Sustainable Environmental Advisory Commission

Memorandum TO: Sustainable Environmental Advisory Commissioners FROM: _______________________________________________________________________ Andrew D. DeCanniere, Commissioner, Sustainable Environmental Advisory Commission DATE: December 19, 2022 SUBJECT: November 29, 2022 Sustainable Environmental Advisory Commission (SEAC) Meeting Minutes Meeting was called to order at 7:05 PM in the Council Chambers at Skokie Village Hall. This meeting was also streamed live on YouTube. A recording of this meeting may be viewed by going to the following web address: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OB1qNVcHgdo Present: Chairperson Jennifer Grossman, Commissioners Christopher Buccola, Andrew DeCanniere, Lisa Gotkin, Alma Likic, Olivia Mahoney, Jim McNelis, Rick Moskovitz, Emily Okallau, Charles Saxe, Trustee Liaison Khem Khoeun, Trustee Liaison Ralph Klein, and Director of Public Works / Staff Liaison Max Slankard Absent: Commissioners Michael Gershbein and Robert Render I. Approval of Minutes Minutes from the October 25, 2022 meeting of the Sustainable Environmental Advisory Commission were unanimously approved. II. Pumpkin Composting Chairperson Grossman stated that this year’s pumpkin composting event was held during the first Farmers Market of the month, and went on to note that it set a record. Staff Liaison Slankard added that a total of 4.55 tons had been collected at the November 6th event. He said that it was a successful event that the Village looks forward to continuing in the future, and went on to thank Collective Resource for their assistance. III. New Business a. Sustainability Plan / Board Meeting Review Chairperson Grossman noted that, during last week’s meeting of the Village Board, the new Environmental Sustainability Plan was approved. Staff Liaison Slankard went on to say that the Environmental Sustainability Plan was presented to the Village Board during a special meeting that was held on November 14th, and then came back to the Village Board for consideration and approval on November 21st. What comes next in terms of the plan actually is implementation, which is also on tonight’s Agenda. Page !1 of 10 b. Waste Sub-committee Board Meeting Report Review Staff Liaison Slankard said that, in addition to the Environmental Sustainability Plan presentation by Ted Redmond of paleBLUEdot, LLC, who led the planning team in putting together the sustainability plan, during both of those meetings the Village Board also considered this Commission’s Waste Sub-committee recommendations. More specifically, at the November 21st Village Board meeting, the Village Board did approve transitioning from twice weekly refuse collection to once per week, and also endorsed the sub-committee’s recommendation with respect to food scrap collection in Skokie. The sub-committee’s recommendation to the Board that night was to pursue the establishment of drop-off collection locations in Skokie, as well as to explore —and ultimately provide — incentives. The idea is to provide some kind of incentive to boost participation in Collective Resource’s collection program. Commissioner McNelis said that he thinks that the last time we talked about it, we spoke of three different levels of service. He went on to say that where things ended up was that they recommended the establishment of drop-off locations, and a less costly version of a Village-wide program. The idea is to try to to bolster the existing program. The Village would subsidize the program, and we would try to grow it from where it is now (there are about 300 - 400 participants with Collective Resource providing the service) — tripling or quadrupling the number of participants. He thinks we’re at the point where we are just trying to focus on growing the existing program we have with Collective Resource, and put money into that and into communication and education. We cannot grow the program without communication and education. Those are crucial components. Staff Liaison Slankard concurred. He said that those were the two specific items of the sub-committee’s recommendations that were presented to the Board. The other two elements of the recommendation to the Board, when it was made a number of months ago, related to communication or enhanced communication, as well as a Sustainability Coordinator or a sustainability type position being created for the Village. During the discussion at the November 21st Village Board meeting, that was discussed during the Q&A session with the Board. The Village Board did not take any formal action with respect to those two items. Staff Liaison Slankard said he would note that, for those who did not hear that discussion, or for those who have not followed along with anything that has happened in that regard, in the budget process last year, the Village did hire an additional communications position. As soon as she began working with the Village, she started helping push out additional public information and marketing information, with respect to a lot of the Village’s waste programs and other programs. They think that the communication investment that was part of that recommendation has been made and is ongoing. With respect to the Sustainability Coordinator position, the Village Board did not take a position on that, but he would expect that there is going to be some discussion of that as the Board and the Village staff work into the budget process this spring. There were questions that were asked about it by members of the Village Board, and he does not Page !2 of 10 think that it is something that is going to be forgotten. It’s just not a specific recommendation that was included for the Board’s action that evening, and it certainly was referenced as an implementation item in the Environmental Sustainability Plan. He went on to say said that, with respect to implementation on those recommendations, there is not as of yet an implementation timeline for a transition from twice-a-week to once-a-week refuse collection. He would say that the direction the Board gave