Greens Work With City On Sustainability Initiatives in Oshkosh (Green Change Blog Action Post)
As part of the Green Change Blog Local Action Day, I am contributing by posting what Greens in my local chapter are doing to bring change to our local community. (By the way, if you are a Green that is looking to network with other Greens I highly encourage you to get involved with the Green Change Network – register an account and get started.)
As part of the Green Change Blog Local Action Day, I am contributing by posting what Greens in my local chapter are doing to bring change to our local community.
The Lake Winnebago Green Party is a regional local chapter centered in Oshkosh on Lake Winnebago in NE Wisconsin. Our local used to raise a lot of hell, organize vigils, protests, and petition drives, especially with the local UW Oshkosh Campus Greens. But in the last two years we haven’t been meeting as often, or organizing local events. What happened?
In my opinion, too much success is what happened!
At this moment, we have two elected Greens on the 7 member all at-large Oshkosh City Council, and four Greens on the nine member City of Oshkosh Sustainability Advisory Board. Beginning with Tony Palmeri’s election to the City Council in 2007 we have been steadily becoming a part of the city government that we are more used to challenging from the outside. This has provided both challenges and opportunities for us.
Since I am the Chair of the City of Oshkosh Sustainability Advisory Board, that is what I am most comfortable talking about. Our board is made of up nine members, many of whom were “activists” before board members. Four of our current members are Greens, several others are very green-friendly. After a rocky start with city staff, we have finally met staff half way and started making some progress towards local sustainability. Our accomplishments to date:
-We have begun a five step local climate change plan working with ICLEI that begins with conducting a baseline audit of Municipal and Community Greenhouse Gas emissions, followed by setting reduction targets, developing a local climate action plan, implementing the plan, and finally monitoring the progress over time. We are half way through step one, but already the Municipal portion of the GHG audit has had an impact on securing EECBG (Energy Efficiency Community Block Grant) money for GHG reduction projects.
-We have been working for almost a year on a Sustainability Planning Steering Committee made up of members of the Sustainability Board, the Plan Commission, City department heads, and community representatives from the School District, the University, and the Chamber of Commerce. This Steering Committee however had less agreement over goals and purposes in regards to a Sustainability Plan though and has had a difficult time making progress.
-We have arranged a partnership between the City and the University Microbiology Department to test the water at the public beach weekly for contaminants such as e-coli to improve public health.
-We are working with the City Forester to explore several shoreline restoration projects that would serve as models and seed farms for future shoreline restoration efforts, hopefully expanding from public land to private land along Lake Winnebago.
-We are researching alternatives to chemical treatment of weeds and invasive species in Millers Bay to hopefully get away from introducing more herbicides into the water supply.
-We have just started working with the local community garden group and the City to try to find land within city limits to expand the existing gardens to meet the growing demand for plots.
-and finally we have developed a great website for the community with an array of valuable links and tools for sustainable living and practices.
It hasn’t been easy for our board, but we have been learning how to work with city staff instead of against them, and we have been learning how to work better with each other on the board (rather than yelling at each other during televised board meetings…).
While I volunteer time for the National Green Party (with the Senate Campaign Committee) and the Wisconsin Green Party (formerly co-chair, now Treasurer), probably nothing I do has been as difficult and rewarding as working on these local actions, particularly since these local actions can make a real impact on people’s lives and our community’s movement toward sustainability.
~Ronald Hardy
