"Modeling Green", Jobs and Enterprise Opportunities

Posted by Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin on October 1, 2007

This Morning, I met with Jim Blaha, director of the Community Action Center (CAC), Bruce Anderson of Sustainable Community Solutions and Jenny Larson, Community Development Director of the Three Rivers Community Action, Inc. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the specific steps needed in order to bring the concept of “Modeling Green”, to Northfield. In other words, modeling green technologies in as many aspects of community development as possible.

Today’s meeting was focused on housing development, especially the aspect of workforce housing, taking initiative and leadership to contribute to the housing needs of our teachers, police officers, and other sectors of the population that even with the housing slump at its lowest point in a long time, still does not provide housing that is affordable to those who sustain our community.

But our goal is not just to promote building more houses, we are thinking according to our times and the opportunities emerging for the future, this means thinking in terms of ecologically friendly systems, you can learn more about this through the Minnesota Green Communities and through Bruce’s link above.

As the director of the Latino Enterprise Center, the growing Latino population of Northfield and the region are enough of a reason for me to be part of this leadership team. Within the context of enterprise development and creating jobs, training people to be able to deliver and sustain this new “green” technologies is key for the long term success of our enterprise ideas in the pipeline.

As a city, it is important that we showcase these new technologies and improve the ability of citizens to make more informed and sustainable choices when deciding where their next home will come from and who will build it. This is just as important as thinking about where our food, electricity and other supplies for our daily needs come from. Others are already dealing with river clean-up and correcting other environmental damages already committed. Besides the corrective measures, we need to ensure that we avoid the continuation of such damages by adopting already available options. At least for now, home building with the ecology and affordability in mind is our focus, organic gardening, sustainable farming systems and alternative energy sources are other areas moving forward with leadership from other sectors of Northfield.