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Fort Collins, Colorado, USA

Fort Collins Adapts to Drier Climate with Data-Driven Solutions.

Project Type:
Community Engagement, Communications, Environment, Equity, Finance, High-Performing Government, Infrastructure

WWC - Silver Certification Badge for year 2021

At a Glance

Saved nearly 40 million gallons of water by implementing a monitoring system that measures hourly water usage and allows customers and contractors to track their water usage.

Utilizes data to identify residents who could benefit from the City’s home energy efficiency program. This data helps facilitate easier communication between city officials and residents, both can reach out to another to share information.

Residents help city staff develop and evaluate budget proposals using an outcomes-based rubric. The city solicits participation through the city’s budget website, where residents can read documents, watch videos, and participate in surveys and online forums.

Tackling Big Challenges

ears of historic drought have exacted a heavy toll across the western U.S., from devastating wildfires to shrinking reservoirs. With extreme heat and dryness expected to be the new normal for years to come across the region, governments have no choice but to adapt. In more and more areas, water management has become an innovation challenge: How can cities learn to live with less?

The City of Fort Collins has a history of tackling big challenges, like developing renewable energy technologies and next-generation rechargeable batteries. Recognized in 2015 by the Smithsonian Institute as a place of innovation, and home to high-tech startups and Colorado State University, Fort Collins views ingenuity as part of its DNA.

No surprise, then, that city officials have stepped up to the challenge of 21st century water management with data-driven innovations that creatively engage and empower residents to be part of solutions. This work has flowed out of Fort Collins’ steady investment in building staff comfort and skill with foundational practices including data governance, performance and analytics, and stakeholder engagement. The City treats data as a strategic asset that can yield actionable insights and meaningfully engage the public.

“When you have a robust data program, and data is easily accessible to both staff and residents, it becomes much easier to determine how finite city resources can be used to tackle issues such as water conservation.”

Fort Collins Deputy Director of Information & Employee Services Tyler Marr

Sharing Data to Save Water

The City’s Landscape Water Budget and Leak Alerts programs showcase how combining the right technology platforms with open data practices and performance analytics can deliver real results.

Prior to launching the Landscape Water Budget program, Fort Collins conducted commercial irrigation audits. Staff from Fort Collins Utilities, which manages the City’s water supply, would assess properties and make irrigation improvement suggestions. But many customers would request an assessment each year without having implemented the City’s previous water-saving advice. City staff often would find themselves stuck between the customer (who owns or rents the land) and a landscaping contractor in charge of irrigation.

A city staff member meeting with a Landscape Water Budget program participant. Image courtesy of the City of Fort Collins.

So the City overhauled its approach. Using hourly water usage data drawn from its new Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) system, Fort Collins Utilities began providing suggested water-use budgets to both customers and contractors during initial on-site consultations. Customers can access their water accounts detailing suggested and actual usage 24/7 via the MyWater portal, developed in partnership with the WaterSmart data analytics platform.

Screenshot from the MyWater portal showing outdoor water usage. Image courtesy of the City of Fort Collins.

The overarching idea was to give end users useful insights into how they can conserve water and empower them to make adjustments without city involvement. “Fundamentally, we are better off when we can build conversations with customers and the broader community that are based in transparency, visibility, and engagement,” says John Phelan, energy services senior manager at Fort Collins Utilities.

Since launching in 2018, the Landscape Budget program has reduced water use by an estimated 73 million gallons. This represents about 1 percent of the City’s total annual treated water use. Over the same period, the number of participants — many are homeowners’ associations and customers with landscapes that cover millions of square feet — has doubled from 40 to 80.

The MyWater portal also provides individual household customers with general water use information and comparisons to similar homes. The AMI system can automatically flag continuous water use, so Fort Collins Utilities decided to use this feature to enhance its system for alerting customers about suspected leaks. On the MyWater dashboard, a household can sign up for the Leak Alerts program and select a preferred communication method. The system will send text message or email notifications if continuous water use is sensed for a 24-hour period. Previously, the City would call a customer or mail a letter if it suspected a leak.

An automatic alert message sent via the Leak Alerts program. Image courtesy of the City of Fort Collins.

Since 2017, the City has sent more than 13,300 Leak Alert notifications. Because it can now reach more customers faster and resolve leaks more quickly, the results are dramatic: an increase in estimated annual water savings from two million gallons prior to 2017 to 40 million gallons in recent years.

