Council adopts strategic plan, outlines action items

In their most recent meeting on Oct. 22, the city council adopted a new strategic plan cover the years 2025-2030.

Back in 2018, the city initiated a process to help guide council and staff in strategic priorities for a five-year period. The plan was adopted the following year and covered the period from 2020-2025. Earlier this year, the city hired Emergent Method to guide the process of establishing a new plan.

Following a number of community meetings, an online survey for residents and another survey of city staff and meetings with four different focus groups, the plan was finalized and approved by the council.

The implementation plan is split into short, medium and long-term projects. Short-term projects are slated for 2025 and 2026.

Short-term projects are mostly focused on communication. For example, under the heading of Public Safety, recruiting and retaining staff is a long-term goal while integrating content about the crime rate into city communications and highlighting the contributions of officers as well as increasing communication about the city’s public safety and service awards is a short-term project.

Under the heading of “accessibility”, short-term action items include designating a city staff member as point person for ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) concerns as well as completing a plan for improving the navigability of public streets. (Note: this item will include a plan to reconfigure parking in the historic downtown area in order to widen sidewalks and get them compliant with ADA standards.)

Under the same heading is the intention to find external funding sources to support making the position of community resource liaison permanent. That position was funded for one year using ARPA funding, which must be spent by the end of 2025.

The infrastructure and historic preservation heading had no short-term action items.

Under the heading ruled by the Growth Ordinance, short-term projects are all about permitting and licensing with goals to continue streamlining and making those processes more transparent. Affordable housing is addressed only as an effort to identify and consider external funding for such projects. That is considered a long-term project.

Financial stewardship goals are focused, in the short-term, on the creation and presentation of a balanced budget. This is not a reach as Boulder City operates on basically a cash basis anyway. The council can’t approve debt of more than $1 million without taking it to the voters for approval and, to quote Councilwoman Sherri Jorgensen in a recent conversation about water conservation, “You can’t buy bananas for $1 million.”

The goal area that leads the plan is focused on recreation and tourism. It is also focused largely on communication with action items including community outreach and developing methods for gathering regular feedback from users of the city’s recreational facilities.