Environmental Sustainability Council

ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY COUNCIL (ESC) Thursday, May 16, 2019, George Mason HS Library, 8:00 – 9:30 p.m. MINUTES 1. Call to Order, joint meeting with Tree Commission (TC): ESC Members: Andy Crawford (ESC Chair), Cory Weiss, Jon Ward, Andy Young, Joy Page, Niharika Singhvi (student rep). TC Members: Dennis Szymanski (TC Chair), Karen Jones, Kathy Philpott Costa. City Staff: Kate Reich (TC Liaison), Kate Walker (ESC Liaison), Shaina Schaffer (Community Planning & Economic Development Dept.), Charles Prince (Urban Forester). City Council Liaison: Dan Sze. Public: Tim Stevens (Planning Commission), Andrew Sakallaris, Kim Perez, 2. Public comments: None. 3. April 2019 ESC Meeting Minutes: Approval deferred until June meeting. 4. Staff Liaison Report: Kate Walker reported having attended the MWCOG Built Environment & Energy Advisory Committee meeting on May 16. She said that technical assistance may soon be available from NVRC for LEED ND and LEED Communities certification; Arlington County has found its certification as a Platinum level community useful for economic development and to support environmental goals. If significant help is available, it may be worth considering for the City of Falls Church. Kate also reported that NVRC could provide technical assistance (e.g., payback analysis) to City engineers in their planning to convert City streetlights to LEDs. 5. Comprehensive Plan Chapter 5 – “Environment for Everyone”: Shaina Schaffer presented a PowerPoint summary of the status and content of the draft Environmental chapter. She solicited comments on the draft from the ESC and TC. She said she would check whether Shelley Mastran was cross-checking the Chapter’s list of Proposed Actions vs. MWCOG’s list of recommendations that received approval from 100% of MWCOG jurisdictions, as the ESC had proposed. Councilman Sze said he would like to see linkage to MWCOG’s Action Plan spelled out. A community meeting is planned for June 8 to receive further input. Shaina is looking for input from the public and B&C’s on prioritizing Proposed Actions. Shaina recorded numerous comments and suggestions from the ESC and TC. Major items included: adding “Green Buildings” as a strategy; adding incentivization of green infrastructure and stormwater BMPs; making the chapter more easily navigated, e.g., using hyperlinks, a table of contents, section numbering, by-topic colors and icons; and more emphasis on electric vehicle infrastructure. The ESC said the “Solid Waste” strategies and proposed actions were weak. During the meeting, Joy Page (ESC) emailed to many attendees a table of strategies and actions that had been developed in a prior ESC meeting with Chris McGough (former City staff solid waste specialist).  o ACTION ITEM 1: [Kate Walker] Forward the table of solid waste strategies and proposed actions to Shaina. 6. Transfer of Development Rights (TDR): Shaina provided an overview of TDR programs, in which owners sell their rights to develop in sensitive areas (e.g., green space, floodplains, historic structures) to an Exchange. The Exchange then recovers its money by selling developers the rights to build beyond their by-right limits, as defined by the City. She said City staff are in the early stages of discussing whether a TDR program would be useful in Falls Church. She said Arlington and Stafford counties in Virginia and Montgomery County in Maryland have TDR programs targeting their particular conservation priorities. ESC members asked whether the City could require, for example, LEED certification in the denser developments as a condition of the use of Transferred Rights. 7. Next Meeting  June 6, 7:30 p.m., location TBD. Abbreviations / Terminology:  B&C’s: Boards and Commissions of the City of Falls Church  BMPs: Best Management Practices  LEED [ND]: Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design [Neighborhood Development]  MWCOG: Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments  NVRC: Northern Virginia Regional Commission