Small Cities Week Celebrates Innovation, Progress in America’s Small Cities and Towns

June 20, 2011

by Sandi Burtseva

Small Cities Week, which honors the achievements of America’s small cities and towns and highlights their vital role in American life, began yesterday, June 19, with a meeting of the Small Cities Council in Beulah, N.D. (See related story). The Small Cities Council, which is comprised of NLC member cities with populations under 50,000, allows smaller communities to share ideas and best practices, and works to ensure that the interests of small communities are reflected in NLC’s overall policies and programs. Small Cities Week will run through June 25.

Small cities comprise the core of America’s municipal governments — 94 percent of the approximately 20,000 municipal governments in the U.S. have populations numbering less than 25,000; 87 percent have populations smaller than 10,000. Though such cities and towns do not often receive the same national recognition as their larger counterparts, they are frequent sites of innovative solutions and advances.

The benefits of their ingenuity on a range of subjects —including safety, ecological initiatives, efficiency and waste reduction, neighborhood revitalization and more — reach far beyond their immediate communities. Small cities have the potential to impact the nation, especially when others take notice of and learn from their accomplishments. The following details examples of successful city programs in small cities:

Kingsport, Tenn.

In the face of a dwindling manufacturing base, a stagnant housing market and no retail growth, Kingsport opted to address its economic problems by investing in education. In 2010, Kingsport introduced the Higher Education Initiative, through which the city funded the Educate and Grow scholarship program. For high school graduates who meet the Northeast State Community College’s (NeSCC) entrance criteria, the scholarship covers up to four semesters of full tuition. This scholarship program is now open to all counties in the NeSCC service area.

The initiative also funded the construction of the Regional Center for Applied Technology — a downtown satellite location of the NeSCC. The $13 million, 54,000-square-foot facility surpassed its five-year goal of 1,000 students in just two years. At the NeSCC’s request, Kingsport also added a building to house the college’s medical programs, and, with the help of state funding, the NeSCC has built a facility for in-house apprenticeship programs, as well as electrical/mechanical and technical programs.

Thanks to the Higher Education Initiative, almost 1,600 students attend NeSCC classes in the full-service “Academic Village” in downtown Kingsport. As Mayor Dennis Phillips explains, Kingsport’s goal was to “mak[e] higher education so affordable and convenient that anyone can get an education. Money and access shouldn’t stand in the way.”

Clemson, S.C.

The Clemson city government looked to the latest in technological innovation to address a problem of inefficiency in debris collection. In 2006, Clemson administrators partnered with PinPoint GeoTech LLC, to create a new product: PinPoint – Public Works.

This technology helps the public works department streamline the collection of debris by mapping debris locations before removal crews leave their department, thus eliminating the need for them to run routes on every street. The system allows city workers who spot debris or other items requiring attention while driving their normal routes to report the location with the touch of a button.

Available categories range from piles of leaves to overhanging branches to code violations. PinPoint – Public Works also enables city workers to enhance the detail in their reports by providing photographs and audio notes.

At the end of each day, the program uploads all marked issues onto an administrator’s computer and generates a list of work orders for the following day. After its successful application to debris removal, PinPoint – Public Works was applied more widely in areas such as code enforcement and post-disaster information collection.

PinPoint – Public Works allows the government of Clemson to serve its citizens effectively while making more efficient use of their employees’ time and saving taxpayers money on fuel and vehicle maintenance.

Slidell, La.

When Slidell created the Strengthening the Community and the Economy through the Arts program, the city committed to building a sense of community and bolstering the local economy by fostering cultural events made equally available to all citizens, regardless of socioeconomic status.

Slidell’s Department of Cultural and Public Affairs is tasked with ensuring that arts events in the city are universally accessible. To that end, Slidell annually offers free admission to more than 40 cultural events, largely through the Cultural Season Sponsorship program. These private sector sponsorships range from $500 to $5,000 per year and provide nearly 40 percent of the funding for Slidell’s accessible cultural programs. The sponsors are perceived as goodwill ambassadors by the community and receive year-round exposure in press releases and printed materials surrounding the arts events.

Slidell’s cultural events enjoy great popularity, as evidenced by the high attendance rates. The Arts Evening typically draws about 5,000 people. Outdoor symphony concerts and the Bayou Jam regularly see crowds as large as 11,000 — more than a third of Slidell’s population. And the private funding has increased dramatically: from $9,000 in 2004 to over $60,000 in just five years.

Estes Park, Colo.

Estes Park created the Estes Valley Restorative Justice Partnership (EVRJP) in an effort to more thoughtfully address, and ultimately reduce, crime and disorder. The partnership builds on the six principles of restorative justice — repair of harm, reconciliation of relationships, reintegration into the community, responsibility taken for incident, restitution to victims and respect given and received by all. These principles are expanded upon and applied in an effort to improve victim services, reduce arrests and recidivism and give community members a more pronounced role in the justice process.

