Sustainability Initiatives

From my first days with the City of Maricopa it became clear that there was an interest in sustainability.  The City Council incorporated elements of sustainability throughout the strategic plan and mention sustainability during the council meetings.  The first long term project I was assigned was to draft sustainability initiatives that incorporate the three legs of the stool; environmental, social, and economic sustainability.

My process began with reading Maricopa's strategic plan and general plan to begin to understand the organizational and community goals.  I then proceeded to read through a dozen or so sustainability plans from municipalities across the country and develop an inventory of key elements from them that could be incorporated in Maricopa. A challenge I found early on is that many of the cities' sustainability plans focus on the environmental components and less on social and economic. This meant that it took more time and research to find plans that provided more ideas regarding social and economic sustainability.  The most helpful plans I found were from the cities of Vancouver Washington, Minneapolis Minnesota, Boulder Colorado, and El Paso Texas. 

In addition to researching sustainability plans across the country, I also gathered existing sustainability practices within the City of Maricopa.  I contacted all of the department heads and particular staff members I found were interested in sustainability to retrieve the information.  I also re-read the strategic plan and inventoried all of the sustainability components of it.

The finished draft successfully incorporates the best practices from cities across the country along with the Maricopa's priorities.  Now all I can do is wait to see where the plan goes from here.