on the 21st is what he would consider to be a strategic direction. The Village staff now needs to take that direction and work towards those details of how they will effectuate this transition, when they will do so, and so on. Obviously, they will not rush into a service transition of this sort. They will need to make sure that it is well thought out and, probably most importantly, well articulated. As such, they are actively looking at their options for how they will set up the routing to do that. As has also been discussed with this Commission a few times, the Village has a recycling contract that comes up with Lakeshore next spring. They are getting ready to go to the marketplace, with respect to those services. As a part of this, they will be considering what all of the Village’s options may be. c. Implementation and Next Steps Staff Liaison Slankard stated that with the Environmental Sustainability Plan done, and with the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Inventory having been done last year, what is important for Commissioners is to dive into the sustainability plan, reading it in detail, assuming there is anyone on the Commission who has not already done so. When we next meet, we all need to be prepared to sit down and discuss, in earnest, what the work plan will be. So, he needs for all Commissioners to review the plan, the plan sectors, and the strategies and actions, and to be prepared to have that discussion, because this group needs to have a work plan in place. He said that, at a staff level, they have already assembled a Sustainability Action Team. They have already taken the plan, with its eight sectors, and they have sector leaders, as well as secondary sector leaders, for each of the different plan sectors. That team has had its first meeting, which was chaired by the Village Manager, John Lockerby. Staff Liaison Slankard noted that the ongoing chairpersons of this staff committee will be (Assistant Village Manager) Nick Wyatt and himself. Then there also are both primary and secondary team leaders in all of the sector areas, and then there are also additional Village department directors as team resources to support all of those teams. He said that they will be expected to have each of those sector teams to have had their initial sector team meetings and be ready to reconvene and report back by December 15th. By December 29th of this year, all of those sector teams are to have identified their quarterly work plan goals for next year, with that quarter beginning in the calendar year and not the fiscal year. He went on to say that there is now the momentum for the Village to move forward, and to start effectuating these planning strategies and action steps. Page !3 of 10 By December 15th, he should have an idea of where he thinks the eight sector teams will prioritize some things as they see their work plans or work priorities within these sectors, and should definitively know, by December 29th, what their quarterly plans are for the next year. Therefore, he’d like to be in a position where, to the greatest degree possible, we can try to sync up our knowledge of what the staff is initially identifying as priorities that they will be working on with what we, as a Commission, think our work plan may look like. When you look at the plan and you look at some of the action steps in there, you will see a phasing indicated in a column on the right-hand side that indicates either “Phase 1,” “Phase 2,” or “Phase 3.” Generally, if it is a “Phase 1,” then that is a shorter-term type of action (e.g. in the next two to three years). As we start to look at this, that might suggest a good starting point for action steps. However, beware that just because an item is a “Phase 2” or a “Phase 3” strategy or action step, and just because it may have a longer time in which to come to fruition, that does not mean that we should not discount beginning to work on it now. It just means that it is a bigger, more ambitious thing, but we may want to start working on that now, because it may take longer to come to fruition. Many of these steps are designed to be accomplishments by 2030. Therefore, we should keep that in mind as we begin to look at this. We should also bear in mind that we will also be looking at what the other Boards and Commissions opportunities are to be able to effectuate their steps in the plan. He said that he is sure there will be questions as to what that will look like, and that he does not know the exact answer to that, but he thinks that a lot of that is likely to be staff-driven, out of what their own staff implementation team does as they begin to identify their work plan, because much of that is going to “spill over” to a Commission’s work. Obviously, there will be many things that will happen in the Community Development realm, for example, and Johanna Nyden (Community Development Director) will have a lot of work items that will fall within building, zoning and land use, which will then fall out to the various Boards and Commissions. Chairperson Grossman noted that, with the last plan, it seemed like it was driven by us, in that each year we would map out what we wanted to tackle within a given year, be it short-term or long-term. With the creation of this new team, they will be doing a lot of that stuff, which previously only we had done. Therefore, she wondered how our role, as a Commission, is envisioned. Staff Liaison Slankard said that he thinks that there has been commentary made at the Board level regarding reporting back, and he thinks that some of us on the Commission have made the same kind of comments, along the lines of “When will we hear back, or how frequently will we hear back from the staff in terms of progress reporting, as we go along?” He thinks that they will all have to work together, and they are going to have to keep us apprised of what the staff work plan is like. He will be in a position to be aware of what everybody’s work plans are, which means that they will be able to feed the Commission that information at basically whatever