Community Profile

Pledge Status

Complete

Pledge Date

Friday, March 28, 2025

Program Year

2025

Achievement

Leadership Circle

2025

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Action Item Report

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Village of Richton Park

Richton Park, IL

Rick Reinbold

Village President

Pledge Summary

Richton Park, IL is a wonderful place to start a family, open a business, entertain, and create a quality of life that's fulfilling and satisfying. The opportunities are endless, and we are aggressively growing to match those opportunities and goals. Richton Park is a place that you can call "Your Home." It is Richton Park's priority to provide vibrant, effective, high-quality services that foster safety, quality of life, and economic vitality throughout our community. The Village of Richton Park recognizes that human health ultimately depends on well-functioning ecosystems, and that bio-diverse regions can better support food production, healthy soil, air quality and also foster health connections between humans and wildlife. For this reason we are looking to establish a commitment to local, state and national efforts that protect and conserve habitats for pollinators like the Monarch Butterfly. Our efforts will assist our community in establishing a greater connection between residents and wildlife in general.

Community Spotlight

Action Items Committed for 2025

Communications and Convening

  • Issue a proclamation to raise awareness about the decline of the monarch butterfly and the species’ need for habitat. This proclamation must incorporate a focus on monarch conservation.
  • Launch or maintain a public communication effort to encourage residents to plant monarch gardens at their homes or in their neighborhoods. (If you have community members who speak a language other than English, we encourage you to also communicate in that language; Champion Pledges must communicate in that language.)
  • Engage with community garden groups and urge them to plant native milkweeds and nectar-producing plants.
  • Engage with Homeowners Associations (HOAs), Community Associations or neighborhood organizations to identify opportunities to plant monarch gardens and revise maintenance and mowing programs.

Program and Demonstration Gardens

  • Plant or maintain a monarch and pollinator-friendly demonstration garden at City Hall or another prominent or culturally significant community location.
  • Plant milkweed and pollinator-friendly native nectar plants along roadsides, medians, or public rights-of-way.
  • Add or maintain native milkweed and nectar-producing plants in gardens in the community.

Systems Change

  • Increase the percentage of native plants, shrubs and trees that must be used in city landscaping ordinances and encourage use of milkweed, where appropriate.
  • Launch, expand, or continue an effort to change municipal planting ordinances and practices to include more native milkweed and native nectar producing plants at city properties.
  • Integrate monarch butterfly conservation into the city’s Park Master Plan, Sustainability Plan, Climate Resiliency Plan or other city plans.
  • Reduce or eliminate the use of herbicides, pesticides, or other chemicals that are harmful to monarchs and pollinators and urban wildlife.