Introductions
Solar Happenings
- Differences between solar gardens/home installations
- First round of solar community garden projects are marketing for subscribers
- Subscribing to a solar community garden is different from direct ownership of panels (either on your own property or other)
- Owning panels allows you to start generating for free after the initial investment pays off.
- There are options to help residents and companies with the initial investment
- Faith has signed with the Department of Commerce to be able to sell 40 solar shares to the community by placing panels on their property
- Using the Made in Minnesota credits
- IPS, Sundial, or others participate in Made in Minnesota program
- Made in Minnesota program’s deadline is Feb 28th [tweet this]
- Is there a way to tell if your property/roof is appropriate for solar panels? Not everyone can put panels on their roof.
- Perhaps send out U of M solar map
- Or if the San Francisco neighborhood map is available here
- Anthony Village city code now allows for solar panels
- Interfaith Power and Light has worked with communities of faith to set up solar gardens
- What background information is there for homeowners who are being marketed to put panels on their house?
- Paul will put together some information
- Subsidies are basically required for smaller installs
- Solar Power Hours at Roseville library for roof installations
- What can/should CFS do to bring this out to SAV citizens?
- Perhaps tour a home solar installation
- What determines viability
- What financing is possible
- CFS should be part of keeping citizens engaged with local gov’t and up
- Perhaps a series of sponsored educational events with the city
- Options for Hennepin, options for Ramsey
- We have the interest, perhaps with the other churches
- We could bring up Midwest Solar Expo (May 17-19)
- Perhaps a series of sponsored educational events with the city
- Recommend contact Jim Busacker(sp?) can speak to home installations in SAV
- Next steps
- work with neighboring churches to show what Faith is doing
- bring in someone to do an assessment for Wilshire Park with school board (In Forest Lake, they didn’t need subsidies to get to a 7 year return – 2 MW)
- SAV City Council did not want to pursue putting solar on city hall
- How do we go from activity to action?
- Educate the city to bring them to do solar projects using Met Council plan
- Citizens will come to a city council meeting we tell them
- Next meeting we’ll have the events schedule for planning commission
- How do we prioritize discussions within CFS
- Maybe we need a solar sub group to keep from taking over time
- Lona will connect us up
- Vote on interest
- Home installation
- Large scale Solar Gardens
- Get community to put them on the roof on public projects
- Maybe we need a solar sub group to keep from taking over time
Bike/walk planning update
- The city wants bike/walk input from citizens, not to create a bike/walk plan
- How could we approach the city to do a bike/walk plan when they don’t think there’s a benefit to doing it?
- Educating city council outside of the comprehensive planning process
- Most other cities have used a single external review company (CDG), but SAV isn’t interested in paying an outside party to help them
- The bike/walk plan should go through the Parks Commission
- Mary feels the city needs several plans in place, but how do we go through the Parks Commission to bring up all the federal requirements upon cities
- LEP – Limited English Proficiency
- ADA Transition Plan – improve city infrastructure for accessibility
- Bike/walk plan – transportation plan
- It sounds like the city wants to roll bike/ped into the transportation section of the comprehension plan instead of crafting a separate plan.
- Becky wishes there to be more bike/walk detail in the comprehensive plan than in the current one.
- Mark brought up that St. Anthony is a major connecting point for multiple cities and two counties
- Ramsey and Hennepin will be presenting bike/walk at the March 7 meeting [[outreach to help get people to attend]]
- Transit for Walkable Communities
- SAV high school has a mountain bike team partnered with Spring Lake Park
- The city’s perspective is very car-oriented when hearing bike/walk transportation needs.
- Federal funding is at risk if the city council doesn’t develop these plans
- CFS needs to improve its relationships with city council members
- How do we get funding? We need a plan. How do we encourage the city to develop a separate bike/walk plan?
- How much would going with WSB/CDG cost?
- Oftentimes these are funded by CDC?
- Met Council will often approach cities
- There will be a sidewalk on 37th and 8 intersections will be updated
- Why wait until a death to fix it?
City updates
- How do we communicate with the city?
- NextDoor
- Village People FB group
- Printed signage/fliers (translated to Spanish and Somali) for churches, community boards (Caribou, etc.)
- CFS website/FB/Twitter
- City website
- Northeaster newspaper article/press release/opinion letter
- Village Notes quarterly
- Channel 16
- Kids in the schools brainstorm these issues
- Poster competition through the newspaper
- SAV water/utility bill messaging quarterly
- City bulletin board on Silver Lake Rd
- Encourage Inland to allow a community message board
- Listserv where emails from city where interested citizens can print or communicate out information
- Senior housing contacts
- church bulletins
- Wilshire Park volunteer room
- St Anthony residents can still buy a few rain barrels
- Beyond the Barrel would welcome a cfs table
- SAV will get $5000 for public pollinator gardens
- Hennepin county has many signs for these gardens
- Pollinators Plants and You 3/5 10-noon
- CFS will need a seed packet assembly session before this
- SAV Spring Cleanup Day 5/7 9-noon – Public Works Facility, 3801 Chandler Drive
- Shredding
- Light bulbs
- Electronic
- Furniture
Other notes
- Kiwanis route signs in SAV. Do we have that history?
- March 7th – Parks commission starts at 7, then there’s a time for community input afterward
- Bring maps (safe routes to school, bike/walk map)
