Mia Williams, who's the Indiana University landscape architect and is a member of the Tree Commission,
gave us a report. They removed lots of calorie pairs in Tree of Heaven. They looked again at Bradford Woods
It's some more inventory at Bradford Woods. And there are now some new plants in the bypass area,
she says. And recently we've started adding reports from Julie Roberts, who's on canopy Bloomington, I think.
She talked about their fall planning schedule will be October 18th, October 25th and November 8th and
then use people to volunteer to help with their tree planting. And they have two movies coming out and
she didn't tell us more about that. What up?
New business. Oh, our, our chairman of the commission is a fellow named Neil Fong, who's from Malaysia,
I think he is. And he's now looking for, I don't think he has a job that's continuing in the city.
Oh, IU won't sponsor this visa anymore. So he's looking for jobs elsewhere in the US and in Canada.
Oh, and then we talked about a project that the city of Wilmington Utilities, which we often do, where
they are planting trees and we try to tell them what trees to plant.
And they're usually pretty successful with that. They gave us a brief description of some project at
8th Street and Fontland Drive. And I didn't get the gist of what that was all about. They talked about
some tree plants that we would affect there.
There's something about urban forestry in the city on December 9th, the 10th, that people could get
involved with. I'm not sure what that is. And then they talked about that, that Ryan Park has now become
an official Arboretum. And they recently had a
meetings that introduced that change, the upgrade. So that was the tree condition. Next on the list
is ERAC, Environmental Resources Advisory Council. I wasn't able to make the last meeting, and Adam
Fudekar goes to those meetings too. He told me he would do
give the report that I usually give last month, and he didn't make the meeting last month, and he had
to leave tonight, so we won't get to hear more about the ERAC. I don't have anything to report on Friends
of Lake Monroe. Thanks, Dave. Thanks for all the details on that. I thought that there's a lot that
the Tree Commission's been up to.
Yeah, I watched that meeting. They talked about attendance and other policies. Council member Rallo
spoke about how the budget hearings had been going in the City Council and possibilities for maybe BCOs
to weigh in in the future, not this go around. They're pretty much wrapped up. But then the main thing
that they did during their meeting was they adopted their resolution
which was to increase urban forestry budget. Basically, it's been steady for a whole lot of years, but
because of inflation, that means it's being devalued, so they're lobbying for it to not be devalued,
for it to keep up with inflation, so that it's going to go to the council at some point, and that was
what happened in WECOS's meeting. All right. MC Iris, yeah, I believe Rachel typically attends those.
I'm guessing she'll update us on that when she's back. And then the Clean Community Program, Mitchell.
Well, we do actually have an update. We have gone, Christy just emailed earlier this week saying we
have moved from four projects that are getting approved to five. The newest one is we just doing the
paperwork for it. We have passed local ordinances for improving stormwater management.
So one more and then we get to go to silver status. So the clean community program is a state department
of environmental management run program kind of recognizing. Cities and counties and I guess other municipal
governments for doing environmentally friendly things. So it's.
based on how big the city is, how many projects you have to do to get recognition. You get bronze just
for signing up for the program and saying you'll do it. And then silver is, the city has done and been
recognized for doing six of this, like they've got a pre-made list of projects that you can get approved
for pretty easily, but then there's also stuff that like if you've gone above and beyond and cool things,
you can get approved for those as well.
Bloomington, we have to do six to get to silver status and 12 total to get to gold status, which only
one city in the state has gotten to gold so far. We weren't first, but we were a little slow on the
draw to joining. I think Beech Grove is the first gold one, and they were one of the first cities to
join the program. But yeah, we've almost got silver status, which is cool, which is something that we
Literally just started on earlier this year. It's neat that we just had all this kind of in the change
that ready to go. Just had to do the paperwork on it. So I know that's like a process to go through
the administrative
you know, channels, but it is really cool. And there's so many things that we've been doing as a city
that are, that immediately qualifies for these different programs. It's just kind of making through
this, you know, going through the steps of, of qualifying to be for the clean community or be city or
whatever it would be. So yeah, it's nice. Great. What are some examples of the things we've done to
get superstated? So far the five projects we've got in the system are become a storm ready community,
which I think is a kind of,
recognition, things sort of like Tree City or Bee City. Tree City certified as one of those, conduct
a greenhouse gas inventory, implement green infrastructure. I don't know specifically what they put
in for that, but that's the category that it fell under. And then the local ordinances, stormwater
management, which was a big overhaul of the stormwater
what's the word, ordinances, I guess, uh, last year. That was one of the big things that we got to learn
about in the water, uh, during the working week. So, yeah. Um, yeah, I've got other things, like I said,
I think we've got enough to get us almost all the way to 12, just already done. It's just a matter of
getting things lined up and the paperwork done correctly to get recognition for it. And I think on the
item end, it's just like one person,
doing it for all of the cities in the state. So it's like, however fast she can respond to questions
and process all the paperwork and everything. I like, I imagine all these people are like, come on,
you're going first. That's great. OK, that's awesome. And I know that, yeah, you all are doing great
and moving along. OK, well, this is the time in our evening where we move into commissioner announcements.
These are typically like semi-environmentally related, but they don't have to be. They could be just
like a personal announcement that you're excited to share with the group.
So yeah, I was going to share, because I'm already talking, that once again, there's a debate about
renaming the Indiana State flower. There have been a couple of organizations that were pushing for it.
And then the Indiana Named Plant Society, I think, has kind of given it another shove to go from being
the peony to a species of milkweed. And because there's so much conversation around monarchs and that
just kind of like,
Rebuilding those populations. Yeah, they're really pushing for mobility with a safe flower.
So we'll see. It's not the first time. This is a thought, but I like that it's got renewed excitement.
So we'll see. And then I also saw there was a press release earlier this month in the city about what's
about the Hopewell development. We talked before about how there's some areas that need some remediation
because of I was thinking this one, things like that, but that they were kind of working through what
was necessary. So
I just happened to see that and it gives some details on areas that are just going to be as they are
for now and other areas that are getting developed on and what that looks like. So it's in the press
release section of the Wilmington website, which I thought was interesting. Other updates from other
people? I have a bunch of native plant seeds in my bag, if anyone wants any. What? Native plant seeds.
Seeds? Yeah. Do you know what they are?
There's a ton of them. Yeah, there's a big list on the back here. I got too many stuff. That's it.
That's it. Any other announcements from both?
Okay, well, we have a meeting coming up in October. We already talked about November being the planning.
You'll get a reminder about that before it happens. But again, it's kind of a pitching situation. So
wrap your brain around that. And then December or December meeting, we already kind of have an idea
of having a presenter, which means your attendance would be wonderful. So, as you're looking at your
calendar and what your holiday season looks like.
We will very possibly move our meeting up by one week earlier in December, but that was something we
talked about in that meeting. So just kind of keep an eye on what your books of life in case it's something
you want to share. And with that said, I suspect we've brought the end of our agenda. A motion to adjourn.
All right. Well, it's 727 and let's call this a wrap. Thank you all.