Fort Collins residents participating in the Leak Alert program can provide feedback to Utilities, including detailing the cause of a leak and whether it has been fixed.

Data from both the Leak Alerts and Landscape Water Budget programs are tracked by Fort Collins’ customized database known as “Bertha,” which supports the City’s big utilities goals: high-quality service and efficient resource management. (Fort Collins Utilities also manages stormwater, wastewater, and electricity.) Staff designed the database system to collect and organize data from all utility services across the City, helping staff address a range of challenges.

For example, city officials have analyzed utility data to identify residential properties that could benefit from the City’s home energy efficiency retrofit program, and then engaged those customers. And during the pandemic, staff pulled data from Bertha to identify residents who had fallen behind on payments and then reached out to them to share information about utilities payment assistance resources.

“Data helps us make better decisions as a city and helps the residents of Fort Collins make better decisions.”

Fort Collins Interim Deputy Director of Water Resources & Treatment Utilities Liesel Hans

Budgeting by and for the People

Data governance, metrics-driven performance management, and stakeholder engagement is evident in Fort Collins’ budgeting approach as well. The City operates a robust public engagement process. In the months leading up to submission of the biennial budget proposal to the City Council, residents can visit a budget website to read budget documents, watch videos, and participate in surveys and online forums. The feedback is considered by staff as they develop the official budget proposal.

The City’s Budgeting for Outcomes process, which prioritizes budget requests to aid decision-making, also serves to increase community participation. Fort Collins’ budget is broken into seven outcomes, each tied to specific performance metrics. For example, in the Neighborhood Livability & Social Health outcome, a key metric is Voluntary Code Compliance, which tracks city efforts to educate neighbors on city ordinances and codes. Through the budget engagement and feedback tools, residents can rank their priority outcomes, as well as which objectives should be prioritized within each outcome area.

The Budget 2021 site garnered participation from over 3,250 unique participants, despite the unprecedented year that was 2020. The Budget 2022 site is expected to have even greater engagement.

“It’s really exciting to see the process work,” shares Lawrence Pollack, Fort Collins’ budget director.

Going forward, Pollack’s team will advance its budgeting process through its Equity Indicators Project. Working with community leaders, officials will look at various equity indicators across the City to focus budget offers on actions that can help close racial and economic disparities.

“Every budget request now has to answer how it advances equity in Fort Collins so that we really embed this work throughout the budget process.”

Fort Collins Budget Director Lawrence Pollack

By intentionally engaging more diverse members of the community, Pollack and his team are hoping to get more actionable and meaningful information from residents. “We don’t want to just hear the vocal majority,” Pollack says. “The differentiation of voices is really important in this work.”

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Denver, Colorado, USA

How Denver’s Outcomes-Focused Approach to Homelessness Delivered Results.

Project Type:
Finance, Health & Wellness, High-Performing Government, Homelessness

At a Glance

Looked at evidence-supported methods to increase housing stability and decreased incarceration among homeless residents.

Provided real-time data to monitor air quality in Denver schools by using low-cost, cutting-edge air pollution sensor technology, equipped with solar, battery storage, and data connectivity.

Implemented a pay-for-success contracting model that used data to identify outcomes rather than outputs, reaping greater investments for public programs such as housing.

Denver’s Dedication to Results

The United States’ homelessness crisis has only worsened during the pandemic. Local governments searching for innovative and replicable solutions to this persistent challenge should look to Denver, Colorado. In recent years, the City has addressed homelessness through a pay-for-success contracting model that implemented an outcomes-based, Housing First approach.

A Denver Rescue Mission men’s shelter. Photo by Evan Semón courtesy of City of Denver.

It all started with a commitment to using data to identify outcomes rather than outputs, says Margaret Danuser, Denver’s deputy chief financial officer. City leaders dug into the city’s homelessness challenges, zeroing in on a particularly costly part of the problem: the homelessness-jail cycle. Without access to housing, many individuals experiencing chronic homelessness become trapped in a cycle that takes them in and out of jail, detoxification centers, or emergency rooms. The cycle makes it nearly impossible for them to find stability or to access the medical care they need. It also comes at a large cost to taxpayers; officials estimated that just a few hundred chronically unhoused people were costing the City $7.3 million each year in public safety and healthcare-related services.

