Consider Resolution #14-01-021 Authorizing the City to Participate in the Minnesota GreenStep Cities Program

The Minnesota GreenStep Cities program is a voluntary challenge, assistance and recognition program designed to help communities achieve sustainability and quality of life goals.  There are no costs to a city that chooses to participate in this program.  The GreenStep Cities program is lead by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, but is governed by a public/private partnership of state agencies and non-governmental agencies.  The program is based upon twenty-eight (28) best practices that outline a cost-effective, step-wise path to implementing sustainable development best practices.  More importantly, many of the best practices focus on city operations and how a city itself can become more economically and environmentally efficient, e.g. more sustainable.  As a community accomplishes more best practices, it can achieve greater levels of recognition as a GreenStep City.  GreenStep Cities that achieve a new level or step are recognized at the annual League of Minnesota Cities conference. 

As previously noted, the GreenStep Cities program focuses on twenty-eight (28) best practices across a range of topics.  The best practices were developed by experts within the respective fields, all from within Minnesota.  The best practices are broken into five (5) categories: Buildings and Lighting, Land Use, Transportation, Environmental Management, and Economic and Community Development.  Within any best practice, there are multiple actions that a community could consider implementing but would not necessarily have to implement all actions to complete a particular best practice.  Additionally, a community can claim credit for actions already completed prior to entering the program. 

There are a number of benefits that the City could realize by participating in the GreenStep Cities program.  The City can access forty (40) hours of free consultant help and intern support for sustainability initiatives, potential benefit in grant proposal scoring, access to best practice topic experts to answer questions, positive publicity, access to a network of other GreenStep Cities communities, and becoming a more sustainable and energy efficient organization.

Researching the MN GreenStep Cities program is an action item on the Environmental Policy Board's (EPB) City Council approved work plan.  A member of the Great Plains Institute, one of the non-governmental partners of the GreenStep Cities program, attended the EPB's November, 2013 meeting and presenting information regarding this program.  The Environmental Policy Board reviewed the program details and were supportive of the program.  The fact that this program is voluntary, self-policing, and does not commit the City to anything specific actions was certainly appealing to the EPB.  However, more importantly, the EPB viewed this as a great opportunity for the City to lead by example by becoming a more sustainable organization.

Additionally, this could help the City achieve its Strategic Goal/Imperative of a Smart, Citizen-Focused Government, which includes continuing the delivery of quality services to ensure the City will have safe and thriving neighborhoods and business districts, and a clean environment.

There is no cost to participate in the GreenStep Cities program.  The preparation of this case and future work related to the GreenStep Cities program would be handled as part of Staff's regular duties.

The Environmental Policy Board recommends that the City Council approve Resolution #14-01-021 authorizing the City to participate in the Minnesota GreenStep Cities program.

Motion to approve Resolution #14-01-021 authorizing the City to participate in the Minnesota GreenStep Cities program.