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Santa Barbara council holds facilitated strategic planning workshop; drafts four priority areas and schedules follow-up engagement
Summary
At a June 3 retreat, councilmembers, staff and a consultant reviewed a draft vision and identified four high-level strategic priority areaseconomic vitality; community resiliency and safety; housing and community services; and a thriving organizationand directed staff to synthesize the workshop for public engagement and next steps.
The Santa Barbara City Council held a facilitated strategic planning workshop on June 3 to draft a citywide strategic framework and clarify council expectations for the next three to five years.
Consultant Nancy Hetrick of Raftellus led the session and summarized prior interviews with council and department heads and the themes that surfaced in preparatory work. Hetrick said the workshop—s goal was to define a vision and a small number of strategic priorities to guide the city over the next several years, then to engage staff and the broader community to identify actionable strategies.
"This conversation today is really about informing kind of where we're headed in the next, you know, 2 to 3 to 5 years," Kelly, a city staff member who addressed the council, said at the start of the workshop. She and the consultant emphasized that the retreat was intended to guide future decisions and not to decide the budget that the council is scheduled to adopt in mid-June.
Workshop participants clustered input around four draft…
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