With the aim of breaking this damaging cycle and mitigating costs, the City launched the Supportive Housing Social Impact Bond (SIB) Initiative in 2016. The first step was to identify participants. Using a list of names compiled by the Denver Police Department from arrest, jail, and emergency services records, local service providers walked city streets to find individuals stuck in the homelessness-jail cycle. They identified 250 people. Through partnerships with two key service providers, the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless and the Mental Health Center of Denver, SIB offered these individuals housing and intensive wraparound services to help them get back on their feet. The initiative followed the Housing First approach, which quickly gets people into housing without any preconditions. SIB participants also received a menu of services to help them get identification, medical care, and therapy; reconnect with family members; and access substance abuse treatment.

But what really sets SIB apart is a first-of-its-kind pay-for-success model. The City organized a pool of private SIB investors to commit $8.6 million dollars in upfront funding to pay for wraparound services. It would only pay back the investors if certain outcomes were met. There were two major targeted outcomes: keep SIB participants stably housed for 365 days with no more than 90 days out of housing, and reduce criminal justice involvement among SIB participants.

Denver’s Supportive Housing Social Impact Bond (SIB) Initiative brings together private investors, city government, and service providers. Image courtesy of the City of Denver.

Developed with support from the Harvard Kennedy School’s Government Performance Lab, an expert partner of What Works Cities (WWC), this pay-for-success contracting method is a stellar example of results-driven contracting, one of the foundational practices of What Works Cities Certification.

“Having that upfront money was a game changer for us. It allowed us to ensure stability for tenants immediately.”

Denver Deputy Chief Financial Officer Margaret Danuser

It shifted the risk to the investor group because if the outcomes were not achieved, the City didn’t have to pay.” On the other hand, if outcome goals were exceeded, investors had the opportunity to not only recoup their funds, but receive a return on investment (ROI).

“We wanted to know the true impact of an investment or program, and we wanted to pay for real results.”

Denver Deputy Chief Financial Officer Margaret Danuser

A Clear Win-Win

In the end, SIB’s outcomes-focused approach transformed many participants’ lives, far exceeding the initiatives’ goals. An in-depth rigorous evaluation by the Urban Institute tracked outcomes, showing that 86% of people receiving supportive housing remained in their new homes at the end of the first year. After three years, 77% were still stably housed. Participants had a 34% reduction in police interactions, spent 38 fewer days in jail, and experienced a 40% reduction in arrests compared to a control group. Moreover, SIB participants had a 40% decrease in emergency department visits and a 155% increase in office-based visits, where they could receive preventative care.

A staff member (left) at a men’s shelter meets with an individual in need. Photo by Evan Semón courtesy of the City of Denver.

Having a third-party evaluator has helped build trust between service partners and the City, Danuser says. “It was timely and it gave us a really clear picture of what was going on.” Guided by data detailing desired outcomes, the City made an additional $675,000 in the initiative, expanding SIB midstream in 2018 by an additional 75 participants.

At the program’s conclusion at the end of 2020, the City of Denver had paid investors a total of $9.6 million across five years. The payback encompassed funders’ initial investment of $8.6 million, plus an ROI of $1 million because SIB goals were exceeded. But that was money well spent in two respects, says Stephanie Karayannis Adams, director of Denver’s Budget and Management Office. Hundreds of lives have been transformed through stable housing and better medical and behavioral care. And by helping people get out of the homelessness-hospital/jail cycle, the City avoided millions of dollars in costs associated with that cycle.

“Without SIB, it’s likely that many of the initial 250 participants would have continued to require high levels of public safety and healthcare services. That would have cost the City more than $9.6 million across five years. So to us, this initiative is a clear win-win in terms of people’s lives and public spending.”

Denver Director of Budget and Management Office Stephanie Karayannis Adams
The SIB Initiative takes a Housing First approach, quickly getting people into housing without preconditions. Photo by Evan Semón courtesy of the City of Denver.

Critically, SIB’s strong results illustrated what many homelessness policy experts have long felt to be true: Supportive housing helps people and communities create lasting change. When asked how the program impacted their lives, participants shared how they felt a sense of relief and security for the first time in years. They told stories of decorating their kitchens, rediscovering a love for cooking, hosting family visits, applying for work, and saving money for the future.

