01/05/2016
Do you know about the City of Durango's Transportation and Sustainability Department? Here's what they were working on in 2015:
In 2015, the City of Durango went through a slight reorganization following the retirement of Roy Peterson, the Director of City Operations Director. The reorganization resulted in the division of the Operations Department into two departments: Transportation and Sustainability and City Operations. The new Transportation and Sustainability Department is led by Director, Amber Blake. The new department includes the divisions of Transit, Parking, Multi Modal and Sustainability. Key departmental staff include: Sustainability Coordinator, Gloria Kaasch-Buerger ; Multi Modal Manager, Jennifer Hill; Parking Manager, Wade Moore; and Transit Operations Manager, Kent Harris.
Sustainability:
In July 2015, the City Council adopted the Municipal Sustainability Action Plan which outlines over 200 actions municipal operations will be implemented to become more environmentally, socially and economically sustainable. This policy document is a framework for documenting the sustainability efforts of City departments.
In October 2015, the City of Durango was accepted into the STAR Communities Leadership Program in efforts to attain their 3 STAR Certification in 2016. STAR Communities is a nonprofit organization that works to elevate, improve and certify sustainable communities. Technical experts, sustainability leaders and local government officials developed the rating system to provide a transparent and data-driven mechanism to improve local communities. The framework will be communitywide and document our current accomplishments as well as give the community a path for the future.
Multi Modal:
In 2015, the City’s Way to Go! Club has 554 Members, who have commuted using sustainable transportation a total of almost 470,000 miles from our roadways, and over 400,000 tons of CO2 emissions from our air.
In 2015, the division was awarded a $300,000 Safe Routes to School Grant for the Needham Connect Project.
Transit:
Durango Transit provided almost 560,000 trips to residents and visitors. The department also obtained over 1.3 Million dollars in grants to fund operations and capital improvements in 2015.
