I mean, sorry. Hey friends, we're here. We've done it. It is October 16th at six. Well, it's actually
six of two, but there are enough of us to get some business done. So we're going to jump on in and start
up today. Okay. Very all right. Night and here. Night and absent, not probably here. We should tell
is not here so far.
Great, great, great. Thanks to the folks who are here.
Um, so the first thing on the, uh, well, not for the next thing from the agenda is the approval of the
September minutes. Those were included in the packet for today's conversation. I mentioned to Rachel that I.
I had an edit and I wasn't sure in our rule of communication where that what we do with our edits, but
it's a pretty easy one. It was just, I was wanting to include, we had a member of the public who just
like introduced themselves and I wanted to include that. So that was Steve Stanford, who was the wastewater
operator. I don't know if he gave us that he helps utilities with industrial customers, but he was present
for it. I know that we were kind of talking around some of the topics that might involve him. So I wanted
to add that little piece.
I apologize for leaving early last week. I started in the middle of the day, I noticed I started to
feel a little sick, but I didn't really think about it when I was in here and couldn't control myself.
No, I feel so bad for you. You're totally fine. Feel free to do that. Everyone here is an adult. So
if you need to leave for whatever reason, attend to whatever real world things happening, please do.
But yeah, sorry I didn't miss you for part of it, but glad you seem to be feeling better.
I move we approve September minutes as amended. Second. Okay. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. I don't think I've
heard. Brown.
We have five yeses, since we need seven is the question. Because we have so many absences. Yeah, it's
majority in the room. I think it passes. As far as the
minutes being posted, I apologize. I did upload them and then they weren't uploaded. They were blank.
So Matt told me today, they were not on the website. So I apologize if people tried to access them.
Heidi, I can show you, I can show you actually where they are. They're in the meeting shop events and
they're going to be here.
I think I put the link in the email as well. They kind of tucked away though. Yeah. There was a time
when we would just send them by email, like here are the minutes, give your thoughts or whatever. But
at this point we have them in the agenda packet. So they kind of come in a few days before the meeting
happens. And if you have edits, it sounds like you can either bring them to the meeting, we do what
I just did, or you could send them to Rachel. Yes. And I can include them in the packet.
Okay. Yeah. Fun with voting. Okay, great. Well, thanks folks for taking a look at those and being on
top of when we need to update them. The next item is a public comment. So if there are any members of
the public on Zoom, we would be happy to have them share that or anyone in the room would like to introduce
themselves. Please do. Sorry folks. Yeah.
Is there a preferred place for me to stand and be or anything? Yeah, you can sit if you want to. Yeah,
you can join us at the table. Hi, I'm Alex York. I helped install solar on both of these people's houses,
so this is being said. I'm currently a member of the Bloomington Commission on Sustainability, and I
am spearheading a project where we are getting a O'Neill Spear School capstone.
And I thought that the project might be of interest to this commission as well. Background is Ann Arbor
last year through a referendum enabled what they're calling a sustainable energy utility. It is a municipal
electric utility that will run in parallel with their Duke energy equivalent. And yeah, they're envisioning
it as a way to have
provide 100% clean electricity to more people in the city. And there's a lot of other benefits that
come out of that, but they have a goal of net neutral energy consumption by 2030, and they can't get
there without doing something over and above the path that their utility is taking. So this is what
they've enacted to keep that goal. I'm happy to talk more about that, but that's not the meat of it.
The capstone project that I have commissioned for spring semester 2026 is to do a feasibility study
into Bloomington adopting an SEU, a sustainable energy utility. What Bloomington does, what Bloomington
doing this with the plane? That's what the study is for. So yeah, lots of questions there.
The Bloomington Commission on Sustainability on Tuesday gave this project their blessing. SPEA has given
it their blessing. We're on the book. Everything's moving forward. But there is time between now and
classes starting to kind of massage research questions that we want the students researching for us.
So that would be one place that your commission could be involved, like helping to massage those.
I know Matt very well, I'm happy to send him like current draft of what research questions are that
he could share with the group here. And like, maybe you could look at that, think about what might be
missing, what isn't needed. Other places you could be involved that would be useful is just engagement
during the project, which we're looking for other partners. And at the end, kind of my primary hope is that
At the end of this, there's a strong recommendation and data to support the idea that Bloomington doing
this, adopting an SEU would be a good thing. And so if at the end, your commission were to entertain
either coming to a presentation or hopefully we could get like the student researchers to come present
to you. And then you could like maybe sign on to some type of statement with the commission
on sustainability, like recommending that the city council
take this off, you know, just that coming from an additional partner would give it more weight and things.
So if you have some other way that you think you could be involved, great. I'm open to options, but
I'm spearheading this project and I love engagement for more services. Hi, my name is Aaron. Alex. Sure.
What is the timeline for the
the start basically when you have your details locked in and then when the whole thing will be running?
It'll be spring semester 26, so early January to the end of May. When presentations would need to happen,
it can be kind of tricky, like they might not be able to come present at your regular meeting. That's
all things that can get worked out down the road. When details need to be locked in, it's kind of tricky.
We had to have a project, a project
Project description submitted this week. It's already submitted, but within that, we can massage the
research questions pretty much up until the students start working. And even once the students start
working, there's a little bit of little rooms, but once we get into the work, these are not experienced
consultants. They're being led by some experienced professors who
I must be a graduate. I went through the semesters program. I know the two professors that we're working
with, they're great. I have a lot of confidence in them, but the students don't. So like changing the
scope of work on the students in the middle of the project would be me. So we should avoid doing that.
But yeah, the sooner the better on the research questions, because that gives more time to like,
have everyone rowing in the same direction and have momentum instead of like, spurring around at the
last minute and there being a miscommunication, like the project started in the wrong direction and
us having to correct it at the beginning. And so earlier, better, but certainly January would be probably
the latest. We could be kind of making any major changes. Can you share with us what you've presented
then? I mean, Tustia?
Or submit the proposal. I could share that document with all of you. Yes. I'll just send it to you now.
And we have there's some memo that was made for within a month to kind of introduce all of that. I can
share all of those material. Yeah. Any other from votes before we're going to get attention on these?
Well, I mean, it's not the kind of thing that we like to do. I feel like this is supposed to be right
up our alley. So three things that we could do will potentially have research questions, which we could
either send them to Rachel and then Rachel sends them all to Matt and then Matt sends them to Alex.
We could gather them and quickly talk about them at the November meeting, which is already a little
bit packed, but we could still do that if you'd like. We could do the conversation at the December meeting,
but that would also be
you know, going to a very busy time of year and have to do that. So that's one thing. It's kind of how
we want to pull together research questions, especially if we're able to get some of this material to
better kind of dig into what we might think through. And then engaging during the project. I might ask
about that just a little bit more. And then having them present would be, I think, super fun. And we
could always have like a little special session that works for their timeline. Or if there are other
commissions that they're presenting to see if we can like reserve the chamber to something like a little
bit bigger to
try and get- And I feel we're all gonna get like council members and things for that. Right. So it might
be good to try to get the chambers and get a coalition all there. Yeah. That'd be great. And then potentially
with like a letter of recommendation and so forth, I'm not gonna fact, if it's a sound for PubMed, it's
getting- I mean, yes, if it's a sound, well, if this doesn't make sense, Wilmington should not.
It's like, oh man, turns out, no.
I'm imagining that if it's going to work for Ann Arbor, it probably is going to work for Bloomington.
Our solar potential is better, but yeah, it's not just solar. It's also, you know, it's a utility. So,
you know, you can do things like energy rebates. You can build financing to help people afford,
you know, energy efficiency and heat pumps and all of these things. So yeah, it's, there's a lot of
potential. Yeah.
They already have the project laid out and a lot of research questions listed, so it's not like we have
to build anything from scratch. It's just looking at it and seeing if we have anything we'd like to
add or anything we think is redundant or anything. I today got feedback from somebody who had a, I think
it would be interesting to explore this. I was like, that was not something on the list. Thank you.
I put together the research questions mostly myself. I do have a background that makes my guesses are
pretty good guesses on what would be valuable to the city, but I am not the city.
I am not, you know, first in all fields. So like, I know I'm going to be missing things. I'm, you know,
we'd love to have that additional feedback. I was just going to say, when I receive it, I can pass the
information on to Rachel so that she can distribute it with the commission. And then I'm not sure how
we want to proceed timeline wise. Yeah. I mean, I think it sounds like maybe the best option is to
As soon as we get them, everyone take a look. And if they have any immediate responses to it, just send
us to Rachel as well. And sorry, Rachel, about the emails. Send them to Rachel and then she can kind
of gather them and you can decide maybe by the November meeting, if we're able to get those, assess
at that point, if it's worth like talking through, if it's like, no, it's just a couple of thoughts.
And my last question for you is when you think about the engagement during the project, does that look
like anything particular at this point? I don't.
fully know. I know I'm going to be the point person, which means that I will go, you know, probably
the first couple of classes, like I will be part of, maybe it'll just be me, maybe it'll be me and some
other people, like there'll be an initial presentation about kind of what we need, what we're looking
for. And then throughout, like, there'll probably be some, like, there'll be some check-ins that I will
certainly be involved in. And there will be, the students will undoubtedly have questions.
I will be the primary person that questions will get relayed to. I'm guessing most of those questions
I won't have answers to, and I will need to find the person who has those correct answers. So if there
are other people engaged, those are other people that I can be like, hey, do you know where I should
take this question to? If I don't know offhand, but I'm trying to engage with lots of people on the
front end too, so that I know where to distribute my questions.
