The City of Fresno today announced that its community engagement plan and process to select a package that will invest $66.5 million of cap-and-trade funding from the State of California through the Transformative Climate Communities program has won multiple awards from the American Planning Association (APA). The Transform Fresno Inclusive Community Engagement Process and Plan was honored with the Central Section 2020 Award of Excellence and Achievement in Planning and the California Chapter 2020 Award of Merit in the Public Outreach category.
The APA is the professional organization for city and regional planners in the United States and annually recognizes the most outstanding efforts in planning throughout the nations to encourage quality in planning and increase the public’s awareness of the planning profession through recognizing outstanding achievement in the planning field. The Public Outreach award honors an individual, project, or program that uses information and education about the value of planning to create greater awareness among citizens or specific segments of the public and celebrates how planning improves a community’s quality of life.
“This process was the most collaborative and transparent that the City of Fresno has ever attempted and these awards speak to the diligence of the residents who spent countless hours identifying and analyzing projects that will ultimately transform our most vulnerable communities,” said Fresno Mayor Lee Brand. “They deserve this high level of recognition for their efforts to raise the bar for community engagement and provide an exceptional blueprint for government projects that want to maximize the power of public discussion.”
Of particular interest to the APA was the City’s approach of conducting several “pop-up” workshops in various locations and at various times, rather than conducting one larger public meeting or workshop, and the approach of creating a procurement process that enabled local organizations to participate in the implementation of the plan, in order to increase the capacity of the local “civic infrastructure.”
The award will be presented by virtual meeting as part of the 2020 California Chapter APA conferenced on Wednesday September 16, 2020, at 12:00 p.m. PDT.