Mayor Tommy Battle's Green 13 Council for a Sustainable Community continues to make progress.
This week the team held its second formal meeting. During this meeting it was announced that the Green 13 will be launching a web-site this Friday 26 June 2009. The web-site is a part of the planned Socialization process according to Chief Communication's Strategist Paulakay Lane of Falcon List, Inc. The web url is WWW.HSVCITY.COM/Green There you will find pictures of the Green 13 Council Members, a calendar of events and other useful information.

This week's Green 13 Council Team Meeting, in addition to providing sub-team status inputs also included a Visionary Planning Session said Green 13 Chair Rodney Pennywell. The Visionary Planning Session was designed to help the team with its developing structure and establish its common vision, mission, and goals. This session was facilitated by Dr. Joe Sparks of Management Resource Group, LLC and included Rosalie Allen of Booz Allen Hamilton, and Jeff Thompson of University of Huntsville - Alabama as support facilitators.

The Green 13 Council meeting was held at the Shelby Center on the campus of UAH and was attended by Dr. Dave Williams, President of UAH, Mayor Tommy Battle, and others. Mayor Battle expressed his pleasure with the progress the Green 13 Council has made thus far and was delighted to hear that it has grown to 20 persons with the addition of a Transportation Sub-Team, a Communications Strategy Team and Report Card Development Team. The seven new members are: Paulakay Lane of Falcon List, Inc; Victoria Bell a student at Eckerd College, Anthony Daniels a Graduate Student at Alabama A&M; Scott Beck of Turner Universal Construction, Dan Cutshall of Westar, Lori Severin of 4Site, Inc; and Robin Cox of Cox & Associates.

The Green 13 Council has divided into six sub-teams which are: Energy, Natural Environment, Built Environment, Education, Transportation, and Report Card Development. In their first two meetings, the Green 13 Team has strategized their report development approach which includes five phases:

Definition, Data Gathering, Socialization, Integration, and Synchronization.

Key amongst these phases is the Socialization phase which aims to share with the public, the progress that is being made by the Green 13 Council. Key activities during the socialization phase are three Mayoral Updates. During these updates, the Sub-Team Leads will brief Mayor Battle along with a panel of Chair Advisors on their findings gathered thus far, sources of data they have drawn from, as well as their road ahead and challenges they see facing them. The roles of the Chair Advisor is to provide specific feedback to the Green 13 Council Chair on prudent actions to ensure that tentative recommendations are relevant, achievable, and actionable.

The Chair Advisors: Irma Tuder - President of Huntsville Chamber of Commerce, Tom Hancock Principle with Booz | Allen | Hamilton; Jeremiah Knight Director of Verizon Wireless Call Center; and MG (USA Ret) John Holly Director of Lockheed Martin Company. The first Mayoral Update is planned for July 22, 2009, location TBD.