residents residents who attended one or more of a series of classes that were offered through the nature center and our partner the ramsey washington metro watershed district big words but they're an important part of this were eligible to submit to what maplewood already does maplewood is agree city in terms of the rain gardens and and being a responsible community and so it will bring attention of the entire twin cities that this is what you can do and i hope next year and tell me what the purpose of the extreme green make over and what the green stand for great questions the purpose of the program is to educate residents about how sustainable landscaping can help with problems in your yard as well as in the general environment if you have flooding problems in your basement perhaps putting in a rain garden can help reduce those problems having a rain barrel for  dry spells these can help save money on the water bill so we want to treat rainwater as waste excuse me as a way that we want to treat it as a resource rather than as a wa ok you know one of the prime questions going to be asked them are viewers as you know how is this make over funded the city of maplewood in partnership with the ramsay washington watershed district will we're funding it along with the friends of maplewood nature center so we have lots of partners we have lots of partners and as the landscape does that the landscape landscaping firm earth where earth works landscape architects was chosen to dollars even the contractor is donating part of his services to try to kick this event off so yeah so what has happened so far the extreme green make over has been very successful for people over four hundred people that tended thirteen classes that were offered this spring forty or more people attended the landscaping seminar which featured different educational speakers on tree landscaping with trees and shrubs and butterfly gardens and so on  the city also offered as as a class two free rain barrel installations and people were allowed to attend and watch how to and how to install the rain barrel that's very interesting because you know i've heard about these  saw one you know i think last year when i was new to that to the city and i really am quite understand it so let's take a look at some film footage it and brought of our rain barrel installation class very evening we're going to be home rather than thinking of rainwater something that we need to get into those storms or pipes and into those lakes and streams as quickly as possible we can think of it as something that we can hang onto and use as a resource treating our rainwater as a resource rather than as something we need to get rid of right away the biggest environmental threat to our lakes and streams right now is storm water runoff that comes in through storms or pipes this house has about a thousand square feet of surface on it and we get i wanted rainfall that's six hundred gallons of water and it would take a lot longer you can put as long a hose you want on this and water anywhere in the y using water just like like it's free it gets wasted so i i think i think it's an essential thing to put in a rain rain barrel or two or three on your home and one thing we forgot to mention is this green stand for you know is it like a stoplight you can both go faster or what a great great question i'm glad you brought brought that back up green actually stands for five five sustainable landscaping principles and so green stands for green design we want to create aesthetically pleasing landscapes for people that benefit the resident as well as well as benefiting the environment our stance for  rainwater we want to put rainwater to use in the yard eve for energy landscaping we want to plant trees in places that will help shade our houses like on the west side and help reduce our cooling costs we want to have effective resource use so easy for effective resource use we want to minimize water use we want to reduce our use of fertilizers and pesticides in our yard seas are great sources of pollution in our wetlands  those for use of native plants less than one percent of minnesota native prairie remains in the state and two thirds of minnesota is lunch covered with prairie so why not have a beautiful period butterfly garden in your yard and that we're offering up to fifteen thousand dollars depending on the yard and what actually needs to be done in sustainable landscape features soulfully rain garden butterfly garden trees and shrubs perhaps something called a trench drain that would direct water flow across the driveway put away for the refrigerator unlocked or right the winner is chosen based on the series of questions asked in an application form that they filled out they had to submit photos of their yard there was to seven people on the evaluating committee and the o's impartial they were a combination of city staff watershed district staff and commissioners both from the watershed district and from the city environmental natural resource commission parks commission and design a review board and so all those folks got together and we reviewed all the applications with thirty one applications and it was hard because a lot of the there were only one winner only one winner there was there's some really good choices difficult choices lee we are having to make and there was word the process was to select fifteen sites for ten to fifteen sites for a site visit solely went to visit the sites and then select up to five finalists and those five finalists were interviewed we're looking for people who are committed to those green principles the location needs to be a very visible location because we do want to put a big sign in the same winner of the extreme green make over and we want to be able to have people be willing to showcase their yard for people might be interested have questions and be able to put it on our website and it's all about education and getting as many people as possible to to be willing to incorporate at least some of the green principles and the ok the trumpets let's take a look at the announcement of the winner of the extreme green make over really really excited and i'm kind of speechless i'm a little bit was the word i'm just grateful for everything