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The Elgin Sustainability Commission met on Tuesday, March 12th at the Edward Schock Centre of Elgin. An efficient meeting by all measurements with virtually no tangents, side conversations, talking over each other, and long-winded echoing of each other. Maybe it was because the commission's City Councilperson liaison -- Carol Rauschenberger -- wasn't in attendance. *wink* (Just kidding, Carol). Truthfully, it is more likely the influence of the commission's new lion tamer (aka Sustainability Analyst/city staffer) Kristin Youngmeyer. 
 
In this episode, Tia Aagesen & Erik Anderson  summarize the agenda items and discussions. They also do another deep dive on the issue of the commission's 2024 Priorities. The following is a laundry list of what you will hear talked about in this episode:

• Kimball Street dam removal
• Elgin Earth Month in April 2024
• Elgin Earth Summit on April 20th
• Elgin Climate Action Plan RFP and submissions
• Soon-To-Be new addition to the city's sustainability staff team
• 2024 Budget for the Elgin Sustainability Commission
• Zero Emissions Yard Equipment Rebate program
• Single Use Bag Fee ordinance
• 2024 Priorities for the Sustainability Commission

There were two kinda/sorta big announcements at the end of the meeting:

• The next Strong Towns Elgin meeting is happening on Wednesday, March 20, 2024 from 6:30-8:30pm at the Light Lounge at Vern's Tavern. Click here to RSVP on Facebook
• The next Elgin Earth Summit planning meeting is happening on Thursday, March 21, 2024 at 6:00pm at Elgin City Hall

The first episode of The Elgin Watchman's WASTE WARS Season Three deep-dive series dropped a few weeks ago. If you missed it, click here to listen.
 
The Elgin Watchman also announced a community-wide WASTE WARS project that everyone is invited (in fact ... encouraged) to participate in. In involves collectively seeking clarity from the city of Elgin and its private sector waste hauler on questionable recycling items. Click here to read about the details and how you can get involved.

We're only at the beginning of this Season Three and hope you and your friends will join us for what is shaping up to be an amazing season.

Get involved . . . Be engaged . . . AND . . . Always keep watch!

For more information, please visit our website, LIKE our Facebook page, and subscribe to our podcast using one of the many RSS Readers on our Buzzsprout podcast platform.

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Welcome to Season Three of The Elgin Watchman podcast. As you know, we got off to a slow start with this podcasting season . . . winter weather, public meeting cancellations, etc. Regardless, we're back in the saddle again. We appreciate your patience as we find our podcast publishing rhythm again.
 
As we've done in the past, the first podcast drop of each month is coverage of the Elgin Sustainability Commission. The second podcast of each month is an episode that is part of a deep-dive topic series that runs throughout the course of a the season. For example, we focused on Lead in Elgin's Drink Water System during Season One. In our second season, we partnered with Friends of the Fox River and collaborated on a series focused on a variety of Fox River watershed issues including the recently proposed dam removal project.

THIS SEASON, we will dedicate the second episode of every month to a new topic -- Waste Wars -- where we will explore waste/recycling issues for Elgin and surrounding communities. We feel this topic is especially relevant in 2024 because the Elgin City Council is seeking proposals from waste haulers with whom they want to contract the community's waste and recycling services for the next 3, 5, and perhaps even 10 years.
 
In today's first episode of our Season Three deep-dive series -- Waste Wars -- Tia interviews Cristobal Cavazos of Immigrant Solidarity DuPage about Environmental Racism. Specifically, they discuss the City of West Chicago's fight with LRS (Lakeshore Waste Recycling Services) over trying to site a second waste transfer station in their Latinx majority community.
 
Why is talking with someone outside of Elgin about a waste transfer station located outside of Elgin important? Because . . . 

• There is a waste transfer station located in Elgin
• Elgin's waste transfer station is owned by Waste Management (WM)
• Starting this podcast series with the topic of transfer stations makes sense because it links to the topic of negotiating a contract with a new waste hauler (or renewing the current contract with Waste Management). How? Because WM's waste transfer station gives them a competitive advantage by lowering their internal operating costs.
• And what happens if the city council decides to contract with a waste hauler other than WM (aka our current hauler)? Could there be a future push to site a second waste transfer station in Elgin (similar to what West Chicago is dealing with)?
• What are the implications surrounding waste transfer stations? Who in the community bears the brunt of those public decisions?
• And so on and so forth . . . you get the idea. We will explore many topics associated with Elgin's waste and recycling efforts. Hopefully, we will all learn something along the way.

We're only at the beginning of this Season Three special series, so buckle up buttercup. Things are going to get interesting at city hall. Get involved . . . Be engaged . . . AND . . . Always keep watch!
 
