The Environmental Sustainability Advisory Board met on Thursday night at City Hall to map sustainability news into Lawrence’s next strategic plan. Nancy Muma said the board should work in two phases, first advancing priorities and then pushing environmental sustainability into the city’s goals, plans and performance metrics.
The board is discussing which environmental policies and projects it may recommend to the City Commission. Muma said, "I think it’s really important that we do it in two phases" and added, "We have some priorities that we put forth now, and that we really engage in the strategic plan … we make sure that we can get environmental sustainability as a underpinning of many of the goals and plans and (performance metrics)."
Patrick Ross compendium
Patrick Ross prepared a 460-page Environmental Policy and Initiative Compendium before the meeting. He said he had seen "a lack of environmental stewardship and care" in other parts of city government, even though Kathy Richardson said the previous five-year strategic plan already included environmental sustainability as one of the city’s commitments.
Ross said, "The city’s going to go through a strategic plan restructuring with a new commission here in September, so this would certainly fall into that as far as how we rework our strategic plan collectively as a city." That puts the board’s recommendations in front of the broader planning process rather than beside it.
Lawrence strategic plan
The compendium includes an environmental data dashboard, a new noxious weeds and native plants ordinance, more solar panels on city buildings, and a regional passenger rail link between Topeka, Lawrence and Kansas City. It also lays out a long-term goal of making Lawrence energy-positive.
One proposal would create a state of the environment report as an annual benchmark for evaluating progress on the strategic plan’s environmental goals. Ross said the report would go before the board and the city and county commissions each year and could include data on pollution and per-capita electricity use.
Muma told Ross, "Patrick, you have a really great overall plan that you’ve started to put together, and that’s going to be a great starting point for our discussion when we’re going through the strategic plan." The practical question now is which of the many ideas in the 460-page compendium the board moves toward the City Commission first.
