Rockefeller Foundation 100 Resilient Cities Centennial ChallengeMasterpiece on the Mississippi
Dubuque
band
AI- America City
1
2007 • 2012 • 2013
TO: The Honorable Mayor and City Council Members
FROM: Michael C. Van Milligen, City Manager
SUBJECT: The Rockefeller Foundation 100 Resilient Cities Centennial Challenge
Team Application
DATE: October 30, 2013
I respectfully request Mayor and City Council approval to submit an application for the
Rockefeller Foundation 100 Resilient Cities Centennial Challenge Team.
Michael C. Van Milligen
MCVM:jh
Attachment
cc: Barry Lindahl, City Attorney
Cindy Steinhauser, Assistant City Manager
Teri Goodmann, Assistant City Manager
THE CITY OF
DUB E
Masterpiece on the Mississippi
Dubuque
katiti
All- America City
11111 F
2007 • 2012 • 2013
Office of the Mayor
City Hall
50 West 13th Street
Dubuque, IA 52001 -4864
www.cityofdubuque.org
October 14, 2013
100 Resilient Cities Centennial Challenge Team
The Rockefeller Foundation
Dear 100 RC Challenge Team,
I would like to express my sincere appreciation for the opportunity to apply for the
Rockefeller Foundation 100 Resilient Cities Centennial Challenge. The Challenge
afforded our city the opportunity to once again come together to assess our
community's preparedness in the event of a disaster. When I ran for Mayor in 2005, my
motto during the campaign was "engaging citizens as partners." As I went door to door
talking to thousands of citizens, I heard a consistent theme revolving around
sustainability. In 2006, after my election and at my urging, the City Council adopted
sustainability as our top priority and it has been our number one priority since. Our
achievements around this initiative, in particular our citizen task force and our unique
collaboration with such partners as IBM Research, have allowed us to understand the
need for an engaged citizenry working hand in hand with government. Climate change
is real and happening. Natural disasters are becoming more frequent and more severe.
In addition, human -made threats are a real issue for cities. The need for government to
operate at its highest level is most acute during these types of events. If cities don't
take the time to plan and build relationships with their citizens, there is tension which is
simply magnified during times of crisis.
We also know small to medium sized cities have fewer resources and know how to
manage competing demands with these resources. History and our own experience
have shown us that while it is easy to scale up, it is difficult to scale down. While
challenges, scalability of solutions and funding resources grow with the size of a
community, what transfers across all cities is outside the box thinking, which is a
hallmark of smaller communities who must be more creative because they have fewer
resources. It is also more relevant across cities. Today over 40% of the US population
live in cities under 100,000. In the US, there are only 10 cities with a population over 1
million, 109 cities with a population over 200,000 and nearly 30,000 cities with
populations under 100,000.
I applaud the Rockefeller Foundation for creating a global awareness and call to action
around resiliency. It is an issue for every city around the world. The groundwork laid
through our Sustainable Dubuque initiative has been preparing us for this moment and
we want to be one of the 100 Resilient Cities. We are committed to being both a
student and teacher throughout this process.
For these and many other reasons, I would ask you to consider our application for the
100 Resilient Cities Centennial Challenge. With our extraordinary leadership,
partnership and committed staff and citizenry, you will not be disappointed.
Please feel free to contact me directly at 563 - 564 -5455 or Rdbuok citvofdubuque.orq
or Assistant City Manager Cindy Steinhauser at 563- 599 -2767 or
csteinhai citvofdubuque.orq with any questions regarding this application.
Thank you for your consideration and for all your work to help make cities and our world
more resilient.
Sincerely,
1.o
Mayor
City of Dubuque
THE ROCKEFELLER FOUNDATION
10G RESILIEN CI
CENTENNIAL CHALLENGE
Your City's Application
Please complete the following application form in full. All questions marked with * are required.
Your responses will be limited to the number of characters allotted. Your submission is final and
cannot be edited. However, you may use this document as a worksheet.
City* Dubuque Iowa
Country* USA
First name 1* Roy
Last name 1* Buol
Organization name 1* City of Dubuque
Email address 1* Rdbuol @cityofdubuque.org
Phone number 1 563 - 564 -5455
First name 2 Cindy
(You may list an additional representative.)
Last name 2 Steinhauser
Organization name 2 City of Dubuque
Email address 2 csteinha @cityofdubuque.org
Phone number 2 563- 599 -2767
1. The Rockefeller Foundation defines resilience as the ability of a system, entity,
community, or person to withstand shocks while still maintaining its essential functions
and to recover quickly and effectively. How does this definition of resilience resonate
with your city? What are the five most pressing resilience - building priorities for your
city ?* (2000 characters)
Dubuque has experienced 7 federal disaster declarations in the past 12 years. We know
communities that are not prepared to act before, during and after an emergency will
suffer enormous losses, and its citizens will carry the weight of this lapse in leadership.
