For Francesca Mundrick, her door onto the Environmental Commission came after she noticed there were not a lot of environmental programming in the borough.
She had moved to Pitman after she graduated from Rowan University’s Department of Geography, Planning and Sustainability in 2018. She continued her studies and received a master’s degree in environmental studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She is now pursuing her PhD in sustainability education from Prescott College.
In the meantime, she went back to her alma mater, Rowan University, to teach at the Department of Geography, Planning and Sustainability as a 3/4 professor and wanted to start to do more community work.
Mundrick designed a GeoLocal explore summer program – a place-based education program held at Alcyon Park for kids ages 5 to 10 – and went to the borough’s Parks & Recreation with the program.
“I said, ‘I would like to be part of the Environmental Commission and I want to offer this [program],’” she recalled. “That was actually how I joined the government in town.”
The mission of the Pitman Environmental Commission (PEC), similar to the mission of all other environmental commissions, is to act as a body of advocacy for public health, natural resource management, and environmental protections within a local municipality.
The PEC makes advisory recommendations and suggestions to the town council regarding environmental happenings in the local community including policy, programs, municipal operations, etc. Environmental Commissions are essential to local communities and serve an important purpose as a resource for citizenry, Mundrick said.
Remember the PEC’s mission because we will round this piece on a recent ordinance on amending storm water management code to regulate the removal and replacement of trees.
“When I joined the Environmental Commission [in January 2023], they immediately looked at my skills,” Mundrick said, noting she was assigned to education community outreach, which became a new role on the commission.
“As the community outreach commissioner, my mission is to foster a culture of environmental awareness and local stewardship for Pitman.
“It is also significant to create awareness of what Environmental Commissions represent and to increase citizen access,” Mundrick said.
Environmental Commissions over the years have been increasingly working to become more modernized and accessible.
“Part of my role coming in is to make that happen,” Mundrick said, which includes an official online web page by creating an online presence for press and media whether through the borough’s website and/or social media.
“It’s a major pathway to more accessibility and less exclusivity.”
Commissioner Robert Holwitt serves as chair and is assigned the Alcyon report. Councilman Robert Uyehara serves as council liaison and Councilman Paul Bially serves as council alternate.
Commissioner Josh Hitchner oversees shade trees; Commissioner Jennifer Totora oversees air, water and climate, Commissioner Alexis Johnson oversees habitat restoration, Commissioner Claire Yeager oversees open space, and Commissioner Tom Slenkamp oversees planning and zoning as a member of the zoning board.
The Environmental Commission meets on the first Thursday of each month at 7:30 p.m. in the conference room in Borough Hall. All are welcome to attend.
Since she came on board, Mundrick has hit the ground running applying and receiving ANJEC grants for the community. ANJEC is the Association of New Jersey Environmental Commissions, which is a non-profit organization that helps New Jersey environmental commissions, individuals, local and state agencies preserve natural resources and promote healthy communities.
“They facilitate almost like a parent organization that we go to understand dynamics of a state policy, what’s hot and what to look for in the community,” Mundrick said.
In 2023, the Environmental Commission was awarded a $1,500 ANJEC grant titled Empowering Community Stewardship through Local Habitat Restoration, which included three parts.
Part one involved the professional invasive removal from the Alcyon Meadow Space-Enviroscapes; part two involved going into the schools, working with teachers and staff to create a Pitman High School lesson plan and PEC assembly presentations; and part three included an Alcyon Community Planting Day of planting native trees with Pitman High School students.
“I had the students act and think globally on the importance of local environments,” Mundrick said. “I engaged the students where they had to think about Pitman, [about] what makes Pitman special, [and about] what makes Pitman sustainable.
“They worked hard defining and modifying environmental challenges and how they apply directly and affect Pitman.”
In 2024, the Environmental Commission received another $1,500 ANJEC grant.
With the grant, Mundrick has created an initiative titled Hitting4Habitat Baseball/Softball Tournament as part of her service in the Emerging Leaders Committee for ANJEC. This will pilot in April 2025.
“We were thinking about how all agencies could work within town and really make something great,” she said, adding they are working with the borough’s Parks & Recreation and Little League committees. “It’s a sports for nature concept that is actually going to fix environmental initiatives with the popularity of sports.”
The teams that are expected to participate are from Pitman and Glassboro. The idea is for the teams to pay a fee, which is going to help support the environmental commission to create a biodiverse habitat community garden abutting the baseball field at Alcyon Park.
Mundrick said there will be gift bags for the players to take home and there will be a growth competition where baseball and softball players will get a chance to plant their own native plant gardens. They will water it over the summer and enter to win a new bat at the end of the summer for the best kept garden.
So let’s go back to the core mission of the PEC, which was utilized with the recent borough ordinance on amending storm water management code to regulate the removal and replacement of trees.
The mission of PEC is to act as a body of advocacy for public health, natural resource management, and environmental protections within a local municipality.
Members of the Environmental Commission worked on advocating for the ordinance and worked to help people understand the ordinance’s goal of reducing the net loss of trees in the borough.
On Aug. 12, the borough council approved the ordinance 4-2 at a meeting.
“The newly adopted ordinance reflects the community’s commitment to preserving Pitman’s tree canopy, ensuring that there is no net loss of trees in our area,” Hitchner said. “Those seeking to remove healthy trees will now be required to compensate for the loss, either by planting a replacement or by making a small monetary contribution to a designated tree fund.
“Not only do trees clean our air and water, provide habitat for wildlife, connect communities, and support our health and well-being but they also keep our communities cool and enhance property values.”
Research has shown tree canopy cover reduces temperatures 11 to 19 degrees Fahrenheit compared to communities with no tree cover, according to Hitchner citing Regan Hopper, of the United States Department of Agriculture’s Urban and Community Forestry Program in “Finding relief in the shade” (2023).
“As summer temperatures continue to intensely impact Pitman, maintaining the tree canopy can have a huge impact on human health and well-being,” he said. “Trees are also important to the aesthetics of the community, drawing new residents in and maintaining the ones we already have.
“Having mature trees around homes and along the sidewalk improves not only the appearance of your home but improves its value. Research estimates an increase of 3% to 15% to a home’s value if it has large trees growing around it,” Hitchner said, citing K.L. Wolf’s Community Economics – A Literature Review. In: Green Cities: Good Health (www.greenhealth.washington.edu, College of the Environment, University of Washington, 2010).
This is the Pitman Environmental Commission in a nutshell. To learn more, just reach out to Mundrick at mundrickf@gmail.com.
Don’t forget to visit them at their annual Earth Day events in April, their BioBlitz in June, or just around advocating public health, natural resource management, and environmental protections within Pitman.
