In our series on the 2025 Community Excellence Award applicants, we take a look at three Michigan communities making the world a bit more sustainable and environmentally friendly. The Village of Roscommon and the City of Southfield created beautiful, educational spaces celebrating important wildlife, and the City of Birmingham developed an all-encompassing sustainability and public health plan for the years ahead.

Birmingham Plots the Course to a Greener Future

2025 Community Excellence Award Entries: Sustainability & The Environment

It all started with a climate emergency.

Back in January 2023, the City Commission of Birmingham named sustainability and climate resilience as high priorities. And so, the City jumped into action. An emergency was declared, and an action plan was set to complete a greenhouse gas inventory and explore the ways Birmingham could get a little greener.

“[The climate emergency resolution] was really the kickstart,” says city planner Summer Aldred-Arens. Soon after, the city formed an ad-hoc Environmental Sustainability Committee to carry out the action plan.

The City adopted its “Birmingham Green Healthy Climate Plan” in September 2024. The ambitious plan includes 70 action items designed to cut emissions, strengthen climate resilience, and weave sustainability into the daily lives and thoughts of its residents. Created through a combination of City leadership and community voices, Birmingham Green is the City’s submission for the 2025 Community Excellence Award.

But first, back to 2023. The nine-member committee (seven plus two alternates) was seated and ready to go by March. Over the course of a year, staff and committee members worked together to write the Birmingham Green plan in-house. “The folks that were involved were very passionate,” says Aldred-Arens.

The process benefited from the skillset of said folks. “In Birmingham, we have a lot of subject matter experts on a lot of different areas,” says Leah Blizinski, also a city planner. The committee included an academic from the University of Michigan; employees of several nonprofits, including Friends of the Rouge; and engineers from a variety of disciplines.

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…As much as we lead by example in city government, a huge piece of this is empowering residents to make changes.

“The Sustainability Committee was great at keeping us on track for a measurable, attainable plan,” says Aldred-Arens. “That’s something that we really appreciated about them—we had a bunch of really intelligent, really well-versed professionals in the room.”

The end result was a comprehensive document with a clear target for Birmingham: reduce carbon emissions by 25 percent by 2035, while aligning with Michigan’s statewide goal of carbon neutrality by 2050. “[The committee had] a big focus on data,” says Aldred-Arens. “A big focus on making sure that—whatever story we’re trying to tell, we’re going to have the numbers.”

The actions of what is termed the Sustainability and Climate Action Plan are sectioned into seven categories and further subdivided by cost; short-, medium-, or long-term; and the level of benefit the actions may bring to the city (narrow, moderate, or substantial). A couple sample action items are instituting a residential rain garden program (short-term, low-cost, moderate benefit) and developing a city-wide composting plan (medium-term, high-cost, substantial benefit).

To jump-start the plan, the City has eight action items to accomplish within the first two years. A few of these have already been completed, including making the Environmental Sustainability Committee permanent, planning for public engagement, and piloting a compost program. “We wanted to make sure that every action item was something that was measurable and actionable,” says Aldred-Arens.

While completing the concurrent greenhouse gas inventory, the City was surprised to learn that municipal operations make up less than three percent of Birmingham’s greenhouse gas emissions. “We realized the bulk of the work is in residential energy use,” says Blizinksi. “That means as much as we lead by example in City government, a huge piece of this is empowering residents to make changes.”

Some of the action items are already sparking excitement. Residents are eager to see how Birmingham can reduce the risk of flooding while creating greener public spaces. “Every right-of-way is City property and is an opportunity for green stormwater infrastructure,” says Blizinski.

Birmingham Green connects the City’s policy goals to things that residents will see and feel, from healthier gardens to cleaner air. “We intend to do community engagement around every single action item that would involve community buy-in,” says Aldred-Arens. And because it’s designed to evolve, the plan will grow alongside Birmingham: the City is always putting out surveys and soliciting feedback from residents on where to take the plan next.

Says Aldred-Arens, “It just speaks to the power of simply having these conversations out loud—in collaboration.”

