Wow, what a year this has been for GreeningUSA.

We have had strong showing of support from all of our board representatives and from many of our members at large in order to move forward a very aggressive agenda this past year. Thank you everyone for helping GUSA make the world a little bit Greener and a lot more sustainable...

We are saddened to see Mark Ranalli, Brian Key and Linda Jacobs stepping down from their board positions, but we know they will all remain active in the organization and their input is always welcome. They have served us well! Thank you.

Nominating Committee:  Thanks to the nominating committee headed by John.  We are excited to see fresh, new, hard working blood enter the board in the form of Greg Michel from Cornell Cooperative Extension and Jennifer Spoor from Naef Recycling. Welcome!

Governance Committee:  Thanks to all governance committee members, especially Cal and Tom. We have increased our membership to 70 plus, and increased our revenues to unprecedented amounts, close to $10,000. We now have a pipeline for grants and have already received two. We adopted various sections of our policy handbook. We had a strategic planning session and narrowed in on our mission, goals etc. We had an excellent annual meeting with Joanie Mahoney, Matt Driscoll and Bob Congel in attendance and winning awards.  It was video taped by Ensemble Video and is posted on our website. We kept a full, high prestige board in place for most of the year. We have spoken to other group leaders about future collaborations. We have tightened up our meetings and calendar.

Communications Committee: Diane continues to compile and send out our excellent flagship newsletter. It is now posted on our new, extensive, versatile website platform, which we have the ability to maintain ourselves. We joined PayPal and now can receive memberships and donations online. Our main database continues to grow. We had several mentions in the press this year. The Green Creators were established with Brian's help in order to brainstorm our image. An animated GUSA power point was created. We have established firm ties with Citadel Communications and Clear Channels for future projects.

Advocacy Committee: GUSA had an active presence at many events, both with booths and as speakers;  Accelerate, ESF Green Building Conference, Go Green Initiative and a full run at the NYS Fair. In addition board members made several presentations across the state to various audiences on behalf of GUSA. Position papers were also submitted on a number of issues including Mark Ranalli's work on Net-metering.

Education Committee: Under Ken and Mark Naef's guidance and with Greg, Cindy and Jen's hard work GUSA has made a name for itself in the local community by organizing and holding the first 4 sessions of the Syracuse Sustainability Academy. At least 8 more sessions are in the works for this coming year. This effort has fostered the collaboration of many groups with GUSA; Gifford Foundation, Cornell Cooperative Extension, Near Westside Initiative and the Joint School Construction Board, to name just a few. In addition, the Curriculum sub committee's work led to the Syracuse City School District holding NYSERDA training for elementary, middle and secondary school teachers, and piloting the NEED program in 4th and 9th grade science classes in 5 schools.

12 Traits of Sustainable Communities Rating System: David, Peter, Linda, Jim, Kuki and others have met several times to decide the fate of this committee and how we can best coordinate with ICLEI. GUSA Intern Amy Chen (now the director of sustainability for the city of San Jose) expanded a few traits to bring us into phase 2 of the project. The committee also interviewed potential interns that would be sponsored by the Environmental Finance Center at the Maxwell school.

There have been so many positive steps forward that it is hard to imagine that only a year has passed since I have been your president. I want to publicly thank the executive committee of David, Peter, and Cal who helped me navigate these waters.

I am sure that I am forgetting some of our accomplishments and I certainly have not been able to name all the individuals and the contributions that they have brought to our organization, but thank you all.

Happy New Year - Mark Naef, President GreeningUSA