Strategic Planning Session

The City Council and staff meet annually to update the City's strategic plan.  Attached to the case is the 2023 plan with progress notes.  In recent years the Values, Vision, Mission, Objectives and Strategies within the plan have been reviewed but have received minimal changes.  In reviewing these sections, these are likely suitable to remain the same and the focus of the 2024 plan could be on action items that support the strategies.  During this session of the planning process, we will focus on four main questions.  These questions will be a general self-reflection of what is going well and not so well in the city.  They will also ask what we are and are not doing.  This can be both internal and external.  A secondary focus of the evening will be to recognize both impacts and opportunities in the next 1-5 years.  From the responses, City Council and staff will then be able to update the action items to work towards accomplishing the strategies.  This will then produce positive outcomes that work towards meeting and improving in the areas focused on under the objectives.

The last part of the evening will be a short discussion on proceeding forward with two action items prior to formal adoption of the plan.  First, would be to commit to a citizen survey in 2024.  A quote was received in 2023, but ultimately we did not conduct the survey due to major focus on road maintenance and a fair assumption that the survey results would largely focus on our roads given what we faced in 2023.  Secondly, the 2023 budget would have been short funds for the quote.  The 2024 budget did include necessary funds to conduct the survey and an updated quote has been obtained with no change to the proposed price from last year.  This survey is approximately a four-month process.  The second request is related to all staff training.  This would support two objectives: An effective and Efficient Organization as well as High Quality Services.  It could further fall under two different strategies.  The request is to expand on the spring all staff meeting where we recognize employees' years of service and review what has happened throughout the city over the last six months.  The budget has available funds to pay for this request. I would like to bring in an outside facilitator/book author of Homerun Leadership to train staff on a decision making process that could be implemented within our organization for more efficiency and ultimately bring forward items to the city council that include great supporting information.  It further instills a process of decision making that supports decisions being made at the lowest possible level within the organization.  The secondary aspect to this event is to generate more opportunity for the entire team to work together, which can be difficult in the size of our organization and being located in multiple facilities.  The all staff training would be estimated to go from 8 am to 1 pm.  Staff does recognize coverage would still be required at the main entrance to City Hall and the Police Department for walk in customers and phone calls.

Below is the proposed schedule for this evening:
Time                      Item
5:30 PM                 Welcome & Meeting Objectives
5:35 - 5:45              Confirm Values, Vision, Mission, Objectives, Strategies and brief review of progress on 2023 plan
5:45 - 6:05              What's working well?
6:05 - 6:25              What's not working well?
6:25 - 6:45              What are we not doing that we should be doing?
6:45 - 7:05              What are we currently doing that we should not be doing?
7:05 - 7:15              Break
7:15 - 7:30              Impacts in the next 1-5 years
7:30 - 7:45              Opportunities in the next 1-5 years
7:45 - 8:20              Begin brainstorming additions, deletions or amendments to the action items
8:20 - 8:25              Discuss moving forward on two action items
8:25 - 8:30              Closing Comments & Adjourn

This meeting is generally scheduled to adjourn at 8:30 pm.  Additional follow-up discussion will be scheduled at a future work session as needed.  Following this evening, staff will work to identify outcomes and indicators to satisfy action items.  If needed, staff will also further brainstorm additional action items that could be considered for implementation to accomplish the identified strategies.

This is being handled under normal staff duties.

Brian Hagen, City Administrator

Based upon discussion.