St. Cloud honored for livability

Star Tribune

Last update: October 14, 2009 - 8:12 PM

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St. Cloud has just been ranked a world-class city, along with such notable municipalities as Tulln An Der Donau in Austria, Kakamigahara in Japan and Canada Bay in Australia.

"We felt pretty good just to be among the finalists, but getting a bronze medal is great," said Mayor Dave Kleis.

Kleis was speaking by telephone from Pilsen, Czech Republic, where the annual International Awards for Liveable Communities were awarded on Monday.

And, Kleis said, it's by no means a step down from two years ago, when the city snagged a gold medal in the 13th annual competition informally known as the "green Oscars."

"Something like 80 percent of the entrants are rejected and a lot of folks don't get anything at all," he said.

Among cities with a population of between 20,000 and 75,000, St. Cloud trailed behind only five others worldwide, including Annapolis, Maryland.

The awards recognize livability as a measure of communities' sustainability and ecological sensitivity.

The "LivCom" awards were launched in 1997 and are endorsed by the United Nations Environment Program. They focus on managing a community's environment to improve the livability of its citizens.

St. Cloud also was recognized for its beautification of Lake George, undertaken in partnership with the local Rotary Club. "We took something dilapidated and made it new," Kleis said.

Kleis and a half-dozen city staffers (paying their own way to Pilsen, he noted) brainstormed with counterparts from cities around the world. "You can learn a lot by studying other people's best practices," Kleis said. "It's real grassroots stuff."

BOB VON STERNBERG

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