On September 16, 2021, Project Cities hosted its first community site visit in two years! Students from Nicole Lee’s Communication Campaigns and Al Brown’s Sustainable Waste Management courses convened at Peoria’s Municipal Operations Center to tour the facility and meet with their respective project leads to workshop project scopes.

The event kicked off with introductions from city staff, including Interim Public Works Director Jay Davies, Deputy Public Works Director Rhonda Humbles, and Solid Waste Manager Aaron Redd. Jay Davies started the tour of the transit department’s offices and allowed the students to walk around one of the buses used for the POGO transit relaunch. Students from Communication Campaigns will be working with the Transit department to design engaging messaging to promote Peoria’s relaunch of the POGO bus circulator.

Aaron Redd took over the tour to show students the solid waste offices, introduced students to several solid waste workers, and showcased Peoria’s state-of-the-art system for tracking solid waste routes and pick-ups. The students were then led outside to view a demonstration of a solid waste truck, complete with existing recycling messaging on the vehicle.

The students were then split up by their projects for individual breakouts and workshop sections with city staff. Rhonda Humbles and Aaron Redd answered questions from the students about the current state of Peoria’s e-waste collection and opportunities for a biomass gasification program. Jay Davies led a separate breakout with the transit and recycling messaging students.

You can check out the full tour of the Municipal Operations Center HERE.

 

Project Cities is a member of the Educational Partnerships for Innovation in Communities Network (EPIC-N) and is administered by ASU’s Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory and the Sustainable Cities Network. Stay up to date with Project Cities and the Sustainable Cities Network by following us on social media or subscribing to our newsletter.