and everyone showing up i didn't expect to see so many council members i'm just i'm just really be able to kind of see the schedule so they can the out that it's on their drive route they can take a look at it as their way to work on their way home or of any any detailed information like that we do have an extreme green website on through the city's website city of nature center brochure i just wanted to say we have even if you don't aren't a winner of the extreme green make over there is opportunities for we know budgets are tight for everybody there are opportunities for everyone  washington metro watershed district has a great cochere program for exactly this kind of thing if you'd like to put a ring garden in your yard or plant some native plants go to their website just google r w m w and click on their car share program and they will match if you put in four hundred dollars there match it were four hundred dollars so it's really i'd rate program for i think up to two or three thousand dollars per yard and then of course the city at the nature center we have naturalists that know lots about native plants lived at brochures and handouts and book line rain garden so come contact the nature center check out our website we've got links to information on a lot of these practices on the website give us a call the nature center is open tuesday through saturday eight thirty to four thirty and the one last thing i wanted to say is our own city of maple it's quite noted for the street projects where they city for many years now it's been installing rain gardens as part of a street reconstruction project so if per chance your neighborhood is up for a new street in the next couple of years you may very well have an opportunity to have a garden installed in your yard in the in the engineers contract that out to the street people to actually grade and put in the rain garden and it's there's no at least at this time there's no extra cost for putting in a rain garden as part of a street reconstruction project so i would really encourage people to take advantage of that opportunity that the city provides a great and thanks so much for being here today one thing you know i really want to thank you and emphasize on is that we have a wonderful staff but augment in this staff are the volunteers that have worked on this extreme green program as well as all the other nature center activities environmental planner for the city of maplewood sean before we get into the really exciting subject organize trash hauling those little bit about yourself and if you're willing thank you jim for having me i started out as an urban planner you know working on developments and making sure they complied with our zoning requirements and so forth but about two years ago the city of maple it like many other cities realize that there is a growing need to have environmental  controls ensure that we're meeting all environmental regulations i started working on some revisions to our environmental ordinances our wetlands ordinance and so forth so i kind of branched off into this area of environmental planning which  now seems to mean i wear about forty different hats jim and i do a lot of a variety of things but one of the most interesting things that's now coming up is is organized trash hauling so i'm looking for look at the difference between open and organized trash collection how does this system work and you know in maple a gym we have an open trash hauling system which basically means that any particular homeowner can go out and purchase any trash hauling service as long as they pay for that service and as long as that services a license in the city in the board in the city i'm able to currently have nine licensed trash haulers so i like to give the analogy of what that means is that any given morning when you're out sitting on your front porch enjoying a cup of coffee you could see as many as nine large trucks you know driving up and down your road picking up the trash i know exactly what you mean i was future but while we're standing there i think i counted at least four different garbage trucks the big ones you know double axle garbage trucks driving over the street i thought to myself you know that can't be good for the street you know that's one of the negative aspects of all those vehicles driving up and down our roads but in an organized trash going system jim a city would try to come up with a system where we can create specific service standards or rate control measures and that could mean a system where you limit either maybe the number of trash dollars you have in your city or the number of days at a trash hauler is allowed to go up and down a street so an organized system can be a variation of a lot of things ok so we could say that there would be perhaps a district or some type of sectors of the city so that one service or one truck would be handling all the trash collection and that portion of the city kind of sounds expensive i mean the minnesota pollution control agency actually conducted a study and they looked at some of that pricing indications as well as environmental  aspects and they found that with organized collection cities really have some more controls over you know the the rate increase and determining maybe the size of containers that you you're allowed to have so you try to reduce the amount of trash you have and then it costs you less so having more control is really has reflected in the studies that there is a decrease in pricing so there could be some in as far as volumes and there are some hollers that currently do that but in an organized system the city you know because we want to promote our environmental sustainability efforts and to reduce reuse recycle our current recycling partner is you rico recycling and that's an organized system where we only have that one recycler who contracts to service all residents in the city in the port currently and our current recycling partner eureka their contract is actually ending the end of two thousand and ten here so we're actually going out for requests for proposals for a new contract which will be awarded in two thousand and eleven and the city will look at both the environmental and economic value of those proposals to our residents