For more information, please visit our website, LIKE our Facebook page, and subscribe to our podcast using one of the many RSS Readers on our Buzzsprout podcast platform.

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The Elgin Sustainability Commission met on Tuesday, February 13th. After cancelling the January 2024 meeting due to weather, the February meeting touched on a lot of different topics. Unfortunately, the commission couldn't vote on anything because of an agenda snafu that entangled the group in Illinois Opens Meetings Act hell.
 
In this episode, Tia Aagesen & Kerry Kelly summarize the whole enchilada, which included all of these topics:

• Starting meetings on time (or not) and respecting each other
• 2024 commission priorities
• 2024 commission budget
• Sustainability Grant Program
• April 2024 Earth Summit
• Commission sponsored 2024 sustainability events
• Artificial turf controversy and Councilwoman Rauschenberger's disappointment in the commission
• City's RFP for consultant to help develop a Climate Action Plan
• City's RFP seeking bids on citywide waste/recycling services
• Update: Single Use Bag Fee Ordinance -- Status DOA
• Kimball Street dam removal (or not removal) issues
• Riverlife Elgin updates and the city's proposed North Grove Street redevelopment project
• And so much more

For more information, please visit our website, LIKE our Facebook page, and subscribe to our podcast using one of the many RSS Readers on our Buzzsprout podcast platform.

Did you like Season Two's deep dive coverage of The Fox River Story in collaboration with Friends of the Fox River? If so, then you're going to love our Season Three deep dive coverage focused on local Waste & Recycling issues leading up to the Elgin city council's 2024 decision about which waste hauler to hire for the next 3, 5, 10 years?
 
Don't miss the first episode in this special series when Tia talks about Environmental Racism with Cristobal Cavazos of Immigrant Solidarity DuPage and the City of West Chicago's fight with LRS (Lakeshore Waste Recycling Services) over trying to site a second waste transfer station in their Latinx majority community.

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Tia and Erik chat about their favorite podcast moments of 2023 and look ahead to what's on deck in 2024 for The Elgin Watchman podcast.
 
Spoiler alert #1 . . . Erik's biggest disappointment was the Elgin City Council's inability to govern effectively when it tabled the proposed Single Use Bag Fee ordinance recommendation from the Sustainability Commission.
 
Spoiler alert #2 . . . Season Three will focus on Waste, Recycling, and Composting, which is where you can bet the proposed Single Use Bag Fee ordinance will reappear.
 
For more information, please visit our website, LIKE our Facebook page, and subscribe to our podcast using one of the many RSS Readers on our Buzzsprout podcast platform.

Are you following our Season Two special podcast series -- "The Fox River Story" -- which is a fun collaboration with our friends over at Friends of the Fox River? 

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The Elgin Sustainability Commission met on Tuesday, December 12th. What looked like a potentially short meeting with only two agenda items, turned into a two hour debate about the pros vs. cons of using artificial turf in city parks/playgrounds and Sports Complex fields.
 
In this episode, Tia & Erik chatter about some of the following topics a heated debate between commissioners and city staff about artificial turf:

• Americans with Disabilities Act
• Microplastics
• PFAS
• Data-driven Decision-making (or the lack thereof)
• And so much more

If this topic is something you are passionate about, then keep your eyes on the upcoming city council agendas because that is where it will appear next.

For more information, please visit our website, LIKE our Facebook page, and subscribe to our podcast using one of the many RSS Readers on our Buzzsprout podcast platform.

Are you following our Season Two special podcast series -- "The Fox River Story" -- which is a fun collaboration with our friends over at Friends of the Fox River? 

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Erik is still lost and no where to be found so Tia and Gary Swick pick up the slack and tackle the hottest topic in town: the dam! Ahhh yes..the Kimball Street dam...what is going on with that? Why's everyone talking about this?!

Listen to Tia and Gary as they navigate the latest findings from the Army Corps of Engineers and what their recommendations mean for the Fox River and Elgin. What's the history of the dam? How is it impacting our community and environment? What's happened recently that we're all of a sudden talking about it? And what is the recommendation! What should we do?!

Never fear, Gary Swick has all the answers and helps us understand this complex and contentious issue. Listen in and learn how you can school your relatives over mashed potatoes this season!

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The Elgin Sustainability Commission met on Tuesday, November 14th. For almost two hours, commissioners and various city staff members talked about the upcoming expiration of the Waste Hauler contract.
 