With the number of individuals experiencing homelessness growing since the pandemic began, the City of Denver is recommitting to SIB’s successful outcomes-centered strategy. In 2022, it signed a performance-based extension of the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless’ contract to continue providing supportive housing to SIB participants. In addition, the City’s Department of Housing Stability (created in 2019) will oversee a new program funded through the federal Social Impact Partnership to Pay for Results Act (SIPPRA). This permanent program, called Housing to Health, will provide 125 additional individuals with supportive housing and basic health services.

“SIB’s pay-for-success contracting model powered an innovative housing approach that both changes lives and saves money — the data proves that. Now, we’re scaling up the strategy with confidence.”

Denver Deputy Chief Financial Officer Margaret Danuser
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Boulder, Colorado, USA

 

Project Type:
Communications, Cross-Sector Collaboration, Environment, Equity, Health & Environment, High-Performing Government, Infrastructure, Public Safety

2024 Gold Certification

Boulder, Colorado, is preventing eviction. Boulder’s Eviction Prevention and Rental Assistance Services program helps residents resolve eviction-related housing issues through legal services, rental assistance and mediation. In 2024 the City evaluated eviction outcomes when city services were provided compared to when no services were provided. Through tracking this data, the City found that services provided led to a 96% eviction prevention rate for active participants, compared to a 58% eviction prevention rate for non-participants. In 2024, guided by their evaluation and community feedback that housing stability was a top issue, the City allocated an additional $253,000 for the program for FY25.

2020 Silver Certification

Data helped the city maintain its goal to reduce its organizational emissions and will continue to encourage the city to optimize machine-learning models that will save costs and minimize environmental impacts.

Created a live dashboard using 911 call data that helps firefighters use real-time insight into emergency trends and improves service delivery.

Boulder partnered with local artists to stage a data-driven art exhibit to increase community awareness of Boulder’s open data work. They turned data files into colorful art installations that helped residents visualize data in a unique way and drove interest in the city’s data transparency efforts.

Incorporated new data practices during COVID-19 to evaluate efforts in reducing racial inequities, reviewing demographic data in infection and hospitalization rates, employment, basic needs assistance programs, evictions, and foreclosures.

Bringing Fun Into Environmental Justice

Every summer, hundreds of people gather on the banks of Boulder Creek to commute to work in unconventional fashion: by inner tube. The annual “Tube to Work Day” is a challenge to the community to leave cars behind and lower greenhouse gas emissions — and an invitation to have fun. Some participants dress in full business attire as they ride the leisurely stream into downtown Boulder, Colorado.

Image Courtesy of the City of Boulder.

The city takes pride in the event, which is quintessential Boulder: quirky and environmentally conscious. Located at the edge of the Rocky Mountains and home to the University of Colorado Boulder, the city has emerged as a green tech startup powerhouse.

People aren’t afraid to boldly tackle big challenges through innovation — something easy to see in Boulder’s climate initiatives. The city government’s goal is to reduce its emissions 80 percent below 2008 levels by 2030. As of now, it’s achieved a 38 percent reduction and is proud to lead the way in making its buildings more efficient and powering its services with local solar generation.

Building a Culture of Innovation by Failing Fast

Boulder’s spirit of goal-setting and data-driven performance management infuses far more than its work around climate, though. The city created the chief innovation and analytics officer role in 2016 and hired Julia Richman to spearhead a culture of data-driven innovation across the government. Julia and her Innovation and Technology team pushed city departments to pilot new data-based approaches without fear of failure.

“Their team’s work established the core principles of data and innovation work in the city, and we continue to push those boundaries today,” said Jennifer Douglas, the city’s current chief innovation and technology officer. “The ‘fail fast’ culture that is prevalent in many innovation-driven industries is working its way into government decision-making. By anticipating where problems might occur and allowing an iterative process, we can minimize risks, reduce costs, and ensure that the services we’re providing are aligned with our community’s needs.”

Image Courtesy of the City of Boulder.

Transparency has been a big part of culture change. Silos have been broken down: Today, 90 percent of the city’s departments have publicly available open data sets and collaborate on data-driven performance management. With the assistance of What Works Cities partner the Center for Government Excellence at Johns Hopkins University (GovEx), the city created Boulder Measures — a community dashboard that connects the community to relevant data. Using data to inform decisions about what’s working and what can be improved is Boulder’s modus operandi.

Treating Water with AI

Recent innovations at the city’s wastewater treatment facility are a great example of how the use of data spans departments. Currently, over 12 million gallons of water come through Boulder’s sewer system every day, where it passes through the Boulder Water Resource Recovery Facility (WRRF) before entering Boulder Creek.