I have a contact at utilities who I'm reaching out to because I'm sure that there will be questions
that utilities will be the right place for because it's a utility. I don't know entirely what your engagement
during would look like, but certainly I'll make some presentations to students. I'm happy to work with
people on that instead of doing it myself. Sounds good. Any other questions for Brian?
Sounds good. Sounds like we're totally interested in helping look at the questions. If there's anything
that might make sense to add in or continue your sport in the middle and then afterwards give it a listen
and potential recommendation. Okay. Matt will help them before I leave this room. Thanks. Thank you.
All right. Okay. Well, that's fun. Something for as we go into the winter seasons and to think about
Great, well then, if there aren't other members in the Zoom, we'll go ahead and move to new business,
which means annual planning meeting. Remember that, it's year already, which is wild. So in November,
our November meeting, which is the third Thursday of the month, is our chance to talk about our goals
for the year to come. We used to do it in January, but then we figured out that after
doing it in January and then kind of recovering in February. We typically weren't even starting this
plan until like, March or April. So we're doing it ahead of the year. But it's just a chance for us
to kind of do a quick look at what we committed to last year and how we feel about that. We made some
plans for sort of a three to five year like goals that we had and structured some of the plans for 2025
around those goals and
then make sure that we had working groups that supported those, that people were attached to those working
groups to make sure that we were all contributing to making this progress. And then, yeah, take a look
back and say, okay, what do we want to do for 2026? And there might be things that we thought we wanted
to do that with the changing of the whole world around us all the time, it might not feel like the right
choice anymore, or we might have something new, but this would actually be a more interesting or more
valuable thing we can do.
Whatever it is, but it's mostly just a casual meeting. We don't really do a lot of the businessy stuff
in that meeting. If Nadia is choosing to present her thesis for her program, we might have her do a
little presentation, but otherwise it's just going to be like a pitch in the potluck environment. So
typically people bring something edible. It can be just a bag of chips. It can be a,
a crock pot of your grandma's special stew, whatever it is. I can do whatever you'd like. We typically
just kind of email around to get a temperature check of what kind of things we have covered. And we
don't really have any similar reports, like bowls, cups, plates, utensils, but we don't really have
a lot of that in this building. So if you were bringing a stew, for example, you might bring bowls or
tell people like, hey, bring a bowl if you want some stew.
I think there is a trina allergy and a shellfish allergy. Yes. That's one of those things. And if anybody
else has the allergy, don't publicly disclose it. I'm happy to say there is an allergy. Yeah. If we
know people aren't going to be here for that meeting, we can probably also share that. But yeah, those
are two of the pictures. And I think there's also a member who is vegan. But obviously, that's not a
a health risk to being in the room with something. So that's more just to think if you're looking at
a room. Anyway, so it's a pitch in. It's from six to eight as usual, but the main thing is for us to
talk from you typically use the Drag Race board and write stuff down and come up with ideas and end
up kind of voting on what we think would be fun. Any questions on that?
Will it be possible for us to be reminded in some way of last year's conversation beforehand? Sure,
sure. We have to see what we've done and what we still want to do. So I have an annual report slide
to make sure to send up going through last year. And then I can't remember, Rachel, if you took notes
or if I took notes, but one of us I know had a full list. It should be in like the December reading.
OK. Thank you.
And I'll look and see if I've written anything particularly legible for two. Should be some kind of
list going of what people plan to bring just so we don't have like five people bringing these or something.
Yeah, dude, what would be a good way to do that? Like, do you want to just like email each other? I
think that's an, it's an appropriate thing to email each other about snacks or bring to a meeting. I
don't think it's, but I think it's much better. So we can do that. Or if you want to just like,
Say something right now, we can do that too. Do you feel scared? It's not moving. It's moving.
It's moving. It's moving. It's moving. It's moving. It's moving. It's moving. It's moving. It's moving.
It's moving. It's moving. It's moving. It's moving. It's moving. It's moving. It's moving. It's moving.
Okay. Anybody else have an idea of what they want to bring? Oh, that's a fun one. Okay, mac and cheese.
Wait, so peanuts are not tree nuts. That is true. Peanuts are not tree nuts. You think that's okay?
upside down for you. Let's say yes, but I will send a note through to the group with the things people
are bringing in and just say like, double check, does anyone have a peanut allergy? I'm thinking a noodle
tofu peanut sesame thing. Nice. That sounds great. She had a noodle peanut tofu. Sesame thing. Yeah.
Love it. Love the salad. Sort of. Like a Thai salad. Yeah, like Thai salad. Yeah. Sesame thing, Thai salad.
I was going to leave these words exactly if I wrote that. It's going to be great. OK. All right. That
sounds great. All right. And I'll send this to the group. And then folks can say, OK, cool. I'll supplement
with this or that or whatever. Awesome. Thanks, Jen. And yeah, like I was saying to Shannon, I can send
through a copy of whatever notes I have from last year, too, just so we can look at what we have. And
typically, the annual meeting, the goal is to double check those three to five-year goals and then
objectives if we call them. Anyway, three to five years plan and make sure that all still makes sense
for us and then identify what we want to do for 2026 specifically and then all those working groups
that we have. The goal is that all of the working groups that we are have active apply to the things
that we're doing next year so we're not just like spinning our wheels on this project over here and
don't have a supporting working group or something that's like trying to tie those two and so if you're
not in a working group or if you're
looking to fill your time with lots of working groups, that will be the time when I really lay on the
pressure. You think I lay on the pressure already? I'm gonna get real testy and we'll make sure that
we've got folks involved in things that makes sense for them. Great, any questions about the annual
planning meeting? I don't know. Cool, okay, well I will send some follow-up emails for that.
In the meantime, we will get to the next item, which is the handbook revision.
And I believe, Rachel, you added this because of the fun we had at the ECPC meeting? Yes. Great. So
we had the ECPC meeting, right? We met with the city planner, we met with Rachel, and we were talking
through some development variances that are in consideration. And so many of us were excited to go.
It exceeded the number of people that are out in a room at the same time, and so we couldn't have all
of us stay, which was
Great. It's a great bond to have, but then we're, I'm kicking, we're all kicking ourselves. We're like,
Oh, we should have made the quorum higher. Because once you hit five people, it's an official, like
enough EC members are there that it's a real EC meeting when it's supposed to just be a working group
meeting. Yeah. In which case you could still have it. It would just supposed to be recorded and supposed
to have an agenda. You couldn't have it. You couldn't have it? The note is one that you can notice.
If we knew the five, a certain amount ago, we could.
without a notice to say it's a special EC meeting. It's all about this one thing that's actually a working
group title, but that's okay. But the formality of it changes. And so the great news is that we have
a whole bunch more commissioners now than we did when we changed those bylaws because we were all tired
of not having quorum. So the quorum for a EC meeting is five. The quorum for a working group is two.
We currently have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 commissioners out of 12. We do have someone graduating
soon, so it is possible that that 12 will turn, or that 11 will turn into 10. I don't know if that is
possible. So the idea is, do we want to change this number, minimum of five, or the subcommittee, minimum
of two, knowing that we have a subcommittee that
has five people in it who are interested, probably six people actually who are interested in being on
it. Subcommittee rule is okay because it means that it can work with just two individuals in a subcommittee.
The issue is our main quorum, and the biggest issue with our main quorum originally was that instead
of half of the commission members plus one, it was half of the possible commission members plus one.
So do you remember, do we have to have the minimum number articulated or can it just be? And what I'm
saying is the five is too low right now. Yeah. Can we just strike that? Yeah. Can we just strike that?
Yeah. So you would like to have 50% plus one. Yeah. Of appointed commissioners. Of appointed commissioners.
Which is always going to be six. Yeah.
Not necessarily, unless there's like nine commissioners. So that would be a half of what's going to
be five commissioners. Yeah. I'm sorry. I was thinking at the maximum. Yeah. Okay. Do you round down
or up? Round up. We should talk about that too. But that would probably be okay because if we have fewer
commissioners total, there's slightly less likelihood that as large a percentage will show up than we want.
Um, some committee meeting. I mean, it's still possible. Yeah. But yeah, that's true. But that's where
the team comes in where she's like, if you were people, we can't possibly have the five people for a
subcommittee meeting. Okay. So the idea is moving forward to have an environmental commission meeting.
It would be 50% of the appointed commissioners, which right now there's 11 of us. So it'd be six.
Five and a half, and then the one would round it up to six. Is that how we do it? Or do you round it
to six and then plus one? D6. I think it would be six. That's why we put five, I think, because we were
like, like this question. Okay. So six would be kind of the, at this moment in time, the number that
would put us into a full. Okay. I understand your question now. Okay. So there's five and a half.
You can't have a person. I have to ask legal. I think how I would interpret it would be five and a half
would be five people present. That's why it would be six. I'm not 100% sure on that. That's how I am
thinking about it, though. I think you're right. So is this language all that needs to be changed with
the handbook? Thanks. Oh.
I think there, somebody brought up to me, but the working groups should, if there should be any type
of requirement to be a part of a working group, or if that should just still be optional. So I wanted
to give space for that. How many would be an environmental commission member? Yes. If they're required
to be. Yes. An active member in a small working group. What do you all think? I haven't shown. Yeah.
I thought, I mean,
But that was actually already a requirement. Yeah, I think the issue is historically, we don't want
to shove anyone into it the moment they jump. So it'd be like, oh, you get a few months to get your
footing and then, yeah, we'd really like you to be in at least two hours. Yeah. I think it should be optional.
Just because, well, for the reasons that you're mentioning, but it may also be, I'm sort of thinking
selfishly here, but that you're part of working group or working groups for a time, but then you need
to step back a little bit, but you still want to stay involved in the commission. Um, so maybe you step
back from the working group and then rejoin that when we're different. Well, I, I like having
the flexibility. Yeah. Just knowing that, you know, there are seasons of life. And if that hasn't been
a problem.