In this episode, Tia & Erik chatter about some of the following topics that emanated from the commission meeting:

• There is a new commissioners at the table
• Is Public Works Director Aaron Neal sexier than commissioner Frankie Garcia
• Results of a community survey focused on waste/recycling services provided by Waste Management
• Issues pertaining to a pay-as-you-throw (PAYT) waste management model
• Single stream vs. multi-stream recycling
• Barriers to implementation of a citywide organics program and ideas to lower those barriers
• And so much more

Here are a few "fun" facts about Elgin's garbage situation:

• Between 2016 and 2022, the amount of garbage collected curbside has increased from 27 tons to 30 tons.
• Between 2016 and 2022, the amount of recyclables collected curbside has decreased from almost 12 tons to 10 tons
• Between 2016 and 2022, the amount of yard waste collected curbside has decreased from 3.6 tons to approx. 2 tons

As a side note, it was interesting that the proposed Single Use Bag Fee ordinance didn't come up once during an almost two hour conversation about waste.

Kinda shameful if you ask Wally the Watchman!
 
City of Elgin ordinance authorizing the creation of the Elgin Sustainability Commission

For more information, please visit our website, LIKE our Facebook page, and subscribe to our podcast using one of the many RSS Readers on our Buzzsprout podcast platform.

Are you following our Season Two special podcast series -- "The Fox River Story" -- which is a fun collaboration with our friends over at Friends of the Fox River? 

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It's ladies night! Tia can't make the September commission meeting so the wonderful and talented Kerry Kelly attends in her stead. Tia invites Kerry on to unpack the meeting and is joined by another friend of the podcast, Kendra Kroiss, who weighs in on process and procedure themes from the meeting. 

In the September episode, Kerry divulges the commission's priority and strategic planning efforts and "visioning" session that was held during the meeting, along with questions about whether the commission should weigh in on the dam removal (or did they already?!) and an update on the Greenhouse Gas Emission presentation for city council. 

What should the commission focus on? What is their role, exactly? And how should the commission operate? These questions and more are asked and maybe answered- tune in!
 

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Welcome to the sixth episode of The Fox River Story, a Season Two collaboration with Friends of the Fox River.

Tia Aagesen and her husband TJ (who is the big sexy voice of Wally the Watchman) host today's show. This sixth episode of The Fox River Story focuses on how the Fox River is being utilized as a community asset that generates economic development opportunities for communities throughout the watershed.

Tia's first interview is with Karen Ann Miller, who is an Executive Planner for the Kane County Development Department. Karen talks about the recent designation of the Fabulous Fox Water Trail as part of the National Water Trails System. For more information, check out the trail's website by CLICKING HERE.

Tia's second interview is with the always amazing Kerry Kelly, who wears so many different hats in the Elgin community. However, on this episode, Kerry spends time bringing Tia up to speed on the North Grove Redevelopment Project and something called Riverlife Elgin. For more information, check out this letter sent by the Northeast Neighborhood Association to the city of Elgin about this project by CLICKING HERE.

For more information about the podcast, please visit The Elgin Watchman website, LIKE our Facebook page, and subscribe to our podcast using one of the many RSS Readers on our Buzzsprout podcast platform. Follow us wherever you get your other podcasts!

For more information about Friends of the Fox River (FOTFR), please visit their website and LIKE their Facebook page. If you want to read more about the history of the Fox River, there is an awesome article titled "Our Waters, Our Fox" on the FOTFR webpage. CLICK HERE to read it.

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The Elgin Sustainability Commission met on Tuesday, August 8th, and unlike the last few months, this time they were joined by the city's new Sustainability Analyst, Kristin Youngmeyer.  The fourth city staff liaison to the commission in the last six years.
 
While this month's commission meeting agenda appeared to be designed for brevity, it turned out to be anything but short and sweet.  
 
In this episode, Tia & Erik talk about the following issues discussed at the commission's July meeting:

• Elgin Farmers Market
• City Street Tree Planting Program
• Single Use Bag Fee Ordinance
• Pumpkin Smash Composting Event
• Various Budget Requests (that were rejected)
• Advice For New City Staffer, Sustainability Analyst Kristin Youngmeyer

For those of you who are new to the podcast (including the new sustainability analyst) and might want some background on the last few years of commission work and discussion on the proposed Single Use Bag Fee ordinance, we suggest you check out The Elgin Watchman's eGuide on this subject. CLICK HERE to find the material on our webpage.
  
For more information about local sustainability efforts and issues, please visit our website, LIKE our Facebook page, and subscribe to our podcast using one of the many RSS Readers on our Buzzsprout podcast platform.

Are you following our Season Two special podcast series -- "The Fox River Story" -- which is a fun collaboration with our friends over at Friends of the Fox River?