Ensuring treated water meets environmental and public health standards is a vital and complex process. Two WRRF employees — Wastewater Treatment Manager Chris Douville and Treatment Process Engineer Christopher Marks — were determined to make it more energy-efficient.

Typical water treatment facilities run a microbiological system using dissolved oxygen control of aeration to clean water. The WRRF team, working with the Colorado School of Mines and Carollo Engineers, Inc., tested an ammonia-based aeration control strategy that has become more common in recent years. They optimized its performance, then worked to improve upon its reaction time by forecasting the ammonia concentration. But first they needed an immense amount of data. To track things like water temperature, flow rates, nutrients and oxygen levels, they utilized measurement probes already installed for monitoring along every step of the treatment process. After crunching the numbers, the team created a hybrid statistical machine learning model that could predict ammonia concentrations 50 minutes in advance.

Image Courtesy of the City of Boulder.

The team hopes this forecasting approach — which is 90 percent accurate — will cut down on the amount of energy used in the future and minimize financial and environmental impacts. The team’s efforts have already reduced energy consumption at the facility and saved an estimated 500,000kWh valued around $15,000.

This work with the city by Colorado School of Mines and Carollo Engineers, Inc. is shining in many areas. It earned first place in the 2019 Intelligent Water Systems Challenge and was published in the Journal of Water Process Engineering in 2020 to share the method with other utilities that may benefit from the work.

Creating this innovative model didn’t happen overnight though. It required a willingness to experiment and multiple iterations over two years that included failures and setbacks to reach this kind of success. “It’s alright though,” said Marks. “This is the Boulder way — we took 10 well thought out steps, rather than one giant leap, and always worked together collaboratively with the whole WRRF team.”

“This is the Boulder way — we took 10 well thought out steps, rather than one giant leap, and always worked together collaboratively with the whole WRRF team.”

Boulder Treatment Process Engineer Christopher Marks

Fighting Fires with Data

The city’s culture of a data-first approach can also be seen across town in the fire department. With Boulder nestled against the Flatirons and Boulder Creek running through downtown, the city is prone to flooding. As a result, one of the city’s fire stations was located on a 100-year floodplain and officials knew it had to be relocated. But where exactly? A data analysis of previous call data helped the fire department determine the station’s new home.

Department staff worked with Emergency Medical Services (EMS) to review three years-worth of emergency calls and identify where firefighting and emergency services could be most effectively repositioned. The goals were to boost service delivery to a part of the city lacking an industry-standard four-minute response time, while decreasing call volume to the other stations. Construction of the new station should be complete in 2020 and the city hopes the station will also double as a community meeting space.

Image Courtesy of the City of Boulder.

But the department’s smart data practices go much deeper than this standalone project. The fire department’s new data dashboard gives firefighters valuable real-time insights into fire trends around the city, supporting better prevention strategies and improved service delivery.

In October 2019, before the dashboard was created, there were hundreds of Fire Incident Reports outstanding — meaning data from these reports hadn’t been entered into the department’s database. Without more timely data from those reports the department was missing opportunities to see important patterns in the locations of fires or types of calls for service being received.

Image Courtesy of the City of Boulder.

Now, with data entry streamlined and the new dashboard live, the number of outstanding reports is down to 30. Insights can be gleaned, and lives and property can be better protected across the city.

“This dashboard really helps us go a step further and create a culture of performance measurement,” said Wendy Korotkin, project manager for data and analytics for the Boulder Fire Department.

“When we are problem-solving based on data specific to us, we’re able to more effectively respond to our community’s needs and ensure the highest standard of public safety.”

Boulder Fire Department Project Manager for Data & Analytics Wendy Korotkin

Boulder’s COVID-19 Response

Racial disparities in the impacts of COVID-19 have affected communities across the United States, but in Boulder, the city is ensuring that data drives its response. Based on city and Boulder County data, Hispanic and Latinx community members are experiencing COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations at a higher rate than the white population. Latinx, Black, and Asian community members experienced COVID-19 related job loss at a rate higher than white community members. As with other health and economic disparities, the causes of these disparities are likely to be embedded in systemic bias and disenfranchisement.

Image Courtesy of the City of Boulder.

