Sustainability Roadmaps: Five Lessons from Richmond

This exclusive Guest Column was written for Gov1 by Alicia Zatcoff, the Sustainability Manager of Richmond, Virginia, whose work was recently covered in an Gov1 article. A recorded interview with Zatcoff is also available.

In Richmond, VA, sustainability is as much about economic development and job creation opportunities as it is about enhancing the quality of life for our residents and improving the environment. Under the leadership of Mayor Dwight C. Jones, we developed our Sustainability Plan called RVA Green: A Roadmap to Sustainability, with engagement from a broad cross section of our community. RVAgreen is a community-based plan. It serves as our roadmap to becoming a sustainable community and improving the overall quality of life in Richmond.

We funded our effort using a portion of the City’s Energy Efficiency Conservation Block Grant (EECBG) from the Department of Energy. We worked for over a year on the planning process to create RVAgreen. During that time, we learned a tremendous amount, and are pleased to share our most important lessons with Gov1 readers:

Begin With The End in Mind

Invest the time before you start the planning process to figure out what type of sustainability plan you want. What are your goals? What specific deliverables do you need to achieve? Determine the key items for your plan and work backwards to ensure that your planning process incorporates those “must-haves.” Check in throughout the process to make sure you stay on track. In Richmond, our goal was to create a sustainability plan that built on the existing strengths and assets of the community. So, we started our process by conducting a baseline assessment of city government and the community to capture past, current, and planned sustainability efforts.

Balance Vision With Reality

Developing a sustainability plan can be an overwhelming undertaking because there are so many goals and objectives that you want to achieve. It’s critical to balance visionary elements with what is realistic for your community. This may result in having to make difficult decisions during the planning process. For RVAgreen, we decided to limit our plan to five broad priorities and those became the five focus areas of our plan: Economic Development, Energy, Environment, Open Space & Land Use, and Transportation. We chose these five focus areas because they best represented the sustainability priorities of our city government and the community.

Engage Stakeholders Early and Often

Transparency and collaboration are crucial to getting buy-in on your plan. Once you decide to develop a sustainability plan, identify your stakeholders as soon as possible. Then, determine the best way to engage them in your planning process. You may need to use a variety of methods to reach everyone.

In Richmond, we created a thirty member Advisory Committee composed of city staff, residents, business owners, corporate representatives and technical experts. The Committee worked with us throughout the entire planning process. We also worked closely with the City’s Executive Team composed of Department Directors and Agency Heads.

We identified seventy-five organizations that worked in the sustainability field in our area. During two critical steps in our process, we hosted workshops for the Executive Director and a Board member from these organizations so they could provide input. We held two public workshops for city residents and interested citizens. During all of the workshops, we organized attendees into small groups, used facilitators, and leveraged Turning Point software in order to maximize the engagement level of participants.

We also attended standing meetings in the community including the Mayor’s Participation, Action & Communication Team, City Council District, and neighborhood association meetings. We created a stand-alone webpage for the RVAgreen Sustainability Plan with a dedicated e-mail account for citizens to contact us. At various times during the process, we also posted on-line surveys to gather input from the public.

Over 400 people had the opportunity to participate and provide input into the identification and prioritization of initiatives for our sustainability plan. Toward the end of our planning process, we met with our various stakeholder groups to prioritize initiatives and determine which ones would make it into the plan. The prioritization results were overwhelmingly consistent among all stakeholder groups. Due to our extensive engagement efforts, we felt confident that there was broad support for our plan.

Plan for Action

As you’re creating your plan, it’s important to strategize about how you’re going to implement it because that’s where the real work begins! How will you fund the implementation of your plan? Is it better to seek funding for the plan in its entirety, or can you fund certain items one at a time? How will you measure, track and report progress on your plan? Will you develop a set of overall indicators for the plan, or specific targets for each initiative or action item in your plan? How often and what format will you use to report on the progress of your plan? What information is important for the community to know about your plan?

During our planning process, we developed a spreadsheet that displayed our implementation process. We created a timeline, and identified specific steps we would need to take once the plan was developed. We also identified a responsible party for each task. In doing so, we were able to hit the ground running once Mayor Jones unveiled the RVAgreen plan this past April.

Be a Good Partner

Sustainability work is holistic in nature, and local governments cannot effectively do this work by themselves. Community engagement and supportive partnerships are essential to developing and implementing a successful sustainability plan. It’s helpful to think about what parts of your plan may benefit a prospective partner. This can help you establish a mutually beneficial relationship.

In Richmond, we truly value our wonderful corporate, nonprofit, academic, political and community partners. They have helped make our RVAgreen plan successful and they continue to work with us during the implementation process. In turn, our partners have been able to use the RVAgreen plan to support grant proposals and other projects. It is a true win-win!

Alicia Zatcoff, J.D., LEED AP, is the Sustainability Manager for the City of Richmond, where she directs the city-wide Sustainability and Energy Management Program. Alicia has over fifteen years of local government experience in areas including municipal law, governmental process, complex real estate transactions, community development, public safety and sustainability. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from the University of Virginia and her Juris Doctor from the T.C. Williams School of Law at the University of Richmond. Alicia is a LEED Accredited Professional. She serves on the Boards of the Sustainable Transportation Initiative of Richmond and the Richmond Region Energy Alliance. She is also a member of the Urban Sustainability Directors Network and the James River Green Building Council. She can be reached at alicia.zatcoff@richmondgov.com