frequency is desired by the Commission — whether that ends up being quarterly or every six months or whatever it may be. They will be able to feed us the information on what all of the various sectors’ work plans are. He said that what he would like to do is to see the Commission identify Page !4 of 10 some items in the plan that it is able to take and run with, whatever those may be. We have always been a Commission that has had different subject matter expertise and interest areas from amongst the Commissioners, and he does not necessarily propose to change that. He thinks that we all still have different areas of expertise or interest, where we will see some things within various sectors of the plan that we are really driven to work on. He would like for that to continue. He just wants to be able to bring it all together, so that we all know what everyone is doing. Commissioner Saxe said that last time we set up sub-committees to look at various areas, and he was thinking there could be a similar kind of thing with these sectors. He went on to inquire as to whether there will be any opportunity to have a direct liaison for each of the staff sector teams. Staff Liaison Slankard said he would think so. He doesn’t see why that wouldn’t be possible. Commissioner Saxe reiterated that it would be helpful for us to have regular communication with the sector teams. Commissioner DeCanniere inquired as to whether, now that the Environmental Sustainability Plan has officially been approved, and we have begun to discuss implementation, we have any idea as to if and when some sort of online dashboard — which would chart our progress toward the various goals and objectives that have been set forth in the plan —will be up, running and accessible to the public. Ideally, something of the sort would be available from the very beginning, but he is unaware whether there has been any further discussion where the creation of a publicly accessible dashboard is concerned. He went on to say that he feels that it would be nice to have all of that information available to the public, in a clear and concise form. Staff Liaison Slankard stated that Staff Liaison Zimmerman would probably have some news where that is concerned. He does not have that information himself, but he will get that information and send it out to all of the Comissioners. Commissioner DeCanniere went on to say that while he is aware that, if there were an online dashboard, it would not necessarily be updated on a daily, weekly or even monthly basis. However, based upon what we have already discussed tonight, it does sound as though quarterly updates of that webpage / online dashboard should be feasible, thus ensuring that not only do we, as a Commission, have an ongoing understanding of where things stand, but that anybody in the community who may take an interest is also able to easily gauge where things stand in terms of our progress towards the goals and objectives that have been set forth in the Environmental Sustainability Plan. Commissioner Mahoney said education is one of the cross-cutting actions in the plan. She went on to inquire how that may be a part of each sector’s activities. Staff Liaison Slankard said that is a good question. He went on to say that (Assistant Village Manager) Nick Wyatt and he had a conversation about that last week, and he thinks that is probably a discussion topic for their meeting on December 15th. They talked about that, and he has a feeling that there could either be a new resource identified to serve all of the sector teams related to education, or some alternative to that. The Page !5 of 10 marketing and public information piece has been identified to sort of serve in that role for all of the sector teams. More specifically, regarding education, the way that they have the sector teams set up internally right now, they do not currently have the education piece identified, and they have identified that as a deficiency already. That is something that they will be talking about on the 15th. Commissioner Mahoney said that the education component had come up quite a bit in the whole process, so she thinks it is critical it be emphasized. Staff Liaison Slankard concurred. Commissioner Gotkin said that the last time she saw the Environmental Sustainability Plan was when it was in draft form, and so she was wondering whether there is a checklist, which she thought Ted Redmond (of paleBLUEdot, LLC) said would be used for approving new businesses / new construction. One of the biggest concerns we all seemed to have was how we integrate sustainability into the planning / zoning processes. When it came to things like the Carvana tower or the Amazon facility, it seemed as though the Trustees felt as though they had no way of enforcing or recommending or requiring sustainable things. She thought that one purpose of this plan was to be able to do that, and that one of the things that was going to come out of this whole process was this whole checklist. She went on to inquire as to whether this checklist exists and, if so, where we may be able to find it. Staff Liaison Slankard asked if Commissioner Saxe might have a comment on that. Commissioner Saxe then went on to say that he put together a sort of pilot checklist idea, and he had spoken with (Former Community Development Director) Matt Brandmeyer and (Former Planning Supervisor) Carrie Haberstitch about that, and now neither one of them is with the Village any longer. That kind of was put on hold, but he does think it would be a good idea to revive the effort. He’s not sure what the best next steps for doing that would be. The checklist he had been working on was based upon more of a hypothetical thing, and he was using some of the LEED criteria as items in the checklist, but we are obviously not necessarily doing LEED certification or LEED-compliant requirements, but we do have requirements that are identified in the plan that we can certainly organize into a checklist form. Commissioner Gotkin said that she’s aware that Commissioner Saxe has been working on