By Scott Edger
Little Apple Post
Commissioners were presented an overview of the final draft of the City’s five-year strategic plan at their meeting Tuesday.
The overall plan details remained much the same from the last draft, but Included in the presentation Monday was a public survey regarding community priorities.
Numerous opportunities for public commentary and a community Action Prioritization Survey was conducted from October 1-17. The participation and commentary were relatively small, not affording commissioners a solid, statistically significant, reflection of the community.
Of the responses, the top priorities were street repair, flooding and mitigation efforts, and bike trails.
Some commissioners were surprised at the ranking of various priorities but appreciated the public’s perspective, however limited it may have been.
Commissioner Usha Reddi said that commissioners are always steeped in the details of city issues, but the individual citizens’ perspectives can be very different “within their own sphere of their own space, the comments are very different,” Reddi said. “It’s good for us to see it from their eyes. Some of these, I would not think would have risen to the top... we think people aren’t paying attention but I’m glad they had a chance to participate in the conversation.”
According to Jared Wasinger, assistant to the city manager, the plan is meant to be somewhat pliable. Commissioner Mark Hatesohl said the plan was a valuable tool that, combined with input from the various municipal departments between now and the January Commission retreat, will better inform the decisions of commissioners.
“That’s when the real prioritization...will happen,” Hatesohl said.
The City team and Planning NEXT consultants have been working on the strategic planning process for nearly nine months.
With the plan and its heady objectives finally polished up and displayed, Wasinger grounded the conversation by pointing out some hard financial and practical truths for commissioners to consider. He told commissioners that there are a lot of wishes from the community, city staff, and the City Commission, to improve our community, but the City is doing a great deal already.
“The city provides services and programs with a lot of requirements,” he said. “We need to understand there are tradeoffs. The community wants us to continue to provide those quality services and there are goals and objectives in the plan that are going to take more time, resources, and money so we do need to balance that accordingly.”