“Our work is rooted in closing these gaps, so that race does not predict one’s ability to thrive,” said Aimee Kane, the city’s equity program manager. “To lift up people of color and support those who are unjustly burdened, we need clear benchmarks to show our progress — or lack thereof — so that we can effectively do this work.”

As part of the city’s COVID-19 response and recovery planning, staff worked to determine which data could and should be collected to measure whether our activities successfully reduced racial inequities. The following data sets could help Boulder and other cities gauge the rate of recovery from the pandemic, by demographic:

  • COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations
  • Job loss, employment and type of employment
  • Basic needs assistance program requests and enrollments
  • Type of business re-opened
  • Evictions and foreclosures
  • Types of 911 calls and other crisis interventions

The city is working with local, state and federal partners to respond, while its ongoing equity and engagement efforts prioritize working directly with those most negatively impacted to ensure city efforts align with community needs.

For example, informed in part by engagement methods tested during the city’s 2018 Bloomberg Philanthropies Mayors Challenge project, the city created a team of Emergency Response Connectors to help distribute information across the diverse cultures in Boulder. These connectors are trusted voices within its neighborhoods who share COVID-19 information, educate about community resources, and document concerns raised by neighbors.

Engaging the Public Creatively

Boulder has made many areas of data public in recent years. The Innovation and Technology Department has been committed to an open data strategy that engages the public in the interest of transparency, accountability and empowerment. The city has now published over 110 data sets on its open data catalog, many of which are updated daily.

But after reviewing download rates early on, the team realized there was a lack of community awareness of Boulder’s open data work. To spark more interest, they decided to partner with local artists to stage an art exhibit inspired by city data. The 2018 exhibit, led by the city’s Open Data Manager, Nicolia Eldred-Skemp, turned CSV data files into colorful art installations, visualizing everything from prairie dog populations, to historic weather patterns, to how community members perceive their safety.

Image Courtesy of the City of Boulder.

“People are used to seeing data in graphs and charts, and this exhibit was a really unique, wonderful way to share this information,” said Eldred-Skemp. “I think it helped bridge some gaps and drive interest from a wider audience, while also giving people a sense of community and involvement with the city.”

The project was a collaboration between the City of Boulder’s Innovation and Technology Department, the City Manager’s Office, and the Boulder Public Library, and the idea was inspired by Kansas City, Missouri’s successful Art of Data exhibit.

Image Courtesy of the City of Boulder.

By the end of the exhibit, the public perception and awareness around Boulder’s open data work had gone up. There was a 113 percent increase in unique page views of the open data catalog during the three-month installation. The city also established stronger relationships with local community organizations like Code for Boulder and the University of Colorado at Boulder as a result of the exhibit collaborations — and hopes to build on this success with an even larger exhibit in the future.

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Longmont, Colorado, USA

Maximizing utility rebates.

Project Type:
Community Engagement, Equity, Infrastructure and Utilities

WWC - Silver Certification Badge for year 2021

At a Glance

In 2018, after approving a new rebate for food taxes, city officials consolidated and improved participation in their various rebate programs.

The new rebate application took just five minutes to complete, down from about 45 minutes for the previous energy rebate.

In 2020, 711 people applied for the CAReS-based support — a 286% increase from the year prior.

The team has added new items to the program, including waste management rebates and storm drainage fees. It’s also expanding eligibility and helping connect residents with other programs, such as a federal subsidy for broadband.

A Pain Point for Longmont’s Seniors

At a water aerobics class in Longmont, CO, a longtime resident shared with her instructor that she was struggling to pay her utility bills. In addition to teaching the class, Sandra Seader is the city’s assistant city manager and was able to point the woman to the Longmont City Assistance and Rebate System program for financial assistance. Known locally as Longmont CAReS, the program centralizes the city’s many rebate and assistance programs for the city’s most vulnerable residents, many of whom are seniors.

Longmont, CO Walkway
Image Courtesy of the City of Longmont.

Like in many growing mid-size cities, life in Longmont has become more expensive in recent years. For residents on fixed and limited incomes, even small increases in utility bills were becoming crushing.

“Our seniors that are on fixed incomes feel it every time we raise utility rates,” Seader said. “I’m not saying a $300 rebate helps somebody stay in their home, but it certainly bridges that gap of the increased prices and increased cost of living.”

That’s why Longmont worked to consolidate a variety of rebates — helping offset increases in food prices, energy and water bills, and broadband — under the program. In designing the program, they utilized a race equity tool that made community engagement a priority from the onset.

