Coalition aims for change
GOALS: A central issue for organization focuses on how to make the Valley sustainable.
By CHARLES HAND / The Valley Chronicle
Published: Friday, April 2, 2010 4:51 PM CDT
A relatively new organization hopes to change the way others look at the San Jacinto Valley by changing the way residents look at the Valley.
Along the way, they hope to provide a better quality of life for those living here.
The Green Coalition of San Jacinto Valley is sponsoring a bicycle ride this month intended to draw attention to the fact that there are few bicycle paths in the Valley and most of those that do exist are intended for short recreational rides, rather than getting from one point to another.
Its name notwithstanding, the Green Coalition is not about fighting climate issues, said Green Coalition President Wiggs Mendoza.“It’s not about global warming. It’s about our little community,” he said.
A central question for the Green Coalition, he said, is “How do we make our city sustainable?”
That was also a question central to the development of a new general plan for Hemet, which is nearing the end of a years-long process, and Green Coalition representatives were on the citizen advisory committee that met for months to develop recommendations for the proposed plan, he said.
Also within the issue of sustainability are several others, he said, not all strictly related to living green.
For instance, the growing presence of abandoned shopping carts, which Mendoza said is among the products of the growing problem of housing foreclosures, damages the quality of life and should be collected before they can accumulate or kept on the premises of the businesses that use them.
San Jacinto has a law requiring all stores that use carts to take responsibility one way or another.
Both outsiders and those living here are affected in their attitudes toward their community by those abandoned carts, Mendoza said.
“What would people think looking from the outside?” he asked. “How do we present our city?”
The Valley attracts people looking for cheap housing when it should seek to attract people who want to live in an attractive community, Mendoza said.
Whatever the issues facing the community, they can best be solved through market forces, Mendoza said.
“We decided early we had to fight on the market level,” he said.
That is why, when the Green Coalition organized an e-waste collection program, they sought out not vendors willing to properly dispose of the discarded TVs, cell phones, and other devices, but who would look first at ways to recycle the castoffs.
It came as a surprise to Green Coalition members helping at the collection sites that some of the devices turned in for disposal were still working.
There should be a way to recycle working devices before they even reach the disposal level, he said.
Even helping people through tough economic times is a market issue, with people trying to reduce their spending able to find savings by using less water and making their homes more energy efficient.
“Green living is a lifestyle for everyone, kids to seniors, wealthy or modest, students and professionals,” says a flier advertising the group.
The group is also working with a San Jacinto school to develop a green science fair as a way of acquainting a new generation of residents with the issues facing both the earth and the community.
The Green Coalition has about 58 individual members and three or four corporate members.
Early members are still being trained in the goals and concepts behind Green Coalition and still help to formulate those goals and concepts, Mendoza said.
The first meetings were held in 2008 and the organization qualified as a 501c(3) organization just last year.
Information on The Green Coalition is available through its Web site at greencoalition-SJV.org.
