In about a month, college towns across the country will be gearing up for a new school year. It’s an exciting time as colleges and universities welcome a new batch of freshmen, host alumni and fans for Saturday football games, and support activities to ensure a successful academic year. The school year will also mean traffic, loud parties, and alcohol violations.

College-town jurisdictions face a unique set of opportunities and challenges. Issues such as code violations, nuisance complaints, and economic development are all greatly affected by a student population. Nuisance complaints—such as open container, litter, and noise—are a particularly important topic, since they can lead to community tension and an undue burden on public safety.

There are many different ways a local government can address these issues. The borough of State College, Pennsylvania, home to Penn State University, tries to get ahead of the problem with a variety of programs. One program offered is the Fraternity and Sorority Question/Answer Presentation. It is one-hour presentation designed for fraternities and sororities where representatives from police, fire, and ordinance departments provide information on issues such as police response to parties and alcohol, as well as refuse and lawn requirements to comply with safety and health standards.

The city of Fort Collins, Colorado, has taken a different approach. Both the city and Colorado State University fund the Community Liaison Program to address issues between the community and the university. A major initiative instituted by this program is party registration, which can save party hosts a fine, but also save the police department overtime pay and fuel by breaking up a party with a phone call directly to the host. Since this program’s inception in the spring of 2009, 538 parties have registered and only eight of these parties have received a noise citation.   

Another solution is to increase the penalty for violations in an effort to deter further misconduct. For example, the city of Amherst, Massachusetts, home to the University of Massachusetts, has instituted a strict fine policy increasing the amount to $300 for noise, keg, and open container violations. Through increased fines and the distribution of educational material on town bylaws, Amherst has collected $33,135 in fines and reduced the number of open-container violations since September 2010. 

All of these jurisdictions aim to reduce the number of complaints and improve town-gown relations with varying degrees of success. What’s missing is a tool to compare communities’ approaches to nuisance complaints and a variety of issues experienced by college towns—what programs save cities the most money, produce the most significant results, and provide the greatest citizen satisfaction?

ICMA’s Center for Performance Measurement (CPM) has been working closely with Fort Collins City Manager Darin Atteberry and State College Borough Manager Tom Fountaine to create a consortium that would bring value to college-town communities. Several current CPM members have committed to being charter members of a college-town consortium and the deadline for new participants to join is July 31. Starting this fall, consortium members will conduct regular meetings, collect data relevant to college towns, and determine empirically based effective practices.

To participate in the college-town consortium or to learn more about CPM’s program, contact Hannah Wolford at hwolford@icma.org.