“She was just so grateful to have an opportunity to offset the increases and she told everybody else in the class.”

Sandra Seader

Rebates Needed to Be Easier

Longmont has offered residents rebates to help with energy bills and water bills for decades. In 2018, when the city council approved a new rebate for food taxes after hearing from residents that groceries were getting more expensive, city officials took a step back and looked at how to consolidate and improve participation in their various rebate programs.

Becky Doyle, now the executive director of the consolidated services team that oversees Longmont CAReS, took a data-led approach to evaluating the existing programs, and noticed a glaring problem: Even though the qualification requirements for their existing energy and water rebates were similar, 1,800 people were enrolled in the energy program–and only about 40 in the water one.

Implementing the programs without engaging the community hadn’t been enough. “There wasn’t a whole lot of outreach,” Seader explains. “You kind of had to know about the rebates.”

Hot air balloon
Image Courtesy of the City of Longmont.

The race equity tool officials used as they undertook the rebate consolidation led to community conversations and focus groups to understand how to reduce barriers for qualified individuals.

The equity lens led to the team paying community members for their time in the focus group and to offering child care to ensure parents could participate. What came out of the listening sessions was not surprising, but it was affirming: People wanted the process to be simple, and they didn’t want to jump through too many hoops to qualify.

“It’s the first program that I had worked on where equity was conscientiously made an integral part of the design.”

Sandra Seader

The Solution

Doyle’s team used that information to create a one-page form. Rather than require applicants to submit income details, which can be cumbersome, the form simply required proof of existing eligibility for a needs-based government program such as Medicaid or the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s free school lunch program.

The resulting application took just five minutes to complete, down from about 45 minutes for the previous one for the energy rebate program.

In 2019, 184 residents applied for assistance under the newly consolidated Longmont City Assistance and Rebate System, or CAReS, program, a significant increase from the previous number of people participating in the water rebate program, but officials saw still more room for improvement.

With support from The Behavioral Insights Team (BIT), an expert partner of What Works Cities, Longmont designed a trial to see whether they could increase applications and participation. They set up three control groups: one simply received their utility bill, another received an additional flier about CAReS, and the third received the flier as well as a CAReS application. They found an uptick in applications among the two groups that received the flier, and little difference based on whether an application was included.

The City’s approach to data is guided by evaluation but also highly entrepreneurial: when the City’s Community Development Department couldn’t get access to county-level data on social services to help inform support for the unhoused during COVID, they worked in concert with local entities to conduct counts and generate their own datasets to determine how to best meet the needs of that community. The City also shifted to a “COVID Dashboard” with specific metrics that would provide the information needed to quickly identify priorities and areas of need.

“That was really helpful information for us because this year when we went to implement results of the trial, we were able to put a flier in all the utility bills in both English and Spanish.”

Becky Doyle

“We knew we still weren’t reaching as many people as we could,”

Becky Doyle

The Results

In 2020, 711 people applied for the CAReS-based support — a 286% increase from the year prior — and received an average rebate of $387, enough to cover the average Longmont utility bill for a little over two months. The team continues to track applications to monitor the success of its efforts and expand the program’s reach. The CAReS program also became a useful way to identify residents for additional help during the pandemic.

Officials sent $25 vouchers to CAReS recipients, which could be redeemed at local restaurants — a way to support businesses that were struggling during the crisis while also providing assistance to residents. Having a way to reach that population and easily deliver help is a key benefit of having a centralized program, Seader notes.

The total amount of money disseminated in rebates — $275,415 in 2020 — has had a demonstrable impact on the level of past due utility bills, a metric the team uses to track the effectiveness of the program. There are fewer past due bills as a result of the assistance—the number of residential accounts past due by more than 30 days reduced by 35%.

“We did a lot of analysis and debate about what is the problem we’re trying to solve in COVID and how we can best help households,” said Doyle. “The thing that we realized we had the most control over was utility bills and providing utility assistance.”

In 2021, the team added new items to the program, including rebates for waste management and storm drainage fees. It’s also expanding eligibility and helping connect residents with other programs, such as a federal subsidy for broadband.

“We continue to enhance the program, expanding access and opportunities for residents to benefit from city services,” Doyle said. “There’s definitely more to do.”

For more on Longmont’s data journey, listen to this episode of GovLov podcast.

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