News Sustainable Biz Accountability baked into sustainability
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By Joe Boomgaard | MiBiz
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GRAND RAPIDS — The most sustainable mid-sized city in the United States now operates under a newer, more focused sustainability plan.
The new sustainability plan for fiscal years 2011-2015, approved unanimously by the board of commission on June 22, integrates sustainability into the city’s budget process and creates clear “results-oriented” targets for various departments to achieve, said Haris Alibasic, office of energy and sustainability director.
“When we put information together and we worked on the sustainability plan, our goal was to meet environmental and economic targets — starting with the economic, that was our top priority — and not lose sight of the social (aspect),” Alibasic told MiBiz.
The plan sets out goals and champions for various city departments. For example, the city has 12 targets — ranging from adding 100 miles of on-street bike lanes to increasing the number of employees participating in rideshare programs by 5 percent and decreasing total miles traveled by city employees by 10 percent — for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and its carbon footprint, which Alibasic will oversee by building coalitions within various other departments.
Because the sustainability plan is tied to fiscal planning, various departments will be held accountable for progress toward social, economic and environmental goals when the time comes for them to ask for money for the next budget year.
“We want to push them to think creatively,” he said.
Whereas the city’s previous sustainability plan was more of a statement of the city’s intent to be sustainable, this updated version serves to drive city government to be sustainable, give it the organizational support it needs, and hold it to various outcomes.
Alibasic said the city is also developing an internal dashboard of indicators so city management can easily track progress and identify areas where improvement is needed.
“We want to be aggressive (in setting targets),” he said. “We provide valuable services, and this pushes us to think creatively and innovatively to use less resources and fewer staff to get to those outcomes.”
In some areas, the city has outlined goals it might seem to have little control over. For example, the plan sets targets for increasing private business investment by $100 million and for the investment of $16 million in private funds for restoration of brownfield properties by the end of June 2011. Other “aggressive” goals include:
The plan outlines specific goals for the city’s financial management, operational efficiencies, sustainable purchasing practices, customer service and satisfaction, business diversity, neighborhood vitality and so on. Also named in several areas is an increased focus on the Grand River as an economic development tool and environmental focus for the city.
Social goals include focusing on growing healthy neighborhoods, as well as higher diversity, educational attainment, volunteerism, civic engagement, wellness and recreational opportunities, while reducing crime and loss of life.
Environmental outcomes encompass the city’s carbon footprint, water safety, watershed quality, healthy ecosystems, waste, land use and park access.
The 2011-2015 sustainability plan is one the Grand Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce endorses as “head and shoulders above” the previous sustainability movement.
“It’s a very robust plan the city has put together,” Andy Johnston, director of legislative affairs for the chamber, told MiBiz. “What the chamber likes is that it ties closely to the resolution the commission put forth on transformation priorities. It’s good to have a unified vision on what it’s going to take to move the city forward, and it’s great to see measurement incorporated in there as well.
Johnston said it was “telling” that the majority of the document spoke to the economic leg of the triple bottom line. The chamber, for its part, has been pushing the city to bring legacy costs more inline with the private sector and function as a “lean, mean, effective city government.”
While the chamber certainly supports attracting more businesses to the city, it wished the sustainability plan would have included a review of regulations to improve the business environment within the city, he said, because too often, small businesses are overrun by a maze of city rules and bureaucracy.
“We hear from employers that there are so many regulations out there. If it could be simplified, it could be a boon to small businesses looking to survive and grow in this economic environment,” Johnston said.
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