My poor little blog has kind of been on hiatus, while I’m in development of a bigger, more sophisticated site, but I was recently reminded of an issue I want to explore, so I thought I’d share the setup with you now.

Tacoma recently became one of 20 cities, worldwide, who joined with Citymart.com to create LLGA|Cities Pilot the Future — a website seeking private enterprise to tackle public works problems. Each city identifies specific issues they’re looking to solve. The LLGA website provides an online marketplace to connect companies, entrepreneurs, organizations and interested individuals, who can propose solutions to these issues.

I became aware of the program late last year, when Tacoma announced a January 31 deadline to propose solutions to these challenges. Then, a group including the participating cities and cosponsors — Oracle, the UN Global Compact Cities Programme and The Climate Group — would invite the groups with winning proposals will be announced in San Francisco in May of this year.

“We have established high standards and expectations for sustainability, and Tacoma’s participation in this global challenge further demonstrates our commitment to protecting the environment and ensuring a sustainable future for younger generations,” said City Manager T.C. Broadnax, at the time.

However, I recently visited the LLGA site and so no indication that Tacoma found a solution for its issue. They were seeking a tool to help calculate the return on investment for sustainable infrastructure projects, to help them evaluate future projects. Visiting the City of Tacoma website only mentions that pilot solutions were scheduled to start this month. We’ll investigate further, and report whatever became of the project.

Other participating cities include Barcelona, Boston, Christchurch, Lagos, London, Mexico City, Paris, Rio de Janeiro and San Francisco.