| Chapter Interlude: | Speech By Mayor Bernero Of Lansing, Michigan |
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I'll tell you an exciting thing. It's amazing how one thing leads to another in this whole Go Green—we call it our Go Green, Go Lansing initiative. And it's about to be expanded with Mayor Sam Singh, my brother mayor. We're working together on a lot of things. And we're going to be working—I'll let him talk about it—but we're going to be working together now on this green initiative. Just by announcing it, and by setting the bar—you know, part of what we have to do as human beings, you know, we've got to stretch ourselves. If you've noticed, the times when you grew, the times when you've learned, the times when you've made real change, was when you had to stretch a little bit. We get comfortable, we get in our comfort zones day-to-day, but then we have to stretch. And so this goal—we met with our management team, and they said, “Gosh, I don't know, 10 by '10, '15, man, that's a lot, you know, how do we…” Ah, but, we said, “We think it's manageable.” We look at what other communities are doing and what we can do. I signed the U.S. Mayors' Climate Protection Agreement. We took the EPA Energy Star Challenge. In Lansing, Michigan, we were the second city in the country to sign the EPA Energy Star Challenge, which says we will reduce our energy use by 10 percent. [applause]
And just by making these announcements, we look at things differently. Our managers, our department heads in city government now understand. They don't just [say], “Oh, well, this one's cheaper. This bulb is cheaper. We'll just buy the cheapest because that's how it works. You know, otherwise we'll get pounded if we buy something different.” No. They know now that just because something costs a little more on the front end, they can now—they're encouraged to make the case to us. We want to know, we want to look at where we can make strategic investments. We're not saying, “Oh, we're in a deficit situation, so we're always going to do the cheapest thing, always, right now.” No. We're going to make strategic investments, to become more efficient, to reach this goal.
It changes the tenor. It changes the dialogue. It gets people thinking creatively. I have people that have been with the city for years, in