ICMA’s fourth annual video contest has come to a close and winners have been selected! This year, contestants were asked to create a short videos that answered one of the following questions:

• Doing more with less: How is your community doing more with less? 
• Sustainable Practices: What does sustainability mean to your community and how is your community being sustainable? 
• Collaboration: Has your community sought out collaborative measure with other communities, private industry, or other key stakeholders? 
• Cutting-edge Practices: What cutting-edge practices does your community implement? 
• Or has your community done something to improve the quality of local government that does not quite answer these questions? If so please submit a video illustrating this improvement.

The winning video was created by Darren Rhodes, chief planner at the North Carolina’s Department of Commerce’s Piedmont Regional Office, a Division of Community Planning. Rhodes, a Piedmont area native, first joined DCA as a community development planner in 1999 and has been chief planner since 2004.

Rhodes worked with the city of Pilot Mountain, NC, to create a video, "A Place to Grow,” to answer the question, "How is your community doing more with less?" 

This video showcases Main Street U.S.A. and the struggles with the loss of tobacco agriculture and textile production. Many young folks leave the community for jobs elsewhere. The community determined there was a demand for locally grown produce. With help of outside contributors, Pilot Mountain purchased an old textile factory and created the Pilot Mountain Pride Agriculture Center. The center, which offers local farmers a one-stop market to process and sell their crops, has created jobs and delivers a fresh quality product to the citizens of Pilot Mountain and surrounding communities.

The 2011 contest entries can be viewed on ICMA’s YouTube channel. Click on “Playlists” at the top, and select "2011 ICMA Video Contest."

Does your city have a video that you would like to have featured on ICMA's YouTube page? If so, send an e-mail to Ryan Davies at rdavies@icma.org for further instructions.