Roscommon Puts a Bird on It

2025 Community Excellence Award Entries: Sustainability & The Environment

It’s a miracle that the Kirtland’s warbler still exists.

The little songbird, nesting almost exclusively in Michigan’s jack pine forests, was once on the brink of extinction, with fewer than 200 pairs in the wild in the 1980s. In response, humans stepped in with a combination of jack pine maintenance and controlling cowbirds, which parasitize warbler nests. Thanks to years of hard work from conservationists, the Kirtland’s warbler has bounced back dramatically. It was officially taken off the Endangered Species List in 2019, though humans continue to keep an eye on its habitat and conduct regular censuses to ensure it continues to thrive.

At the center of all of this is Roscommon, a village of 981 in northern lower Michigan on the Au Sable River. “This is where their breeding habitat is, over 90% of them,” says Amanda Wichinski, Community Economic Development Association of Michigan (CEDAM) Community Development Fellow, “Right in the area, just north and east of Roscommon.”

The birds and the village have a long history. There is a local conservation team of 50–70 people and the nonprofit Kirtland’s Warbler Alliance. The first Kirtland’s Warbler Day was held in 1976, at Kirtland Community College in nearby Grayling. In 2015, the annual Kirtland’s Warbler Festival was revived in Roscommon, held on the first Saturday in June.

Michigan Audubon, state operating partner of the National Audubon Society, launched the Bird City Michigan program—which “provides public recognition to cities, villages, counties, and campuses that are making our environment safe and welcoming for birds”—in January 2025. To qualify for the Bird City designation, a community must meet a minimum of 10 qualifying actions, easily met thanks to Roscommon’s years of conservation education and outreach.

Mike Petrucha, chairman of the Kirtland’s Warbler Festival, served as a liaison between the Village and Michigan Audubon. The Village’s DDA paid the $200 application fee (“the decision was a no-brainer,” says Wichinski) and Roscommon was certified as Michigan’s first Bird City in March of 2025.

The Village wanted to make the 2025 Kirtland’s Warbler Festival special to celebrate the new designation. One of Wichinski’s charges as a CEDAM Fellow is public art, so she got to thinking about some bird-tastic artwork that could be unveiled. She held community meetings and worked with Petrucha and Bill Rapai, director of the Kirtland’s Warbler Alliance. They settled on one item: a statue of a Kirtland’s warbler.

With three months to go before the festival, the whole community turned out. A crowdfunding campaign was set up through Patronicity. Funds were given by the local Rotary, DDA, and Village Council. Silent auctions featured art donated by Gahagan Nature Preserve, a local watercolor group, and an outpouring of area artists and businesses. A “Birds & Brews” event held at Irish Kilt Brewing Company contributed other sorts of pouring. ARAUCO, a major local employer, solicited donations from employees as part of their “lunches for a cause” program. A “Warbler Welcome-A-Thon” drive was held in May, when the birds migrate. In just over two months, the Village raised over $38,000.

James Seaman, a wildlife sculptor in upstate New York, designed and constructed the statue. With the assistance of his brother Tommy, who lives in Bloomfield Hills, Seaman transported the 15-foot-tall structure to Roscommon in his trailer. The Seamans and the Department of Public Works installed it in the rain. “It stopped raining as soon as we got it installed,” says Wichinski.

The statue depicts a 6-foot-tall stainless warbler, with its characteristic yellow breast, sitting on a carbon steel jack pine. The 2025 Kirtland’s Warbler Festival saw a record turnout of 450 attendees, with 137 people showing up just to view the statue’s unveiling. The Village of Roscommon’s Bird City designation and the Kirtland’s warbler statue are its submission for the 2025 Community Excellence Awards.

Conversation and placemaking are similar—the work is never done. Roscommon recently unveiled a DDA-sponsored mural by Grand Rapids artist George Eberhardt III, who incorporated community feedback on the fly as he was painting. One consistent request? More birds.

“He was like, ‘I just keep hearing about Bird City,’” says Wichinski. “‘I keep hearing about all these birds.’”

