The City of Edina is one of five Metro cities piloting the GreenStep Cities program with the PCA and Urban Land Institute Minnesota before CERTs and the GreenStep Cities Steering Committee officially launch the program in June at the League of Minnesota Cities Annual Conference in St. Cloud. The six-month pilot project is being managed by Urban Land Institute Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. The GreenStep Cities program is an action-oriented voluntary program offering a cost-effective, simple pathway leading to implementation of best practices that focus on greenhouse gas reduction.
In Edina, the Energy & Environment Commission (EEC- a Metro CERT affiliate) is spearheading the city’s effort along with Edina Assistant Manager, Heather Worthington. The city needs to choose eight mandatory best practices and seven optional ones if it desires to seek future GreenStep Cities designation. The EEC is currently assigning a different Commissioner for each of the best practice actions and evaluating each of the steps for ease of implementation. They will report back in June about their analysis of the steps and make a recommendation to the City Council for enrollment into the GreenStep Program. The City has already completed two of the best practice actions AND Commissioners are busy working on several others!
For more information about the GreenStep Cities Program go to www.MNGreenSteps.org or the Urban Land Institute Minnesota pilot go to http://minnesota.uli.org.
