The St. James community photo taken at 6 a.m. on Wednesday, July 30, for the St. James Horizons story that will appear in Source magazine. Photo is from St. James Plaindealer web site. Thanks to Extension for setting it up, and thanks to Sue Harris (back row, right side) to get everyone to show up so early.
Congratulations, St. James!
After 18 months of planning, organizing, great conversations, and hard work, your work plan is complete! Click the link below to find details of the Horizons Team organizational plans, focus areas, and projects.
The first Horizons money requests were granted at the Leadership Team meeting on Tuesday. The Education Future Squad will get $750 for interpreter services for Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) classes. The classes are being held by the Good Samaritan community in May, June and July.
The other grant was $500 to the Green Team Future Squad to get their names on the reusable shopping bags that are going to be sold at grocery stores and around town. Besides being environmentally friendly, the project is a social contribution because the proceeds from selling the bags will go to a scholarship fund for low-income students.
This money comes out of the first $1,500 payment from the Northwest Area Foundation (the parent of Horizons) to St. James. Another $8,500 will be coming upon the completion of the Horizons program.
The March newsletter from Project for Public Spaces contains a checklist titled “Is Your City a Great City?”
St. James still needs to do some work to check off all of the items, but some of the Horizons projects are doing this work.
Based on discussions at St. James Green Team Future Squad meetings, Mark Anderson drew up the following green vision for St. James. This is meant to be a preliminary discussion of what a green St. James would look like, so please add any comments or suggestions. If you would like to become part of the Green Team, contact Jill Henderson at Wilcon or Mark Anderson at the St. James Plaindealer.
Green Team vision:
Recycling
Short term goals:
• Support Youth Council projects, support city-wide recycling.
Long term goals:
• Reduce the need for recycling by promoting reusable containers.
• Begin recycling building materials.
End goal:
• Have a recycling center in St. James.
Could be for anything or everything: containers, paper, electronics, batteries, all building materials …
Energy Conservation / Reduce Consumption
• Promote energy-saving light bulbs, Energy Star appliances, and other household energy saving practices.
• Reduce the use of air conditioning in the summer, and winterize homes to reduce heating costs.
• Promote use of reusable grocery and shopping bags.
Land Use
Short term goals:
• Start working with the Madelia Model to explore bringing a bio-energy industry to St. James. The Madelia Model combines natural prairie plantings with the latest technologies, such as pyrolisis and gasification. It also works with existing industry to use waste or excess heat to produce electricity.
Long term goals:
• Wind generators
• Locally-produced food
• We implement the Madelia Model so thoroughly that it becomes known as the St. James Model:
-All farmland near streams and ditches will be prairie grassland, eliminating much agricultural runoff.
-All St. James industries will find ways to reuse waste, excess heat, or other by-products to create energy.
End goal:
• Through wind, bioenergy, and solar conversion, St. James will produce more energy than it uses. We will have vast swaths of natural prairie along our waterways, sandy soil and sloped land, which will be used not just for energy, but for hunting, fishing, hiking, birdwatching, education, and science.
Education
Short term goals:
• Put the St. James Green Team logo on environmentally friendly products in stores or projects around town.
• Get schools more involved in environmental teaching, like a district-wide Earth Day project.
• Set up a “Green Corner” at the library, with Green Team materials and pertinent books and magazines.
• Work with the schools to find a “No Child Left Inside” project.
Long term goals:
• A majority of St. James people and businesses will implement new sustainable practices.
• Build nature areas into the school playgrounds so children have daily access to nature.
• Schools will put environmental science and environmental projects into curriculum.
End goal:
• All St. James decisions will be made with a 100-year or more basis in mind.
• Every school will have large nature areas for daily access to nature. The Northside/ High school campus will still have beautiful athletic fields, but there will be nature trails running around them. There will be a permanent nature trail leading to the Meadowlark Environmental Learning
Green building
Short term goals:
• Get green building projects started in St. James, using the Minnesota Green Communities, Green Playbook, or other programs.
• When building, the people of St. James will look at lifetime costs rather than up-front costs.
Long term goals:
• Area buildings will be filled with strong insulation, energy-efficient heating systems, native landscaping, and nearby access to nature trails.
• More construction people in St. James will become LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified.
• Building centers will sell more green products and natural building materials.
• Green Team will expand to projects for a green lifestyle: green transportation, green design, green banking, green retailers, green clothing…
End goal:
• Transform from green building to a green city. All St. James neighborhoods will be energy-efficient and built with natural materials. Neighborhoods will be planned for social health, environmental health and economic health for the whole city, not just for one household.
• A greenway will run around and through St. James, connecting parks, allowing for hiking, biking and daily access to nature, no matter what neighborhood you live in.
Other Green Team projects:
• Do an Earth Day project (April 22)
• Get educational videos made for public access TV
This agrees with the “Mailbox: St. James” post below. Jack Schultz of Boomtown USA
has listed his top trends in 2008. He travels the country to look for small town economic success, and his number one trend in 2008 is:
1. Millennials-This generation, ages 10 to 27, dwarfs the Baby Boomers in size. These young people are going to be the most entrepreneurial in the history of the USA. I’m finding incredible examples of what these young people are already doing. You need to be recruiting and retaining the Millennials.
The more I hear, the more it makes sense. One of the first goals of the Horizons Youth Future Squad should be a program to retain youth in our town.
Update: the article linked is no longer on the web, but click it to get a different story about a different town.
Anyone interested in retaining St. James youth has got to read this. Brookfield, Missouri, exactly the same size as St. James (4,700), started a plan to give each graduating student a mailbox to let students know that they will always have a home in Brookfield.
But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. They also started a $250,000 community foundation and a bunch of other stuff. It’s like a blueprint of what St. James is talking about in the Horizons discussions. Read the story by clicking here.