Your city and town most likely just passed their budget for 2021. While it may seem like a quick turnaround, town staff and council will also begin drafting next year’s budget in the spring. The town or municipal budget is a reflection of your community’s priorities for the year. As a community member, understanding the … Continued
Community engagement is necessary to the success of community planning and project implementation, and the data collected through this process serves as both a record of community input and the foundation for the plans and policies that follow. Each community has its own relationship with data: how the data is collected, stored, and managed; what … Continued
Jamie Finney is a partner with the Greater Colorado Venture Fund (GCVF) which invests in rural Colorado based startups. He is a sixth generation Coloradoan and lives in the San Juans. If you are interested in writing a blog for Community Builders, click here. In 2020, the inevitable changes our hometowns predicted (such as rising home … Continued
Make your town a great place to live and everything else will organically follow. Five years after the City of Alamosa and its partners attended our Building Better Places Training (BBP), this mindset still permeates City Hall. “BBP solidified for us that quality of life is the primary economic driver,” explained City of Alamosa Development … Continued
Jillian Sutherland, Co-Founder of Community Builders Since moving to Glenwood Springs in 2011, I have been inspired by the deep love people have for this place. Not simply this town, but the entire region. The American West has always captured our collective imagination – the wildness and beauty that still exists here reminds us of … Continued
At first glance, the coal counties of Northern Arizona and the movie “Moneyball” have very little in common. Coal is the economic driver of Coconino, Navajo, and Apache counties, providing millions of dollars in revenue and thousands of jobs. The closest baseball team is further south in Phoenix, in a diversified and far richer economy, … Continued
Affordable housing is a critical need in communities throughout Colorado. A variety of influences make affordable housing projects challenging to realize, such as construction and labor costs, an increase in second home and investment purchases, lack of housing supply, and, of course, land values. While addressing affordable housing is no easy task, Community Builders works … Continued
In the wide open spaces of the west, cities are often defined by their quaint downtowns and the routes that connect them to the next urban area. State highways and defunct rail lines crisscross the cities, dividing the neighborhoods and commercial districts that grew in the in-between spaces. Hamilton, Montana, on the edge of the … Continued
This is the first year I’ve had enough yard for a garden. It’s also the first year that the focus of my work has been economic development. Initially, I didn’t think these two things were related, but as I learned about how to foster a healthy and thriving garden, I in turn learned about how … Continued
River surfers enjoy twilight at Eagle River Park. The park was dreamed up during a river master planning process led by Community Builders. When local leaders from the Town of Eagle attended Community Builders’ Leadership Training in 2015, they were searching for ways to improve downtown connectivity and revitalize the community’s post-recession economy. Though the … Continued
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