Environmental Advisory Council Meeting Minutes - September 9, 2025

Environmental Advisory Council Meeting Minutes
September 9, 2025 @ 7pm
 
This meeting was held as a hybrid meeting – both via Zoom and in person at the Township building.

• Call to Order: Meeting was called to order at 7:00 pm
• Attendees: Anne Kadar-Duzan, Mike Irwin, JoEllen McBride, Lindsey Beacher, Debra Town, and Leslie Edwards
• Staff Present: Abbey Swan
• Guests Present: None
• Public Comment: None
• Minutes Approved – August 12, 2025 (Motioned by JoEllen McBride, seconded by Mike Irwin) Approved unanimously
• Old business:
  • Outreach to Boards and Commissions – the EAC has been working on ongoing outreach to other township boards and commissions:
    • Golf Committee: Nothing yet, waiting for off-season
    • Zoning Update Taskforce: Abbey spoke to Don on this and he suggested we start by reviewing the draft zoning update before anyone attends a meeting.
    • Planning Commission: Anne attended the most recent Planning Commission agenda. She reported that the meeting agenda included the Main Line Health project. She introduced that commission to the EAC briefly and contributed to a stormwater discussion. Mike (a PC member) mentioned that PC chair Adam Thomas has discussed getting EAC input on upcoming plans, though turnaround time needs to be figured out. Mike offered to report back to the EAC on upcoming projects that come before the PC.
    • Historical Commission: Lindsey reported that she’s attended some HC meetings and spoke in-depth with Commissioner Evans about conducting a forest inventory of the Kings Highway Park site for her thesis. She also may explore potential trail connections between Kings Highway Park and Bondsville Mill park in East Brandywine Township. Currently, she’s working on a base map for her data collection. Mike also attended a meeting and had a good discussion on adaptive reuse and working together to create a significant tree inventory.
    • Municipal Authority: Abbey attended the last MA meeting, but since they’re only in charge of the sewer system, there isn’t a lot in the report that impacts them. The Authority board was very enthusiastic about the report and asked good questions. Abbey explained the I&I program and a bit about how the sewer system works. Water conservation is one area that we can coordinate on.
    • Parks and Rec: Didn’t have a September meeting.
  • Newsletter Pieces – Anne submitted an article for last month’s newsletter on getting started with native plants. She also started a potential topic calendar in the shared drive and drafted some additional content. The newsletter generally goes out the middle of the month. JoEllen offered to edit the drafts. Everyone is welcome to contribute content (and it can be very short!). Debbie suggested a column on “hard to recycle items,” starting with medical waste. Anne suggested inviting expert guest contributors as well. Abbey mentioned that some of these topics would make good video content as well.
  • Community Day Table Recap – Anne, JoEllen, and Lindsey all attended. They gave away water reduction kits and coloring books. A few people did engage with the report QR code. There was a discussion on coming up with more short-form displays for events. JoEllen mentioned that we should add QR codes for the website to anything we hand out at events. We also need to find some eco-friendly candy for next year.
• New Business

Action Items:
            Ordinance Review: Zoning Task Force Draft – Abbey sent out the draft for the group to review. Anne plans to focus her review on the landscaping section and the group discussed including soil types/plant communities. Abbey saved a shared copy in the EAC folder and started highlighting relevant sections, and she will add a copy of the list that’s already been started to the folder. Mike suggested adding the sustainability report recommendations to format our comments on the zoning update. Lindsey mentioned a resource on zoning updates from WeConservePA that she’ll add to the shared drive. Abbey will work on a spreadsheet for this. We should have some of this done by our next meeting.

• Adjournment