To: Flagstaff City Council

Transforming Flagstaff's City Yard into an Environmental Education Center for Sustainable Practices

This Mother's Day 2014, I would like to propose that we replace our outdated City Yard with an environmental education center for sustainable practices. This location (at the end of Mogollon St.), nestled among so many schools and community gardens and within walking distance of downtown, makes this site a prime location to explore ways to rehabilitate an asphalt-covered land and turn it into a thriving, productive community center. This land could further clean our reclaimed water, harvest rainwater with sculpture gardens, grow crops and raise food that would supply an on-site restaurant, educate children and community members, make jobs, promote tourism, support natural cycles of plant and animal systems, demonstrate sustainable building examples that could house grad students in a small on-site neighborhood, host our already popular farmer's market, art, music, and theater performances...there are limitless possibilities! For our amazing Mother Earth, this could be one of the greatest gifts ever given: a place to teach us all how to live greener, more gentle and beautiful lives; a vibrant, thriving heart for the center of our fair city.

Why is this important?

This is our neighborhood. We are greatly impacted by the constant traffic of heavy equipment. It's noisy, stinky, and often very fast though this family neighborhood. The City Yard facilities are run-down and outdated, and a bond to move the City Yard has already been approved by the voters. We would just like to see it replaced with something amazing rather than high-density tract housing.