Decatur City Commission Set to Approve “Ambitious” 2010 Strategic Plan Tonight
Decatur Metro | March 21, 2011Also on the docket for tonight’s Decatur City Commission meeting: final approval of the now- complete 2010 Decatur Strategic Plan!
Asst. City Manager Lyn Menne recaps in a letter to the City Manager (page 13 of the meeting materials) that the plan is the result of a 14 month effort, which included input by over 1,200 Decatur residents. Over the past few weeks, I’ve tried to highlight most of the goals of the plan here on DM, so hopefully we’re pretty much up-to-speed on the basic elements which will be included in the final version presented this evening.
Of course, the creation of the plan is just the beginning. As Ms. Menne notes…
This is an ambitious document that includes sixteen goals and 89 individual tasks. The success of this plan requires continued citizen involvement and commitment to its implementation. The plan identifies several important implementation partners whose involvement is essential to the city’s ability to accomplish the goals and tasks outlined in the plan.
As soon as I can get my hands (er…mouse?) on a copy of the finalized plan, I will post. For now, here’s a final link to the draft that was posted a few weeks back.
This looks like a very well designed plan that seems to formalize many things Decatur is already doing. I’d like to mention a thank you to all of the people that took the time to provide input and help create the document.
In one of the recent updates on DM a different commenter suggested opposing the plan and raised the issue of “massive government takeover or private property rights and individual responsibility. ‘ While that view seems a bit overboard for simply wanting to manage canopy and control invasive plants, the commenter did raise the issue of an increasing tax burden. (It’s not our CoD gov’t that we need to worry about… but that’s a different topic.) The comment raised a good point about how we fund these programs. I think it is fair to suggest restraint in potential increases to any millage or fee rates that might be needed to fund any new programs – at least in the near term. For the time being I hope the plan will simply guide how existing funds are utilized and not so much how we establish new programs that require additional funding.
This is a nice plan and I don’t have any reason to think the City wouldn’t be cautious and responsible. Personally, I’ve always been quite pleased with the level of service that I get for my tax dollars. Just wanted to throw in a couple of cents that we don’t try and do it all, i.e., fund it all, at once. I like that Goal 10 and Task 10C in particular discuss fiscal responsibility. It’s been my opinion that my tax dollars are well spent on a very good level of services.
I’m a bit late in responding to Eric but I want to assure you that this is a 10 year plan. There’s no way that we can accomplish all of these tasks in the first few years and many of them require multiple years of work. One of the best things about having a planning document like this is that it provides the needed justification and indication of public support that is essential for the many grant applications that we successfully submit to help fund these projects. Since 2001, the City of Decatur has received over $15 million in grant funds to help implement a number of the projects that were included in the 2000 Strategic Plan. We will continue to look for creative funding sources as we move into the next decade and begin implementing the new plan. Thanks for your input.
Thanks for the reply. Having the plan to demonstrate support and obtain grant funding makes a lot of sense, so thanks for that explanation!