Citizens' Environmental Commission

MINUTES CITY OF DEKALB CITIZENS’ ENVIRONMENTAL COMMISSION October 5, 2017 The Citizens’ Environmental Commission held a regular business meeting on October 5, 2017, in Council Chambers at the DeKalb Municipal Building, 200 South Fourth Street, DeKalb, Illinois, 60115. Chairman Kenney called the meeting to order at 4:01 p.m. A. ROLL CALL The following members of the Citizens' Environmental Commission were present (indicated by x): _ Mark Hein X Dan Kenney (Chair) X Ken Koch X Clare Kron _ Michael Lundgren X Bill Oleckno X Sharon Skala X Ann Shult The following ex-officio members were present (indicated by x): X Amy Doll, DeKalb Park District __ Mike Holland, Kishwaukee Water Reclamation District X Melissa Burlingame X Michelle Gibson B. APPROVAL OF AGENDA MOTION - To approve the agenda. Add under New Business – 5. Discussion of Vice Chair by CEC and under Old Business – 3. Mayor’s Climate Protection Agreement Ms. Skala moved to approve the motion, seconded by Mr. Koch Agenda was approved unanimously by voice vote. C. PUBLIC COMMENT Ron Cress addressed the commission. He lives at 3060 Wedgewood Drive in DeKalb. Mr. Cress commented that any land to go unmaintained could be a hazard to the city. Harry a 4th year biology student at NIU spoke. He is an Officer of 2 clubs and possibly a 3rd. Non- binding agreement for achieving climate action plan aligned with the city target to reduce emissions. Sign up with e-mail with a responsible party to represent the mayor. These are important issues to the city. This would set up the city for success in the future. As a future data scientist it would greatly help his research or any local schools like Kishwaukee College. Chair Citizen Environmental Commission October 5, 2017 Page 2 of 5 Kenney asked him if he was familiar with our sustainability plan. Chair Kenney would be interested in having him look at it. D. APPROVAL of MINUTES from September 7, 2017 MOTION to accept minutes of the September 7, 2017 Regular Meeting Mr. Oleckno said Page 2 of the minutes cut off, just a few typos to change. Ms. Shult moved to approve, seconded by Ms. Skala. Minutes were approved unanimously by voice vote. E. COMMISSION REPORTS 1. DeKalb County Health Department: Michelle Gibson Had a big electronics collection over the weekend, 3.5 semis worth of electronics. Had 425 cars come through the line. Last year was 300 cars. It worked good having it at the airport. October 28th there will be a second one. Collecting holiday lights end of November, recycling through DIMCO. Solid waste recycling looking into the strategic plan. Taking more things off the list. Encouraging people to come to the meeting, Nov. 2nd at 2pm at Health Dept. Ms. Skala asked where the holiday lights will be collected. Not sure yet but they will have as many collection places as possible. Ms. Shult asked about having a collection site at the high school, Michelle said she would like to do it there. 2. DeKalb Park District: Amy Doll A couple of weeks ago NIU did a clean the Kish program. There was a lot of trash pulled from the river. About 70 volunteers, this is the 4th year this has happened. It went from Hopkins Park to Buena Vista golf course. A lot of tires were pulled out. They are starting to see progress from Lyons Park to the lagoon. Less was pulled out than previous years. Nature trail restoration plan is still on the website. Will be on agenda for approval in November meeting. Should have native non aggressive plants. Working on a 5 year capital plan reducing acreage we mow. Would reduce costs. November 11th another clean-up day at Prairie Park from 9-11am. Trying to remove invasive species. There is a new trail trying to remove invasive species. Mr. Oleckno noticed there was a lot of algae? growth on 1st & Hillcrest. 3. NIU: Melissa Burlingame – Moving forward with a 2 year plan. Developing a data base of sustainability initiatives with students. Green team members doing talks at stakeholder meetings. Solar developer coming to a meeting. Making some headway. Chair Kenney asked if NIU has been approached at having a solar farm. Ms. Burlingame didn’t think so. NIU pays very little for electricity it would not be economically feasible. 