Has it been a problem? One thing we do have an issue, we have had issues in the past where like one
or two or three people are really involved and then one or two or three people aren't in any working
groups at all. And so they come to a monthly meeting, but they're not really, they don't have a lot
of context for any one thing in particular. So they aren't necessarily as engaged and the people who
are engaged are like doing a lot of things and really trying to keep momentum. So I think we included it to,
to sort of set the stage for new commissioners. If you're going to join, we would really like you to
be in the working group. But I do think that to Shannon's point, it's like, there are going to be times
when you're like, I can't, whether I'm in the working group or not, I'm not going to be attending things
for a little while because I've got stuff going on. And that's so fine. I'd rather people be enthusiastic
about the EC and take breaks where they need it than be forced and quit. So what do you think, Adam?
I guess you could have some sort of like, you have to be in a working group for like,
half of the year or something, the next number of months. But then at that point, it's like, we're kind
of not about manning it. Like, what does it mean to be in the work group? Like a certain percentage
of meetings? Yeah. It's kind of hard to. Yeah, I'm conflicted because if you, if you were to force somebody
into a working group, they could still just attend none of those working group meetings. Exactly. Yeah.
Oh, but there's a thing that says if you don't participate in working groups, you eventually are out
of the working group. And there's something in there that's like a little bit more firm language. I
think I'm okay.
with it still technically not being required as long as it's made clear that it is expected. That's
the way I read it. I don't remember reading it that. I do remember thinking that it was required. That's
what it reads strong enough. The pressure is bottom. Did you say it says strongly encouraged? Yeah,
strong but very strong. I don't remember how it's written. Yeah, I think we tried not to make it
If you don't, you can't be part of our group kind of thing. But I do think it was, I mean, for the reasons
I said, it's, it's very valuable having commissioners be involved in some working group of some sort.
But, you know, if you're a really big water person and there's no one else who's into the water stuff,
it may not make sense for us to have a working group. And that may be the thing that you're like, as
soon as that comes up, I'm ready for it, but that's my thing. And that's what I really want to do. So.
Okay, sounds like the important as is, were there any other changes or modifying the handbook that anybody
feels strongly about? Okay, that's the only change. Harry, I want you to show proper. Okay, yeah, yeah,
we can go ahead and vote on the changes to the bylaws. Second, nice.
Oh, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to force you into making it. It was, it was my choice carrying those
two. Sorry about that. No, no, no. Okay. Yes. Yes. Yes. The changes that we talked about with the quorum
going to 50% plus one and not five minimums. Yes.
I need brown. Very all right. Yes. Yes. Great. Thanks, all. Thanks for the discussion. Speaking
of discussions, here we go into the old business, which is the working groups. Great. So the first one
is water quality. Mitchell is not here today, but I attended the water quality working group with him
last, sometime in the last few weeks.
Don't want to blur, but we had a few folks from the Bloomington Utilities. Thank you. Oh, you were there
as well. Oh, do you want to do the update on this one? No. Yeah, I took too many notes, but basically
we had a couple of folks from the Utilities Department, Liz Carter and Evelyn Gordon, who chopped through
some changes. Basically, there's a bunch of changes that are being made. So what I can say is that
Some of them were just adjustments to some of the different administrative details. But in looking through
this, it was things like they had regulations around like plastic erosion control being something that's
not allowed. But because of the way a new laws come down, they can no longer say you can't do plastic
erosion control because it's not in the codes. They basically put it in the
Um, the plant apartments, musical code to say that you can't have that. So things like that was like
just sort of. Hiding up some rules that were in place that had been formalized. Um, let's see, there
is some different permits about, and you might know about this as well. Um, about water quality, if
depending on the size of the development that you're working on. So.
And if you want to elaborate on this, it's maybe more fitting for your... Yeah, I think it was also
from 37, I think. I forget how it was codified. But basically, the permit name, I think, is CSGP. Infection
and stormwater improvement, maybe. Something along those lines. So the state now does not allow
municipalities to
permit erosion controls for sites under an acre. And it's only the IDEM permit. And I think IDEM only
regulates sites more than an acre. So I think that under an acre, you know, lot size is not being regulated
for erosion control at this time. That's nice. Another thing, driveway culverts, didn't know this, but
previously it was said that property owners had to maintain culverts that went under their driveway.
and that, or that, that bridges, well, it, but it was not, oh, that's what it was. It was not officially
in their, in whatever their, their code was. So they added that word. If you have something that's,
that's the one under your driveway, you could be the one to handle it, that the city will install it,
but that you have to manage it. So that's something that had been kind of happening, but they had to
put it in officially. Let's see, there's,
Their design manual went into effect. They've been doing some revisions to that. It goes with utility
board, and they're updating things about green infrastructure and stuff like that. There's a lot of
details about that, which I can send you if that's useful. And then they're also changing their street
sweeping using Route Smart to improve street sweeping routes and frequency. They're looking at long-term frequency
uh, decreasing, basically decreasing the overall volume. So instead of just like doing it whenever they
can get a truck and go out there, um, trying to be a little bit more intentional about how much they're
sweeping, when they're sweeping, and if doing it on a certain, uh, cadence reduces the overall collection
over time. So it's like just less, um, uh, a little less work overall, but they're like monitoring it
and measuring it in a way that they didn't before. So they can assess like what they need to be doing
moving forward and with the room time.
Um, let's see. And then, okay. And then there's some things that are not, there's a report that we received
that is going through utilities board next. And then they're going to go through, I think now like a
finalization process and then release it. So that would be something that will come out to the public
at another time. And then we were talking about, there's that item grant, that 319 grant that has to do with,
Uh, and now point source water pollution. And so we were talking about different ways that we might
be able to do something with them. Maybe with them, maybe with the parks department, um, uh, in one
of the waterways in Bloomington. It sounds like that the original idea was that it was for the Cascades
era isn't like the proper watershed to actually be applicable. But we were talking about maybe trying
to tie in that with a clear creek, which is where they've been doing a lot of sampling. Um, there's
some different levels that they're being required to sort of, um,
uh, remediate. And so trying to figure out if there's multiple ways of incorporating some clean-up or,
um, educational materials or, um, monitoring or something like that that we can do that would be like
through an IDEM funded grant. So talking through that a little bit, but trying to figure out where the
EDC fits on that as far as like helping look into things. So it was very jam-packed. There were a lot
of things that were very natured of interest. And, um, yeah, overall,
They're really excited to continue conversations with us. Utilities is a really relevant department
for us, so it's nice that we've got some folks who are excited to talk about what's happening in the
waterways, what's happening with the bacterial levels and things like that, and what our role could
be in either helping to communicate about that, engage people about that, or do any kind of supportive
documentation. That's the water quality through the voice of the carrier who is not a water quality
specialist.
Right. ECPC is the next one. That was one of those meetings that had a whole bunch of folks at it. Is
there anyone who wants to talk through that process? So, ECPC met twice. The first one was where we
almost had our quorum issue and the third had to leave. We discussed the St. Remy wetland situation
a little bit and also a future housing development
Um, near the beeline where a bunch of tree removal is going to happen though. That one was in the early
stages. We just touched on it. We had some, a staff member there as well. I can't remember who that
was. We decided we had strong enough feelings about the St. Remy spillway project that we wanted to
write some sort of letter. Um, and so we planned to meet again a week later.
Uh, which ended up just being me and Mitchell. And we are bringing a letter to the commission today.
It's next week. Uh, the packet, I think, was about the same when we actually got continued to November,
because there's still some unresolved issues. Um, so. It's sort of remind us for those of us who haven't
done these meetings. What is the sample?
They have, um, where is it? I can share more now. Sure. It's on the southeastern part of town right
on the county city line. Uh, they have a, a couple of, uh, cons within the HLA common area. Uh, and
one of the cons has a spillway data, um, to the south of it.
around the pond and there was a wetland delineation on the parcel. And the wetland delineation did not
cover the entire parcel, but it showed significant wetlands, emergent wetlands within the construction
area. So while the spillway is certainly failing, CB wants it repaired, the HOA wants it repaired. It's
impacting a significant, I think it was impacting 0.7 acres amount of wetlands.
Um, mostly because of the construction access road, um, that would be remain in perpetuity. So then
the dam can, um, need maintenance periodically. And trees are being removed as well. Um, and then I
think it's crossing a couple of streams, so right there in buffer areas are being impacted. Did that
cover anything? Yeah, no, not much. Um, my issue with it being continued again, um, this is one of those
things where,
I wish there were some more flexibility within government because our recommendation was essentially
to seek an alternate route that was shorter and less disruptive and would pretty much require them to
ask a property owner if they were okay with an access road coming up along the edge of their property, which
theoretically be asked of them anytime, because they could say yes, and then a new survey could start.
They could say no, and we could be forced to go with what the original petitioner has put forward at
whatever time this has continued to. So it's one of those things that is disappointing to me that would
be pushed back for consideration another month, because whenever
should they choose to heed our advice, it will require them to take more time. They will be frustrated.
So I wish that it could be put in front of them now, even though the project is being continued, because
then the question could be asked. So I did ask. I did ask the designers correctly. They said that the
property in question, it was an empty lot that
That was actually their preferred route. Negotiations failed. Okay. So that has been asked. And then
as far as the other point about the entirety of the ponds, creating a wetland area, the west part of
the pond, after we met, we looked at the plot again, and the west part of the pond is actually not within
the HOA's control. It's like the northeast and south part of the pond, the backward sea.
