Sustainable Issaquah would like to recognize the pro-active work on behalf of environmental sustainability that the City of Issaquah undertook in 2009 under the leadership of its Council, the Council Sustainability Committee, the Resource Conservation Office (RCO) and other boards, committees and departments. A few highlights include:
• The Polystyrene Food Packaging Ordinance
• Sustainability Sounding Board, including Indicators
• Tilth garden at Pickering Place
• Development of a Carbon Footprint for the city
• Sustainability Movie Nights
• The Green Sheets (Sustainability Checklist).
We applaud the fact that sustainability is part of the make-up of the city and embodied in many of its documents, including its vision, and is reiterated each year with the Council goals of modeling, requiring and rewarding actions that promote environmental, social and economic sustainability.
For its efforts and its leadership, the city was recognized in 2009 by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Business Civic Leadership Center and Siemens Corporation, who named the City of Issaquah as a leading example of a sustainable community; by a 2009 Governor’s Smart Communities Award; and by King County’s Green Globe Award as a “Leader in Open Space Conservation.”
At the dawn of 2010, Sustainable Issaquah would like to encourage the city to continue and expand on that path. We feel that the residents, businesses, and forested wild communities who call Issaquah home will all benefit from continued focus on increasing sustainability, now and in generations to come.
We hope the city will continue to promote sound environmental practices through agencies like the RCO and the Parks & Recreation Department. The green sheets that the city plans to use as a sustainability tool should be designed to help city leaders keep in mind that sustainability applies to more than just the environment, and that problems need to be addressed systemically and at the intersection of the social, economic and environmental fields using a multi-disciplinary approach and should include a feedback and evaluation mechanism.
We look for sustainability to become fully embedded in the affairs of the city in a way that is transparent and accountable, and to apply not only to actions by the council and various departments but also those of the different boards and committees.
Accountability and transparency require mechanisms to track performance and to report progress to the public. We encourage the city to apply such tools to its pursuit of sustainability. After all, if we don’t know how fast, or even whether we’re moving forwards or backwards toward our goals, how do we know where we stand as a community on sustainability?
Chantal Stevens and Lori Danielson – on behalf of the Sustainable Issaquah Coordinating Committee.
(The Reporter Editor Jake Lynch is a member of the Sustainable Issaquah Coordinating Committee – Ed)
