How Gardner is making strides in preserving the environment and being efficient with energy. From a 2023 interview
Question: Let’s talk about planet awareness. We all strive to be planet aware and the City of Gardner is no exception. What specifically falls into the accomplished category with respect to Gardner and planet awareness?
Answer: One of the things that we’ve been trying to do lately is really help reduce our carbon footprint and be more green in the actions we’ve been doing. We’ve applied for a couple grants and we’ve gotten a few for new electric vehicle charging stations, with the latest being installed at the Department of Public Works building at 50 Manca Drive this past week that was funded through a grant from the Environmental Protection Agency. At the same time, one of the things that we’re currently looking on is increased solar capacity in the city, placing solar on the roofs of our public buildings and a potential solar canopy over the Knowlton Street parking lot. What that does is allow us to drop our energy uses on our city side, not only saving us money, but also being more environmentally friendly. Working with the Keep Gardner Beautiful organization, we’ve done our cleanups events, but they do a lot more than just pick up nips every now and then, but working on them now and creating a pollinator garden at some location in the city that’s still to be determined to really help not only diversify the plant life that we have here in Gardner, but also make it more sustainable for the different bee pollinators and the different other pollinator insects in the area. It’s something that just helps us be more environmentally friendly and aware that Gardner doesn’t live in a silo. While we’re here in Massachusetts, we’re also here as part of a greater picture that we have to do our part in.
Question: How do you actually attract those bees? Do you put out a sign? Do you actually bring in some bees? What do you do?
Answer: I don’t know. We’re working on trying to find what the bee hotline version of our code red call is. Once we find out, we’ll be sure to let you know. There’s a reason why Diane LeBlanc goes by neon, and I think there’s a certain color scheme that has to go with it.