With the assistance of two groups of graduate students from the University of Illinois Chicago, River Forest officials have started work on creating a climate action plan for the village.
Officials formed a partnership with UIC to have graduate students in the Department of Urban Planning and Policy create two separate climate action plans as a class project. The class was divided into two groups with each group creating a climate action plan specific to River Forest.
After working on the project over the semester, students presented their plans to village officials April 30, then Seth Jansen, management analyst for the village, provided overviews of the plans at the May 13 village board meeting.
Recommendations from students in the first group covered buildings and energy; transportation; resilience; and community engagement. Recommendations from the students in the second group pertained to natural environment; land use and transportation; and resilience and resource management. Jansen explained that each group provided three or four opportunity areas with two to five actions within each area and one to six strategies for each goal or action.
Village President Cathy Adduci said she attended the April 30 presentation, which she called “great” and said she was “quite impressed with our collaboration and partnership with UIC.” She also noted “how important this step is in the village’s ability to reach our stated goals” within the Greenest Region Compact, Chicago Climate Change and the C4 initiatives.
“All of those organizations’ efforts are impactful and have been important for us to take individual action such as composting, solar, bike lanes, EV stations et cetera, but the village is now embarking on putting together a comprehensive climate action plan that will be a living document for our community now and into the future to meet or exceed our stated climate goals.”
In his presentation May 13, Jansen commended both groups for doing “a great job” and noted how many of the recommendations are “very ambitious.”
He noted that the first group offered “a lot of strategies” for transportation and that recommendations from both groups stressed the need to involve the community.
Village Administrator Matt Walsh noted the recommendation of the first group regarding the weatherization of homes, especially older residences.
Topics covered by the second group included the tree canopy, renewable energy and electric vehicles.
In response to Trustee Erika Bachner’s request for an example of a transportation partnership, Walsh cited the North Avenue Streetscape Project the village is undertaking with Elmwood Park.
“It looks very attractive,” Trustee Katie Brennan said. “The challenge will be to implement it.”
Members of the Sustainability Commission were expected to discuss the two groups’ recommendations at their meeting last week and again at their June 11 meeting. Jansen said commission members and staff members will review the recommendations to determine the feasibility of strategies and areas on which to focus resources, adding that input from the village board is “heavily encouraged.”
“We need to give the sustainability commission time,” Trustee Lisa Gillis said.
“We’ve done a lot already, but we can do more,” Adduci added.
Brennan said she hoped the plan, once adopted, would not “wind up on a shelf collecting dust.”
“I want to thank our wonderful staff, especially Seth Jensen, village Trustee Lisa Gillis and our sustainability commission for taking the lead on this effort,” Adduci said. “Partnering with UIC and other organizations to accomplish our climate action plan is a big undertaking and the village board is grateful for their work and energy around this effort.”
Jansen said the matter is expected to come back to the village board at either the June 17 or July 8 meeting.
Kazuya Kawamura, the professor who taught the course, said graduate students in the master’s in urban planning and policy program are tasked with developing a plan for a local community through the course. Each year the plan-making course has a different type of community plan students are tasked with developing. He said students who had registered for the class indicated in November that they had an interest in sustainability or climate projects, leading to this year’s project being a climate action plan. He reached out to officials at the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning who suggested he target west Cook County and “helped spread the word.” Once he publicized the opportunity, River Forest officials responded “almost immediately.”
Kawamura called the partnership a win-win because the students obtain real-world experience and the partner community receives an action plan. He said the class is a core course and described it as “extremely intensive.”
Research included students coming to River Forest in January for a driving tour of the community.