Holiday Party with Wacky Auction - Thursday, Dec. 1 at Depot Park in Gainesville
Photo Credit: Karen Garren
Hello Sarah,
Join us on Thursday, December 1 from 6:30 - 8:30 PM at Depot Park Pavilion located at 874 SE 4th St. in Gainesville for a fun evening with good food, music and a Wacky Auction.
What is a Wacky Auction you ask? It's where everyone brings gently used items that they want to part with, and our Wacky Auctioneer will auction them off for our FUNdraiser!
What a great way to repurpose items while raising funds for a good cause because one person's trash is another person's treasure!
We will be serving grilled chicken as the main dish. It's a potluck so there is sure to be plenty of home cooked delights! Bring your festive favorite to share.
Donation: $5 - $20, sliding scale donation (all are welcome)
Please bring:
Gently used household items (Wacky Auction)
Food to share (Potluck)
Your own plate & utensils (Zero Waste)
Each year members of the Sierra Club Suwannee-St. Johns (SSJ) Group have the opportunity to vote for members of the Executive Committee (ExCom). This year, there are three candidates for three positions.
The electronic voting is now open. The deadline for voting is 5:00 PM EST on Friday, December 18th.
If you are a Sierra Club member then your member number should be listed here: 40230520
If you are a Sierra Club member and your membership number is not listed above, it can be found by accessing Sierra Club MyAccount or by contacting Member Care at member.care@sierraclub.org or (415) 557-1100 or by emailing to ronaldhaines@aol.com. Your membership number is required so your ballot can be verified by the Elections Committee.
If you hold a joint membership, each individual under the joint membership should submit their own ballot using the same membership number. Visit the ballot, vote, then instruct the other member to click on the link and cast the second vote.
Please, vote only once as duplicate ballots will not be counted.
Don’t delay, vote today!
Energize Alachua!
An Energy Justice and Savings Fair
It was months in the making and well worth the effort. Our premier event, Energize Alachua! was attended by 79 participants.
They all went away with more than just information on how to save money on their energy bills. Several lucky attendees won $200 credit towards their electric bill!
After the land and labor acknowledgement, introduction and a visual description of the meaning of inclusion, equity and justice by our Vice Chair, Dr. Michelle Rutledge. Terri Baily led an exercise to describe our vision for a future where we have Energy without Injustice and Power without Pollution.
Karen Soares from HBCU Clean Energy Initiative shared with us what is a Just Transition and how the Inflation Reduction Act can assist in addressing the energy injustice.
Later, Karen joined Barry Jacobson of Solar Impact and Kevin Bennett, Associate Professor at Santa Fe College, in the panel discussion on careers in renewable energy and energy efficiency.
There were demonstrations and energy savings tips from Community Weatherization Coalition. While outdoors Tesla gave test drives in their model sedan and there were several other manufacturer's electric vehicles on display.
Representative Yvonne Hayes Hinson brought it home on how important our voices are to bring this message to our state legislature as they return to Tallahassee this session.
Here are some photos taken by photographer, T. Mushell, that highlight the event.
Karen Soares of HBCU Clean Energy Initiative
Introductions made through shared connection
Weatherization tips demonstration
Participation remained high throughout the day
A special thanks to our event organizer and Sierra Club Chapter staff member, Jyoti Parmar, and our creative partner Terri Bailey of Bailey Learning and Arts Collective for all the hard work that went into making this event such a success!
By Maryvonne Devensky
Plan to join us on Saturday January 14 to hike on the Orange Lake Outlook, located on 441, on the way to Ocala.
Heather Obara will lead us on the property owned by Alachua Conservation Trust. She will give us information on the ecosystem of the property, as well as some background information on why ACT bought the property and what are their plan there.
Time to meet: 10:00 am. Plan to spend 2 hours on the hike.
FYI: There is some slight elevation on the terrain, so plan accordingly. Wear a hat, and good shoes. Bring walking sticks if you want, and bring water.
Sign up here where you will also be required to sign the waiver form.
ALACHUA COUNTY'S COMPREHENSIVE PLAN
By Maryvonne Devensky
That was the topic of discussion at our last general meeting, and if you missed it, here is a short summary – an overview of the introduction.
The whole document is very long and could put you to sleep if you had insomnia…
Background History:
Our Alachua Comprehensive Plan (Comp Plan in short) is a legal document written by planners, lawyers, and people in the community. Some Sierra Club members participated in the 1990’s to write the Conservation portion of the Plan. The goal of the Comp Plan is to create guidelines on how the County will grow from 2000 until 2040.
Initially, the Comp Plan had very strong language to protect land: a developer had to set aside 80% of the land for Conservation. The County would hire an independent contractor (i.e. a biologist, a geologist) to evaluate the land in a project, to know what parts needed protection. That evaluation is called “ground truthing”. The funding was cut between 2002-2006 as the study is very expensive.
