 Hello, Columbia! My name is Mary Pat Baldolph and I'm a Sustainability Facilitator for the City of Columbia. My name is Morgan Hughes and I work with Mary Pat in the Office of Sustainability in Public Works and I'm the Sustainability Intern. Star Communities is a non-profit organization and a framework for sustainability. It was created by local governments for local governments and uses a standard set of measures for sustainability. It's very comprehensive, a lot of people just think sustainability is environmental and this includes environmental, economic, and social. Columbia is recognized as a three-star community and that means that we have sustainability leadership within our community and the way we got started with Star in the process is Mary Pat held some workshops back in May with the local government and any community partner and we kind of got to see where we were with data and so everybody you know brought a little bit to the table as Mary Pat talked about environmental, economic, and social and so from that I went out and researched and contacted these local government personnel and community partners and put all of the information together in our application and we went through a two-step verification process so the first time Star kind of got to see what information we have and give us feedback on it and then we got to provide additional information, some more data like links to websites, different things like that that people gave to us and then we went through our second verification and we were verified in December of 2017. We had a workshop with community organizations and it lasted for two days and we started to gather the information we needed. We had people from all over the city, city employees, city staff, but also nonprofits and other government agencies came to the table and it was like a leg up on the research. We definitely want to thank all those people that did come out. You can't do sustainability alone and we know that. We know that and we've learned that for sure with Star. Everybody, everybody plays a part. Right and we are very thankful that they were so patient with us during the data collection process because it was a lot sometimes to you know follow up with people continuously but we did it and we're certified so they won't hear from us for a couple years. We love that we got the three stars but we're not satisfied. Our goal is to be a four-star community when we re-certify in 2021. And I think one of the biggest things for us is it's nice that we have all of the sustainability efforts throughout Columbia in one location and that also gives us a baseline on areas that we're doing really well in and also areas that we kind of aren't doing as well in so we can target those areas specifically and have a goal for those by re-certification. And I think that we can reach that four star pretty easily because we do a lot of sustainability programs and services throughout the city but we just don't document them all the time and that's something that Star needs for verification. Sustainability is imperative for quality of life and it's not just putting things in the recycling bin. It's not just saving water. There are a lot of things that contribute to a sustainable city and it makes the city a better place to live. It makes it healthier economically and healthier for our citizens. It's the big picture really. Right so going back to those not only environmental aspects but the social and the economic and a lot of the times when people think about sustainability they just think about environmental. So definitely keeping an open mind and thinking about all facets of sustainability because I know in the data collection process in education arts and community that's something I never really thought was part of a sustainable community or even when it talked about I think how many grocery stores do you have in X number of miles? Is this not something that I just naturally think about but it definitely is all-encompassing in sustainability so definitely keeping an open mind will help Columbia move forward.