We didn’t do this yet, but we want you to know about it: We plan to hold a meeting at Red Mountain Resort at the end of March or the first week of April for anyone interested in learning more about what the Initiative is doing and planning to do. (Thank you Red Mountain Resort for donating meeting space for us.) It will be an opportunity to ask questions and to volunteer some time and expertise, if you want, on any projects that look interesting to you.
Last night we did our first measurements of the color temperature of outdoor lighting in Ivins with the help of Rob Roush, a developer interested in maximizing dark sky friendly lighting. We used a professional spectrograph borrowed from the International Dark Sky Association. We need to do more of these measurements because getting the color temperature “right” in our ordinance is critical, because it sets the “look” of Ivins in the future.
The Mayor and City Council were impressed by the art created by the five Vista students who received awards in our February contest for their interpretation of the night sky over Ivins. In fact, they were so impressed by the students’ efforts that they asked the students to showcase their art at City Hall on March 21st and receive formal recognition from the City Council.
We met with the Mayor to discuss all of our current and planned activities, and to create a schedule for preparing a draft ordinance and research plan for the City Council to consider. We are planning a work meeting in early March with the Mayor, City Manager, Public Works Director, and the Building & Zoning Administrator to finalize the draft ordinance and research plan. Tentatively, we intend to deliver these to the City Council on March 21st.
The Ivins Night Sky Initiative was incorporated as a Utah nonprofit corporation in late February. Then we filed for recognition from the IRS as a 501(c)(3) tax exempt entity.
We created draft Bylaws and a Board of Directors to do a better job of moving the Initiative forward professionally. The Bylaws allow for 3 to 9 Board members. The initial Board members are: Patty Dupre, Sue Gordhammer, Kai Reed, and Mike Scott. The first Board meeting is on March 1st.
We completed our survey of City owned street lighting. This gave us enough information to analyze what it would cost the City to meet the requirements to get designated as a Dark Sky Community.
We signed up to have an information table about dark sky friendly outdoor lighting at the Kayenta Street Painting Festival on April 27th and 28th. And to add some excitement, we commissioned professional artist, Anat Ronen, to create a street painting at the Festival showing her interpretation of the night sky over Ivins.
The St. George News gave the winning Vista School art students and their paintings a lot of coverage in Grade-schoolers interpret Ivins night sky through art contest. Here’s one more way the art contest gets the message out about improving, preserving, and protecting our night sky.
We wrapped up our student art contest at Vista School on February 12th with five awards for the best interpretations of the night sky over Ivins. We will use these students’ artwork in our educational outreach materials.
If we didn’t mention something you did to advance the mission of this Initiative, please tell us. And if you would like to get involved in any of these projects or other projects we plan to start working on soon, let us know. And let us know about any ideas you have for other projects.
We need all the help and expertise we can get. Send us an email from the Contact us page.