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2020-06 AgendaSUSTAINBILITY COMMISSION Regular Meeting Agenda Thursday, June 25th, 2020, 7:00 pm Virtual Meeting - WebEx Commission Members Staff/Others Liaisons Jeremy Barthels, Laura Durenberger-Grunow, Carolyn Engeldinger, Amanda Kueper, Kameron Murray, Alyssa Sanden, Brian Shaw Amy Markle (Recreation Services Director) Rachel Lindholm (Sustainability Specialist) Ben Whalen (City Council) Heather MacDonald (CSC) 1. Call to Order/Welcome 2. Approval of Minutes/Agenda  Regular Meeting Minutes: June 4th, 2020 3. Public Comment  Resident comment and items not printed on agenda 4. Staff Reports  Richfield Sustainability Efforts (Lindholm)  Work-plan Update (Lindholm and Markle) 5. Discussion Items  HESE virtual visits (Lindholm) 6. Action Items None 7. Committee Reports  Community Services Commission (CSC) (MacDonald or Markle) 8. Next Meeting Thursday, August 27th, 2020, 7:00 pm (no July meeting per bylaws) Virtual Meeting held on WebEx 9. Adjournment REGULAR SUSTAINABILITY COMMISSION MEETING Thursday, June 4h, 2020 Held virtually over WebEx PRESENT SC: Laura Durenberger-Grunow, Carolyn Engeldinger, Amanda Kueper, Alyssa Sanden, Jeremy Barthels STAFF: Rachel Lindholm , Amy Markle LIAISONS: Ben Whalen (City Council) ABSENT SC: Brian Shaw, Kameron Murray LIAISONS: Heather MacDonald (CSC) Call to Order Lindholm called the meeting to order at 7:07 pm. Members, staff, and liaison introduced themselves. Approval of Minutes/Agenda Kueper moved to approve the agenda and previous minutes, seconded by Sanden, approved by all. Staff Reports Virtual Meeting Logistics Markle walked through WebEx features and Lindholm discussed the protocol for voting virtually and motioning/seconding motions. Commission Work-plan Pandemic Update Lindholm reviewed the initial 2020 initiatives for the commission:  Organized Collection – Currently on the backburner due to COVID-19 and shifting work-plans for other city staff.  General Recycling and Organics Education (Farmers Market, RWB Days, Penn Fest, UWHM) – Lindholm stated that all of these events have either been cancelled or drastically re-planned with mitigation measures that do not allow for public in-person education at this time. Future commission meetings will discuss how to best adapt education to online platforms.  Richfield Climate Action Plan – Lindholm shared that this has been a project she has been working a lot on during the pandemic. Next steps include talking to staff across the city about specific categories and actions to add the right language to the document. Then it will be shared with the Commission for discussion and revision. Over the next few commission meetings, staff and commissioners will revise the work -plan for the rest of 2020. Sustainability Efforts Update Lindholm gave an overview of the sustainability efforts the City has undertaken over the past few months during the pandemic. These include: communication about the status of the organics program, social media posts about bulky item collection and yard waste collection when haulers limited services, social media posts about decluttering homes and donations, municipal building energy benchmarking and solar production analysis, developing a climate action plan, and working with Hennepin County to learn more about private building energy benchmarking. Lindholm also mentioned the 2020 Home Energy Squad visit challenge and encouraged Commissioners to sign up themselves for a free virtual visit to learn how they could reduce their energy usage and save money. GreenStep Cities Presentation Lindholm gave a presentation about GreenStep Cities, before walking through the website. She showed the navigation bar, the Best Practices page, and explained the levels of recognition. She also showed Best Practices and supporting actions that all have a field expert, examples from other cities, and implementation resources. Lastly, the City Detail page is the best way to see what Richfield has accomplished, and what level each action has been graded at. It also shows a guide on how to achieve the next star rating. Discussion Items None DRAFT MINUTES UNTIL APPROVED BY THE SC Action Items Chair and Vice-Chair Elections Kueper nominated herself; there were no other nominations. Barthels motioned to elect Kueper, seconded by Engeldinger. All voted in favor. Kueper nominated Barthels for Vice-Chair and with no other nominations, motioned to elect him. Seconded by Engeldinger. All voted in favor. Committee Reports Markle reported on the CSC’s last meeting, giving an update on the Recreation Ambassadors program, the Ice Arena refrigeration project, and Virtual Recreation programming. Engeldinger asked how the parks, FOWL dinner, and UWHM have been affected by the pandemic. Markle reported that the FOWL dinner raised an amount comparable to past years and the UWHM will be virtual this year. Other/Next Meeting/Adjournment Next Meeting: Thursday, June 25th, 7:00 pm, will be held virtually over WebEx. Adjournment: Motion to adjourn by Engeldinger, seconded by Barthels. Meeting adjourned by Kueper at 8:36 pm.