With a mission to foster efficient economic growth for a prosperous region, Metropolitan Council serves as the Twin Cities’ regional policymaking body, planning agency, and services and infrastructure provider (including transportation, wastewater treatment, regional parks, planning, and affordable housing). Striving to foster community vitality, the Council administers the Livable Communities Program that helps communities in the region fund economic revitalization, affordable housing, and development connecting different land uses and transportation. From 1996 to January 2016, the program awarded nearly 1,000 grants totaling over $311 million— investments credited with building or rehabbing nearly 20,000 affordable housing units, cleaning 2,100 acres of polluted land, and creating or retaining 41,000 jobs.