American City & County’s 2020 Crown Communities Awards

Projects nominated for American City & County's annual Crown Communities Awards are judged on uniqueness, short- and long-term value to the community and effective/innovative financing.

Written by Jason Axelrod
26th February 2021

Each year, American City & County gives its Crown Communities Awards to municipal and county governments that have substantially implemented innovative, impactful projects over the preceding 18 months. The projects are diverse in nearly all aspects, and they represent a wide array of local government disciplines. Competition among the nominees is typically tough each year, and this year was no different in terms of the competition between projects.

2020 however, was a very different year in many regards. Shelter-in-place orders, social distancing guidelines, mask mandates and general caution towards COVID-19 forced local governments to adapt existing programs to the pandemic’s new normal, while reassessing some projects’ implementation.

Accordingly, the pandemic influenced some of this year’s Crown Communities winning projects. One community’s project addressed COVID-19 head-on. Another project saw a significant setback due to the pandemic, which also influenced that project’s implementation. Yet another has still managed to flourish despite the pandemic.

In another instance of an atypical year, one of this year’s Crown Communities Awards winners is neither a municipality nor a county — it’s a joint powers authority that built an impressive municipal fiber network spanning its member county and 16 member cities.

Each year, we profile the winners of the Crown Communities Awards on our site. In our first year as a fully digital news outlet, we serialized the profiles of the six winners, publishing one profile of a winner each weekday between Feb. 26 and March 5 (in addition to the first profile coinciding with the awards announcement).