EVRJP is a joint non-profit and municipal venture staffed almost entirely by volunteer facilitators, which addresses:

The nature of the crime. Crime is understood first as an offense against relationships and community well-being, and second as an offense against the law or the state.

Offender accountability. Offenders are held directly — in a face to face meeting — accountable to victims and other community members.

Repair of harm. Victims are provided with a voice and recognition and, where possible, attempts are made to rectify harm done.

Balanced participation. The victim and community are brought together with the offender in voluntary and constructive ways to improve reintegration. While the traditional criminal justice system still holds power to ensure follow-through, the participation model provides a more convincing source of motivation.

Capacity building. Victims are given an opportunity to move toward forgiveness and healing, while offenders are encouraged to develop empathy and an inclination toward better choices. Communities unite in an ability to solve their own problems, allowing the justice system to play a supportive role.

Encouragement of innovation. This system employs and encourages non-traditional and community-minded methods of promoting justice.

Partnerships for action. Stakeholders in the justice process and community well being build mutually beneficial alliances.

Through the Restorative Justice Partnership, Estes Park is providing local crime victims with a voice, holding offenders accountable without shutting them out from their community and strengthening its community’s role in addressing and preventing crime.

Bristol, Va.

Through its Broadband Partnerships & Sustainability Project, Bristol created the first public utility in the nation to implement triple-play broadband over a fiber-to-the-user network. Through Bristol’s considerable efforts, ubiquitous broadband access was brought not only to its own Washington County, but to six others in the southwest Virginia region.

Bristol Virginia Utilities (BVU), which operates as the government enterprise fund for the city, has invested millions in building the innovative network. In the process, Bristol faced considerable legal hurdles, not only spending $2.5 million to fight internet and cable companies seeking to block BVU’s entry into telecommunications, but also being forced to sue the state of Virginia in federal court. These difficulties have proven to be well worth it, as BVU’s OptiNet infrastructure is now the national benchmark for small-town government triple-play broadband technology.

As a function of its success, Bristol was able to secure more than $6 million of funding from the Virginia Tobacco Commission and the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration. BVU applied these funds to add a 155-mile expansion of the already 850-mile OptiNet structure, bringing world-class broadband access to some of the most remote and rural parts of southern Appalachia.

The emergence of OptiNet has also been a financial boon for the region. In 2007, two of the nation’s largest knowledge-based companies — CGI Inc., and Northrop Grumman Corporation — built multi-million-dollar facilities in nearby Russell County. BVU OptiNet is credited with creating 1,200 jobs across seven counties in the region, adding $50 million in private investment and $37 million in annual payrolls.

The Broadband Partnerships & Sustainability Project has put Bristol on the map as an innovator — improving broadband access and the local economy for its citizens, neighboring counties and the entire region.

South Sioux City, Neb.

South Sioux City drew on a positive history of public and private sector cooperation for a unique project. After the 1968-built indoor city pool was deemed unsafe for competitive swimming, the South Sioux City Community School District joined with the YMCA to build a $10 million recreation center, the Siouxland Y.

The city provided an ideal location for the new facility, situating it along the Missouri River and thus incorporating the new center into its ongoing Riverfront Redevelopment Program. This central location also provides the Y with visibility from the interstate, is accessible via the tri-state rail system and by regional transit and provides ample space for parking and for handicapped accessibility.

The city and school district contributed $1.5 million in non-property tax funds toward the new recreation center’s construction and added it to their existing wireless security camera system. As an added bonus, the old indoor pool, no longer in need of city subsidies, was turned into much-needed classroom space for the school district.

As then-mayor Bob Giese explained, “South Sioux City is blessed with a community of innovation, cooperation and caring… The YMCA recreational project is an exceptional example of a city, school and non-profit cooperative venture.”

Beach, N.D.

The City of Beach decided to spur necessary economic revitalization by creating a Renaissance Zone. The zone is intended to encourage private sector investment in underdeveloped areas by providing property tax exemptions, state income tax credits and historical tax credits to projects that make a significant and comprehensive investment in real property within the zone.

Administered by city employees, the Renaissance Zone program brings great reward at a limited cost. Its success is measured over the five-year tax exemption period in indicators such as job creation, aesthetic improvement, historic restoration and property value growth.

Dania Beach, Fla.

Dania Beach found an innovative and ecological solution to a lighting problem. Facing a five-year backup in replacing conventional streetlamp bulbs, Dania Beach instead opted for a switch to solar-powered street lighting. The new system reduces inefficient power use and light pollution, and cuts greenhouse emissions by 40 percent.

The installed cost of the first solar streetlights was $8,690 per unit, paid in part through a Community Development Block Grant. Since the solar lights have no cost beyond installation — whereas the city had been paying $3,773 per conventional streetlamp per year — Dania Beach received payback on its investment in less than three years.

The city has since opted for two more installations of 87 and then 44 new solar fixtures. By negotiating these projects with the same contractor, the city was able to drop the price to only $7,700 per unit installed during the last round of installations. The innovative, eco-minded project saves both energy and taxpayer money.