VOTE UKIAH! #1 STRONG TOWN!
City competing with 15 others in the nation
Strong Towns launched in 2009 as an American nonprofit media advocacy organization dedicated to helping cities and towns in the United States and Canada achieve financial resiliency through civic engagement.
The advocacy group points to American post-World War II suburban development as a failure and seeks to improve communities through urban planning concepts such as walkability, mixed-use zoning, infill development and the reduction of car dependency.
With a membership of 5,377 their focus is on the creation of transparent local accounting, incremental housing and safe and productive streets and ending highway expansion, parking mandates and subsidies that cause productive land use to be used for motor vehicle storage.
This year Ukiah has been chosen from 33 applicants as one of 16 towns in the 9th annual international Strong Town competition. Voting begins now and, as a member (for as little as $10), your vote carries more weight.
In the first round, four towns have been placed in four categories: striving for safe streets; healing local housing; building better budgets; and progress in public engagement. Ukiah is competing in the building better budgets category for the first round — with Davis, California; Bloomington, Illinois; and Rutherford, North Carolina — and is competitively well-positioned in the other categories.
The first round is introductory with the official voting to begin on March 11-14; after which, eight towns will advance to Round 3 with voting March 18- 21; four towns will advance to Round 4 with voting on April 1-4; and two towns will advance to Round 5 with voting on April 8-11.
The final two towns will compete in a live webinar, and two
representatives from the winning town will be flown to the 2024 Strong Towns National Gathering in Cincinnati ( May 14-15) to be presented with their award certificate. Strong Towns' video creator will make a documentary short film about the community.
Strong Towns Program Manager Rachel Quednau, a member of their review team, acknowledged that Ukiah had achieved a great deal in reducing parking requirements for multifamily housing projects, encouraging the use of bicycle exemptions and promoting education in this area; making improvements in sidewalk widening, road diets, curb ramps, bulb outs, crosswalks, bike lanes, furniture, tree planting and water, sewer and electric infrastructure replacements; the creation of a Housing Trust Fund and addressing barriers to new construction by adopting and refining objective design and development policy specifically for multi-family housing; and the creation of street projects that are coordinated with other improvements such as water, recycled water, sewer, electric utility work and storm drain management.
“However,” she said, “where the city really looked strong was its focus on financial transparency.”
“One of the reasons we were selected for that particular category,” says Traci Boyl, senior management analyst in the Ukiah city manager's office, “is because in 2020, we became the first city in California to publish a fully digital budget providing online access to financial documents, public meetings, and workshops.”
Ukiah earned the Government Finance Officers Association's Distinguished Budget Presentation Award for seven years and received the GFOA's Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting for four consecutive years.
Deputy City Manager Shannon Riley explains that Jesse Davis, chief planning manager for the City of Ukiah, spearheaded the effort, about a year ago, in applying for the competition.
“And we couldn't have done this without the Greater Ukiah Business and Tourism Alliance,” she says.
She explains that GUBTA represents the entire community from multiple perspectives — the Ukiah Main Street Program, small businesses downtown; the Chamber, small and large businesses throughout the community; and Visit Ukiah, the visitor attrac
tion program.
“We've worked very closely with them on many, many projects. For this one, they've distributed a great deal of media primarily throughout California, especially with the California Welcome Center, and because of that, we were able to provide dozens of press pieces that were directly related or supplemental in support of our application.
“They've been helping with the publicizing of this contest over the past four or five weeks. It comes down to support and we're relying on their marketing expertise to help get the votes in each week.”
Based on the guiding principles of Strong Towns, the city team working on the application knew the community was a good fit.
“Even though we're a
smaller city, we do things much bigger than most cities our size,” says Riley.
The city utilizes a variety of funds to create large, impactful projects; for example, the Streetscape project utilized water, sewer and electric funds; grants; Measure Y money to help with paving the streets; and Enterprise Funds to replace the ancient infrastructure underneath.
“By coordinating all those different financial streams, we're able to create very large- scale projects. We did the same thing with the Housing Trust Fund, in a unique way that allowed us to work with developers to enable housing like the Acorn Village project,” says Boyl.
In the last 12 months, with grant teams and city directors working collab
oratively, the community has received approximately $100 million in grant funding including $53.7 million for the Phase 4 Recycled Water Project; $7.2 million for the Wildfire Mitigation Project; $4.8 million for the Electric Utility Fire Mitigation Undergrounding Project and Related Hazard Mitigation Projects; $921,000 for the Climate Adaptation and Resilience Program; $2.5 million for the Housing Programs; $6 million for the Urban Core Transportation Rehabilitation Program; and $2.2 million for the Airport Runway Enhancement Project.
“We're doing big things,” says Riley. “We absolutely are.
“Other cities our size are going insolvent right now, but we took advantage of the time provided by COVID. When a lot of projects weren't happening, we were designing projects.
“We knew that at the end of that tunnel there was going to be federal money for infrastructure. The reason we received the $54 million for recycled water was because our project was shovel ready when the state decided to give out money. We were first in line.
“We've continued to do that over and over again, always proactive in seeking this funding, through great leadership from our City Manager Sage Sangiacomo and a lot of support from the City Council. This isn't just about the city government; it's about our entire community.”
Ukiah was placed in the building better budget category for the first round of voting because of the city's stand- out performance in that classification; however, Riley and Boyl are optimistic that Ukiah will be highly competitive in all the categories.
“It's not just about fiscal responsibility; it's about safe streets; it's about community engagement; it's about housing; and it's about the strength of the Ukiah community.”
Go to https://strongesttown.com/ and start voting on March 11 and continue voting through the end of the contest until April 11. Go Ukiah!