Mayor's Environmental Advisory Committee

Did you know...

The City of Jacksonville's Mayor, John Peyton, regularly meets with members of various environmental groups to discuss the needs of the North Florida region in terms of land use, stewardship, smart growth, conservation, green building, and overall sustainability?

I was pleased to learn that this is the case after receiving an invitation from the Mayor's office to participate on behalf of the US Green Building Council's North Florida Chapter. As many of you know, I serve as the current Vice Chair of the chapter, was chair of the Public Advocacy Committee and briefly served as Regional Representative to the Florida/Carribean Council. Needless to say, my passion for green building was tied closely to legislation and municipal ordinances. After nearly two years of committed focus on assisting with the Sustainable Building Ordinance, I am pleased to say it passed and Jacksonville is now among many other cities embracing green building and offering incentives to those pursuing a third-party certification.

Go Jacksonville!

As you can imagine, I was thrilled to receive the invite to participate.

Among those organizations represented:

• US Green Building Council North Florida
• The Jacksonville Arboretum
• Greenscape
• St. Johns Riverkeeper
• North Florida Land Trust
• The Trust for Public Land
• The River Alliance
• Sustainable Jacksonville
• Sierra Club
• Timucuan Preserve
• The Public Trust
• Museum of Science and History

The format was a round table discussion with Mayor Peyton leading the conversation which addressed the master plan for the Riverwalk, the Stormwater Fee program, stimulus money, Reality Check, and the City's commitment to conservation measures on an administrative level. Derek Igou, COJ's Sustainability Officer, and Vince Siebold with the Environmental Quality Division, were also on hand to offer insight.

The bottom line is there's a lot of great things happening in the City yet we still have far to go.

As was stated at the meeting, with so little in the way of budget and available money, the best thing we can do right now is plan for a sustainable future. What should the plan look like for when the cash is flowing again? How do we plan for smart growth and low impact development before development ramps up again?

What do we need to do right NOW to ensure future development is executed responsibly?

The Mayor's Environmental Advisory Committee is meeting again in July to continue this conversation and keep up the momentum.

So, what do we need the City to know and what what we can provide for them so that they can execute our plan for environmental stewardship, smart growth and green building?

Let's start talking!

Ellen

Jacksonville Mayor Signs it!

Wow! This is a bigger wow than the Governor's Wow!

Copied directly from Flog, Folio Weekly's blog. Kudos to them for getting the information so quickly:

Jacksonville Mayor John Peyton has signed the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection
Agreement, in which cities commit to scaling back their greenhouse-gas
emissions in accordance with the international Kyoto Protocol’s
target for the U.S.: to 7 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. Peyton’s prior and
conspicuous lack of participation in the initiative has been covered
continuously by Folio Weekly.

Peyton spokesperson Susie Wiles tells Folio Weekly that until recently,
all conversation about committing to greenhouse-gas reductions had been related
to The Sierra Club’s Cool Cities
program, which the Mayor’s Office and The Sierra Club discussed about a year
ago. Peyton promised to consider joining the program, but after JEA urged him
not to, he “somewhat reluctantly” decided to back away, says Wiles, rather than
commit to something unattainable.
“We were persuaded we could not meet [the
goals of Cool Cities],” says Wiles. Nonetheless, Peyton remained interested in
making efforts to fight global warming, she says.

More recently, and after learning more about the USMCPA from the U.S. Conference of Mayors, Peyton was
formally asked to join the agreement by Miami Mayor Manny Diaz. Perhaps
anticipating federally mandated greenhouse-gas cuts (post-2008, obviously), the
city of Jacksonville’s lobbyists in Washington also advised Peyton to do so. JCCI’s
recently released report on local air quality was also a factor, says
Wiles.

In fact, Peyton signed the agreement six or seven weeks ago, Wiles
estimates. Because the city is still mapping out the plan it will implement to
meet USMCPA goals, Wiles declined to talk about specific measures. What with all
this budget business, the Mayor’s Office isn’t planning to announce the decision
until late this summer, she says.
Sorry to spoil it, guys.

Philip Ramsey of the Jacksonville
Carbon Neutral Initiative, a group that was founded chiefly to lobby the
mayor to join the USMCPA but has since expanded its mission, reacted to the news
with a bit of skepticism. The schedule for reducing greenhouse gases laid out in Gov.
Crist’s recently issued executive orders — to 2000 levels by 2017, to
1990 levels by 2025, and to 80 percent of 1990 levels by 2050 — is superior to
and more realistic than that of the USMCPA, he says.

Even if only symbolic, Peyton’s decision to commit to specific
climate-protection goals is exciting news for local environmentalists. Now comes
the hard part — Wiles says Peyton will soon have to begin persuading his city
“partners” to get onboard the effort to fight global warming.

Again. Wow. I'm really blown away by this. We had just recently discussed how to get the mayor to sign off of the agreement. And now it's done. More to follow....