Note: The raw transcript incorrectly dates the meeting as Monday, May 13, 2026; however, the agenda, minutes, and assigned date confirm it occurred on Monday, April 13, 2026. The summary below follows the official date.
The Climate Action Plan Steering Committee met on April 13, 2026, at 4:02 PM in the Eagle Room at City Hall. Chair Mackenzie Mindel called the meeting to order. All six present members (Dorothy Lenard, Casey Meehan, Mackenzie Mindel, Natalie Heneghan, Stephanie Hanna, Lauren Fortin) were present; Andrew Ericson was excused. The meeting was adjourned at 5:22 PM. Major items included approval of funding for bicycle/pedestrian counters, a performance contract update, a Youth Climate Action Fund impact presentation, and decisions on pursuing a new grant and communications plan.
Request for Funding of Portable Bicycle & Pedestrian Counters (Item 26‑0207):
Energy Saving Performance Contract Phase 3, Year 2 Measurement & Verification Report (Item 26‑0335):
Youth Climate Action Fund La Crosse’s Impact Presentation (Item 26‑0376):
Grant Services Update and Request to Pursue Energy Innovation Grant Program (Item 26‑0411):
Climate Action Communication Plan Update (Item 26‑0412):
Meeting minutes and recording are available from the City Clerk's office.
Good evening, everyone. It is Monday, May 13th at 4 02 p.m. I'll call to order this meeting of the Climate Action Plan Steering Committee. We have all members of the committee present, either online or in person, except for Andrew Erickson, who is excused. First up, we have the approval of the minutes. I'll need a motion on the minutes unless you have questions. I make a motion to approve. Motion to approve the minutes by Casey Meehan. Second by just do a hand raise for that second. Oh second. Second by Steph Hannah. Any discussion. All right. All those in favor of the minutes, please uh signify by saying aye or thumbs up. Aye. And that passes unanimously. All right, let's move right into our agenda. We have 26-020. Oh, sorry. Do you want to do notices and discussions? Okay. Thank you. My apologies. I usually include notices and discussion on the agenda, but I omitted it this month. However, we have a very important notice about our um zoning code update. And I wanted to let Leslie uh give that um for the committee members. I emailed you earlier this afternoon with the draft uh memo on the zoning code along with an appendix of uh references. And uh before you all dig into that, I just wanted to let Leslie give an overview. Awesome. Thank you, Lewis. And welcome, Leslie. I will shamelessly say that I by surprise got to spend a few days with Leslie in Cleveland the other weekend at the Midwest Climate Collaborative. So it was so fun to see Leslie in person. It's good to see you again. Welcome back. Thanks. Um we're we I didn't hear everything. Sure. So if you want to, I believe you have the functionality to share your screen if you have something to share. I just have some I just have some notes and so I'm just gonna uh talk talk at you. Um you all you all should have received a draft of our memo that summarizes our model ordinance review. Um we um reviewed um over 40 different ordinances um across Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa. And in the in the memo, we've provided recommendations on which of those ordinances we feel would be um the best models for um implementation with the city of lacrosse to align with your climate action plan goals. Um we also um completed eight um different um interviews with um some of our top um candidate um model ordinance cities and so um we summarized information from those interviews in the memo um the memo includes uh an appendix that um includes the questionnaire that we used we also have included an Excel file that has all of the ordinances that we reviewed um that are um broken down by section um we will be providing even more detail like than that in our final draft um but just giving you a flavor of what we have so far so um if you would like to provide any comments or recommendations for um changes we ask that you complete those recommendations by um April 27th which is um two weeks from today you can send those comments to Lewis and he will get those to me um and then our plan is to present the final recommendations um in meet up with you in person um at the next committee meeting in May any questions fantastic thank you leslie are there any questions or Lewis you feel free to ask questions or add anything to um one thing I wanted to add is that um Bolton and Mink were working on um EV ready ordinances in the vein of our of the charging smart program which was uh briefly defunded but now it has its funding back so um we'll be getting technical assistance I believe from the Great Plains Institute on um One thing I wanted to add is that Bolton and Mink were working on EV ready ordinances in the vein of our charging smart program, which was uh briefly defunded, but now it has its funding back. So we'll be getting technical assistance, I believe, from the Great Plains Institute on fulfilling the rest of the actions and points for that designation. So that'll build on the work we're doing here. Great. Thanks, Lewis. Anyone else?