OSHKOSH (NBC 26) — The City of Oshkosh's sustainability board held public feedback sessions on Thursday, seeking input on the draft of the 2026 Sustainability Plan Update.
- The City’s sustainability plan was last updated in 2019.
- Oshkosh allocated $60,000 of ARPA funding to hire an outside consultant to help with the plan.
- The plan outlines a variety of guidelines for future development, including waste management, environmental conservation, community health and energy use.
Margy Davey was one of the founding members of the Oshkosh Sustainability Advisory Board.
“I'm really concerned about our earth,” she says.
Now, she’s the chair of the board and hopes to make their efforts more visible around Oshkosh.
“I'm hoping that we can get more citizen involvement, more municipal involvement,” she says.
She's eager to be involved in the city’s third-ever sustainability plan.
“It needed an update, and we had planned to have an update every five years,” she says.
The City allocated $60,000 of ARPA funding to pay a Milwaukee-based consulting group to help craft the plan.
The draft plan for 2026 examines several key areas, including disease prevention and expanding green spaces.
The consulting group presented at three feedback sessions on Thursday, hoping to learn what people want from the next plan. They plan to have it finalized by the fall of this year.
“We need to have buy-in for it to work, so we’re hoping people will give us a lot of feedback,” Davey says.
The first session didn’t have a large crowd, but many people were enjoying the outdoors at Menominee Park.
Some say sustainability is a priority for them.
“I think it’s a beautiful place to live and I hope we can preserve that,” Kelsey McDaniels, an Oshkosh resident, says. “I think we could all do more to be more sustainable. We want to preserve our planet for the future.”
Davey says it’s still difficult to get public engagement with the sustainability board.
“I'm surprised when people come to the farmers market and they come up to us and say ‘what are you?' and they’ve never heard of us,” she says. “People don’t know what the word means– sustainability.”
Davey says she hopes people will stay involved with the sustainability plan for the future.
“Everything in this world does start locally, that’s why it’s important for us to model locally the sustainability that we’d like to have everywhere,” she says.
