Setting and achieving goals is vital to many success stories. Whether it was NFL coaches Andy Reid and Kyle Shanahan starting their seasons wanting to go to the Super Bowl, a mailroom employee working their way up to the CEO of a company, or the desire to make a community better, it helps to have a road map to measure progress. That is where a strategic plan is valuable. A strategic plan can also translate as the community’s road map.
Strategic planning is how a community (or organization) defines its vision for the future. From start to finish, the vision is achieved by identifying goals and objectives that make up the plan. In the case of a city strategic plan, the process involves community input and examination of community strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (called a SWOT analysis). It consists of developing measurable and actionable goals that city staff can implement over several years to accomplish the community’s vision.
Several months of input and discussions with the community helped formulate Boulder City’s Strategic Plan in 2018. The city issued surveys, and staff engaged with the public in workshops.
The plan set the course for the city’s sustainability and economic resilience tactics for 2020 through 2025. The plan includes five significant goals: Achieve prudent financial stewardship, invest in infrastructure, manage growth and development, promote historic preservation, and sustain a high level of public safety services.
Each of these has implementation action items to measure success. City staff have quarterly presented updates on the action plan implementation process to the public and the City Council.
Just like driving on an unknown highway, strategic planning sometimes has obstacles or traffic jams. That’s one way of looking at the 2020 COVID year – as a traffic jam. The focus of many city employees went from achieving the strategic plan goals to making sure our community stayed healthy. Even though they faced new challenges, staff kept the plan ahead of schedule.
In April 2023, the city completed 40 action items in the 2020-2025 strategic plan, with only one put on hold. The City Council is now ready to engage the community to develop a new strategic plan for 2025-2030.
City staff studied proposals from various strategic planning consultants and hired Emergent Method to develop the next Strategic Plan for 2025 through 2030. Managing Director Robyn Stiles, Ph.D., started the meeting with stakeholders in January to learn what they like – and what can be improved – in City Hall. In the next two months, Emergent Method will ask the community to complete an online survey, participate in community workshops and focus groups, and tell what works well in the community and what needs more attention. You will have the chance to provide your input on which goals the community should focus on over the next five years.
I look forward to seeing residents at the community workshops scheduled for Monday, March 18, Thursday, March 21, and Monday, March 25. All three workshops are 5-7:30 p.m.
Workshop formats will be identical so that you can attend one or all three. More details can be found at www.bcnv.org in the coming weeks. I look forward to exploring new paths with you as we execute the next Strategic Plan for the community!
The online survey is open now through March 5, 2024 at 5:00 p.m. at bit.ly/cbc-2024.