HomeMy WebLinkAboutMinutes - MGG - 01-07-2014o ORI GINALMILTON GROWS GREEN COMMITTEE
JANUARY 7, 2014 MINUTES [ApPROVED]
Date: January 7, 2014, 6:30 to 9:30 PM
Place: Executive Conference Room, Milton City Hall, 13000 Deerfield Pkwy., Milton, GA
Attendees: Jack Lindon, Gail Gill, Cindy Eade, Teresa Stickels, Joe Lamp'l, Kathy Johnson, Francia Lindon,
Priti Bloor, Lynna Lee, Barbara Peck, Margaret Lamb, Jennifer Griffiths (Skolex) and Frank Buckman
(Closed Loop Organics).
1. Agenda: It was posted on the City's web site.
II. Approval of Minutes: No minutes were approved. Still needed are July, August and October's from
2013 to post.
Ill. Old Business:
• Bring One for the Chipper -We estimated we collected over 700 trees. BSA collected about 300. Casey
Tree was our big sponsor. Joe Lamp'l potted 200 "generic" dogwoods to hand out. Those left over will
be save for Earth Day. MGG was disappointed in location at Scottsdale (being way in back). We will
consider going back to Fire Station #43.
• Vote on MGG Logo -Cindy announced that number 2 won by a large majority and it reflects
characteristics of the City's new logo. Jack thought number 1 would look great on T-shirts we give out
to volunteers.
• Household Hazardous Chemical and Paint Collection -Scheduled for Feb. 22, 9-1 at Bell Memorial
Park. Got 5 bids on this including the one from the company we used last time. Need to draft a
contract and get consent from City Council and move ahead with pre-registration. It's an expensive
event thus the need to control quantities. It would be great if it could all be done on-line. Jack offered
to contact the Boy Scouts (Tim Cedarquest), to see if some Scouts are interested in developing an on
line registration form.
• Adopt-A-Stream -Jennifer, Ken's wife, is taking over the A-A-S project for Ken. She has talked with
Sharon Smith. Certificates are in the mail. Sharon is flexible on additional training but gave good dates
for her -the weeks of February 24th or March 10 th . Question about doing it at a stream location. It is
harder to do it in a stream then in classroom. We would need a rest room and classroom near by.
Margaret Lamb offered to have it at her house during the day since she meets the needs criteria. Also
it's more difficult to do it after work because of time constraints. Training takes about 3 hours and
we'd want to have time for questions. If the selected date is a Saturday, Kathy wants to bring some of
her Green Team kids.
• Earth Day Planning -Event is April 19th at Friendship Community Park. Have been working on
getting sponsors, volunteers and vendors. Event had about 1,600 attendees last year. Consider having
an Art contest where winner would get their design on at-shirt.
• Evergreen School Meeting -Is working on Milton School $500-grant program for public and private
Evergreen School participants. Deadline September 30,2014 to use money. $1,500 is available. January
14th Evergreen meeting at High Meadows School-Earth Day ideas. Need to identify contact person at
each school. City wants grants to tie into recycling/ waste reduction and storm water quality
education. Last year Kathy used grant to host a two-day giant earth balloon event at Birmingham Falls
E.5. Presented different lessons for different grade levels. Kids can go inside and loved it. Roswell
owns the balloon. It cost $300/ day with a 50% discount to rent. It costs $20,000 to buy. It has to be used
indoors.
• Adopt-A-Road -Julie has been working on updating online forms, now 4 years old, application and
followup to better track groups/individuals doing cleanup, quantity of litter collected, number of
Milton Grows Green Committee Meeting Minutes January 7, 2014 [ApPROVED]
ALL MILTON GROWS GREEN DOCUMENTS ARE PRINTED ON RECYCLED PAPER WITH AT LEAST 35 % POST -CONSUMER CONTENT.
volunteers and volunteer-hours the program generates. Angela Thompson is looking at the last
Saturday in March for a volunteer recognition event. Better Together and Rotary Club of Windward,
Milton will be the first to use AAR sign with new logo. Old signs will stay for time being but Cindy
will look into whether or not overlay decal would work. Next year will submit budget item to replace
all AAR signs.
Preserve Rural Milton -A resident, Laura Rencher, who also wants to be an MGG member, has
invited everyone to a meeting on Sunday, January 12th at 2:00 pm at the restaurant next to I Love NY
Pizza to address the loss of open space. Laura's invited speaker is Carol Hassell of GA Piedmont Land
Trust/Suwanee City Council person, a knowledgeable resource on preservation. Cindy has been
trying to get as much information as possible but is not supposed to be working with Laura until the
City Council says they want staff to move forward . The big news is City Council has called a 30-day
moratorium on accepting any new rezoning requests. Jack talked about his experience instituting a
conservation ordinance in North Andover, MA.
IV. New Business:
• Committee to Update Structure and By-laws -Take a look at the resolution that established the
committee. See if it's relevant to what we're doing now, structure, terms for officers. Cindy asked to set
up a committee to look into it and bring ideas back to committee sometime the end of March for
discussion. Let Cindy or Jack know if you're interested in participating.
• Boy Scout Troop 3000 & Recycling Event -Wants to partner with us for a document shredding and
metal and electronics recycling. Event planned for March 15 th • We would help with promotion. The
paint recycling company they used a few years ago has gone out of business.
• MGG Meeting Schedule -Wednesday is better and prefer evenings in Executive Conference Room
Cindy will check on its use schedule -with Hickory Flat Fire Station as backup location.
• Climate Change Talk -Gail Gill gave us a preview of her PowerPoint talk on Climate Change. Gail is
a climate leader with the Climate Reality Project, founded in 2006 after the movie"An Inconvenient
Truth." It is a grass roots effort with 6000 trained climate leaders across the US with the goal of
changing energy policy around the world. She started by explaining how it is due to "global warming"
and the polar vortex that we are experiencing colder then normal weather in Georgia during the past
few days. Raising temperatures add energy to the atmosphere causing wider and wider swings in
temperature and rainfall and alter prevailing wind patterns. Ramped up temperatures in the
atmosphere cause it to hold more moisture, which in turn causes more extreme weather patterns, both
warm and cold. Climate becomes more unpredictable. More frequent and damaging storms occur.
Climate change has been shown by scientific proof to be accelerating as a result of the increasing
buildup of greenhouse gasses, which include CO2 emissions, which come from burning fossil fuels.
2012 was the hottest year in record for the US. July 2012 hottest month ever, planes at Reagan
Washington National Airport couldn't take off because tires mel ted on the tarmac. 1800 records were
tied and 4600 where broken. Elderly and children are disproportionally affected by weather
disasters. We need to let our leaders in government know that climate change is real and we have to
do something about it now. The talk was about 45 minutes long with a combination of data
information slides and the consequences of climate change showing climate change is a reality and
anthropogenic. Every National Academy in the world concurs. 30 Countries have carbon policies.
The US in not one of them so some states have adopted their own. MGG would like to sponsor this
talk and make it available at a public meeting. Gail and Barbara are coordinating with Better
Together. The Climate Reality website is climaterealityproject.org . Another good resource for
climate change information is www.350.org .
Meeting adjourned at 9:30 pm
AnESL~-'"~£ ~~
Francia Lindon, Secretary
Milton Grows Green Committee Meeting Minutes January 7, 2014 [ApPROVED] 2