Um, so we are working with them on that to get that, uh, all of the needs met and some, uh, wetlands,
um, messic plantings. Okay. Yeah. Is, so it sounds like part of the letter, like it's kind of already
addressed that with the conversation. Is everybody just, I mean, I guess if they didn't have the meeting,
did we submit this to their path here or can we rescind the initial letter? And you can certainly revise
it or rescind it and revise it. I mean, the, uh,
I submitted it to Eric formally, but since it was continued, I don't anticipate it'll be sent out unless,
I'm not sure, I don't pay that close attention to the practice if something's continued and plans are
submitted and it's listed as continued or not. So I think it can be resubmitted and modified if you
guys would like.
And Harry, do you want to lose space for your other comment about whether we wanted to vote on IDEP,
like, whether it's like both? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Thank you for bringing that up. So the way that the ECPC
worked this time was that they met and then put together a draft of what this letter would look like
and then sent it to Rachel. And the question was, do we want the Environmental Commission to look at
it as a group, read it as a group, say yes, they think it's OK, and vote on it letter by letter?
Do we want to say, ECPC, thank you for doing this work. We trust that what you're saying is representative
of the Environmental Commission. You may sign at the Environmental Commission. Or option C, ECPC discusses
it. ECPC writes a letter. ECPC signs it as a subcommittee to the Environmental Commission. If people
have thoughts on what's the difference between E and C? The Environmental Commission as a whole would
be signing the letter versus if the subcommittee would be signing it.
I'm trying to figure it out. I should note sometimes the board of zoning appeals and EC often meet up
the same night, not this month, at least half of you meet up the same night. So sometimes to get a letter
submitted and to meet the BZA requirements, there's not really time to have the EC have eyes on that
letter prior to it being submitted. So I think I didn't very acknowledge that point, but I just wanted
to make that super clear that sometimes that can be the difference.
So one option is a good faith, like, yes, the EC will sign it, assuming that, you know, the ECPC has
done its thorough divergence in writing something that is, you know, aligned with our goals and all
of that, or just skip that and say ECPC sign, write what you want signed, what you want we support some
committee doing what they think is best. I trust what the ECPC is like.
I trust them, but at the same time, I think that it's just clearer if it's signed by the committee,
by the ECPC instead of the EC, and then we don't have to worry about anyone coming back and saying,
oh, you didn't run this by the whole EC. Technically, we didn't run it by the whole ECPC either, because
we can't share things. Oh, we just had another meeting. That's a fair point.
So either way, there is some trust involved, which, right, when a knee-jerk reacted was, oh, it should
just be signed by the ECPC. That is the group that's accountable for it. And they're like, well, I pretty
much wrote this. So that's one of those things where... I want to move there. Right. There's still trust
involved either way. So I guess I'm
I'm fairly comfortable with B or C. It's up to other people. A question for Rachel. From the city's
perspective, does it look any different if it's signed by the whole EC, or politically, or the ECPC,
or the author's name as a member of the ECPC? I don't. I can't speak for the Board of Zoning Appeals.
My inclination is that they're going to see city-level environmental commission. Yeah.
Okay. I did add the environmental commission logo. So there is that recognition for it. Now what do
you think about it having the name of the author or authors in the letter and then environmental commission
planning committee versus just the name of the committee as a whole? Because you're going for it. Right.
Either way, I mean, it's, whether it's as the ACPC or as the environmental commission, there is still
going to be a certain amount of press there. And we do, we do want them to see the words city of Bloomington
environmental commission. So definitely couldn't really want names to come first. So we could also list
the names. I mean, that feels a little, a little extensive, I guess, to like list names of the people
on the committee, but.
I guess just as, as for example, the author of this particular letter or the primary author knowing
that like, I wasn't in on those meetings and gave there for the letter. You know, we were going to be
doing some law potential. I mean, maybe not a lot, but like there's potential for it happening more.
I was also, I think Mitchell and I were both also planning to try to attend this meeting as long as
it didn't run at the exact same time as the BC meeting. So that would be another way for, if it doesn't
conflict with the meeting for authors to
be extra involved, but I don't have terribly strong feelings on the name part. Like I don't, it isn't,
I want to see my name on it. It would be if you were David or someone was like, well, I didn't write
that. I'd rather just see the names of the people who wrote it on there. So like I don't have strong
feelings. Do you have any strong opinions? No.
Okay, I think keeping it as it is then makes sense because it represents a specific part of the EC,
but clearly it doesn't work administratively as well to have that whole EC exposed to the letter every
time. I think that the ECPC is a fine route because then there's no question about, oh, did it go before
the whole commission? Well, it went before whatever part of the ECPC attended.
If we had a CPC quorum. Yeah. Well, and, and sometimes the EC itself doesn't have every single member.
No, it's true. So yeah, that's giving some permission. And when it comes to the letter being rescinded
or edited, um, my knee jerk reaction is I wouldn't change a thing. Yeah. I mean, I would want the plan
commission to read.
In its entirety, and then obviously the petitioner can say we tried that and the negotiation didn't
work that way we still have our two cents in there and then our rationale. Yeah, I say that, not just
because I spent a little chunk of time on that first paragraph, but but I mean I want them to.
see what we're thinking basically to say we looked at that map and we said I understand that you've
tried to be accommodating given what you have to do. Could you do this because it's so much less damaging
and goes through fewer mature trees, crosses no tributaries, goes through less wetland, and if they
say no we cannot then they are where they are. And I don't think the DBA is still in the full map. I
don't see them seeing
I don't think there's anything like there's an empty lot nearby. So I think that this at least poses
the question for the dishwasher to answer at least. Yeah. It puts it on the record. And again,
it gives a why. It's not just us being difficult. It's saying, man, I see a route that I know you have
to go up a hill and over some private property, but it's so much less disturbance and zero wetland.
So just way, way superior amount. But they would then address that.
That would be that. So yeah, my initial reaction is I see no real reason to rescind or edit unless there's
anything that anyone wants to edit or add. One more thing, I wasn't there, but I totally approved as
a member of that planning committee, I totally approved it, and not having to write it.
Yeah. And I think personally, I think that having this documentation out there somewhere, like, here's
stuff that we're raising and whether or not they're like, we already had the conversation,
it's not possible. The fact that this is on our radar, we're saying, here's what we're seeing, here's
why it's important. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work, but that doesn't make it any less important
or possible or whatever. So I like it with that thing. Any other thoughts on this piece of it before
we move to the next working group? Good letter.
I will email the ECPC formally to say that was good to me to know that, especially for my thought. Should
have seen me trying to measure on the computer screen. Disappointing. Okay, well then we can go ahead
and move to the light pollution subcommittee. Anything from you all? So, we're not mad. It's kind of
not bad. We've been slacking a little bit, but I did reach out to planning
about that question I had in the UDO, the response I got, they said that that pretty much only applies
to like street lights on the right of way, public right of way, and that there are other bits in the
UDO that apply to lights on private property that kind of supersede that line. So it sounds like my
concern was
unmarked. So no one can just put a spotlight. Yeah, so you cannot put a spotlight. I will say that there
are enforcement cases for that. So it was out at like 6 a.m. when it started. So if you do have a complaint,
maybe you're converted. I don't specifically. It was just. Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah. I can see the solution
working here. Just one night to stay on your report.
Yeah, that's about it for me. Nice. And I know that when David was here, he was mentioning the changes
to the UDO. I think it's Eric that just kind of keeps our rolling list of anything we want considered,
and then they kind of start to call that list a little bit to discuss what should be on there. So I
know to everybody that as we're talking through things that are potential additions or edits to the
UDO, it's not that we can send them through planning kind of anytime, and they'll just keep track of them.
We usually do that at the end of the year, so that will be approaching. So if you get it to me, then
it already won't be addressed until the end of the year. Yeah, that's good to know that they collect
them, but they don't actually do anything with them until the end. So thanks. Great. OK, thanks for
the updates. About a diversity working group, we're just going to organize. Who's going to say what?
Shannon, do you mean Beth and Michelle?
Well, so we haven't met as far as I know. But there's just one small bit of news, which it seems like
the Bee City has officially made its way through the whole process. Because I don't know if you all
have been getting them, but I've been getting notices saying we are now, we've paid our dues. We're
now Bee City. So that's good. Yeah. I was going to say, I know that we had the resolution passed, but
can we add to our social media now and then maybe
like every three months for the next year, just like get a reminder of what this is and announce one
of it, like just kind of like keep surfacing it while we figure out what we want to do about that status
or anything like that. And I was talking to Tangible a week or two ago and we were talking about maybe
doing something, I don't know, an op-ed or something to basically celebrate the fact that both IU and the city
have now achieved obesity status. So I can follow up with him on that if you all would. Good idea. Would
like me to. I don't know exactly. You two are going to kind of co-write it. But we could or we can do
other things. Yeah. Okay. Before we get off with finite diversity, the bug fest. Did you guys return
the outreach materials yet? No, I saw the tip. Okay.
Okay, I just wanted to make sure that it was not lost while I was gone. Yes, and I still have them.
Oh, because we were just talking about maybe going on some table. Yeah. I guess that is biodiversity.
We used some of the outreach materials and that showed up to the opening of this exhibition. We got
maybe five or six people to sign up for the habitat connectivity plan, just something. Handed out a
few of those flyers. Yeah.
And I forced it on some other people. I have my computer there. I was like, we'll fill it out.