Southfield Creates a Haven for Monarch Butterflies

2025 Community Excellence Award Entries: Sustainability & The Environment

Famous for its striking orange and black wings, the monarch butterfly is facing a steep population drop-off.

Monarchs depend on milkweed to lay eggs and feed their caterpillars, but this plant is disappearing. Their epically long migration, spanning thousands of miles, has also been disrupted by extreme weather and shrinking overwintering grounds. In 2022, the monarch was officially listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Efforts are now focused on restoring native plant habitats and protecting migration corridors to help reverse the decline.

The City of Southfield is doing its part with its first pollinator garden, meant to provide a waystation and nesting ground for the butterflies. Monarchs play an important role as pollinators, helping to support healthy ecosystems by transferring pollen between wildflowers as they feed on nectar. “Pollinators are important because they contribute to about a third of our food source,” says Souzan Yousif, Southfield’s Sustainability Planner. “So, any fruits, nuts, seeds, anything like that, we attribute that to pollinators.”

“Southfield has a robust art scene with different sculptures and statement pieces throughout the city that give it its iconic look,” she says. “We wanted to bring awareness to the decline of the pollinators.” Completed in 2024, the “Monarch Butterfly Sculpture & Pollinator Garden” is Southfield’s submission for the 2025 Community Excellence Award.

Located along Southfield’s City Centre Trail on the grounds of Eaton Corporation, a stone’s throw from Lawrence Tech, the garden is anchored by a striking 12-foot painted metal sculpture of a monarch butterfly alighting on a purple aster flower. The sculpture was designed and fabricated by Sign Graphics, which handles much of the City’s signage.

Surrounding the metal monarch (I was hoping for an “iron butterfly” joke, but the sculpture is aluminum) is 2,400 square feet of garden, featuring (as of this writing) 46 different species of native species, including annuals, perennials, and bulbs—including, of course, milkweed. Interpretive panels educate passersby about monarchs, pollinators, and the garden itself, with QR codes for those who would like to learn more.

The City hired a landscape architect to design the garden. “She taught us that butterflies need an area to sun themselves and keep themselves warm, and for the grooves in the rocks to accommodate water; ‘puddling’ areas that will allow the monarchs to drink water,” explains Yousif. “So, we purposely placed some boulder rocks out there just for that purpose—to help them on their journey while they’re migrating. “

“Everything that is done in that garden is designed to promote pollinators to stop in the garden, feed, rest, and then continue their journey.”

The costs of the garden and statue were handled almost entirely in-house, pulling from different funding pools. The City also received a small grant from Keep Michigan Beautiful that went toward the planting budget. “A grant with no match required? We’ll take it,” she says. “Every little bit helps.”

The City updated and expanded irrigation lines to ensure that each of the planting areas of the garden are well hydrated, especially during the hottest months of the year. The City expects that the garden will take about three years to become fully established and is keeping an eye on the plantings—but things are growing nicely.

In the works are another pollinator garden and sculpture, this time of a bumblebee, with education focused on the importance and struggles of that species. “We foresee this becoming a series throughout the city,” says Yousif. The sculpture has already been installed elsewhere in the city; the garden has not been installed yet.

The monarch sculpture and its surrounding pollinator garden have been well received by passersby on the City Centre Trail. “It’s beautiful.” says Yousif. “The great thing about anything we install in Southfield is that everybody has that sense of respect—that we’re enhancing the community.”

And most importantly, the butterflies like it, too. Says Yousif: “We’ve already seen monarchs out there.”

Author

Emily Landau

Emily is the League’s full-time Content Writer, composing emails, articles, blog posts, and press releases. If you need words, she has many. Prior to becoming a word person, she was a restaurant person, handling catering, event management, and marketing; prior still, she was a teaching person, at a private boarding school in Massachusetts. Having earned a master’s degree in Classics from the University of Georgia, Emily is confident that she is the only League employee fluent in Latin. She also enjoys cooking, stand-up comedy, and is an avid gamer, having achieved level 40 on her Steam profile.