Beaumont staff tell council 69% of strategic-plan tasks are complete; wastewater, downtown and public-safety projects highlighted

Miles Haynes, assistant to the city manager in special projects, gave Beaumont City Council an update on the city's strategic plan at the April 20 meeting, saying about 69% of the five-year objectives are complete or substantially in progress.

Haynes summarized work across the plan's five goals, citing completed items that include a new real-time crime center and several utility and downtown projects. He said staff will begin monthly goal-review meetings and expects departments to tie strategic objectives to their FY26 budget requests so council and the public can track funding and implementation.

Haynes said the city's five-year portion of the plan (through 2028) has five major goals: making Beaumont a great place to live, ensuring a financially sound city that provides excellent services, a vibrant downtown and riverfront, livable neighborhoods and upgraded facilities and infrastructure. "The mission of the city of Beaumont is to provide exceptional municipal services and to plan for Beaumont's future in a financially responsible, open, transparent and ethical manner," Haynes said as he recited the plan's mission.

He told council the presentation covered the key actions staff track under each goal and the metrics used to judge completion. On Goal 1 (quality of life and neighborhood work), he said 6 of 9 actions are complete (about 66%). On Goal 2 (infrastructure-related work) he said most items are complete and other goals show mixed progress; overall he cited a 69% completion rate for the tasks he reviewed.

Haynes listed specific projects and statuses: - Wharton Park feasibility study: not complete; preliminary timing placed design in FY2028 and construction in FY2029 if pursued. - Real-time crime center (police): complete; four analysts were onboarded and staff are building regional camera partnerships. - Wastewater and sewer work: the city contracted Black & Veatch for a wastewater treatment-plant master plan and has several lift-station and trunk-line projects planned or under bid; Haynes said sewer-main replacement work has been funded but noted that an estimated $5.7 million in allocated money would improve only about 1.4% of mains, underscoring the scale of the system's needs. - Downtown projects: the city has a contract with Stonehenge on a downtown hotel feasibility study and is incorporating downtown master-plan elements into the FY25 CIP and potential bond projects. - Homelessness and mental-health initiatives: staff convened a coalition of local providers and identified priorities including marketing, web support and grant assistance for nonprofits. - Organizational work: citywide customer-service training, Lean Six Sigma white-belt training for staff, and an AI committee led by the IT director were cited as completed or ongoing items.

Haynes said the city has undertaken a number of small capital and programmatic projects listed in the strategic-plan materials available on the city website and that departments will soon begin including strategic-plan objectives explicitly in budget requests so council and the public can see how much funding supports each goal.

He closed by describing next steps: monthly implementation reviews with assigned staff, a potential strategic-plan refresher later in the year, continued grant-seeking for projects such as the SAMOK master plan and outreach to build a public-facing dashboard so residents can track progress. Council offered no formal action on the presentation; the item was an update for the record.

Ending Haynes encouraged council members and the public to review the strategic-plan document (available on the city's website) and invited questions. He also said staff will bring CIP materials to council in late May and that several items flagged in the presentation will return for more detailed budget and policy decisions.