Locally, we have made improvements to help mitigate the impact of future disasters.
Resiliency isn't a theoretical concept in Dubuque. It's real.
Dubuque has identified 5 areas where it seeks to build its resiliency:
#1 Planning: Dubuque needs a comprehensive resiliency plan that helps to assess
community risks; identifies preparedness, training and other gaps and vulnerabilities;
and develops strategies to address human health, infrastructure failure, communication
breakdowns, and other public needs.
#2 Information: Dubuque needs to centralize how information is gathered and analyzed
to be more effective in our allocation of resources and services during an emergency.
#3 Communication: We need to assess how people receive information and develop
both high -touch and high -tech techniques to communicate to people in a way that is
most effective for them and will ignite them to take action.
#4 Reaching out to vulnerable populations including the elderly, low- income, transit -
dependent or non - english speaking people. Our challenge is to identify and engage
partners who can be integrated into all our emergency plans with defined roles and
responsibilities.
#5 Mitigating vulnerable infrastructure: Dubuque is the oldest city in Iowa with limited
roads into our city. The Mississippi River and a floodwall lie to our east, with only two
bridges providing access. Low -lying areas are prone to flooding, and large bluffs to our
west limit communication infrastructure. While we have some strategies to mitigate
impacts during a disaster, they are for "typical" incidents — ones we experience on a
regular basis and are fairly short in duration. There is no comprehensive long -term plan
to address vulnerable infrastructure.
2. Do you have a formal risk assessment for your city? What are the most significant
hazards, shocks, and stresses that your city faces and how do they affect the ability of
your city to function ?* (2000 characters)
While we can say with certainty that disaster will strike again, we do not know what
infrastructure will be put at greatest risk and if we are sufficiently prepared to combat that
risk. During our most recent disaster declaration, when Dubuque experienced over 15"
of rainfall in 12 hours, in addition to flash - flooding, some evacuation and high -water
rescue, we had infrastructure failure. This included failure at our lift stations, detention
basins, sewage treatment plant, slopes & large retaining walls, washout of roads &
bridges and loss of our emergency paging system. While we had experience in dealing
with each of these individually, collectively we had never encountered this scenario
before.
We recognized during the last storm that while we have components of a risk
assessment for the city, we lack a comprehensive assessment. We realized that the
most significant stresses we face are:
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1) Flood wall breach - With climate change, the threat of overtopping our floodwall has
become a very real nightmare for which we are not adequately prepared. We have
acquired equipment to address a short -term response, but no long term strategy exists.
2) Inland flash flooding - Flooding of the Bee Branch watershed, which impacts our
lowest income neighborhood, will eventually be addressed thru Bee Branch Creek
restoration. However, inland flash - flooding via the Catfish Creek tributary has no current
strategy.
3) Terrain - Our bluff terrain, proximity to the river and other constraints impact access
and response during an incident.
4) Communication network redundancy - Our communication systems are dependent on
a limited, non - redundant network coming into the city. In addition, our 911
communications center is located in a vulnerable flood area and our radio
communications network is vulnerable to high, straight line winds or tornadic activity,
both of which we experience on a regular basis.
3. Many cities already have some activities that are directly relevant to building resilience.
What specific current or recent project(s), urban plan(s) or policy(ies) has made the most
significant positive contribution to the resilience of your city? Were there innovations that
you can describe ?* (2000 characters)
Dubuque takes pride in being innovative. We created the first municipal sustainability
office in Iowa and used a citizen -based process to develop Sustainable Dubuque.
Building on that, we now have a Community Engagement Coordinator, Volunteer
Coordinator and a Human Relations specialist who are focused on connecting citizens,
businesses and non - profits to solutions for a more resilient community.
The Sustainable Dubuque Collaboration was created to carry on the work of the
Sustainable Dubuque Task Force. The goal of the Collaboration is to develop a
community - supported organization, with broad participation, in order to increase
community education and partnerships around sustainability.
A strong collaboration exists around emergency services. Currently, Dubuque and
Dubuque County share operations of our 911 call center. We also operate a shared radio
system. But our most innovative partnership exists in our Regional Training Center, a
unique partnership between the Dubuque County Firefighters Association, Dubuque
Police, Dubuque County Sheriff, Iowa DNR, Iowa State Patrol, gas & electric utilities,
railroads, Dubuque School District, and our community college. This is the premier
Regional Training Center for disaster response in the tri -state area of Iowa, Illinois and
Wisconsin.
