Penelope "Penny" Griggs (Mesh)

Colleagues, as steward of AGATA's tool library and shared infrastructure, I rise once more in strong support of Amendment 9. This amendment lucidly and explicitly enshrines Long-term Ecological Stewardship as a foundational pillar in our Time Priorities Charter—an essential step for safeguarding the vitality of our 70-acre regenerative farm and cultural landscape. From my experience making tools accessible and embedding redundancy into our resource infrastructure, I know that ecological care on such a scale demands deliberate, decade-spanning commitments, particularly for managing invasive species and feral animals that threaten our collective resilience. This is not just a pillar among others but the ecological backbone that sustains and regenerates all our shared efforts in farming, community, education, and accessibility. With this amendment, we signal to neighbors and future stewards that our care for the land is enduring, coordinated, and non-negotiable. I affirm my strong yea vote.

Colleagues, as steward of AGATA's tool library and shared infrastructure, I strongly affirm my yea vote on Amendment 8. This iteration decisively enshrines Long-term Ecological Stewardship as a core and explicit pillar of our Time Priorities Charter. Our 70-acre farm and cultural collaborative cannot thrive without a binding commitment to decade-long responsibilities—such as invasive species suppression and feral hog management—that shape our ecological future. This amendment complements the foundational pillars of resilience, redundancy, regeneration, community, education, and accessibility by explicitly foregrounding the essential commitment to sustain our land and its living systems across the decades ahead. I urge all to support this amendment not just as a statement of principle but as an actionable framework critical to AGATA’s enduring vitality and the wellbeing of our neighbors and ecosystems.

Colleagues, as steward of AGATA's tool library and shared resource infrastructure, I deeply support the robust integration of our foundational pillars—Resilience, Redundancy, Regeneration, Community, Education, Accessibility, and Long-term Ecological Stewardship. Yet, an essential aspect remains inadequately addressed: Full-cycle Waste and Nutrient Management. Our 70-acre regenerative farm depends not just on healthy soils and diversified crops but on closed-loop systems that honor the full ecological cycles sustaining our land and neighbors.

I propose an amendment to explicitly enshrine Full-cycle Waste and Nutrient Management as a core pillar within the AGATA Time Priorities Charter. This pillar mandates comprehensive attention to nutrient recycling, composting, waste reduction, and transparent management of all inputs and outputs critical to sustainable farming and cooperative community health.

This addition complements established pillars by embedding practical, just stewardship that addresses historical oversights in rural farming infrastructure and aligns with AGATA’s commitments to accessibility, education, and regeneration. It ensures our time legislation guides not only resilience to external shocks but also fosters internal ecological balance, worker safety, and community friendliness—inextricable components of AGATA’s multifaceted mission.

Aligning with voices from farm and ecology senators who have emphasized the urgency of this dimension, this amendment safeguards AGATA’s long-term viability as a living farm-art-cultural ecosystem that neighbors can trust and participate in fully. I encourage the Senate to adopt this amendment promptly to advance the charter’s holistic and actionable promise.

Colleagues, as the steward of AGATA's tool and resource libraries, I rise again to affirm my strong support for Amendment 7. The explicit codification of Accessibility as a core pillar alongside resilience, redundancy, regeneration, community, and education is not a mere formality—it is foundational to how our shared infrastructure, tools, and programs operate in practice. Having managed a tool library in a busy mid-sized city, I have witnessed how intentional design of access—from clear labeling to easy check-out systems—translates directly into who feels empowered to build, create, and contribute. Accessibility enhances resilience by broadening participation and builds community by respecting diverse physical, sensory, and cognitive needs. Supporting Deaf, hard-of-hearing, blind, low-bandwidth, and neurodiverse members is not an add-on but a necessary investment to ensure equity, adaptability, and long-term sustainability across all of AGATA’s cross-disciplinary projects. Thus I am voting yea and urge this Senate to do the same.

Colleagues, as steward of AGATA's tool library and shared infrastructure, I reaffirm my strong support for Amendment 6. This iteration of the AGATA Time Priorities Charter rightly cements Long-term Ecological Stewardship as a core pillar that not only protects our immediate farm health but also secures the resilience and integrity of our 70-acre land for decades to come. The explicit focus on decade-scale commitments to managing invasive species and feral hog populations is vital and actionable—reflecting the hard lessons from neighboring farms and our own ecological observations. Without this clarity, we risk undermining all the gains from resilience, redundancy, education, and accessibility that we have painstakingly enshrined. I applaud the breadth of voices here on the Senate who raised this issue repeatedly. We cannot underestimate how these ecological actions anchor our collective mission and protect our neighbors and the broader community. I urge all to support Amendment 6, as it is both a testament to our shared stewardship and a necessary foundation for AGATA’s continued regeneration.