this, but she thought that Mr. Redmond suggested that paleBLUEdot had come up with checklists for other municipalities and that he was preparing one for the Village. She went on to ask whether she’d heard that incorrectly or what the case may be. Commissioner Saxe stated that he does remember Mr. Redmond mentioning that there are other municipalities that had them, but does not recall that he is preparing one for Skokie. He thinks they were just models that could be emulated for Skokie, but he cannot say for certain as to whether he had one that we could adapt or whether he was preparing one for us, specifically. Page !6 of 10 Staff Liaison Slankard stated that he would like to check with Mr. Redmond. He had prepared a checklist-type form for Skokie, but it was not particularly specific or detailed as it relates to development. Staff Liaison Slankard went on to say that, from his perspective, it was more applicable to any one of a number of actions or items that might be sent to a Board, a Commission, or to the Village Board, that asked for the staff people submitting the item to identify how the item proposed for Board consideration relate to the goals or strategies in the Environmental Sustainability Plan. He is not aware as to whether he had provided one to us that is very detailed specifically where development is concerned. He will be checking on that. Commissioner McNelis inquired whether such a checklist is something that the Plan Commission might want to adopt. Staff Liaison Slankard said that they might, potentially. He is not certain. It would depend upon what it would include and how far reaching it might be, but he will get information on that. Commissioner Gotkin said that, hopefully, it could be something that could be presented to those who would like to construct some sort of development here in Skokie, instead of handing them the whole plan, and telling them to make sure that their business fits in with it. A checklist, such as the one we are discussing, seems like it would be much more workable, which we could give to businesses, that would also be usable and practical for all of the Boards and Commissions, when they are coming to a decision on zoning, appearance, and so on. Staff Liaison Slankard stated he will follow up on that. Commissioner Okallau thanked Staff Liaison Slankard for providing the summary and the next steps we will be taking in terms of implementation. She said that, to return to the whole matter of the Sustainability Coordinator, she wanted to know whether they plan on requesting that position in the next budget cycle — in March — or would it be later. She said that she isn’t completely certain what Staff Liaison Slankard’s thoughts were on that, in terms of timing. Staff Liaison Slankard said that, in normal circumstances, it would go through the budget process. The budget calendar has not been set as of yet. Ordinarily, it would be somewhere in the February to March range, for hearings before the Village Board and approval. With respect to the Sustainability Coordinator position, the direct answer is that he does not know if the Village would consider doing something that is quicker than that or not. Commissioner Okallau said that makes sense. She was just wondering if it something that was going to wait a year or two, or whether that is something that is more immediate. It sounds like it is the latter. Staff Liaison Slankard said that his sense is that it is something that will be discussed before a year or two has passed. His comment should not be taken to presuppose that the answer is going to be “yes,” but he personally does feel that the decision could be made a lot sooner than that. Commissioner DeCanniere said that to follow-up on his earlier question, so much of the plan depends upon the community’s continued engagement and involvement — as we say in the plan itself, “implementation is for everyone” — and we are explicitly asking for the public to be involved all along the way, whether we’re talking about residents or business Page !7 of 10 owners. Therefore, he thinks that it is important for them to be able to follow along with where we are and how things are going. Aside from his earlier question — which was when we could expect some sort of online dashboard to be up and running, and accessible to the public — the second part of that question is whether we know how frequently such a webpage would be updated. As he said, he thinks that quarterly would be appropriate. However, he is not aware of how the Village staff might feel about that frequency, or what anyone else on the Commission might feel. It sounds like updating the webpage quarterly should be quite doable, especially given our anticipated schedules for making progress toward these various goals and objectives. It seems to be in-sync with how things will be structured. He went on to inquire as to whether we currently know how often such a webpage or dashboard could be anticipated to be updated or whether that remains unknown. Staff Liaison Slankard said that we currently do not know. He went on to say that he thinks that we need to give this some thought. The 2016 - 2021 Environmental Sustainability Plan talked about the importance of everybody in the community playing a role. Similarly, this plan also talks about the importance of everyone playing a role. So, public awareness, public participation and public action is important. Therefore, we do need to look at our ability to put information on the Village website, as well as the ability to update that information. That said, he really thinks that a more important discussion than that is how we have more active communication and engagement that actually furthers the goal of changing peoples’ behaviors and gets them to do something. He said that sometimes he thinks that a webpage is a bit of a passive endeavor. It sits there for people who want to seek it out. We need to think about more than that. That said, he doesn’t have an answer as to how frequently a webpage might be updated. If we’re talking about quarterly reporting, or quarterly