I love it. Um, so as, uh, as an addition to some of the, um, habitat connectivity stuff, one is that
Saturday is the neighborhood association special at the market. So I'm going to go, actually, I think
I'm gonna take some of those flyers with me and I hand them to them to also say,
Let us know if you want us to come and talk to your neighborhood gathering. If there's a meeting that
would be a good one, we can do it literally any time of year. It doesn't have to be this one. We might
try to show up to that, too. Yeah. Same day as no kings. I know. Yeah, Saturday at the market. I mean,
depending on the time of the month, I think it ends up being this. But anyway, so by checking in with
as many of those groups as possible to say, hi, how can we
Help make this possible in your share enthusiasm. Seriously, I think most neighborhood associations
are interested in engaging. So that can be something that we continue a conversation about depending
on how they respond. I wonder, would it make sense for us at some point to partner for biodiversity
to partner with the.
neighborhood, they have those grants for the development of like more. Oh yeah, like $500 neighborhood.
Maybe. That's a great idea. Yeah, but I thought about putting in some, you know, like rain gardens or
things like that for water collection and pollinating, sort of pollinator friendly fence. But it might
be interesting if we were to partner with them to say,
Create habitat and here's some way you can apply for some money to do that in the neighborhood. That's
a really interesting idea. Yeah. Do you think that it would be, while we're here and able to talk about
it openly, thinking about that. Okay. So, so does everybody have a passive familiarity with the hand
grants that we're talking about? So yeah, basically it's like, it's not, it's not a ton of money, but
it's enough that like, and, and,
couple of blocks would be able to do something interesting. And yeah, I think a lot of times it is intended
to be sort of neighborhood enriching things.
Maybe I'm confused, but that's one more thing. Well, this is why I was thinking rain gardens, but. I
think some people have done rain gardens. I think this is a modern one too. I thought you were talking
about like the neighborhood. Neighborhood improvement. Yeah, that was what I thought you were referring
to. Yeah, so this one, here's some language. No, wait, oh wait, this is, let's see. I've gotten it.
Funding request. Oh, so this is funding request between one and $10,000. Neighborhoods must provide
a minimum matching
Neighbors Providing Matching, this is not the grant I was thinking of. That is the Neighborhood Improvement
Grant. What I'm thinking of is something else. The stormwater one's kind of hard too. I mean, there's
like a proposal and the more people you have on it, the better. Okay. You have certain priorities and
they don't guarantee you'll get whatever the full amount of it costs or anything. There is a residential
stormwater. Let me see if that's what you're talking about.
I'm sorry, I don't remember. I was associated in a storm. That's what I was thinking about. Yeah, it's
just that it's bundled under small and simple grants provided to five hundred dollars annually available
through September. Why do you do that for community building that funding neighborhood newsletters,
celebrations, training sessions or invasive species control?
funding to remove plants, the place of native species, things like that. So it's 500 bucks for a neighborhood
at one time a year. It sounds close, but is this the major thinking action? I think it's neighborhood
improvement. Oh, I guess maybe not the one I want. Maybe it was a sustainable income. I don't need that one.
Okay, I'm going to send Rachel kind of send this to you and send it to the here. There it is. I think
that's it. Just email it to you. Yeah, the rain garden. Okay. Yeah, build community garden. Yeah, plan
to pollinate our garden.
Okay. Yeah. And that one doesn't have any of the matching stuff. Interesting. No, it's smaller, but
there's only $10,000 total available. Oh, the budget itself. Okay. So the one I was looking at is $500.
This one is up to $1,000. But I think that's a really, really cool idea. And I think that when you think
about that, like, let's say you're talking to a neighborhood association,
Do you think it is us saying if that's something you want to apply for, that would be basically supporting
the habitat connectivity plan concept that we would something, something like have ideas for you or
provide you, like what do you think our involvement would be in that? Then not like officially, but
just now like as your brainstorming on this, somebody considered.
I haven't, this was just a random comment. I hadn't thought of it. Yeah. I think so. We certainly could
talk to them about it and the ideas, you know, you know, but. We couldn't encourage them to reference
the habitat activity plan and the proposal. We're helping with this. I think we'd want to reach out
to whoever.
is like evaluating these grant proposals too and say, we'd like to, you know, this is very much in line
with some of the things we're encouraging through our habitat connectivity plan. And basically,
you know, we'd like to sort of partner with you to get news about this out there and also to help them
if you can. Yeah, with the projects that emerge.
I mean, I think, I think the idea is really, really good. I was trying to like, what does the logistics
look like? But maybe step one, it's just connecting with hand and saying like, this totally applies
to something that's really important to us. And it's baked into different parts of the city and the
climate plan and things like that. Like there's a bunch of places this pops up. So how, is there something
that we can do to either help? This one might be ESD, but it's probably some mistake. Oh, we have both.
Oh, okay. Departments. Yeah, this is a sustainable neighborhood, yes or no?
I mean, I think on the Habitat Connectivity Plan, we just keep encouraging people to make improvements
on private property, but it's always worth referencing that grants exist, especially if you're going
to do something in your community or across multiple yards or an HOA space or whatever it would be.
We're still kind of pushing that every little action counts. So just reminding people that those grants
exist is a good level of involvement.
Well, great. One other note about the Habitat for Connectivity Plan was something that came up last
week or last month, which is really interesting. I think Heidi brought that up actually, but it was
about if there's any kind of communication we have with people after they add something to the Connectivity
Plan. And we were talking a little bit about mailing lists and things like that, and then thinking that
sounds like a logistical
I don't even know what may be a possibility, but Labyrinth, if nothing else, when it comes to how would
we communicate with people. I don't know, Rachel, if that's something that you can ask. Are there any
other ways that if people say, yes, I would like to hear from you in the future, that we could say,
great, here you go. It would be like a newsletter that you would send to people who signed up, then
we would make the right. Can we do something like that?
Probably. I am scared. I don't have the capacity right now to do stuff like that. I guess, like, selfishly,
I would encourage to do the Facebook post and say, hey, you should follow our Facebook. We're making
more comment or more group updates. I can certainly ask about the newsletter and see what that looks
like. Is there any, do you know if there's any, like, city communications person that could do that?
Yeah, there's, I don't know about having an EC-specific newsletter and has,
a newsletter that Angela may be more unhappy to include items on. And then the city does have their
outreach. That Angela's newsletter goes out. I want to say, I don't want to give a number. It goes out
to at least a thousand people. So she is always more than willing to put stuff out first.
At Bonfest, we had some nice brochures that had plant recommendations and deer resistant plants. On
the city's, on the Habitat Connectivity Plan website, do we have links to information about native,
suggested native plants? The brochures are in the
page. They're just not on the connectivity plan, so you'd have to navigate a little. Okay. Yeah. I will
note too, Fiona's been working on kind of a brain drain task and she's more creative outlet than the
more technical stuff has been putting together kind of one pagers of the brochure information and just
creating nothing new updated book. So I think she's planning on presenting that sometime in the spring.
She doesn't have
all of the information from the brochures. The example she gave was like, some of the native plants
have heights, but not all of the native plants have heights across all the brochures. So that is being
done as time. But I don't think there's a link on the habitat connectivity map itself suggesting native
plants or linking to those brochures
directly. I think that's something that can be added because I think there is like an information tab.
There's that so on the EC's web page, there's like a sub page that is like it's labeled natural landscaping
things actually labeled brochures on our homepage, but it but then it's like the list of like links
to all the different brochures we have about de-resistant plants and native things and things like that
like a natural
landscaping everything. So we could link to this page. It just kind of floods you with choices. Yeah.
You think that would work out if we put that on the map links? Well, so at the, at the, at Bugfest,
when people were interested, they would go directly to the page. And so I do think it would be helpful
for all on the landing page to have immediate links to
plants, you know, suggested plants. So yeah, that would be if there's a link to that page that could
be helpful. Do you think it sounds like it might be more helpful to have like the actual like link to
this thing, like the pressure that we have? Yeah, on that or what's done are resources on that page.
That's it. Okay. Yeah, so this is the resource of the different tab. Yeah. Yeah, so this is probably
where the GIS team is going to want to host
Yeah. Um, so I can definitely ask that if that's okay with the group. Just a tab that. Yeah. It says
like native plant recommendations or resources. They're like, um, whatever, I love that page, but whatever
this page is called with the resources. Oh, it's the, yeah, it's like natural landscaping. You know,
maybe just natural landscaping resources or something. Yeah. They all phrasing like that.
Yeah. Can we have that be like the third thing listed? I think right now it's like the PDF, math, and
recorded GIS issue or whatever. Yeah, good mention. And I think this is stuff that we're like continuing
to kind of figure out how to do it better now that we've got a map that we're really excited to engage
with. It's like, what feels really intuitive? Where are people going when they won't?
Any other thoughts on any of the biodiversity working group items? Any other thoughts on any of the
biodiversity working group items? Any other thoughts on any of the biodiversity working group items?
Any other thoughts on any of the biodiversity working group items? Any other thoughts on any of the
biodiversity working group items?
We don't have too few. We have enough deer. We have more than enough deer than I think we can get. Yeah.
It would be amazing if we had like trackers on the deer, all the deer, and we could watch in live time.
We could watch how they move around. I noticed some of them had it on their side.
Oh my gosh. Adam, at one point we talked about you doing a presentation on sort of the invasive animals
and their impact and all that for the EC. Is that something you're still doing? Yeah. In Bloomington,
we think mainly about invasive animals, insects. And there are invasive animals that reduce biodiversity,
including insects within animals.
I give lectures on invasive species all the time. So you'd be happy to. Cool. I think last month we
were talking about just sort of some timing for when we might do things. So it might be like early 2026.