4. Kishwaukee Water Reclamation District: Michael Holland – No report 5. City Staff Liaison: Tim Holdeman Tim introduced Linda as the new Recorder of meeting minutes. Public Works finished up street maintenance program. Striping & patching on 1st street. Striping on Peace where big potholes are being patched, that is pretty much completed. Portions of 23 2 Citizen Environmental Commission September 7, 2017 Page 3 of 5 north of Greenwood Acres Drive has not yet been milled. Existing has not been removed until next spring. There has been some unforeseen conditions. Another portion the manholes have been adjusted, that will be completed before winter. It is expected to be done sometime in October. Be cautious around manholes. Kishwaukee bike path is making good progress. That should be complete by winter, spring will be doing restoration. The bike path will be open sometime in the spring, there will be a grand opening after it is open. He feels this will be a good draw to DeKalb having a continuous path. Leaf collection will be starting on Oct. 16th. Working on getting the equipment in good working order. This will continue until the later part of November, a lot of staff is dedicated to this. Mr. Kron suggested the residents use this as compost instead of leaf collecting. Tim said he is working that. It is pretty intense with using that many staff, there are other things that should be getting done instead so that would be a good idea. F. NEW BUSINESS 1. Discussion of DeKalb County Zero Waste Program Plan for a County Wide Ordinance requiring recycling as an option for all residents of the County. Ms. Gibson said this was an original zero waste program. They have not pursued this because they would have to go to each municipality. They will not pursue until the city wants to do this. They would need to work with all the mayors. Ms. Kron said the problem is there is nothing in place, public needs to have recycling bins out. She has students that tell her they request recycling with landlords but they say it is too expensive. People could drop off recycling but most will not do that. There was a survey done and some apartments don’t have the space for recycle bins. Maybe the dumpsters should be spaced apart, recycling vs garbage so people don’t mix up recycling/garbage. The ordinance would need to be supported by the Mayor and Alderman’s. Ms. Kron asked when the contract is due for renewal, it is August 18, 2018. Mayor Jerry Smith said what Ms. Gibson is talking about was high on the recommendations. The city wants to aggressively pursue recycling. This commission can easily pass a recommendation that the city study the question of this issue. Mayor Smith wants the Citizen’s Environmental Commission to make a recommendation. Chair Kenney said if Ms. Kron would like to write up a recommendation they can decide if this is supported. Chair Kenney asked Mr. Holdeman if there has ever been an agreement for recycling. Chair Kenney told Ms. Kron that landlords that own multiple properties use DAR. 2. Friends of the CEC Ms. Kron said this seems very prohibitive. It would need to have start-up money. Having a table at CornFest would have been good. She asked if the county would want to have a table next year, Ms. Gibson said probably not. Chair Kenney asked if the city has a table at Cornfest, Mr. Holdeman didn’t think so. The Chamber probably does. Maybe the commission should approach the Cornfest organizers. Ms. Kron will contact Lisa from the DeKalb Chronicle about having a table next year. 3. Discuss CEC input to new municipal waste hauler contract August 2018 Mr. Holdeman will report back about the new contract for bidding on the waste hauler contract. It could be a 7 year contract. We have the option to go to the market and do competitive bidding. Should talk about several range of services to be included in the contract. We have good service with residential Waste Management now and residents are accustomed to 3 Citizen Environmental Commission October 5, 2017 Page 4 of 5 this. There are additional services we are not receiving like “at your door”. Composting is another service. Talked about pavement damage on the streets due to garbage trucks. Should costs include damage’s to streets etc. Carbon footprint is another issue. Mr. Koch said commercial industrial has multiple haulers. Ms. Gibson asked how businesses would feel about a blanket contract not being able to negotiate. Mr. Holdeman said it might not be exclusive. There is a state law we have to abide by. Chair Kenney asked if we have any examples of what other municipalities have. Mr. Oleckno asked if we should come up with some recommendations. Mr Koch asked if we have any stats on “at your door” program of what other cities are doing. If we decided to offer that there would be no option, all residents would have to do this. Mr Oleckno would like to see data. Didn’t know if the elderly & low income would utilize this service as much. Vaugh Kuerschner from Waste Management spoke and said the elderly could possibly have old paint etc. Commission members need to bring suggestions for the waste haulers contract. Christianson should be invited. The city is spending a lot of labor to pick up leaves on the curb. Use craft bags instead. Leaves go out to a big pile at the land fill. Ms. Burlingame asked what the general cost is for leaf vacuuming, what could we use the money for instead? Ms. Shult asked if you have to have the brown bags for waste. There are also 3 landscape drop off locations, these have become a burden to the city. The people using it are the commercial landscapers that are not supposed to be. Mr. Holdeman will report back with the cost of picking up leaves. Mr. Holdeman said we would discuss this next month again. Chair Kenney said he would like to see the commission have recommendations by next month. 