City staff preview next Raleigh strategic plan; council to set priorities at January retreat

Heather McDougall, head of the City of Raleigh Office of Strategy and Innovation, and Christina Laios, the office’s strategy and impact manager, briefed the Raleigh City Council at an afternoon work session on the process and timeline for updating the city’s strategic plan.

McDougall said the strategic plan is a council-adopted policy that translates the council’s vision into a three- to four-year implementation framework. "This plan guides our organization's focus, our work, our resources," she said, adding the city assigns cross-departmental teams to implement initiatives and treats the plan as a "living, breathing framework." Laios described a multi-step evaluation and community engagement process the office used to review the current plan and surface priorities for the next plan.

The briefing previewed evaluation findings and resident engagement used to shape priorities. Laios said the Office of Strategy and Innovation conducted a six-month evaluation that involved "over 250 staff and expert voices," and a second engagement phase that drew on more than 350 residents, 45 staff across 22 departments and the more than 1,000 respondents to the 2022 community survey. "We heard from over 350 residents, 45 staff members across 22 departments," she said.

The presentation summarized recurring resident themes organized under the plan’s six Key Focus Areas (KFAs): arts and cultural resources; economic development and innovation; growth and natural resources; organizational excellence; safe, vibrant and healthy community; and transportation and transit. Laios said common concerns included barriers to arts programming outside downtown, a need for more workforce opportunities and coordinated business supports, confusion about recycling and curbside services, limited affordable housing choices, inconsistent customer service standards, concerns about reliance on traditional policing and gaps in transit, pedestrian and cycling infrastructure.

Council members used the briefing to press staff for clearer performance measures, tighter alignment with budgeting and other plans, and more transparent public reporting. One councilor said a dashboard showing simple, plain-English metrics — for example, "percent of buses running on time" and "percent of trash getting picked up on time" — would help residents and staff track progress. McDougall and Laios said the city will work with a consultant to better integrate performance measures into the next plan and to develop a dashboard.

Councilors also asked how the strategic plan will align with the ongoing comprehensive plan and departmental business plans. Laios said the strategic plan is intended as a shorter, three-year window that informs business plans and budget requests; she said the plan will go into effect before the new comprehensive plan and that staff are coordinating to align subsequent business plans to the strategic priorities.

Staff outlined the near-term timeline: council priorities will be finalized at a retreat in January; results from the 2024 community survey (administered by consultant ETC) are expected in February; departments and cross-functional teams will determine initiatives in March–April; staff will return to council for formal review in May–June; and the plan is scheduled to launch in July. Laios said the 2024 community survey data collection is expected to be complete next month.

On resident engagement, Laios said the office used a mix of methods to limit survey fatigue and reach people most affected by specific services, including reviews of past engagement, targeted surveys and in-person focus groups. "We prioritized hearing from the people who are most impacted by those specific services," she said.

On technology, Chief Information Officer Mark Wittenberg said the city is drafting governance and policy for use of artificial intelligence and is exploring limited, governed deployments, including in a customer-relationship module and Microsoft Copilot to help analyze survey results. "We're looking at AI very pragmatically," Wittenberg said; the city expects to return to council in the coming months with an update on that work. Staff said they will wait for CIO guidance before expanding AI use across departments.

Staff accepted several requests from council: to provide the GoRaleigh on-time performance data for the retreat, to compile the performance and annual reports used to measure progress under the current plan (including a synopsis of completed initiatives and outstanding items), and to prepare the more interactive retreat session with priorities in digital form for council review before Friday. Laios said the Office of Strategy and Innovation is already implementing changes identified in the plan evaluation to make initiatives more actionable and better aligned to budget.

No formal votes or ordinance actions were taken during the work session. The council scheduled the retreat and follow-up steps described by staff and closed the briefing to reconvene at 7 p.m.

The city plans a public launch of the new strategic plan in the fall following the July implementation, and staff said they will publish an annual report and a dashboard to make performance measures more accessible to residents.