The City of La Crosse’s climate planning consultant, paleBLUEdot, believes effective, meaningful, and community specific climate action planning is grounded in robust data collection and assessment of community existing conditions metrics. Establishing comprehensive baseline data is a necessary element that provides a point from which to inventory what you have before you set out to improve it, and from there, aid in identifying and establishing strategies, and measuring the progress of them. The broader the baseline data available, the more effective goalsetting and action planning can be.