July EDA Meeting
I have been a member of the City of Falls Church Economic Development Authority since earlier this year and I keep meaning to post recaps of our monthly meetings. In an effort to actually do that I’m going to keep them kind of short.
This month our chairman, David Tarter, once again pulled together and interesting panel. The topic was “Developing Green: How Arlington and Communities around the Nation are Successful in Supporting and Promoting Green Buildings and Homes” and the presentations were very interesting. There were three panelist and this first up was Jeremy Cohen from the U.S. Green Building Council (the folks who define what LEED is). Jeremy gave us some background on LEED and how it’s been growing over the years. Later, in the Q&A section, he also gave us some insight on how they plan to evolve LEED specifications over the years.
Next we heard from Joan Kelsch who is the Arlington County environmental planner. She talked about how Arlington has been successful using various techniques to encourage green development in Arlington. A particularly effective technique that they’ve used is allowing builders extra density (i.e. a bigger building) in exchange for various levels of LEED certification.
We wrapped up with Patty Shields who is the principal of Metro Green, a residential development firm that focuses solely on green residential projects. She also happens to be City Manager Wyatt Sheilds’ wife! She mostly talked about the house they recently build in Arlington which meets the highest standards of LEED and incorporates an amazing number of green building techniques. It was really interesting to hear how the house was built and the technologies and techniques used to make it environmentally friendly.
A handful of people turned out for the presentation - but we had a much better turnout for last month’s presentation on a similar topic. Dave does a great job pulling together these events and it would be great if we could get more folks coming out to participate.
After the forum wrapped up we covered standard EDA business (which is also open to the public). We’re doing a joint work session with the Planning Commission on July 20th and decided to cancel our August 4th EDA meeting. The session with the PC should be interesting. We want to see how the EDA can be more plugged into planning to help promote economic development.
Finally, we had a lively discussion about the unsolicited proposal to the DOE that was approved at the last City Council meeting. This was covered in the Falls Church Times as well as the Falls Church News-Press and Nick Benton wrote an editorial about it. I won’t get into the details of the EDA’s discussion of the topic (you’ll have to come to one of our meetings and hear it for yourself) - but we’re a bit divided on the issue. Most people tend to support the basic idea - using stimulus money to develop green technologies in the City - but a lot people also feel like the proposal was rushed and hasn’t had enough scrutiny.
My personal opinion (not universally shared on the EDA) is that we should pursue the grant and in the off chance it is awarded we should be very careful with how the money is used. We don’t want to establish programs that are unsustainable after the stimulus money runs out.
And that’s my recap. Feel free to join us for the joint work session with the Planning Commission in a couple of weeks. Otherwise, our next scheduled EDA meeting is September 1st at 6:30pm in City Hall.
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