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City staff reports 75% completion of 2019 strategic plan; COVID delayed several large projects
Summary
City staff told the council Feb. 4 that the city’s 2019 strategic plan is roughly 75% complete; COVID and difficulty securing funding delayed several 'big idea' projects, though progress was reported on financial planning, communications, staffing and certain capital planning improvements.
City staff presented a status report on the Shakopee 2019 strategic plan at the Feb. 4 meeting, saying the plan is about 75% complete and noting that the COVID-19 pandemic and funding challenges delayed several large, multi-year initiatives.
The presenter summarized the plan’s purpose — to operationalize goals from the comprehensive plan and parks master plan — and recounted four council priorities developed during the plan: financial stability; enhanced community strengths; effective public services; and communication. Staff read the adopted vision, mission and values and highlighted accomplishments and gaps toward the plan’s objectives.
Notable accomplishments cited by staff included: maintaining a stable tax rate (indexed to the implicit price deflator), creating a long-term financial plan integrated into the budget process, diversifying non-property-tax revenue sources (including tourism and ticket surcharges), improving the five-year capital improvement program (CIP) and completing employee-stability and recruitment measures (lower turnover, internal promotions, staffing studies). The communications priority was described as particularly successful: the city upgraded its website to ADA standards, added translation services, rolled out a strategic communications plan and refreshed branding guidelines.
Staff identified key items that lagged: the large ‘big idea’ capital projects (riverbank work, cultural corridor and the hub innovation center) lacked fully secured funding and therefore remain unfunded or in planning; staff also noted they have not developed an “impact review” process to evaluate program effectiveness and cited that as the lone objective without any progress.
On performance metrics, staff noted limited data for certain measures (e.g., a lack of databases to measure event attendance reliably) and said the chamber’s visitor-data work could be a resource for the city. Staff proposed working further with the chamber to leverage available visitor tracking data. Council members discussed the effects of federal pandemic funding on city financials and the difficulty of separating one-time federal dollars from long-term baselines.
Councilors asked about timelines and staff said some metrics will take time to return to pre-pandemic baselines; staff proposed restarting work on the impact-review effort and incorporating program-level surveys and internal audits to measure service delivery. Council members generally expressed support for returning to the unfinished items and directed staff to bring follow ups as funding and data permit.
Staff closed by committing to continue work on the remaining plan objectives and to return with progress updates at future meetings.
