The Correspondent

Recently the Correspondent had the pleasure of interviewing the sustainability director of Mayor Goodnight’s Department of Development, David Galvin, and questioning him about the recent movement towards environmentally and economically sustainable systems by local government. Mr. Galvin was a graduating member of the University of International Peace and Conflict Resolution.
Galvin begins, “I’ve read about cities around the state that have Sustainability Directors. I love the one in Fort Wayne; they have a title for their person, and her name is Wendy Barrott, Director of Energy and Environmental Services. She’s my counterpart in Fort Wayne. There are only a few cities in Indiana - four or maybe five that have a position like this one. Of those four or five, I’m the only one that’s not an engineer;, all the rest are engineers. One is environmental - the guy in Bloomington. Wendy is a civil engineer. The others are civil and mechanical engineers. So I contacted Wendy and said to her, ‘your approach to this is different than mine. I’m thinking on the left side; you’re thinking on the right side.’ So, we’re creating a network to not only bring the four or five of us together but so that our city government can then go to other city governments and encourage them to train them or help them. Then, we’re a high performance government network. We’re talking with them now.”