Several targeted efforts have been taken to build sustainable and strong relationship
with community members at different levels. A Human Relations Specialist is currently
working with the School District to better understand the stories of newly arrived
international immigrants to Dubuque.
Lastly, Dubuque conducts a regular review of its emergency plans, administrative
policies and standard operating procedures. However, these are designed to address
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day to day operations and not incidents of extended nature. Incorporated into this
process is comprehensive and extensive disaster training sessions and incident
response skill development with our leadership team and private sector partners.
4. How do the hazards, shocks and stresses that you've articulated impact your city's poor
and vulnerable residents? How do you define poverty and vulnerability within the context
of your city ?* (2000 characters)
Dubuque has made a conscious effort to address disasters for our disadvantage
populations for the past 13 years. In particular, the City is building resilience for the
residents of the neighborhoods where the Bee Branch Creek Restoration Project is
located, which represent the largest concentration of elderly, minority and transit
dependent populations. The neighborhood is one of the city's oldest, most diverse areas.
A disproportionate amount of the available housing is considered blighted and is some of
the oldest housing in the city, as well as some of the oldest housing in the state of Iowa,
with over 86% of the housing built prior to 1900. The area is comprised of 30%
homeownership and 70% rental properties as compared to the 70% homeownership rate
in the rest of the city. These neighborhoods are where citizens have suffered the most
from weather events that the city has experienced.
Since the 1950s, those able to afford it have moved out of this low- income area to larger
homes and businesses on larger lots on the westend of the city. Too late did we realize
the impacts this shift has had on the at -risk Bee Branch neighborhood. Stormwater and
flooding issues created as a result of the westward movement have created regular
flooding problems for a segment of our population least able to afford to clean up the
mess or mitigate future issues. We recognized it was time to chart a new course under
the Bee Branch Creek Restoration project. Our plan for resiliency isn't just about
removing our most vulnerable citizens from the negative impact of disaster, but rather to
live up to our sustainability slogan of "viable, livable, equitable." These people were
being treated inequitably. Therefore our solution must do more that prevent and mitigate
damage; it must restore community. Our community based solution will not only reduce
flooding but restore equity and right some wrongs by including other enhancements
community gardens, parks, trails and educational components.
5. Describe how you will bring multiple stakeholders, including the private sector and other
levels of government (e.g., state and or national) together in developing and executing a
plan to build resilience. Please give examples of key stakeholders. Which stakeholders
do you think are the most relevant and most critical to success ?* (2000 characters)
Dubuque excels at engaging stakeholders. A strong foundation of partners exists for the
development of the Dubuque Resiliency Team (DRT) and a process to engage citizens
on resiliency planning. During the development of our plan this team will identify issues
and resources around our five most pressing priorities identified under question #1. The
following are identified as critical to the success of our resiliency plan:
Community Foundation which improves lives by serving donors, strengthening nonprofits
and leading collaborative initiatives to address community needs.
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Greater Dubuque Development Corporation which includes representation from over
200 local industry leaders such as John Deere, IBM, Prudential and McGraw -Hill.
Dubuque Chamber which is the business advocate for over 1300 local members.
Sustainable Dubuque Collaborative which focuses on community education and
partnerships around sustainability.
Cultural Voices - A program by community members which aims to enhance the quality
of communication between the City and culturally diverse community members. This
brings neighborhoods together as one group with their self- created strategic plan /ideas
to make their neighborhoods a safe place for all, especially children.
Residents Lead which assist leaders in the communities and focuses on revitalizing
existing skills in the community members, and sharing local and national resources.
Other partners include cultural and faith -based groups and organizations; Dubuque
County; ECIA, our local council of governments; local utilities including gas, electric
communications and cable; health care facilities including hospitals, physician group,
VNA, public health center for uninsured and underinsured; as well as representation
from our over 13 neighborhood associations.
Lastly the DRT will also include key city staff such as police, fire, health, emergency
management, planning, human rights, housing, transit, leisure services, water and City
Manager's office.
6. What specific technical support would you seek for the development of a resilience plan
(such as financing mechanisms, technology and data analytics, land -use planning,
infrastructure, and community /social resilience capacity building)? What specific
technical support would you seek for implementing a resilience plan? Are there solutions
or solution providers/ companies with which your city has already worked with or would
like to work ?* (2000 characters)
In crisis, a community asset is the efforts of its people, and the quality and availability of
information. Informed citizens help cities react to disasters more effectively. Cities need
to have good data, strong telecommunications backbone and backup storage. Dubuque
has established relationships with firms that understand our needs and place a priority
on communicating good data to citizens and leaders.