Sure. Okay. Cool. We can have an 11 of the wild. The what? The fall of the wild. Yeah. Oh, Anderson
was telling me about the dolphins. It's a sort of anti...
a lane manifesto instead of invasive animals. There's a call of the wild, it's about the guy that- It's
not the call of the wild. Oh, that's a little species. Yeah, it's a critique of a whole set of species.
It's interesting. All right. Well then, if folks have any other updates, we can keep moving on. Special
projects, we were talking about putting together some items just to help with our tabling.
um, using some of our budget for some things. Um, that was not been the time for me to work on that.
And if you're interested in design things like designing what our little presentation thing would look
like or designing what a new tablecloth could look like, feel free to join the special projects where
we do things like that. Because right now it's going to say the city have a standard vendor and would
it be very easy to just do a tablecloth? Yeah, it's really expensive. Weirdly, like an actual, like
nicely made tablecloth is like interesting and
Like 140 bucks. So yeah. So, so I think it's because of the way it's printed, like it's printed really
nicely. So there's some sort of, some things that will require input from other people. It's not quite
as easy and cheap as I would have hoped, but can I jump in real quick? So I think that you see budget
was $1,300 for this year. I think that was requested for action too. And I think that 400 of that was
used for the city. So we're down to 900. It will reset.
in the new year, but you still have $900, obviously, with this year. Maybe I should just take it to
the tablecloth. Go to the tablecloth. Okay. $140. That's like 10 years or something. That's true.
It's true. Presumably it would. I'm not on special projects, but I'm in favor. Okay. Thanks, Matt. I
appreciate the support. Okay, great. The last thing on the old business is the eco-heroes
The human discussion, folks, we have had some really great themes over the years. I sent an email out
that there was a huge silence too, so thank you. But I listed a ton of the different themes that we've
done over the years, like about pollinators, about trees, about just the plant and biodiversity,
all this. And so Adam and Matt and I have gone through some ideas separately and not together, but we're
gonna bring our separate ideas here tonight to hear if people have thoughts
Ideally, we would be able to lock in a theme. And then what we can do is start talking about like a
tagline and talking about what kind of materials we want to share with educators or the community as
they're putting together. But identifying a theme is going to be square one into putting all of these
things in motion so it's not an insane rush come March. Right. The sooner we do that, the better. That
way we can get it in front of educators and stuff before they've planned their whole spring. We don't
want to fall behind like we did last time.
And sometimes it feels like it's in your mind all the time. It's being feel that way no matter what.
It's actually trying to get ahead of it. So do either of you, or anybody else, if you have ideas for
themes that you'd like us to consider, feel free to say something. But Adam or Matt, do either of you
have any themes that you'd like to kick off? I had two that I thought of. The first one was something
around killing your lawn. It's a kind of, I don't know.
Like getting rid of, you know, grass monoculture, maybe just letting it grow a little taller, placing
them native plants and all the bits and bits that it has. And it's kind of like eye-catching, I think.
And then I didn't have a nice tag like with this one, but something about like predators, just because
that's another thing that people get excited about. You know, you've got like raptors and wolves and
stuff, but it's also like,
buzzes, most reptiles. Yeah. OK. All right, cool. That's all. OK, awesome. Awesome. I love it. Matt,
do you have any questions? I'm just always, every year, a broken record. I'm focused on native plants
and the ecosystem services they provide. So I was trying to figure out, I don't have a great working
title, but it just sort of ties in with everything from the connectivity plans, MCIRs, calorie pair removal,
to anything, but I just basically, um, few of the things I wrote down like native plants and Bloomington's
wonderful wildlife or like native plants fueling Bloomington's wonderful wildlife or supporting, or,
I don't know, just was kind of spitting out ideas, but my, it's like native plants are the, are the
foundation, even if you're more excited about the, you know, Fauna that they support, but it leaves
it very, very open to them.
you know, painting a butterfly on a flower to a buffalo in a field or whatever, because it's all stems
from the wildlife, but it's not a very focused idea at this point. Gotcha. Cool. I came with three ideas,
some more, some less focused. The first one, I was trying to figure out what we could do about around light.
I was thinking light, like the sun, the benefits of the sun, the gems of sun, whatever, solar energy
and, or light pollution and what that looks like. So the eco heroes in our art contest specifically,
so it's how people express through written art, art, 3D art, some sort of creation that they've made
this theme. So I was thinking about light from a few different directions and maybe it's all, or maybe
it's like, I don't know.
Uh, my partner's currently dating children on a bird watching program. So birds came up and I was like,
we've been on the birds before we've done different like types of wildlife, but I was like, people like
birds birds. All right. And then we're going to say about the birds. I like it. I have all sorts of
ideas too. Um, and then the last thing I had, because the, the, the idea came up last two years ago. Um,
that the area that we're in has like a ton of karst and it has tons of like geos and so much limestone
history. I was thinking like nature rocks as a thing and it being about like geology or something about,
you know, the role that stone, that earth, that rocks play and Bloomington you found in the ecosystems
too. Because it does. And so I'm like, well I'm done. Those are my three ideas. I think those are amazing.
I think we should go with one of those.
My first thought when you said it, though, it was like, it's the end of the world as we know it. No,
no, no. Like, you know, the apocalyptic thinking. No, but it's not local though. Well, like what emerges
from that? But then my second thought was not a real thought. My second thought was related to that.
So when is Eco Heroes? When is that contest? It happens for Earth Day.
And so we typically try to get materials out to teachers at the start of the year. Okay, April 18th
is the roofay event. So by then it will have been submitted and we'll have picked winners and we'll
have gathered prizes. What do you think of? Well, I don't know how appropriate this would be. I'm just
wondering if I'd be worth doing a sort of tie-in with one of the sort of either native plants ideas
or I'm doing this whole big project with a bunch of artists in the spring around the herbarium.
Um, the sort of the, which is basically that native center basis, right? I sort of plant archives sort
of why is it important to think about sort of catalogs or archives of, um, living species. But,
but I, one day I was just thinking it'd be interesting to try to do some sort of time, but you should
also, whatever we do, we should reach out to artists for climate or for climate awareness. Um,
who would help us get the word out for this. But I think your ideas are good ideas. So I'll just sort
of... Do other folks have ideas of themes that are general, like one word themes? Like I said, birds.
Any theme or something specific that would be like, something to consider? Well, do you have a favorite
native plant that you want to fish? I'm sorry, I do. No, I wouldn't. I mean, I wouldn't want to put
the artist in that spot.
Yeah, I would tell them that the free time they could do a big tree or they could do flowers and they
could do whatever. What is my number? It's tree, seven. Seven. We are a tree city. That's true. Yeah,
it's kind of tricky because you want it to be like somewhat focused. You don't want everyone to just
be like doing the same thing. You release some latitude for expression. I like the accessibility of
the birds.
I mean, like so many people have gotten into birding over the last couple of years, but it's also like,
I fear, and I know we're talking about kid's art, but even so, I fear it's going to be like creative,
just literal art. Whereas when you focus on light, I actually think could get us some really interesting,
or even karst, and that's sort of the karst topography. Because the karst has a lot to do with how we
think about water and wastewater and all sorts of things like that in the area too.
And so I think, I really, I find like that it's just a very evocative thing to work with. And the adult
artists could certainly do a lot with that. Yeah. And I think that's part of it is like what appeals
to children, what appeals to a classroom, what appeals to a high school, what appeals to a fiery, like
there's like, there's so many different ways that we can go about this and kind of making sure it's
like, is there a little pocket for people about walks of life to, you know,
I think probably birds, but it's like the lowest common denominator here. It's a cheap shot. I know,
I know. Birds are 30. What are you doing? John, go ahead. Well, there are lots of great ideas. Birds.
I also like the native plants and so on. So what have we done in the past? Oh, would you like me to
read you a magnet? Yes. Give you some time. Well, I just want to say the nature of rocks to tag along,
I think, is very good.
Trying to imagine people drawing rocks. Or they just draw nature, you know? They're like, well, I totally
miss the geology. Or they'd make paper mache geos, and then they, you know, write what a geo is.
Who knows? Kids are weird. But that's a routine. Muscles. Yeah. And those are rhinoids. They could be
like sculptures. They could grow. Where do you all see the most participation with topics? What was it?
with one of the most participation. Participation was always high until the pandemic. It's just been
harder since, somewhat regardless of the, I'm thinking that us getting out ahead of a year might give
us a better chance. We want people to be able to tie things into grade school lesson plans or, you know,
more time for us to put up flyers if we choose to do that, more time to harass friends and family.
Here's some things. Last year, it was bugs in bloom, how native insects are important to Bloomington.
The year before, it was drops to drains, eco-heroes working with the city on stormwater streams. And
we paired with the city a couple of presentations on that. And then a list of others are eco-heroes.
How about the eye and environment? How do you nurture nature in your neighborhood? Mission, lower emissions.
Embracing our aging planet. Let it grow. What trees give us. Fighting fragmentation. Not the question
mark, I just ended on a question mark. Protecting our pollinator pals. Doing my share of cleaner air.
Celebrating Earth's variety of life, biodiversity. And lakes, rivers, and streams, oh my. Those have
been the things that I could talk to.
So we don't really talk, there's a few things, like the native thing, we don't name natives in any of
those. Birds, we don't name birds. We don't name rocks. We don't name sun or light or whatever it relates
to. So I think, I mean, we don't name predators by name. Like there's a bunch of opportunities that
keep flushing me off this list. I will say that I think some of the more broad things, I think the broader
things were maybe in the beginning a little bit too.
Um, like the very first one I think was the, how do I put that out of environment? And it's just like,
I mean, you get any and truly anything, which is great, but it's also really hard to judge those and
say like, and then it becomes how much time do I actually think you put into this or that sort of like,
you kind of start to critique what the perceived effort was versus, you know, does it tie to the theme
because it can be so many different ways to tie to the theme. What do you mean the theme?
