Leading the Way to Sustainability

The City of West Des Moines recently directed some of our Curb It! Revenue Sharing funds toward sponsorship of the Center on Sustainable Communities Building a Sustainable Iowa Workshop. The events taking place here in West Des Moines at the Raccoon River Park Nature Lodge include an Advanced Building Workshop and a leadership forum.

I think that the leadership forum will be an exceptional opportunity for area individuals, businesses, government entities, and organizations to dialogue about our current efforts and how we can make more progress toward sustainability in Central Iowa. The City of West Des Moines will have staff in attendance.

Here is the description of the forum from the COSC website:

"As Iowa’s leading resource on sustainable building education, COSC is conducting a Leadership Forum with Marc Richmond for Iowa’s business leaders, community leaders, state agency leaders, and policy makers. The session will define the key components of sustainable building and illustrate strategies for building sustainable communities based on national models. "

Schedule:

9:45 am Registration, Networking
10:00 am Welcome by Kevin Nordmeyer, New Director of the Iowa Energy Center
10:10 am What exactly is Green Building and Sustainable Design . . .
and why is it important to you?
11:00 am Where are we in Iowa?
12:00 am Luncheon
12:30 pm How do we move forward effectively?
1:30 pm Open Discussion and Wrap-up

I would encourage any Greater Des Moines community leader to consider signing up. I know that our staff members look forward to participating in the conversation.

The WDM Difference

Click the graphic above to virtually browse through the City of West Des Moines' newest development guide, The WDM Difference. The guide was distributed to Business Record subscribers in January.

This guide serves as an economic development tool for the City's Community and Economic Development Department as they work to recruit and retain businesses in the city. In my opinion, it's also a pretty interesting read for residents of West Des Moines because it encompasses so many different aspects of our community. A map highlighting land uses and development areas is available halfway through the online publication.

Request a hard copy of the development guide.

Crime Free Multi-Housing

Many people don't realize that multi-family housing (apartment, town home, and condominium) is a strong component of West Des Moines' residential inventory. Over 18,000 of our residents (35%) live in multi-family dwellings.

Although residents report a very high "feeling of safety" on our citizen surveys, we continue to work in all parts of our community to improve how we deliver public safety services. One important element of that service is crime prevention.

Approximately 10% of the Police Department’s calls for service are to apartment communities. Although that is just a percentage of overall crime, we try and work through management groups and associations to affect a large number of people in multi-housing developments. All of these efforts take shape in the Crime Free Multi-Housing Program (CFMH).

CFMH is a partnership between the WDM Police Department and local apartment complexes. It is essentially a coalition of police, property managers and residents of rental properties working together to reduce crime. This concept was developed in Mesa, Arizona in 1992 and introduced in the Des Moines area in 1996. Our department received its initial training in 1997 and certified its first apartment community, Sun Prairie Apartments, in 1998.

The main tenants of the program are that effective property management can have an impact on the health of the community and that simple, legal, and fair techniques exist to deal with illegal activity. There are three phases to the program - management training, crime prevention through environmental design (which involves inspections and meeting security requirements), and tenant safety training. A complex must complete all three phases to be fully certified. Eight apartment complexes have done so. The Police Department has developed partnerships with an additional 42 apartment communities in West Des Moines to work towards that goal.

Learn more about the phases and tools involved in the program on our website. For more specific information on Crime Free Multi-Housing, you can contact Officer Jeff Hartshorn in the Police Department's Special Operations Unit at 222-3369.