Setback

This week I sent out the Cooperative Community Program one-pagers to the first two schools, and got a rejection from one of them and no response from the other. Even when you think something is a no-brainer, you can never predict fully another's response.

Hopefully, the setback is minor....and I need to move forward as if it is.

A boost

It seems that if there is one constant to my personal journey, it's that I always seem to know what the right thing to do is, and I often do not do it or do it too late. Thankfully, last week, I was not too late. Thanks in part to the foundation laid by attending the meeting on the golf course, and by a brief appearance at the 19th Ward Democratic Organization event on Thursday, I had an opportunity to sit down with Alderman Matt O'Shea last Friday. It did not hurt that Matt and I grew up together (his brother Mike and I were the same age with Matt a year older), and that we have relatively regularly run into each other over the years.

Matt was very receptive to the Cooperative Community Program that I showed him and we discussed. He quickly asked what three things we could do as a ward, which I thankfully had at my ready:

1. Reduce energy that we use....every dollar we save in energy use is a dollar we can spend in the neighborhood. Resources spent on energy use leave the neighborhood, whereas resources spent on energy efficiency stay.

2. Stormwater. The city now has an ordinance for new development, but we need an approach to create the same value in existing development. This not only improves the lives of our residents by reducing sewer backups, but it drastically improves the lives of people downstream of us.

3. Target 75% recycling rate in solid waste. Matt mentioned another shredder/electronics event he was hosting at SJF on Saturday, and gets the value of getting more things out of the landfill stream and back into our lives.

We discussed the general approach, and my plans to start meetings with schools this month. He said he supports the program, would write a letter of support for any grants, and is okay with me mentioning his support with others.

Good guy. Good day.

The first grant and the image becomes clearer

Last week I put together my first official grant application (for the DCEO BITE program). Years from now, I might look back on that application and cringe, but for now, it served its purpose. It made me try to formulate this nebulous "idea" into a written form. Although I am not sure I adequately expressed the idea to the grant reviewers, I now think I have a better sense of it, and hopefully over the next week, I can make it a little easier for myself to understand.

Yesterday, I had the luck to sit down for about 1/2 an hour with Val Jensen at ComEd who used to oversee their energy efficiency and environmental work. He now sits in my mom's old job as the VP of Customer Operations. It was a treat to meet with someone who gets what I am trying to accomplish, but was not in a position to either fund it or be threatened by it. He gave me some great information that I think will make a great deal of difference.

1. The city is trying to work out how to make some things work, and might be looking at a test ward. This plays well into my thought about what we can do in the 19th.
2. Tim Melloch is still in charge of energy efficiency, so I should meet with him to see if anything I can do will help them.
3. Peoples is still the larger player in the residential arena. I knew I was going to have to meet with them, but this put a bigger bow on it.
4. Acquisition costs are going to be tight for ComEd and Peoples as their commitments grow, but their funding shrinks relative to the state law. There might be an opportunity if I can come up with a workable way to create a ready acquisition infrastructure.

Next step: meet with the Alderman. Hopefully on Friday of this week.

ETJ