It's that time of the year once again when Humboldt dusts itself off and sparkles on the national stage for the Communities in Bloom (CIB) competition.
Every year, cities similar in population density compete in six different categories to see who has the most attractive community. Of those categories, tidiness holds a place of equal importance.
"Tidiness is important to us. It's about making a good first impression. If you make a bad one, it's hard to recover," said Dean Hergott, chairman of the Humboldt Downtown Business Improvement District (BID). "Our basic primary goal is to try and attract more business into the downtown core, mostly through beautification."
According to the website, the purpose of CIB is to promote "civic pride, environmental responsibility and beautification through community involvement." As such, each year judges are rotated and go around to the different competing communities to evaluate and inspect them. They deliver an assessment with a rating of up to five blooms and will say what was good and what could use improvement.
Last year, Humboldt was given five out of five blooms for tidiness, but still had room for improvement. The positive things mentioned include the lack of litter and graffiti and tidiness of business and commercial areas. The recommendations for improvement mentioned cleaning up the weeds from the sidewalk, improving the entrance signs, and putting decorative screens or fences around vacant lots.
Unfortunately, while recommendations are always great as goals to strive torward, that doesn't mean they're easily achieved.
"Some things take longer and are harder to manage," said Darrell Lessmeister, director of community and leisure services for the City of Humboldt. "Some things are more doable, some are a process, and some are going to take more time. We try to do as much as we can."
The city can only do so much on its own. Undertaking projects like those recommendations are voluntary on the part of the property owners and businesses. The local CIB committee acts as liaison to provide direction, but it's up to the individual organizations and people to take the next step.
"We ask everybody to pick up garbage and tidy up their yards, especially since the judges look at back alleys," said Janice Ruedig, a member of the local CIB committee. "That's why we have Tidy Community Week in June, so that people are more aware of it."
So far, Ruedig said they've seen good responses from some of the businesses. Tangible evidence of the improved response can be seen in the CIB potted plants that increased from 10 to 110 since it was implemented.
"Since 2008, we see improvement every year in the judges' comments," said Ruedig. "The things they're asking us to improve are starting to get more complex because we've worked on all the small things."
Thus, it's obvious that the tidiness recommendations aren't just applied as a quick fix once a year before judgment day. Instead, they're implemented throughout the year in order to continuously improve the community.
"CIB identifies areas that we need to focus on or we need to do more work or find better ways to work with the community," said Mayor Malcolm Eaton. "It's not just about flower pots and flowers, it's about tidiness and general impressions."
