By Jennifer Steichen, Rosemount Town Pages, January 14, 2016
Last year, the City of Rosemount partnered with the University of Minnesota’s Resilient Communities Project on a one-year undertaking in which students across various disciplines worked with city staff to identify 29 projects that would advance local sustainability and resilience in the community.
Now, the city must determine what to do with the results. Though the University of Minnesota provided the city with a list of project summaries and suggested courses of action, it is up to the city to put its ideas into action.
Community development director Kim Lindquist said the city took something away from almost every project but will need to pick and choose which parts it wants to follow through with in the months ahead.
Lindquist said she had initially thought the University would propose some course of action and the city would be able to take the entire project and implement it as written.
“It’s more like you have to take parts of projects that are really relevant and good,” she said. “There is some valuable information there. Some is implementable now, some will be housed in the comprehensive plan, but it’s a bit more stretched out, like crumbs along the way.”
The city, which is currently working on gathering public input and updating its comprehensive plan, has already made some modifications to programs based on the studies’ results. Some of the specific projects the council wishes to address involve parks, recreation and open spaces, making the the city’s farmer’s market more accessible to the public, increasing civic engagement and finding more ways to reach out to immigrants.
Mayor Bill Droste emphasized the importance of engaging with the public to develop a strong vision for the community. City administrator Dwight Johnson said ideally, the city hopes to use the University of Minnesota proposals as benchmarks and review them periodically.
“I think a lot of ideas or parts of ideas have already been implemented in some fashion or another,” Johnson said. “There is more to be done. It’s a matter of reviewing it every now and then.”