AGENDA #1

MEMORANDUM

TO:	Mayor and Town Council
FROM:	Sustainability, Energy and Environment (SEE) Committee  (Council Member Jim Ward, Chair, Mayor pro-tem Bill Strom and Council Member Laurin Easthom)
SUBJECT:	Carolina Environmental Program Carbon Reduction (CRed) Event
DATE:	March 19, 2007

On March 5, 2007, Professor Douglas Crawford-Brown, Director of the Carolina Environmental Program (CEP) at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, attended the Sustainability, Energy and Environment (SEE) Committee and invited the Town to participate in an upcoming Carolina Environmental Program (CEP) event to be held in mid-April at the Carolina Inn. 

The purpose of the event is to formally announce the carbon reduction (CRed) goals of the Town of Chapel Hill and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and to raise public awareness of the goals.  In 2006, the Town and the University each pledged to participate in the CRed program and to reduce carbon emissions by 60% by 2050.  

In addition, the CEP will announce that it will become the University of North Carolina Institute for the Environment, and that the Institute will produce a CRed-USA website.  The website will feature the Town of Chapel Hill’s CRed goal and the efforts currently underway to achieve this goal, as well as future efforts to be determined by the Council. 

We request that the Mayor, or his designee, attend the event at Carolina Inn on behalf of Town Council. 

We also request that the Town Manager and appropriate staff work with Professor Crawford-Brown prior to the event to determine the best manner in which to create an interactive presence for the Town on the new CRed website, to include links to Town web pages dedicated to our CRed goals.