On behalf of the City of Forest Grove, our City Council and our employees, I wanted to take a moment to express our deep gratitude... more
City Hall
City Sustainability Efforts Continue
About 16 citizens of the community met to view the presentation on sustainability on October 8th. This is the first step in developing a sustainability program for the community. The next step will be this coming Saturday, October 22nd. We will be performing a SWOT (which stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) exercise. This is a strategic planning tool business, government and non-profits use to develop programs. We hope as many of you can attend and participate in this exciting effort. Every person attending the October 8th meeting said they plan on attending. The SWOT exercise will begin at 9:30 am at the Community Auditorium (1915 Main Street).
The October 8th presentation was intended to provide information about sustainability so that they could participate more effectively at the SWOT exercise. Several persons mentioned they attended the presentation to obtain information on specific sustainability practices and came away with much more. 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.
Information handed out at the October 8th presentation can be found on the City's website under Community Development: Sustainability. If you have any further questions, please contact Jon Holan at 503.992.3224 or email at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . We hope to see you at the SWOT exercise on October 22nd.