I am blogging live from the quarterly High Point Neighborhood Association meeting. The theme is “Doing MORE with LESS Impact on the Environment”.

We are using the meeting room at Elizabeth House, and can not WAIT for the High Point Neighborhood Center construction to be complete. I will post a picture soon of how the construction site is looking – it is finally going vertical. Ray Li, the Director of Strategic Initiatives for Neighborhood House,, just gave an update to how the project is going and the opening is planned for October. The handout that was passed out is very exciting, and I will try to find an online version to link to or upload a PDF. A rain garden, solar panels, and the use of pervious and light-colored (reflective) natural materials to reduce runoff and the “heat-sink” affect of concrete (respectively) will all be implemented at this site.

The building will be the first LEED(TM) Gold-certified building constructed by a nonprofit agency in Washington, meeting the highest standard of environmental design and sustainability as designated by the US Green Building Council.

We also have a guest from Delridge Neighborhoods Development Association here to discuss “Team Delridge”, a new program of King County Food and Fitness initiative. There will be a meeting on Monday, March 23rd, from 6:30 to 8:30 pm at the Southwest Community Center. The community conversation will include goals that will form the Community Action Plan supported by the Kellogg Foundation over the next 10 years.

• What kinds of businesses and programs will make a more vibrant Delridge?
• What are our largest community concerns and how can they be addressed?

“Delridge” is defined as zip codes 98106 and 98126 and goes from So. Spokane Street all the way south to SW Roxbury Street, from South Seattle Community College to the east to 35th Avenue SW to the west.

Conley Kirschner, a volunteer for American Lung Association, is here to tell us some things about chemicals in our home. He stresses specifically allergies and asthma, their causes, and how to do healthy cleaning to get rid of dust and pet hair and other issues that effect air quality. Cleaning fluids like bleach and ammonia can be very bad to use. Ordinary household cleaning doesn’t require such strong chemicals. He passed out a “green cleaning recipes” handout. I understand he will be giving a cleaning demonstration and then giving away these products to the attendees of the meeting. (Baking soda, vinegar, Borax (Bon Ami)).

Some of the biggest keys to whether something is a healthy green cleaner is either lack of odor and cost. Most natural cleaning products cost a LOT less than name brand products. Those name-brand cleaning products also have a lot of warnings on the label. This is an environmental justice issue – immigrant families who speak English as a second language (if at all) are unable to read and/or fully comprehend the warning labels on cleaning products. They often buy expensive products because they saw advertising on TV and believing that product to be “the American way” may actually be harming themselves and their children because they are unaware of the many dangerous things that can happen when using these products in the home.

This was a rich agenda this evening and I saw many new neighbor faces here (maybe they came because of my email blast this morning?) My favorite parts of our neighborhood meetings are the food (the Somali samosas always burn my mouth but I love them) and the translation to Cambodian and Vietnamese just washes over me in a soothing way. The meetings take longer because of the translation, but I enjoy the entire experience every time.

Biggest tip of this evening – that caused quite a stir in the room – was that the CFL squiggly light bulbs (that were also handed out for free) can NOT be put in the garbage can. They need to be recycled at the library or Home Depot. Obviously we are still not talking about this enough with our friends and neighbhors. These light bulbs often last up to 10 years. But when they do finally go, they must be treated as hazardous waste because of the mercury in the bulb.

The next HPNA meeting will be on June 11th. There will be elections for 3 Trustee positions. If you are interested in being more involved in the High Point neighborhood, please contact Andrew Mead, current Association President, at mandrewmead@gmail.com