Representatives of Bay Village organizations met Jan. 13 to conduct the first Community Council meeting of the new year, and to select the Bay Village Citizen of the Year and Project of the Year.

Council members present unanimously agreed that the 2010 Citizen of the Year is Rhonda Schneider. A Bay Village Kiwanis member and former club officer, Schneider has served as president of the Bay Village Education Foundation and Bay Band Boosters.

Nominees for Citizen of the Year must be Bay Village residents who have provided outstanding volunteer community service without monetary reward.

The Project of the Year is the Bike to School Challenge. In May 2009, Bay High and Bay Middle School students and 90 school staff members logged 37,042 miles in riding bicycles to school instead of riding in automobiles and school buses. The effort is estimated to have saved 34,149 pounds of CO2 emissions and thousands of dollars in gasoline costs. Most important was the awareness in the minds of students and the community as to how important individual efforts are to change the direction of the world’s ever-increasing dependence on fossil fuels.

Cynthia Eakin is the Secretary of the Bay Village Community Council and lives in Bay Village.