Annapolis Green Introduces
"Keep Annapolis Beautiful"
Last week, just before Green Drinks began at Baroak at the Loews Annapolis Hotel, we held a ceremony to announce our affiliation with Keep America Beautiful, marking a big move forward for our organization.
While our name is still Annapolis Green, you'll see a new logo strengthening the work we do in...
- Waste reduction and recycling,
- Litter prevention, and
- Beautification
... will be under the Keep Annapolis Beautiful brand. Teaming up with Keep America Beautiful (KAB) opens up great opportunities for Annapolis and Anne Arundel County.
For example:
Cigarette Litter Prevention Program -- This summer you'll see us launch a program to keep cigarette butts off our streets and out of our rivers with the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay, funded by a KAB Grant. We're calling it "Scuttlebutt." We'll have more details on this soon.
GameDay Recycling Challenge -- A goal of ours for the fall is to participate in the KAB GameDay Recycling Challenge program at the Navy Marine Corps Memorial Stadium during Navy Football games. The GameDay Recycling Challenge is a friendly competition for colleges and universities to promote waste reduction at their football games.
Keep Annapolis Beautiful is only the second KAB affiliate in the state. The other is Keep Prince George's County Beautiful, which is a government entity, part of that county's Waste Management Division in the Department of the Environment.
Together we can make our community more beautiful and reduce the amount of litter on our streets - it ends up in the water and becomes an ugly public health hazard and threatens the health of our beloved rivers and Bay. Keep Annapolis Beautiful will lead the way.
We have big plans moving forward. But first, some richly deserved thank yous.
First, a big thank you to our KAB Trainer, John Deuel. In addition to being a wonderful person, he was the best meeting facilitator and trainer would have ever had. The affiliation process could not have been completed without the help of two hard-working volunteers:
Linda Barfield, who planned and helped us execute the litter survey. Linda worked with KAB in Puerto Rico and we were so fortunate that she gave of her time and expertise to help us get this big job done.We took an entire day to look at 50 areas, each ½-mile long, from Severna Park to Edgewater and assessed how littered they are. Bottom line: Overall it's not bad, but there are areas that are awful - and not where you might think! More about that later.
The other volunteer we owe a big thank you to is Leslie Redwine. She designed and disseminated a community appearance survey to examine how our community sees itself and helped us assemble our 44-page affiliation report. It was a difficult job and we greatly appreciate her time, brainpower and persistence.
Now that we have the affiliation behind us we are moving full steam ahead with filing for non-profit status as Annapolis Green. Our founding board consists of these generous, wise, and thoughtful individuals who gave us an afternoon of their time to plan, discuss, and guide the future of Annapolis Green:
- Jim Ferguson, Old Line Bank
- Lynne Forsman, Annapolis Green
- Robert Gallagher, Maryland League of Conservation Voters & Former West/Rhode Riverkeeper
- Kevin Green, South River Federation
- Doug Lashley, GreenVest
- Rick Leader, Scenic Rivers Land Trust
- Melanie Teems, Various non-profit boards
- Al Todd, Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay
In addition, this group of esteemed advisors joined us during the Board planning session:
- Carol Benson, Four Rivers Heritage & Conference & Visitors Bureau
- Anthony Clarke, Irish Restaurant Company
- Julie Crudele, Friends of Quiet Waters
- Alice Estrada, Annapolis Maritime Museum
- Jackie Guild, Chesapeake Legal Alliance
- Ariane Hofstedt, Historic Annapolis Foundation
- David Jarrell, City of Annapolis Public Works
We thank them for their time and wisdom!
And if you are wondering, Elvia Thompson will be our Executive Director. Lynne Forsman's not going away either. She will continue as co-founder and serve on the board too.
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Alderman Jared Littmann and Mayor Mike Pantelides present Lynne & Elvia with citations at June 22, 2015, council meeting.
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At our affiliation ceremony, four Annapolis City Alderpersons and a representative from the County Executive presented us with citations for our work over the past 10 years and for what we will do for the community with Keep Annapolis Beautiful. In addition, the City presented Elvia and Lynne with citations at the last city council meeting a week ago.
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Aldermen Ross Arnett, Joe Budge, and Jared Littmann with Alderwoman Sheila Finlayson, Elvia Thompson and Lynne Forsman
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Anne Arundel County Constituent Services Officer Victor Henderson with Lynne Forsman and Elvia Thompson
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Once again we were spoiled by
Loews Annapolis Hotel and
Baroak Cookhouse and Taproom! Thanks to General Manager
Barbara McMahon and her amazing staff, we spent our entire day of training, ceremony and Green Drinks in their capable, accommodating hands despite the heat and severe thunderstorms. (A special thank you to
Randee Steiner.) We are officially dubbing the Loews as our KAB partner hotel... the whole process began in the very same board room a year ago. It was only appropriate we celebrated our success with them as well. Thank you, Loews Annapolis Hotel!
And our greeters! It is almost impossible for us to hold a Green Drinks event without help from folks who set up and break down, greet our Green Drinkers, answer questions, and make everything flow so smoothly. A big thank you to Astrid Caldes, Rita Calvert, Leslie Trott Givens-Neff, Karin Hannah Stern, and Sandy Williamson. And to the guys who did (literally) some heavy lifting for us, Kevin Green and Anthony Clarke, thank you!
Quite a few of us stayed for dinner and it was terrific. If you haven't eaten at Baroak, stop in for some delicious surprises and a huge beer selection.
And finally, we'd like to thank representatives of the MainStreets Annapolis Partnership and the Historic Annapolis Foundation for being with us after a long day marking the 50th anniversary of the designation of Colonial Annapolis as a Historic Landmark. Doug Smith and Lisa Craig of MainStreets spoke about our Green Drinks theme, "Green Roots: Weaving the Past with the Present for a Sustainable Community," emphasizing how our affiliation with Keep America Beautiful works well as a public-private partnership, tying the past with the present. Donna Ware of Historic Annapolis echoed that sentiment.
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Lisa Craig, head of city's historic preservation office and MainStreets Annapolis; Donna Ware, Vice President of Historic Annapolis, Doug Smith of MainStreets Annapolis; Robert Clark, President & CEO of Historic Annapolis; and Alderman Joe Budge of Ward 1
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NEXT GREEN DRINKS COMING UP QUICKLY!
Our next Green Drinks will be held on Tuesday, July 14, in the Design District, just off Chinquapin Round Road. Our theme is "It Takes a Village: Arts, Oysters & Tea." Our hosts are Gallery 3976, Oyster Recovery Partnership, and Capital Teas. More info to come... save the date!
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