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HomeMy WebLinkAboutSCMinutes_2025_04_07City of Brookings Sustainability Council Meeting Minutes Monday, April 7th, 2025, 4:00 PM City/County Government Center; Room 300 Sustainability Council Members: Anthony Shanks, Louis Hesler, Albert Patin, Robin Buterbaugh, Emily Abele, Kiley Rath, Kyle Jamison, Conner Evers, Alicia Heich, and SDSU Student Representative Valentyna Stopul, City Staff: Samantha Beckman Assistant to the City Manager 1. Call to Order T. Shanks 2. Approval of the Agenda Motion to Approve: E. Abele Second: R. Buterbaugh Aye: All Opposed: None 3. Approval of Minutes Motion to Approve: R. Buterbaugh Second: L. Hesler Aye: All Opposed: None 4. Open Forum At this time, any member of the public may request time on the agenda for an item not listed. Items are not typically scheduled for the end of the meeting; however, very brief announcements of invitations will be allowed at this time. 5. City Update ● Spring bulky item pickup: ○ Wednesday, April 9: First day to start placing items on boulevards. ● April 8th is Election Day for City Council & 2 School Board ● Marketplace started moving dirt last week ● Fifth Street Gym - The City is partnering with the School District and County on a plan to preserve the Fifth Street Gym as a year-round community recreation space. ● City Attorney Steve Britzman is retiring so the City is currently evaluating law firms. 6. Garden Discovery Festival Planning May 18th, 1-5pm ● T. Shanks will send out a sign-up for council members to volunteer ● R. Buterbaugh: Motion to approve up to $40 for crayons and paper as a kids activity. Second: L. Hesler Aye: All Opposed: None ● R. Buterbaugh will print brochures and bring rain barrel 7. Proposed Website Updates - Kiley Rath ● E. Abele: Motion to approve edits to website discussed during meeting and have Kiley send in to publish to the website.. Second: R. Buterbaugh Aye: All Opposed: Nay 8. Updates/Reports from Subcommittees a. Education and Outreach ● Will discuss monthly social media posts. b. Climate (Biodiversity) ● No Updates c. Waste ● No Updates. d. Energy ● E. Abele: working on a letter to promote EV charger at new Marketplace location. e. Local Foods ● Community Engagement Meeting: April 16th, 6:30-8:30pm at the City & County Government Center, Community Room 300. 12. Updates from LIaisons a. Parks and Recreation Board i. No Updates b. Planning Commission i. No Updates c. Historic Preservation i. No Updates (Vacant) d. Local Emergency Planning Commission i. No Updates 13. Continuing Items a. SDSU Student Project Ideas i. R. Buterbaugh: Potential Educational Outreach Event for Bee City? b. Mayor’s Awards Planning i. Categories: Nonprofit/Government, Industrial, Individual 1. All nominations are due August 1st. (Finalize at July meeting) c. Downtown Brookings Brainstorming 14. Call for Future Agenda Items ● None 15. Adjourn Respectfully submitted by Kiley Rath. Collaboration with Sustainability Council and Parks & Recreation Board 1. Call to Order the Joint Meeting of the Sustainability Council and Parks & Recreation Advisory Board Chair Erika Saunders called the meeting to order at 5:30 PM. Board members Present: Erika Saunders, Jay Larsen, Nathaniel Condelli, Steve Berseth and Stacey Zerfas. Board members absent: Brenda Andersen. Sustainability Council Members Present: Alicia Haich, Connor Evers, Kyle Jamison, Anthony Shanks, Robin Buterbaugh, Emily Abele and Kiley Rath. City of Brookings Staff Present: Park, Recreation and Forestry Director Kristin Zimmerman, Assistant Director Parks, Recreation and Forestry Joshua Bauman, Park, Recreation and Forestry Office Manger Ashley Johnson and Stephen Hartung, Park Technician. 2. Approval of the Joint Agenda Jay Larsen motions to approve the joint agenda as printed. Steve Berseth 2nds the motion; Motion is carried. 3. Bee City USA Kristin Zimmerman explained that she and Sam Beckman had got together and thought it would be a good idea to have a meeting between the Sustainability Council and Parks and Recreation Advisory Board to discuss Bee City USA and the Community Food Forest. Anthony Shanks spoke on behalf of the Sustainability Council. He brought up the commitments needed from the city. The Sustainability Council will be responsible for communicating with the Parks and Recreation Board to make sure that we are working together. There are several items that Bee City USA requires. Much of these requirements are already things that are being done by the City of Brookings Parks and Recreation Department. Part of Bee City USA requires that we create an enhanced pollinator habitat on public and private land. Using native plants and nest sights. Parks and Recreation has already been doing this. We also need to incorporate pollinator conscious practices into policies and plans. We will need to make sure that we are creating pollinator awareness events. Garden Discovery events at Medary Gardens qualifies and that is an event the Sustainability Council takes part in. The Sustainability Council will take care of awareness events but the Parks Department is also willing to help with awareness. We will have signs that should be coming soon. We will need to make sure that we are paying the application and renewal fee. The Sustainability Council will apply for and pay all fees. We all feel that the Parks and Recreation Department does a great job with the commitments that are outlined for Bee City USA. We will have a lot of information on the website. There will be green houses that will be listing some of the native plants that will be available as well. Robin Butterbaugh believes that we could really do a lot of outreaches by working together to have different events, like introducing rain gardens and native plants. Kristin mentioned that we made seed balls for the Downtown at Sundown events last summer. If we wanted to do an exhibit at the nature park, we could do that, or we could even introduce a beehive into the Nature Park as well. As events come up, we can look at different options to include the Sustainability Council and invite the public. Anthony believes that the application will be approved in just a few days. 4. Community Food Forest Update Robin Butterbaugh spoke about the community Food Forest. It will be located at the community gardens. Residents wouldn’t have to pay for the food forest, it would be open to the community and we have already got a few trees planted. We will be having a community engagement meeting that will be on April 16th from 6:30 PM to 8PM. This will allow the public to get more involved and voice their opinions about what they would like to see there. We have been working with SDSU Architecture Dept. They have come up with a few different designs so that we can help the community envision what the food forest could look like, we hope that it will also help engage the community and get them more interested. The first thing that we need to do is raise some funds for a fence. This would keep deer out of the food forest. The Sustainability Council believes that it will cost about $10,000.00 for the fence. They do have a fundraising letter that they are getting ready to send to businesses, to see if they can get any donations to help with the fence. Once we get the fence up, we can start looking into other projects, like benches or shelters or even moving the water closer for watering. We would also like to have educational programing at the food forest as well as having volunteer days. We will utilize social media to get information out about when certain plants are ready to harvest. We will have signs that will show what the plants are, with additional information about harvesting. The Food Forest would be an ongoing program, that we would continue to work well into the future. We did purchase signs that are ready to identify the Food Forest. 5. Adjourn Nathaniel Condelli Motions to adjourn the joint meeting, Stacey Zerfas 2nds; The motion is carried.