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CC the nation’s first under 10K pop. STAR city

CITY NOTES

CC the nation’s first under 10K pop. STAR city

In February, the city of Charles City finally became a STAR Certified Community. In doing so Charles City became the first city in the nation with a population under 10,000 to become nationally certified as a Sustainable Community. We also were the fourth community in the state of Iowa to be certified, following Dubuque, Davenport and Des Moines.

Also in March of 2016 Iowa City received they’re Star Rating. Charles City was awarded a 3-star community rating, this rating is based on a number of items that determine how sustainable of a community each city is. The categories that are covered include:

Achieve livability, choice and access for all where people live, work and play.

Reduce climate impacts through adaptation and mitigation efforts and increase resource efficiency.

Create equitably shared prosperity and access to quality jobs

Empower vibrant, educated. Connected and

diverse communities

Ensure equity, inclusion, and access to opportunity for all citizens

Strengthen communities to be healthy, resilient and safe places for residents and businesses

Protect and restore the natural resource base upon which life depends Each goal area is broken down between five and seven objectives and points are awarded up to 700 for meeting the set criteria. Each objective has two or three outcomes and up to nine actions. The outcomes are the main goals for the each objective. They need to be clear and have a desired outcome intended in order to move the community toward the broader goal. The actions are a range of decisions and investments that the community can make, or activities that they can engage in, which are essential to achieving the desired outcomes. Our scoring breakdown was:

53 points

39.8 points

38.9 points

29 points

23 points

14.2 points

10.6 Points We were also awarded an additional nine out of 50 points for innovation, which gave us a final score of 217.5 points placing us in the 3 Star classification.

A complete listing of our results can be seen online at https://reporting. starcommunities.org/communities/ 69-charles-city-iowa.

By Charles City reaching this achievement we have set a new standard for communities of our size to look to the future and become sustainable communities. Many of the things that we were awarded points for are things that Charles City has been doing for years, with some dating back to the 1970’s.

This entire project took over two years to complete and would not have been possible without the help from the entire city staff and many other people throughout the community, especially the help of Dr. Dan Cox with the school, Tim Fox with the Charles City Area Development Corporation, and Mark Wicks with the Charles City Area Chamber of Commerce.

Since the completion of the STAR certification, I have been helping the City Engineer, John Fallis with a number of his projects including the city’s ADA compliance plan. Earlier this summer you may have seen me around town checking sidewalk ramps.

After a survey was completed of every sidewalk ramp in town a GIS map was created to show the types of ramp at each intersection. Once that was completed I began doing some survey work for the parking lot at McQuillen Place and for a trail extension along Clark St. to the east. The elevation data that was collected in this survey work will help in John’s design of each of these projects.

Jake Johnson

Charles City GIS / Planning Coordinator

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