Dubuque's technical assistance needs include:
Application providers - to manage good data (Cartegraph & ESRI); to help us to enhance
our high- touch, high -tech outreach efforts (Sungard & Mindmixer).
Communication providers - to support all municipal telecommunications, radios and
cameras (CEC, Verizon, US Cellular & Raycom).
Technology providers — to provide server /storage for all data backups (Hewlett Packard
& EMC).
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All of these providers participate in disaster training and help manage the flow of
information around an incident, our response and tracking of resources. However, they
have tools that are more diversified and mobile friendly that have yet to be used in
Dubuque. During a disaster these tools can create "portals" for citizens to share
information about the disaster and its impact on their neighborhood. We currently don't
have a mechanism to do this. Emergency responders can also use these portals to
understand what action citizens are taking when allocating resources. Finally they allow
cities to better understand where data is or is not coming from and gives us the ability to
see geographically who we are not "hearing" from and adjust our disaster response
accordingly. This is particularly important in our low- income neighborhoods which tend to
have more vulnerable population. During our most recent Presidential Disaster in 2011,
while our response was good, there were gaps that cost us time and money that could
be addressed with technology.
7. What is the desired impact you want your resilience plan to have in terms of success?
How might the plan impact various communities, especially poor or vulnerable
residents ?* (2000 characters)
We will consider our effort a success when we have a comprehensive strategy that
allows us to get out ahead disasters to minimize negative impact and increase response.
This strategy will inform everyone from the newest citizen to the Mayor on what is
happening during times of crisis and what their respective response should be during a
disaster. It will also provide for a robust outreach effort that connects citizens to
volunteer opportunities to aid in recovery. It will build on the community engagement
lessons learned from our prior experience and become a replicable model that can help
cities become more prepared to manage a disaster before, during and after it occurs.
Our plan will create networks that connect people to their community in a way that builds
attachment. Creating tighter communities makes even our most vulnerable citizens feel
safe and secure, improves quality of life and makes government more transparent.
Specifically, our plan will envelope our existing incident specific plans into an integrated
planning document that can be used for an extended crisis; create protocols for a
centralized system of data gathering so we can make efficient and relevant decisions
during a crisis; create a stronger communication network allowing us to connect to
residents quickly and in a way comfortable to them; quickly help us identify vulnerable
populations to let them know what they need to do or how we need to help them; and
identify ways to create stronger, hardened infrastructure giving us better access to
connect and talk to the outside world.
Specific measurements will be organized around social /economic needs such as lives,
property, money saved; injuries /illness /deaths; reduced displacement from home or
medic response. Engagement needs including the number of partners agencies
participating, citizen participation and government efficiencies such as reduced response
time to incident, reduced duplication of services or savings to taxpayers.
8. How do you envision the role of a Chief Resilience Officer? Beyond salary support, what
structure would be established to enable the CRO to succeed in building your city'
resilience? We recommend that the CRO would have a direct reporting line to the
mayor or a senior official. If you already have someone in a similar function /role, what
duties and powers is he or she currently vested with ?* (2000 characters)
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The CRO will be highly integrated into the community's philosophy of people, planning
and partnering for the development and management of a resiliency plan. Dubuque is in
this for the long haul. Much like sustainability became the brand for our community,
creating resiliency at all levels is still in its infancy but being weaved into the fabric of our
community. We have a strong foundation started, but have much work still ahead of us,
and that work cannot start without an engaged public.
The CRO will report to the City Manager, who is the CEO for Dubuque and reports
directly to the Mayor and City Council. The CRO will also conduct regular work sessions
with the City Manager and City Council around the development of the resiliency plan.
Internally, it will be the role of the CRO to create and manage the Dubuque Resiliency
Team (DRT). The DRT will be comprised of public and private stakeholders, including
traditional public safety positions as well as representation from sectors that can help
engage and build social capital. The DRT will include the City's Sustainability
Coordinator, Human Rights Director, Community Engagement Coordinator, Human
Relations Specialist, Multi- cultural Family Center Director and Intercultural Competency
team members.
Through the CRO, this team will provide updates on the resiliency plan to the City
Manager, City Council and other policy decision makers to achieve consensus and
commitment on the plan. The CRO's primary goal will be to build consensus among
groups; engage government to adopt policies to support the plan; identify and leverage
resources to implement the plan; track success; and share best practices and lesson
learned. The CRO (and DRT) will do this while recognizing that the underpinning of all of
this is focused on three areas:
Comprehensive community risk assessment including business, institution and citizen
risk
Community engagement & empowerment
Technology — Meeting citizens where and how they are most comfortable.
