In July, Mayor Will Haynie announced a goal of establishing 1,000 pollinator gardens across Mount Pleasant. He hopes to see this come to fruition in “the next couple of years,” he told the Moultrie News.
“1,000 is a very modest goal,” Haynie said in reference to the 40,000 residences in town. “There’s a crisis of pollinators in our ecosystem. It’s a very simple thing to do.”
Haynie himself has installed a small “dedicated” pollinator garden at his residence — “don’t ask of others something you’re not willing to do yourself,” he said.
“I fully embrace that goal,” Quick said. “I think it’s a wonderful thing and that we don’t have to see our political governmental entities as enemies.”
The Town of Mount Pleasant is also developing a program to offer incentives for town residents to enhance their properties with more sustainable infrastructure, mirroring their already established commercial program Environmental Guidelines for Land Development (LID). These plans will be made public “soon,” Haynie said.
The Town previously offered a small incentive program which offered $200 to homeowners to install rain gardens on their property. The program was cut recently, Quick said, due to lack of oversight and follow-through with the grant recipients.
Mount Pleasant is “a little behind,” when it comes to developing this kind of sustainable infrastructure, Quick said. “It’s not just something that’s extra. This is something that’s critical to our future and the health of our community.”
Other neighboring city governments have successfully implemented incentive and rebate programs which allow homeowners to install rain and pollinator gardens on their property.
The Department of Energy and Environment of Washington, DC RiverSmart Homes program will install native plant gardens for homeowners for a copayment of $100 per 120 square foot, as well as other rebate programs for rain barrels, solar panels, rain garden installation and permeable pavements. Since the program’s beginnings in 2009, Washington has helped install over 20,000 of these sustainable features in residential properties.
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