The Town of Sahuarita convened a daylong strategic‑planning retreat to convert survey results into updated, SMART key objectives and to prepare for a priority‑based budgeting (PBB) process intended to make the town’s budget more transparent and more closely aligned with community priorities.

Consultants hired to facilitate the retreat said the PBB tool is intended to produce three outcomes: greater transparency in the budget process, more data‑driven decision making and stronger confidence that adopted budgets reflect community values. “We took a budget that has really just been line‑item driven … to what is now a budget that is completely boiled down into program service areas,” the town manager said as staff and council discussed how the tool allocates costs to programs and services.

Why it matters: Council members and department leaders said the PBB visualization — a treemap that shows the size of each program’s budget and a shading score for how well it aligns with council priorities — will change how budget conversations are held. Facilitators explained that a large program with weak alignment will be easy to spot and will prompt new questions about whether to reallocate resources, add funding to well‑aligned small programs, or leave mandated services untouched.

What the council did: Facilitators presented roughly 27 proposed key objectives across five focus areas (economic expansion and placemaking; outreach and communication; infrastructure and facilities; community well‑being; high‑performing organization). Council members debated which existing goals should continue, which proposed objectives should be reworded, and which measurement items belong in an implementation plan rather than as high‑level objectives.

Notable changes and clarifications
- Outreach and communication: Council rewrote a proposed objective to emphasize “transparency” and “routine digital and in‑person engagement,” and set aside the technical decision about how often to run a community survey (staff and facilitators suggested operationalizing the survey as an implementation tool rather than a strategic objective). One council member criticized small survey samples, saying surveys can feel like “a waste of time” if participation is limited; facilitators and others explained sampling approaches and options for future timing (the next community survey was discussed for 2026).

- Infrastructure and utilities: Council removed language that would have committed the town to ensuring the safety of third‑party utility systems and instead agreed to language reflecting town influence with partners: ‘‘maintain, expand and modernize multimodal transportation systems, town systems and services to meet future demands’’ (wording to emphasize partnership with private utilities such as TRICO or TEP rather than ownership). Staff said standard development practice includes requesting will‑serve letters from utilities during project review.

- Parks, trails and community facilities: Members preferred broader language over hard numeric targets for park acreage. Staff said the parks master plan and performance metrics will provide the specific measurements, while the strategic objectives will remain high level and evergreen.

- Community well‑being and public safety: Council and staff agreed to a flexible, departmental approach to staffing: rather than prescribe a single officer‑per‑1,000 target in the plan, the police chief and town manager recommended the high‑level objective read as “maintain staffing sufficient for core services to keep pace with population growth.” The police chief told the group he had previously used about 1.85 officers per 1,000 residents as an approximate planning baseline but cautioned that staffing formulas are complex and must be informed by operational data.

- Code enforcement and cleanliness: The council replaced a narrowly worded «litter prevention» goal with a broader “community cleanliness” objective that combines education, volunteer coordination and code enforcement. Staff noted the town currently lacks a dedicated code‑enforcement officer and indicated that staffing and program design would be part of implementation.

Quotes from the meeting
- ‘‘This budget tool was really promised to help us accomplish three things… greater transparency, data‑driven decisions, and invoke confidence that the budgets the council adopts align with community values,’’ the town manager said as he introduced the PBB approach.
- Consultant Mike summarized the process: ‘‘If purpose is unclear, we need to reconsider that objective.’’
- Police Chief (on staffing): ‘‘We came up with that 1.85 per thousand as an approximate number, not the number… it’s a conservative number, but it’s usable.’’
- A council member skeptical of survey results said: ‘‘I think to me the surveys are a waste of time’’ when response counts are small compared with the town population; facilitators explained options for statistically valid sampling and operational timing.

Next steps and timing: Staff committed to finalizing the revised language within about a week and to packaging the updated strategic plan for council review next calendar year and ahead of the new fiscal year. The town manager noted the Dec. 8 council meeting will include an executive session related to a pre‑annexation development agreement; staff expects a draft related to that item in January.

What this does not change: No formal votes, ordinances or budget decisions were adopted at the retreat. The session was a deliberative, workshop‑style review to set high‑level objectives and to prepare staff for the PBB‑driven budget process during the upcoming budget cycle.

What to watch for next: Staff will circulate final phrasing of the proposed key objectives for the council to adopt and will use the PBB tool in the next budget cycle to show program budgets, alignment shading, and to surface reallocation options.