Now the County allows the developers to hire these experts, in a process that often results in a ground truthing evaluation in favor of the developer.
We need to ask that Alachua County hires the independent contractors again and then be reimbursed by the developers.
The weakening of our Comp Plan occurred between 2002 and 2004, when two pro-development County Commissioners adopted compromises requiring only about 50% of the land has to be preserved for Conservation.
In general, there is a good protection of wetlands, but the uplands (areas that are dry and easy to develop) do not have so much protection.
All in all, our Comp Plan is one of the best in Florida and in the Southeast.
"The Plan promotes more mobility options and responds to changing demographics and emerging markets by linking long-range multimodal transportations plans with standards and incentives for higher density, mixed use development along planned transit corridors within the existing urban area.
This approach provides for non residential employment-based land uses proximate to residential areas, reduces trip lengths, and can also reduce the transportation component of housing costs.
Residence closer to employment helps reduce percent of income spent on housing and transportation."
The Comp Plan also explores Future Land Use Element which "focuses on urban development within a defined urban growth boundary (Urban Clusters) to maximize efficient use of land, separate urban and rural areas, and protect agricultural areas and natural resources.
The Plan promotes the continued concentration of growth in the Urban Cluster by providing incentives for new development located within urban residential land use categories to be designed as Traditional Neighborhood Development (TND) or Transit Oriented Development (TOD) with higher transit-supportive densities and mixed uses. Cottage Neighborhoods, groups of smaller homes built around a common green space, offer opportunities for creative, diverse and high-quality infill development within the Urban Cluster, and more efficient use of land through density bonuses.
Policies promote urban agricultural uses such as residential chicken keeping, community gardens and edible landscapes, as part of the effort to reduce community greenhouse gas emissions by shortening distances to bring food to local markets. The Plan protects the diverse range of natural resources and agricultural and silvicultural lands with policies promoting agritourism and ecotourism as well as policies promoting more sustainable practices including reduced use of synthetic fertilizers. Policies protect air and water quality, species diversity, and identify six primary conservation areas and methods for protection, including wetlands, surface waters, 100-year floodplains, listed species habitat, significant geological features and strategic ecosystems."
FYI: The term “strategic ecosystem” could be replaced by “Florida heritage land” or “Florida Upland Areas”. Our Comp Plan has a list of 47 “strategic ecosystems” which are the most significant ecosystems in Florida.
For further information, please read the following parts of our Comp Plan which also states the various principles of the Future Land Use.
You will understand that our Comp Plan is the best tool we have as Sierra Club members to demand that our City and County Commissions both respect our Comp Plan in their future projects.
By David Hastings
The 2022 election season is (almost) over. While most pro-environment candidates in the Sunshine State did not fare well in the midterms, nationally we had strong wins for the environmental community.
The Republican wave that was predicted fizzled out nationally; in many states, climate champions scored victories that were not predicted.
The Suwannee St. Johns (SSJ) Sierra Club Group re-formed our Political Committee for the 2022 election cycle. We had a strong group with 11 members participating. For most of us, it was the first time we had participated in the endorsement process.
To ensure that Sierra Club endorses the best environmental candidates, we have developed a rigorous, volunteer-driven, selection process. The SSJ Political Committee wrote and distributed extensive questionnaires to each candidate with questions on climate, clean energy, racial equity, social justice, solid waste, growth management, mass transit, and governance. Their responses were carefully evaluated; each candidate that returned the questionnaire was interviewed. We interviewed 22 candidates running for office in Gainesville, Alachua County and Bradford County. Recommended endorsements were then approved by two committees at the local and the state level.
Of the nine local and county endorsements our group made for the August primary, six of them either won or moved on to the general election. This included three Alachua County School Board members, the first time our group included School Board races.
In the general election, four of five local candidates we endorsed won in their respective elections. Two important referenda were up for election including the popular Wild Spaces Public Places program which passed by a relatively narrow margin of 52-48 percent.
We are delighted that our endorsement process was generally successful. But our work has just begun! Indeed, the most important challenge now is to work with our elected officials to make sure they keep their promises. We are already beginning to meet with city and county commissioners on important land development proposals which would greatly impact our communities. Let us know if you are interested in this work.
The Suwannee St. Johns Group is the largest group in Florida, including 14 counties. We would like to extend our electoral work to other communities outside Alachua County. If you live in other counties and want to start your own local Political Committee, please contact us at ssjsierra@gmail.com. We look forward to extending our work to other counties.
You can now direct donations through Cash App to support the Sierra Club Suwannee-St. Johns Group by using our CashTag$:
$SSJSierra
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