Do we need to decide today? I think a general direction will be helpful. And we can wait until the next
meeting. The next meeting is going to be a wild one. So. Well, I want to point out that. Yeah,
please do. Yeah. Talking about why you did it in the night time. I'm trying to get a diverse environment.
What do I think about the night? You know what's happening at night? Oh, yeah.
save the light, enjoy the dark, so what do you enjoy about it? And there's also nocturnal animals, there's
like what happens to plants at night. Ooh, that's a really interesting one. Yeah, we'll get on with
an American book about what happens at night, offensive stories, home keepers of the night, book of
constellations and animals, owls. That's a great thing to put on, like if we were to do this at any point,
like a teacher resource list of like the library has this book or like you could reference. So anytime
you think of things like that, we can always put them with whatever our, um, ecovirus thing is going
to be for sure. Okay. Yes. I really like that. Um, if we, uh, if we wanted to go back to like lawns
and natives and stuff like that, we could do something not rewilding. Um, one of the things that I noticed
in your list was,
Um, a lot of them have this kind of sort of focus on action or sort of ethics. And the thing about birds
is that it doesn't feel like, what do you think? But rewilding like, you know, sort of rewilding escapes
Wilmington, whatever people would interpret that. And all sorts of different ways that you could think
about laws, you could think about, um, native species.
But I do like the night one better though. Yeah, again, I think it's more interesting. That's a really
interesting observation. I wonder what the turnout looks like based on, is it an observation type words
about birding or maybe the last one where it's more about the thing and teaching about the thing versus
what is my engagement with it.
That's really fascinating. I think it would suggest some sort of engagement. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, yeah,
yeah. Like, let me consider nature at night or something, because I mean, avid bludgers, whether it's
like, you know, the night flowering plants or whether it's moths or owls or raccoons or whatever.
Interesting. Did you say record? Someone said record. What do people think about that? It is very wide open.
Or maybe they have some flashlights and looking for frogs. And the light pollution thing can also come
up with like dark sky, the value of dark sky. Yeah, okay. Okay. I mean, I think it sounded a bit fun.
Yeah. The night scene sounds fun, but it is, you can take it in a number of directions even if we're going to
Mostly get baths or something. I don't know. I don't know what we'd get. I don't know what we'd get.
Yeah. But it goes in like so many directions. Right. I like that you, there's a lot of room to be creative
with it or you can draw the stuff that's obvious. Is there any other theme that people would like to
really consider? Cause I think I'm hearing a lot about the nighttime thing. Any other themes that people
are like, it feels like we're onto something. I think a lot of the ideas are good that we could, we
could revisit them for any
additional, like, for your heroes. Seriously. We're talking about June for next year. But those are
the piggy banks. If we're good, right. But those are the piggy bank for next year. Right. Just hold
on to it for next time. Cool. But I like the late contender here. I think that seems like swimming for
you. I love it. How do folks feel about some sort of, yeah, nature at night or something? Our nature
at night or something. Let me see. Nature at night. Yeah. Okay.
Either Bloomington's nature at night or our nature at night. Something that makes it still feel kind
of local. Yeah. Something personal, yeah. Okay. Are folks okay with if we do that theme, the ninth theme?
I think it should be fun. Well, great, Heidi. Great idea. That was great. And it kind of touches, it
kind of includes all the different groups in the area that are put away. Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. This is great. I'm a big fan. Thank you for suggesting it. Thank you. Um, Matt and Adam
both for thinking through things and getting us going and for everybody for interviewing ideas. This
was super cool. Um, oh, Rachel, we didn't hear from you. Night or you are you. Excellent.
Before I move on from working here, is that everything about eco-care that you wanted to touch on? I
believe so. And then we, maybe we can just set up a meeting sometime in the next couple of weeks and
we'll. I wanted to get just a, I don't think I've ever gotten a formal confirmation of who is a part
of each group. I know we're missing some people tonight, but who wants to be part of the eco-careless
group? I don't know. I don't know.
Um, yeah, it has to be less than easy. We can't have more than six. We can have everybody. We just can't
all come together in a single meeting. So you can get us to be like, I would like to be on the part
that. Designs a fire since then you all could come to the meeting. It's just, you have to send out the.
So, yes, if you'd like, you're welcome to to be part of it. I don't understand. You raise your hand.
You did not raise your hand on that.
They did not rejoin in Heidi. I'm not sure. I can always put in any of them later. I'll pressure you
next month. I'm not sure if I can put in any of them later. I'm not sure if I can put in any of them
later. I'm not sure if I can put in any of them later. I'm not sure if I can put in any of them later.
I'll pressure you next month. I'm not sure if I can put in any of them later. I'm not sure if I can
put in any of them later. I'm not sure if I can put in any of them later. I'm not sure if I can put
in any of them later. I'm not sure if I can put in any of them later. I'm not sure if I can put in any
of them later. I'm not sure if I can put in any of them later. I'm not sure if I can put in any of them
later. I'm not sure if I can put in any of them later. I'm not sure if
So ECPC, I have Harry, Matt Pauly, Norm, Adam Martinez, Mitchell, and David. Is that everybody who wants
to be part of ECPC. Okay. Special projects. Harry, Matt, Mitchell. Is that right? Water quality, please.
Casey, Mitchell. So you don't want to get me in there. David, are you part of the water quality group?
Okay. Then I have Casey and Mitchell. Yeah.
I've been hanging out. And Heidi, would you like me to add on you for right now? Sure. Okay. That was
with the e-mails about it. Why pollution? Add-on. Who is the second? Okay. Two thirds of it is add-on.
It doesn't quite matter. You want to include it as well? Okay. Are you also ever to add-on though?
Not on water. I didn't actually really sign up for special projects. I'm just, I don't know, something
about being the vice chair, and I guess he wrote it down. Yeah, so you're the vice chair for so long.
Yeah. And then by the first year, Carrie, Nanya, Matt, Adam, Jennifer, Shannon, and David. I'm officially
on? I am on. OK. OK. OK. And I had all of the action work. Yeah. Does anybody have any other comments before?
I saved my volume. Okay, thank you. Thank you for covering everybody. Yeah. Cool. Okay, well, is there
anything else that people want to just say about Ecovirus? That was kind of the goal was to lock in
just a general brand. I think it's really great that we essentially have a theme. Yay, thanks everybody
for contributing and nice job. What a fun addition. Okay, so next on the list is the staff update, starring
Rachel Dawson.
The first thing I have is item public notices. Council Member Piedmont-Smith emailed, I think she emailed
you and I, Carrie and I, about does the EC get public notices and meet you guys often in comments. So,
I guess we are in central, it's a little weird. So these public notices,
or a separate item. If it's sent to the office of the mayor, and it seems environmental, office of the
mayor, secretary does send it to me. If it doesn't seem environmental, I usually don't get them. If
it's sent to the council's office, I don't usually seem to get them. So kind of just practicing, I don't
always get these public notices, but I wanted to bring this up.
Mostly because Council Member Fugum said, I asked them if they'd be interested in this. Is this something
you guys would be interested in seeing the packets? These public notices are about permits that are
going on in the Williamson. I don't know anything about these profits. I would not be able to advocate
for, again, to give more detail. The public notice is what it is. Since it's a public notice, it's also
found on IDEM's website.
So I just wanted to ask everyone what their thoughts are. If there's any strong feelings, and if you
guys would write a comment. And just to clarify, these are going through IDEM. So they're not going
through our county council. They're going through the state level, which is unworthy. Indiana Department
of Environmental Management. Correct.
And I think DNR and Department of Natural Resources, I'm assuming since they have a construction and
floodway for men as well as stamp permits and probably some others, I think they probably have some
sort of public notice. I do not receive those and recently has public notice. I also don't receive those.
So I think you would only be looking at a very small fraction
Uh, if, you know, they represent, you're saying we see these, you know, receiving a small fraction for
me anyway. And one other thought is that the Minerva County. Formerly American environmental commission
now the resiliency committee resiliency commission, um, they're the county level. So, because these
like, like the central one, I'm pretty sure the top side of the city, uh, that's the one that Isabella
center and that.
is outside the city limits. So, technically, it's outside of like Boynton, you know, Maryland Commission.
Theoretically, the county commission of this nature would be relevant to respond to that, I think,
above us. So, I feel like that's where I think it's really useful for us to know. I think if these things
impact the environment because they've been approved, that's something that eventually may trickle down
in some way because of like a water issue or a soil issue or something. But figuring out do we want to
find a way to be lifted on these permits as they're coming through would be useful. I do think the idea
allows interested parties to sign up for a list. So if individuals are interested, we could also do
that. Do you have any strong opinions on how the EC handles this? It seems on the outside of our jurisdiction
that, I mean, what would we do?
It will come in to issue a report, yeah, but to whom? Because it's not the city. And I should note too,
like I brought up an example here. Some of them are quite detailed. Some of them are this. There's not
a lot of information about it. I'm okay with not receiving them. You made it sound like they only very
occasionally get to you. I get six a year if that.
of those six, three of them are about the same project. And most of the time it's Catalan so far. Yeah,
I just don't know what we would really do with the information. Kind of the same way we were talking
with ECPC, if there's something that's like really big and obvious that we want to weigh in on, you
were passing along. Sure, like if there's something, any factory or something. We could treat this similarly
in the very rare occasion that it's something you think we'd like to know about.
Sure. I mean, looking at the examples there, it's hard to know without like a historic list. I've been
missing out. Yeah, it does feel like it's a lot of load processing on our side to figure out if it's
even relevant. Are you okay with that, Larry? Thank you for asking. Okay.
