21 April minutes

21 April 2011
Quinebaug Valley Greens Local

Attendees: Daphne Stevens, Maureen Doyle, Gus Steeves

Since this was our first meeting, we did not have an agenda.

-We talked about Jill’s recent phone call to us and about registering for Doodle.com

-We talked about the conference’s four goals: 1. Green economy, 2. Single-Payer health care,3. Instant Runoff Voting, and 4. Peace

-We talked about the proposed wind turbines for Charlton, MA , solar projects in Southbridge, and the wind turbine in Worcester (at Holy Name High School) in regard to the Green Economy.
         --how can we support these projects? Cable projects?
         --we talked about attending the upcoming public hearings: on May 4th, the Bay Path Wind Turbine hearing in coming before the Charlton Planning Board

Food Issues: Daphne’s church is donating food to the Worcester Food Bank(canned goods and boxed items) and light bulbs. There was a speaker at her church who spoke about how the Worc. Food Bank works. She’ll find out the name of the person. Can we, as a local, participate? We discussed a meeting that Gus and I attended where Charlene C. talked about the length of food supply we have in this area. Would she be willing to speak out here again? We talked about butchers in the area; what sort of a food supply do they have? Linda F. could speak about how CSAs work and Chris S. could talk about container gardening.

Other potential speakers (about green issues in general):
Linda C. (re-elected to the Board of Health in Sturbridge; she seems very “green” in her positions)
Ted
Kathleen W. (Charlton Selectwoman)
Ian L. (pastor from Brimfield)
Mike S. (knows a lot about composting and gardening)
Scott B.
John G.
Brad K. (head of maintenance at Old Sturbridge Village; he does not use pesticides)
Peter P. (pastor from Southbridge)
Russ

Other ideas:
Approaching local businesses about how they use things, like Styrofoam. Can we change that? Can we educate folks.

Work on individual town clean-ups. Southbridge  has a clean-up, organized by the Future of Southbridge. Do other towns?
Community Gardens (http://acga.localharvest.org/garden/M2138)- getting one started here and a potential speaker

Press release to send to the area papers and cable services Stonebridge Press (Southbridge Evening News, the Villager Papers, Sturbridge, Charlton, Webster Times), Turley Papers ( tkane@turley.com;
Town Common http://www.thetantasquatowncommon.com/, Quabog Current http://quaboagcurrent.com/index1.html), Leicester (web only),

Ecosystem of the Quinebaug Valley:
Spencer
Sturbridge
Southbridge
Webster Dudley
Charlton
Holland
 Wales
Brookfields

Next meeting: May 5th, 2011 at the Joshua Hyde Library in Sturbridge at 11am


GUS: share info received disputing the flicker effect
DAPHNE: research green solar field research and the Norfolk solar field project
MAUREEN: Contact Sandy Q., from Sturbridge. Sturbridge had a presentation about solar hot water recently
EVERYONE: work on creating our own education about these issues
EVERYONE: register on doodle.com (It is easy!! I did it and you can, too! J)
MAUREEN: Contact Charlene C. about speaking about the food supply.
DAPHNE: Find out the name of the person from the Worcester Food bank.
GUS: Do you have contact at the Worc. Food Bank also?
GUS: You offered to write a press release