9. One key element to 100RC is the creation of the 100 Resilient Cities Network to facilitate
sharing of best practices and lessons learned as well as become a source of knowledge
on urban resilience building. What are the things your city would like to gain from the
network and what are three things your city would contribute to the network ?* (2000
characters)
As stated, one of the core principles of our community revolves around people, planning
and partnering. We embrace learning about others successes and best practices and in
turn, offer what we can to the conversation. Our needs align with priorities and hazards
identified in questions 1 &2, in particular our need for a comprehensive resiliency plan.
Specifically, the city has many incident specific plans such as Severe Weather,
Pandemic, HazMat or Emergency operations. However these plans need to be
integrated into a comprehensive plan and aligned with structured, effective training for
our staff, partners and citizens.
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As a leader in Sustainability, Mayor Buol is often called upon to share our story with
others and we do so willingly. Mayor Buol has traveled the world to share our success
story and carry the message of sustainability. Our Sustainable Dubuque initiative seeks
to make Dubuque a community that meets the environmental, economic and social
equity needs of its residents today without reducing the ability of future generations to
meet their needs. It has become a community wide initiative that all citizens have
embraced and has resulted in dramatic changes for our community. Dubuque will
continue to make the Mayor and staff available help share the lessons learned from this
citizen -based endeavor.
In tandem with this, Dubuque was selected as the only city in the US by IBM Research
to serve as a living lab for their Smarter Planet Initiative. In 2009, Smarter Sustainable
Dubuque (SSD) was launched with the idea to "give residents and businesses what they
need (which is information and tools specific to their circumstances to do what they want
— which is to save money, conserve resources, improve local economy and reduce
carbon." Embedded in this program is scientifically -based research around successful
citizen engagement. Dubuque excels at partnering for solutions and leveraging those
partnerships. SSD helps us share the science behind this approach.
10. Are you currently a participant in or have you participated in other networks? Which
ones ?* (500 characters)
Mayor Buol co- Chairs the Mississippi River Cities and Towns Initiatives and is a member
of the Climate Communities Executive Committee. Dubuque hosts an annual
sustainability conference which draws attendees from 92 cities and 20 states. City
leadership is also actively engaged in the following organizations:
Urban Sustainability Directors Network, Heartland Sustainability Directors Network,
STAR Community Index, ICMA Sustainability Committee, Funders Network and
America's Watershed Initiative.
11. What about your city in particular makes you a good candidate for 100 RC? What
unique perspective, knowledge, or capability do you bring? What essential problem must
be addressed whose solution can also be replicable for other cities ?* (2000 characters)
Over 42% of US citizens live in cities with populations of 200,000 or less. It is critical to
our global society to develop scalable solutions for these cities. These are not monolithic
cities where citizens are but a number and solutions are institutionalized, but places
where it is easier to engage citizens, create a shared vision and react quickly when
disaster strikes. True resiliency will come when solutions are scalable to smaller
communities.
Dubuque should be one of the 100 RC because:
Dubuque is right -sized city. As a smaller city, Dubuque can interact more closely with its
citizens. We have an engaged Mayor who has made sustainability and resiliency his
legacy — and not just locally. Mayor Buol has carried this torch across the globe
challenging cities and businesses alike to take action.
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Dubuque knows how to engage. The Mayor and council have always recognized that
you'll get the best results if you partner with people in the creation of a plan and the
implementation of the community's ideas. Since 1991, Dubuque has had over a dozen
community -wide engagement efforts. Each of these efforts has seen participation in the
thousands by citizens.
Dubuque listens to its citizens. A citizen task force led the Sustainable Dubuque
initiative. This is the model that works. Unfortunately, this is not the model often used in
big cities where it would become just another government program.
Resiliency is our next sustainability initiative. Our citizens want this. We don't have to
convince them that it is needed.
Unfortunately, the best evidence for why Dubuque must become more resilient is our
repeated experience with previous storms, including 7 federal disaster declarations in
the past 12 years. During a disaster, time matters, information matters, communication
matters. Dubuque is perfectly positioned to help develop best practices that deal with
these challenges. Dubuque excels at bringing stakeholders together to create replicable
solutions.
12. Include a link to a map of your city in which you highlight and annotate areas and
features of particular importance to your application responses.*
https:// cityofdubuque .sharefile.com /d/s342646bfda441 ec9
13. Please attach your letter of support from the senior -most representative of your city's
government, whether elected or appointed.*
® 1 agree to all rules and legal conditions associated with this challenge.*
® 1 am 18 years of age or older.*
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