More than 80 people from Oak Park and River Forest turned out for a public forum at Percy Julian Middle School to begin outlining the PlanItGreen initiative, a blossoming effort to make the two villages more environmentally sustainable.

"This is what the community has said it wants," said Boyd McDowell, president of the Oak Park River Forest Community Foundation Board at Thursday's summit. Environmental sustainability is one of the three goals of the Foundation's "Communityworks" fund, which were identified by a citizen advisory committee in 2008.

Whereas similar initiatives elsewhere tend to revolve around municipal government, village officials in Oak Park and River Forest have opted for a more inclusive path to increased sustainability.

"People support what they help to create," said Gary Cuneen, founder of the nonprofit Seven Generations Ahead, which is leading the PlanItGreen initiative.

Participants in Thursday's forum broke into ten groups, each of which focused on a particular aspect of sustainability. Proposed goals and strategies included:

Transportation: dedicating less space to cars.

Energy: expediting or waiving the permitting process for retrofitting of buildings.

Food: establishing a physical, permanent clearinghouse for local foods.

Open space: creating more "pocket parks" and place more benches in existing parks.

Water: managing stormwater more effectively.

"We want to create renewable local energy, not just a plan to create it," said Robin Sheerer of Oak Park, who participated in the energy session. Allowing people to lease roof space to harness solar energy was just one of the strategies that came out of that session.

A series of power outages over the summer raised some questions about the state of the local power grid and how high Oak Park and River Forest can afford to set the bar for their goals regarding energy efficiency.

"There's a lot of cynicism, and that's a big thing to overcome," said K.C. Poulos, sustainability manager for the Village of Oak Park and one of the forum's facilitators.

Participants in Poulos' energy session decided to set the goal of reducing energy consumption in buildings – the greatest source of carbon emissions – by two percent every year for ten years.

Achieving that goal will likely require more stringent building codes, which Poulos suggests introducing gradually. "We don't want to hammer anyone with regulations," she said.

Sustainable practices are clearly on the rise locally.

Oak Park has reduced its electricity consumption by four percent since 2005, officials said. A house on Clinton Avenue is drawing attention for going furnace-free, as is a new Walgreens on Madison Street that uses geothermal heating.

"Money saved on energy translates into more money spent in the community," said Poulos. So not only does reduced energy consumption help to minimize environmental damage, it's also a harbinger of increased economic activity.

More than 600 people have responded to the PlanItGreen survey so far. The goal is to get at least 2,500 responses by the Nov. 24 deadline so that the final plan reflects as many opinions as possible.

With help from Seven Generations Ahead and other agencies, Oak Park and River Forest aim to implement the plan starting in June 2011.