and then we're able to choose the best value based on those standards and guidelines and then award that contract and then also jim what we were hoping to accomplish is that if we do look at organized trash hauling if that comes to fruition we'd like to take a look at combining trash hauling and recycling effort on phase so we  we one reducing the wear on the streets to people would have a little bit more convenient putting their trash out the recycling out in this type of thing and again this is an open transparent process this is a request for proposal so it will august of all ready well now that was a favorite part of our segment our crack camera crew that went out and gathered some video and interviews on this very subject so let's take a look and see what they came up accurately and i am with maplewood environmental and natural resources commission i've been a resident for me from maplewood for the last twenty years things that we look at when we design our streets is the number and weight of vehicles that are travelling on them and wherever we can restrict the amount of heavy vehicles on our roadways it's always better off for pavement rehabilitation it's less cost to the residents since our council currently has a policy to assess residents for street reconstruction terms of the fuel that they burn in terms of the exhaust that they met there's the danger of having a trucks running up and down the street where there are all the other kids involved and just the general noise wednesday morning is when we have our pick up and from it o'clock in the morning until practically noon there is there is some kind of a heavy truck driving up and down this street we can reduce the amount of heavy vehicles mainly garbage trucks which is the probably the heaviest vehicle that we see on our honor residential streets on a regular basis and we limit those we increase the life of our roadways no worries whether or not organize collection will work or not look at recycling recycling is organized we've got one recycler that come around they collect the recycling and it works fine everybody's been extremely happy with it if anybody has a problem with they contact the hall or if they don't get satisfaction from the whole of the call the city in the city then has a lot of clout because of the whole or doesn't satisfied the complaint that they run the risk of losing the customer impacts that the multiple haulers have we showed several haulers going up and down the road there but what we've seen this time around is a real grassroots effort at attempting to organize or interest and organizing  we've heard from city residents who notice all those hollers driving up and down the road the impacts on the road a lot of people have road improvements and of course there are assessed a certain amount of money and then they see all these large trucks driving up and down their brand new created roadways and they're concerned about their investment and of course the noise impacts and the emissions that are being emitted from all those vehicles so with that we've had like i said a lot of resident concern which was voiced our environmental commission who chose this as one of their top goals for two years now so they really want to look at this and the city council heard these concerns from our environmental commission and the residents and they actually chose as one of their goals for two thousand and ten was strengthening the city's environmental planning efforts which it is a good thing for me because there's no job security but of course it's a good thing for the environment as well and a priority that's associated with the the review of our environmental efforts is looking at our trash hauling system so really the city council wants to determine what kind of effect the multiple trash dollars are having on the environment on safety and on pricing and then look at the feasibility of organizing that trashing system now this is not going to be a painless process because i've heard that this has been brought up before not only in maplewood but thrown in cities and and beaten back in some areas and other nefarious stories so what is  process to organizing the city's trash hauling system the process is actually dictated by state law so all anyone is pallid in the city in the state has to follow this process and basically it includes  city initially adopting a resolution of intent to organize and all the licensed talers would have to be notified so it's again an open and fair process and then that's followed by this one hundred eighty day planning a negotiation period with all the favorite trash hauler right like one of our council members i see says the right of life liberty and the pursuit of your chosen trash hauler so so the city i'm a port and the county is actually attempt organized trash hauling the city a maplewood and then the county also attempted at same time no during a different attempt but the first one was in one thousand nine hundred six and both of those attempts failed i think mainly due to the complex nature of the organized trash hauling statute you know which requires that cities basically negotiate with all callers on a system and as you can imagine haulers of course they're trying to do business within the city and and it's a competitive process and they want to keep and maintain the business so what had happened in the past was it was mainly a campaign by the haulers i'm  assuming to generate interest from the public to cry foul and you're taking away my right to this process but there is a public process and that is what the statute is designed for so there will be public hearings and that's why we're having this show to highlight the process and the concerns that we have as a city so there's politics even in trash sean i our camera man is giving me the high sign so thanks for being with us we're going to look forward to a lively discussion on this subject and if people are interested they can contact you absolutely we're going to have something on our website we having a newsletter come out in august and they can contact me my phone number is six five one two four nine two three zero four or my e mail sean and finn was at c forward to being back with you next month and have a happy safe summer