General Feedback and Suggestions for the Office of Environmental Quality
Share your ideas, hopes, and dreams with us!
🌻 To leave a comment, please click the "Submit a Comment" button. You can leave your ideas, feedback, photos, and specific locations.
Would you like to share any ideas for improving Kansas City's environmental quality, or perhaps suggest a program from another city that you miss and would like to see here? Have you recently traveled and found something inspiring that you wish was closer to home?
Office of Environmental Quality
The Office of Environmental Quality (OEQ) promotes policies encouraging the private sector to preserve and enhance environmental quality and provide regional leadership for the public, private, and non-profit sectors on environmental affairs and sustainability.
What OEQ Does
- Sustainability: Promote a triple-bottom-line perspective that seeks to simultaneously achieve environmental quality, social equity, and economic vitality in all city decisions and actions.
- Environmental Compliance: Assists with regulatory compliance in over 300 City facilities concerning federal/state/local air, water, solid and hazardous waste, storage tanks, and chemical usage regulations and promotes environmental stewardship among all City employees through implementing the City's Environmental Management System (EMS). OEQ provides environmental training and consulting services to city staff, performs asbestos and lead paint inspections for various departments' renovation and demolition projects, and provides oversight and management of abatement activities.
- Environmental Liaison - Promote and maintain relationships with external organizations, collaborating with the public and private sectors to preserve and enhance environmental quality.
- Energy and Water Benchmarking - Ensures compliance with the Energy Empowerment Ordinance; collects and maintains the energy and water consumption of buildings that are 50,000 SQFT or greater citywide.
Phases
Summarize the Feedback Received
During this phase, a comprehensive summary of the feedback will be shared with residents and City staff across multiple departments. This process ensures that community input remains central to decision-making, allowing the City to make well-informed choices that reflect the needs and priorities of its residents.
📌 Residents frequently emphasized the need for pedestrian-friendly spaces, with multiple mentions of creating vibrant, pedestrian-only shopping zones featuring street vendors, performers, outdoor seating, and walkability, inspired by places like the San Antonio River Walk or Boulder's Pearl Street. There was also a call to make sustainable lifestyle choices—such as recycling, composting, and reducing car use—more accessible and to reward residents already engaging in these practices. Another respondent highlighted the importance of fostering community connections through shared spaces, improved walkability, slower speed limits, and neighborhood investment to create a sense of belonging and stability. Additionally, there was a demand to return animal control responsibilities to the city.