Okay. The second thing I have is scheduling December meeting. I have heard through the room in the middle
that the last you have a schedule for might be any youth graduation or some college's graduation tonight.
So I guess I think we wanted to check out who are we going to meet for December.
The week after is the holiday. So a week directly before, none of the rooms are available. So we would
have to put it pretty close to either the November game. I haven't touched early December for that Thursday
night, or we could move into another day of the week. So we can't have it on the 18th, which is when
I was- We could have it on the 18th. That's how it's currently scheduled.
But is there an IU event, a large IU event that would be? I think Mitchell may have said something about
it. I don't know if that's true. I haven't. I need to check the schedule. OK. Does it make it like one
specific school or something like that? Should we see first if we would need quorum? I mean, we only
have some of us here. Yeah, we have to make a quick Google search. It says winter commencement is the
19th. They don't choose the next day. Oh, yeah. OK.
I don't plan on being affected by that. I anticipate that date working fine for me. You're going to
be able to. Yeah. Cool. Same. So. Maintain some red tape. Yeah. Okay. So again, we're decided on the
red tape? Yeah, yeah. And so that will be something that's going to follow up and to say, hey, if you
are not going to be on the 18th, please, please, please let us know because, um,
Although it was fun to cancel meetings at the last second. It's more fun to note in advance. Okay. And
that is the staff update. Thank you for the update, Rachel. Okay, so we're running nicely close to the
end of our meeting. So I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to the reports section and just know that
we're, yeah, kind of we've got about 20 minutes to get through the last part of our agenda. So first
we have Tree Commission or EREF or Friends of Lake Monroe. Dave, any updates? Well, September was
one of those months when Monday comes before Thursday. And so I've already told you about the September
meeting. October is one of those months when Thursday comes before Monday. In terms of there's a Thursday
that comes up before Monday. And so the commission is meeting next week and so I can't tell you
much done yet. So that's trade commission. Iraq met in October, October 6th, eighth, I mean. Let's see.
There was something about vegetation management. Oh yeah.
Griffey has dealt with vegetation management, their ecologic and KCI contracts. And they mentioned that
some things also have been done in vegetation management in the switchyard in Griffey, in Crestmont,
and in Lower Cascades.
And then we've talked about urban forestry. Calorie fair is now under 1,000 in the county. 300 have
been removed. And there's the 15-year plan to remove them is on track. Tree of Heaven is being removed.
And there's no spotted lander plot here, although there is some in the state. Urban forestry planted
142 trees in the spring. There are 20 trees that are growing in around Kirkwood and the square, 1,215.
1,215 trees have been planted this year in the city, and there are 24,000 inventory trees in the city.
Next, they talked about education. Nature days are in full swing when students are taken from classes
to various places in the city. Leonard Springs and Griffith in particular
In Bugfest this year, there were 1,400 participants, and they tagged six monarchs. Griffey Deer Management,
November 14th and November 21st to 24th will be closed under the White Buffalo contract with the
White Buffalo works with sending volunteers who come in to kill the excess deer in Berkeley. Next thing
on the agenda was projects, building trades park,
Phase one is complete. I didn't catch all the details about this. The ricky parking lot is to be paved
with one rail to trail. This coming in at the Rogers Family Park on the power line trail.
We'll go from Switchyard to the RCA. Wait, that's big news. So the Rails to Trails, what are they doing
to that? The which? The Rails to Trails is coming in at Rogers Family Park. They're connecting the parking
parks with a power line cut out. Oh, okay. That's great.
Okay. Yeah, I guess I didn't get the details on that one. Okay, so that's Iraq. I don't think it's getting
paved. I was not at the last meeting. But yeah, so I think that's project seven's done.
connecting Switchyard Park to whatever the next park is. Yeah. Yeah. But then the Rodgers, we also chose
the Rodgers family park. They're going to continue to, I don't know. That's interesting. But they're
connecting the parks with the power line cut from Switchyard Park. I'm not sure what that is about.
I could be wrong. Yeah, that's interesting. I don't know if that's true. There's not really a great
way to get there on a bike right now.
It gets to some like, uh, when you can, there's like a staircase that you have to go. Yeah. It's like,
if you're on, um, with it more spike at that point, that is the go. Yeah. Okay. Okay. That's go for,
and then you can go up from the old car park.
Yeah, there's a whole trail system. Yeah, but they're connecting that to the rest of the trails. That's
amazing. Yeah, because right now it's like you have to go through that neighborhood or the name of the
neighborhood. Yeah, like the south of the park. Yeah. I must have misunderstood something. It happens.
Yeah. No, I was looking and the power line trail is like on the city website and it lists a bunch of
different things. So that might be helpful too.
Yeah. Okay. Thank you for that update on ERAC. And then do you have a friends like mineral update if
you want to share on that real quick? Just one thing there. Their science committee, which I go to to
support the environmental commission, met last night. They're talking about going to some statewide
meeting, the Indiana Clean Lakes volunteer group and getting involved with some lab
there when they're discussing how to work with this Indiana Clean Lakes Volunteer with respect to Lakeland
Moat. There's nothing now on microplastics in Lakeland Moat that anybody sports down the questions of
whether they should do something. The science committee should work on volunteer
programs, especially on how they use GIS for Lake Monroe and there's a program called StoryMap that
they're thinking of making use of. And they might have a cruise on the lake to train volunteers
that crews would have 10 to 30 people. They would go around to various places and even show them how
long and they'd do different things. So that was the science committee last month. Gotcha. Thanks for
sharing that comment about the, there's nothing about, there's no study on the microplastics in the
lake thus far.
I feel like that's a very topical conversation. I'm guessing a lot of people who would love to know
what that state is. So I'll be eager to hear if they put this in place. Yeah, great. Okay, we have just
a few minutes left for the BCOS update or MCIRs update or Clean Community Program. BCOS, I can be real
quick. They approved the Sustainable Energy Utility Capstone Project as Alex presented to us. They also
shouted out that it was their commission's 20th birthday.
20 years ago this month. And they approved a resolution, well, they advanced the resolution that they're
going to officially vote on next meeting to add resilience to the name. Like, I'm not sure exactly where,
like what the new acronym would be. I don't know if there's going to be an and, I don't know the order.
They haven't finalized any of that. They have advanced that they're going to add resilience or to vote
on whether they're adding resilience to the name.
next month and it sounds like it has some support. So that's my big update. What's Alex's last name?
York. J-O-R-C-K. Any update from MC Iris? I did not. It's in their meeting yesterday, but they received
a note. So they
are changing, they're reducing ways of using challenge for next year. They're focusing only on tree
cutting, coloring, fair use, and bush honeysuckle. And instead of giving somebody a new tree or shrub
when that was replaced, I think they're going to be giving the applicants $30 to get certificates instead
to offer some flexibility. It looks like they talk about some weed wrangles. The native plant sale will
be September 12th.
And then the MCIR's annual meeting is this Friday, October 17th, Friday the 7th. Does somebody else?
So if you're interested in going, I will make that information. Nice. Okay. Thank you. And then we program
the update. Perfect. Great. So this is where we go around and say any announcements that we have, because
we're short on time. I'd say if they're EC specific. One example is November 21st. It's a Friday.
From five to 730, there's the open house at the Waldron for city boards and commissions. It's the city's
chance to recognize and honor the fact that people are putting their time and energy into these things.
There's snacks, there's a little talk. I can't remember if there's some sort of like artistic piece
of it, but I think last year it was like, it's like a first Friday. Well, there was like a first Friday
last time, but it's November 21. You're invited. People from the EC will be going. A couple times.
It's not EC related, but I can be quick. Okay, so I have to do a couple of things. A couple
of the exhibitions that are up that might be of interest to people in here. One is called Forest, and
it's 90 years of the Hoosier National Forest, because there are all these different artists to sit the
wall during up through the end of this month. Another is called No Missing Landscape. It's at the Process
Gallery, and it's on ecological disturbance and destruction. But the main thing I wanted to announce
is that Terry Thomas Williams is going, do you all know who Terry Thomas Williams is?
You should know. She's one of the great modern nature conservation writers from Utah. But she's giving
a big talk at the Busport Chumley November 6th, which is my Thursday evening. It's free but ticketed.
And then the next day, she's having a conversation, also free but ticketed. But yeah, I can give you
information if you want. But she's amazing. You should read her work and go and hear her speak. This
needs to be information. I think I'll put it on the police book. Norm also had an update.
He sent me North Brampton's inquiring about getting a place at both the March and April farmers markets
to hand out the flyer about reducing lawn cutting routines, produce the production greenhouse gases.
You've seen the draft of the flyer and maybe possible circulated the leaf to the residents with their
water belts for the 26th of November. Thank you for sharing. All right, we can talk more about that
as we keep moving through the season. Do we want to decide
on an EC theme exactly, or are we comfortable knowing roughly what it's going to be? It's just because
we aren't going to see each other again for a month. The Eco-Heroes? Or Eco-Heroes, sorry, yeah. Are
people OK with the Eco-Heroes committee coming up with it, or would you, the group, like to decide?
Like, maybe not the theme, but the whole thing? The whole thing. The whole thing. The whole thing. The
whole thing. The whole thing. The whole thing. The whole thing. The whole thing. The whole thing. The
whole thing. The whole thing. The whole thing. The whole thing. The whole thing. The whole thing. The
whole thing. The whole thing. The whole thing.
Okay, I'm going to send an email with the thoughts we made about potluck pigeon items and remember meeting
as much of other things we can follow up on. But if that's all we've got, we have four and a half minutes
just to be adjourned.