Shaping Orange County's Future Final Full Report

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Action Strategies: A. Work with Durham and Chatham Counties and their recent visioning efforts to develop a "Triangle- West" regional vision and plan, which can be a model for regional planning statewide. The regional plan should: • involve all municipalities, major institutions and counties in the area; • be driven by consideration of environmental and resource limitations; and • develop guidelines for a Growth Budget to allocate scarce resources in each area, and control the amount and timing of growth. B. Lobby the NC General Assembly for a statewide planning mechanism that would require regional planning and local government cooperation. Recommendation 4: Adopt and implement policies embodying a governmental commitment to using the most sustainable technology and practices. (County and Town Governments need to take a leadership role in moving toward sustainability. The following would apply to all area local governments.) Action Strategies: A. Adopt green building standards for all new government construction. Standards should include guidelines on • environmentally sensitive site design; • use of non -toxic or least toxic building materials; • use of materials that can be recycled and that contain recycled content; • energy and resource efficient design; • use of renewable energy sources; and • maintaining good indoor air quality. B. Adopt a policy to systematically replace older vehicles with new low or no emissions vehicles that are alternatively fueled and /or fuel- efficient. The policy should include targets for percent of fleet changed over and a timeline for transition. C. Establish a program to reduce vehicle miles driven by government employees. Measures to reduce vehicle miles traveled could include: • carpooling and vanpooling; • public transportation incentives; • telecommuting; • teleconferencing; • flex -time scheduling to avoid travel during peak traffic; and • other appropriate strategies. D. Purchase products made using fair labor practices. E. Establish a comprehensive reduction, reuse, and recycle program. Such a program should include components for: ■ reducing office paper waste through use of the internet where feasible, reuse of paper for scrap or draft printing for personal use, and requiring two -sided photocopying of documents whenever possible; ■ purchasing durable, minimally packaged, energy efficient products; ■ giving preference to purchasing products containing recycled content, and /or are readily recyclable;