City makes historic preservation top goal

Historic preservation will be more of a priority for the city in the future as it is one of the five goals adopted in the new strategic plan.

The plan, approved by City Council on Dec. 11, sets goals and plans for the city’s sustainability from 2020 through 2025. In addition to a greater focus on historic preservation, the city aims to achieve prudent financial stewardship, invest in infrastructure, manage growth and development, and sustain a high level of public safety services.

“This is a new goal that wasn’t in our last strategic plan — to include historic preservation,” said Councilwoman Peggy Leavitt.

The strategic plan also included ways the city would work to achieve its goals.

Regarding historic preservation, it will develop a mission statement based on state and national standards; develop a historic preservation plan; explore adding new historic preservation districts; amend existing codes to achieve historic preservation goals; identify financial incentives to promote historic preservation; promote economic development through historic preservation; develop an educational campaign about historic artifacts in Boulder City; and identify historic buildings to repurpose and reuse as appropriate.

“It doesn’t have to be a static document for five years,” said Mayor Rod Woodbury. “If we need to tweak it, we can tweak it. If we want to add some substrategies that we hadn’t thought of, we can add those. If one of the strategies proves not to be useful, we can get rid of that.”

In July, City Council hired Management Partners to help develop a strategic planning document. The firm sought input from community members and city employees through an online survey and received 347 community responses and 66 employee responses. It also conducted four public meetings and two community workshops.

“It was a rare opportunity for the participants not only come together to brainstorm but to share their suggestions and opinions based on their varied backgrounds and skill sets,” said Councilman Warren Harhay. “For many, it was the initial opportunity to inventory the opinions of the citizens and city employees but also to appreciate and incorporate Boulder City’s rich heritage into the new plan.”

“I was really pleased with how this went. … It was kind of remarkable to me how we had a consensus so quickly on getting these five goals out, ” Woodbury said.

City Manager Al Noyola said he will introduce an implementation plan to council by February.

“I am looking forward to the ‘Implementation Action Plan,’ which will establish benchmarks and strategies to help us actually implement the plan,” Leavitt said. “We will be able to track and measure the success in meeting our goals and can regularly report to the residents how we, as a community, are doing to achieve our goals.”

“It is important to ‘get on the same page’ and work as a team,” Harhay said. “Working as a team to implement this plan’s elements makes for a better and more efficient city government.”

Contact reporter Celia Shortt Goodyear at cgoodyear@bouldercityreview.com or at 702-586-9401. Follow her on Twitter @csgoodyear.