City Council Chooses Strategic Initiatives for Next Fiscal Year Post (from city memo)
The Fayetteville City Council, based on the City’s established Strategic Priorities, identified several initiatives for the next 12-18 months at this weekend’s annual Strategic Planning Retreat. Those initiatives include:
Redevelopment and business growth of the Murchison Road corridor
Job creation and retention for the local workforce through an internship program
Developing Smart City capacity, specifically through pursuing the installation of broadband across the City
Collaboration and empowerment by developing a Young Adult Engagement Program
Working to develop a quality stormwater program
Managing the City’s future growth through a comprehensive land use plan
Improving connectivity by assessing the feasibility of railroad crossing safety at at-grade crossings
Elevating the conversation about how to combat poverty across the City
To advance community revitalization efforts, to include residential and commercial properties
The city’s elected officials met on Friday, Feb. 1 and Saturday, Feb. 2 at Fayetteville Technical Community College’s Wesley A. Meredith Horticultural Education Center to learn from their most recent citizen engagement efforts, set strategic priorities for the next 12-18 months, agree on methods and specifics of reporting, accountability, and community, and create talking points for strategic priorities.
The 2-day session was facilitated by Lydia Altman and Dale Smith, from the University of North Carolina’s School of Government. “Council appreciates this annual opportunity to review what we’ve achieved over the past year, and from listening to our citizens, carefully chose our priorities to work toward achieving next year,” said Mayor Mitch Colvin. “This helps keep us grounded and figure out how with a finite amount of money and staff resources, we can best focus on the selected priorities to make our city a better place for citizens.” City Manager Doug Hewett said, “This process is important for our council. It allows them to meet in a different environment than their normally structured meetings and collaborate with each other to plan where they want to direct city staff to focus our efforts next year.
It also helps us to ultimately be better stewards of our citizens’ money.” Strategic planning is a roadmap employed by many local governments to guide the use of money, personnel and resources to realize a shared vision of the future. It outlines what a community hopes to achieve through a long-term and annual goal-setting process and provides steps for reaching those goals. “This is an important part of determining how we as a city move forward,” said Rebecca Jackson, Strategic Performance Analytics Director. “Citizen input from engagements throughout the year has been taken into consideration to ensure council focuses on what’s most important to citizens.”
More information regarding the City’s strategy and performance programs can be found on the City’s website at https://fayettevillenc.gov/government/city-departments/strategic-performance-analytics/strategic-planning.
Citizens can also visit TRACstat for key performance measures, finance and budget data and Targets for Action updates at http://tracstat.fayettevillenc.gov for updates on strategic performance results.
