"Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself."Thus spoke Chief Seattle in 1854. Pete Karlin used this quote to set the tone for his presentation to the Beloit City Council at their work session Tuesday night, Feb. 19, 2008. Pete had been invited to share his proposed changes to Beloit's weed control law, Ordinance 1836. He began by sharing his personal philosophy on how to be guided in scientific discoveries by nature itself; see his quote above on the right.
Here is the first seven minute segment of this council agenda item. Watch by clicking on the little black arrow under the screen. If there's no audio, slide the volume control to the right:
How does Ordinance 1836, adopted in 1997, currently read? Below is a link to the text of the code, with four hightlighting colors and strikethroughs indicating issues calling for change. These four colors, blue, yellow, red and green symbolize four over-arching reasons to amend the ordinance, which are explained in the second document in the list below. You can also read in the document titled "WHAT TO PUT IN" the draft of a revised version of Ordinance 1836 that would allow for the progressive practices of natural landscaping in Beloit. Finally, a Table of Contents from a comprehensive legal review of issues pertinent to weed laws is shown from a Chicago-based publication, a journal that appears in the top 12% of legal magazine citings in our nation. If you cannot open any of these files, please download Adobe Reader here:
The documents listed above made up the bulk of the study materials presented to the Beloit City Council by Pete. Once the packets were introduced, the assembled group watched an 11-minute video from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency site, "Landscaping Naturally". You can watch the video right from this blog in the article dated Feb. 16, 2008, below, or click on http://westcourtnews.blogspot.com/2008/02/11-min-video-from-epa-website.html to go there now. You may read or print out the transcript to this video by clicking here.
Here's the final 2-minute clip of Pete's presentation to the City Council:
The next day, Wednesday, February 20, 2008, The Beloit Call printed this report on their front page. Click on the article to enlarge it.
Thank you!
(blog article submitted by Laura Karlin)