updates to this Commission on activities, he doesn’t know that he sees any issue with updating that information on a quarterly basis as well. He just wanted to point out that the bigger, and perhaps more important challenge, is how to do more engagement. Commissioner Mahoney stated she thinks that is where education comes in. Staff Liaison Slankard concurred. He went on to say that while he accepts that people will look to us and ask what we are doing, the whole point of saying that implementation involves everybody is that they also need to talk about what they’re doing. Everybody has a part to play in this. Commissioner Saxe said that, to follow up on what Staff Liaison Slankard was saying, he has been working with the Citizens Utility Board (CUB) and Go Green Skokie, and something that they’ve been working on for a while is that CUB has been pushing a decarbonization program, and had asked if they would set up a meeting. They have set up a public meeting at the Skokie Public Library, which will be taking place in January. That was prior to the Environmental Sustainability Plan being approved, but the question of whether there would be any subsequent meetings did come up in conversation, and he thinks that it might be an opportunity to set up a regular series of meetings that would be hosted by our Commission that, for one, would also be an opportunity to give people an update on where things stand with the plan or what the actions are, but also to pick out Page !8 of 10 specific items, and to provide information on those in terms of what people can do and what the implications are for people in the Village. It could be that we’d have someone who speaks to it from a subject matter expert point of view — they are somebody who has some expertise in a particular area — and then there could also be some opportunity for feedback, for people to share their experiences or concerns or ask questions. He said he thinks that this is something we could look into and create a quarterly series, and it would be something that we could schedule in advance. Commissioner DeCanniere noted that he had helped put together an event back in 2018 (“Putting Your Garden to Bed for the Winter”), which was held at the Skokie Public Library, which seemed to have been well attended / well received. He’s aware that there were others that we’ve done in the past that were similarly well received, also in partnership with the library or with others in the community, and those things do seem to go over pretty well. So, he does think that a series such as the one proposed, with a different topic covered each time and where there’s a presenter who can come at it from an expert perspective, could very well be a good way of reaching people, and said that he too believes the answer, when it comes to education and community engagement is an all-of-the-above approach — not one particular means of reaching out to and engaging with the community. Chairperson Grossman asked if we as a Commission — or else a specific sub-committee that may be created — identify a topic particular issue that we would like to tackle, how that might interface with what the staff sub-groups are doing. She went on to ask if we have something different that we want to try and push, but we need staff for many of the things that we’re trying to do, how we would go about doing that and whether that would be well received. Staff Liaison Slankard stated that they are interested in knowing what the Commission sees as its priorities, and they are looking to the Commission to identify those priorities, and are also looking for the Commission to identify areas where it feels it can be of assistance in terms of whatever those priorities are. They would definitely like to take those into consideration and to integrate those as much as possible. Commissioner McNelis asked if policy would be coming from Village staff, or would they want policy changes to come from the Commission. Staff Liaison Slankard said he thinks that the answer can be either, depending on what we’re talking about. A lot of building, zoning and planning policy can be anticipated to be staff-driven or will quickly become staff-driven. When it comes to other things, that would depend on what we’re talking about. He thinks the key parting thought that he will leave us with tonight is that those of us who have not had the chance to really dig into the plan as of yet ought to dig into the plan. Our priorities can then begin to be identified/defined at our next meeting. Commissioner Saxe reiterated the fact a workshop on decarbonization will be held on January 25th at the Skokie Public Library, in partnership with the Citizens Utility Board (CUB). Page !9 of 10  Commissioner DeCanniere asked whether the CUB event will be in-person only, or whether there are any plans for it to be a hybrid event, where people can attend in-person or remotely via Zoom as well. Commissioner Saxe said that the library said that they can do it hybrid. The library will promote the event, and the intention is to provide a way for people to attend via Zoom. IV. Public Comment Rachel VanHoose introduced herself to the Commission and proceeded to speak about Evanston Grows, volunteer opportunities at Eggleston Farm, and a number of gardens around Evanston. She also stressed that we do not need to wait to start community gardens, and spoke about what the Peterson Garden Project did in Chicago (taking over undeveloped lots, until such time as development of the lot begins), and how there could be such opportunities when it comes to undeveloped lots here in Skokie, such as those on Oakton Street. She also spoke about backyard composting, saying that she does not think that compost drop-off/pick-up sites are the right answer for every family, and how we should encourage/incentivize backyard composting. V. Next Meeting Based on the expected availability of Commission members, the next meeting will be held on Tuesday, December 27, 2022. VI. Adjournment There being no further business, the meeting adjourned at 8:15 PM. Page !10 of 10