Community Development: Sustainability

The second meeting was held Saturday, October 22, 2011, to identify stakeholders, develop content ideas for a mission statement and to perform a SWOT exercise which is a strategic planning tool used to develop programs.    Agenda 

INITIAL MEETING The initial kickoff meeting was held on Saturday, October 8, 2011, to provide information on sustainability. The presentation started with mentioning the reasons why we are concerned about sustainability.  Not only are there the usual reasons of climate change and limited natural resources, but other reasons.  Did you know that the City’s Vision Statement promotes sustainability?  In addition, equity, inclusionary and economic reasons also encourage sustainability.  These last three items are part of the roots of sustainability along with physical.  The key concept to sustainability is to understand the sustainability cycle between action (i.e. doing something) and capacity (i.e. the ability to do something).  In considering this cycle, we must be mindful of human, financial and resource regeneration rates (i.e. the ability to replenish resources being used to perform an action).  The presentation then touched on the Melbourne Principles.  These are ten concepts developed in 2003 by the United Nations Environment Programme.  They were developed specifically for cities to consider.  Next, the differences between “being green” and sustainability were presented.  Then we reviewed various definitions of sustainability and suggested a possible definition for the community.  The session concluded with a review of various general sustainability approaches and efforts in the region.  Such general approaches reviewed include Natural Step, LEED for Neighborhoods and Eco-Districts among other approaches.  Next, Dale Feik discussed his experience with installing solar panels and Doug Martin presented Pacific University’s efforts.  The presentation then touched on other efforts including United Church of Christ’s sustainability statement, City of Forest Grove’s efforts, City of Portland, State and Metro efforts involving Greenhouse Gas reduction and the City of Corvallis. The following materials were presented and distributed at that meeting:

  For more information, contact Jon Holan at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or 503.992.3224.