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Charlestown Township |
Due to Covid-19 pandemic shelter-in-place orders, the meeting was held remotely via Cisco WebEx.
Pete Goodman (chair) opened the meeting at 6:26 pm (delay due to technical difficulties).
Approval of June Minutes were delayed due to last minute edits and will be presented for approval at the next meeting.
Charlestown Day
Event is officially canceled. We will need to explore small group events such as clean-up projects or harvesting of milkweed seeds if timing works out.
Guest presentation by Mark Connolly
Presented the Phoenixville Area Energy Transition Plan, an initiative to develop a community wide Energy Transition Plan involving local townships and municipalities. The transition plan he is proposing is to all clean energy for a township consortium.
EAC will follow-up with BoS to discuss proposal.
Green Business Award
This has become an unrewarding endeavor given the amount of effort put forth with little response and little progress being made. We considered expanding the award to include residents in addition to businesses but this seems to make the program more complicated. We decided to put this project on hold for next 2 months.
Brightside Farm Park
We are scheduled for another planting which will involve the removal of invasives. We hope to attach identification tags to the future trees and bushes as they are planted. Goodman made a motion to have EAC cover cost of tags/labels that Armstrong had purchased. Solomon seconded the motion and all agreed.
Community education series
We need to check in with Findlay about his communications with Lori Hayes (Director of Urban Forestry Philadelphia Parks and Recreation) for an update on how to re-envision her planned lecture presentation – “Trees as your friend”. Armstrong offered to be contact person with Lori Hayes since Findlay may be backed up with his move.
Riparian Buffers: township and state compliance
Goodman stated that he thought that the best way to approach the matter of a riparian buffer ordinance would be to include it as an overlay district in zoning. He had found a particularly good version that he was editing and said he would pass on to the EAC before the next meeting.
Online Presence
Solomon drafted a wonderful newsletter that we had all reviewed prior to meeting, Some recommended changes were discussed. We will distribute quarterly alternating with township newsletter.
Newsletter Articles
Deadline is next week. We have an article about pollinators and anonymous donations.
DCNR Pollinator Program
As we discussed previously, we do not have enough seeds to harvest to send to DCNR program. Planting may also not be feasible. We could still plan on making an event around harvesting milkweed seeds and plant them ourselves– though this may not correlate with Charlestown Day timing.
New tree Plantings on township owned properties project still on hold. Goodman has mapped properties onto the township map. He notes that there are parcels that are not included on preserves. Raises some questions on how parcels have been distributed. Not all are parks, some are historical. It was suggested we inventory open land.
New Turnpike building may have some issues related to water and light pollution. This will come before the planning commission in the July meeting.
Next scheduled meeting on Wednesday, August 12th via Cisco Webex.
Meeting was adjourned at 8 pm.