4. Plan for Annual PRIDE Awards Chair Kenney will send to Mr. Holdeman to get input. Start advertising in October. Ken thought last year’s forms were fine, just change dates. Will get the forms on the website & Facebook. 5. Discussion of Vice Chair by CEC – appoint someone. Chair Kenney recommended to the commission that he will serve but to have a vice chair that would possibly be a chair after 2 years. There has always been a vice chair but only has the responsibility to fill in when the chair cannot attend a meeting. Mr. Oleckno thought Chair Kenney’s suggestion was good having a vice chair to groom for the chair’s position. What about a term limit? Code does not have a limit for the board chair. If anyone is interested bring the names to the meeting next month and the commission will vote in January for the Vice Chair. Will be formalizing the position more. G. OLD BUSINESS 1. Receive and discuss suggestions from City staff related MC. Ch. 12; 22 weeds Chair Kenney & Mr Oleckno met with Mr. Holdeman and Ms. Charlton and had a list of concerns of draft ordinance. Have pictures (guide) so residents know noxious weeds. Chair Kenney suggested to have a special meeting to talk about this. Some of the difficulty is taking what exists and shape it into something better. It was recommended to abandon and start with broad concepts and move to more detail so we as a commission believe this should be an overriding principle. Then we can work through details of how those principles and concepts are implemented. Don’t worry about wording, attorney will do that. Mr. Oleckno said we could come up with new suggestions and what we have now will not work. Mr. Holdeman thought it would be hard to enforce the ordinance on how it was presented to us. Ms. Kron thought it would be hard to get a 4 Citizen Environmental Commission September 7, 2017 Page 5 of 5 picture of all native plants. Could we be provided a link to native plants? There are a lot of questions on what ornamental plants are. This should be more understandable. There is a book written by Dick Young, Native Plants of Kane County. Have a session and make bullet points of what we want. Is was decided to have a special meeting to make recommendations and come back to commission for another review. Mr. Holdeman would like it to be a collaborative recommendation. Ms. Shult made a motion to have a special session, Ms. Kron seconded. All in favor yes, none opposed. The special meeting was set up for October 19th at 4pm. Ms. Kron will look at WI, Mr. Koch will do a google search and Ms. Shult will cover Cincinnati. Chair Kenney said to make sure and look at what we have, there is a list of what we have looked at before. Allocate a list of what we already have. Mr. Holdeman will compile a list of what everyone is doing and e-mail it to everyone every few days. 2. Update on Progress on the City Sustainability Plan - None 3. Mayor’s Climate Protection Agreement Ms. Skala said it looks like a good idea. It follows along with the Paris climate agreement. She looked into some things, a community inventory tool which looks good but a lot of extra work within the city. Chair Kenney asked if college students could do it. They would have to have access to city documents and records. There are 2 excel programs to put this data into. Getting data is the problem. Looking deeper, consider what tools want us to do. Mr. Oleckno asked how this would differ from the sustainability program. Fossil fuels, solid waste and how it’s managed. Building/facility electrical usage info from the city. Need more efficient ways to power our city vehicles and power plants. Some of it does overlap with the sustainability plan. This could be more like a political issue. Many things have been addressed in the sustainability program. Maybe emissions is necessarily not the problem. Citizens are asking for some kind of statement from the city that we are on board for addressing the climate change. Chair Kenney needs to report on our progress on the sustainability plan and the goals and accomplishments to the city council. We are recommending that the mayor draw attention to the cities sustainability plan and its intended purpose to be proactive in addressing climate changes. Mr. Koch made the motion and Mr. Oleckno seconded. Motion passed no voice vote. H. ANNOUNCEMENTS - NONE I. NEXT REGULAR MEETING: November 2, 2017 AT 4:00 P.M. J. ADJOURNMENT Mr. Oleckno moved to adjourn the meeting, seconded by Mr. Koch. Motion carried unanimously by voice vote. Chair Kenney declared the meeting adjourned at 6:05 p.m. Respectfully Submitted: Linda Odom, Recording Secretary Minutes Approved November 2, 2017 5