The Town of Sahuarita convened a one‑day strategic planning workshop to update its strategic plan and further implement a priority‑based budgeting (PBB) tool intended to tie budgets to measurable, community‑aligned objectives. Facilitators Mike and Bill led council members and town staff through proposed “key objectives” and a PBB scoring exercise aimed at increasing budget transparency, producing data‑driven choices and ensuring alignment with community values.

Council and staff spent the morning reviewing the five focus areas in the draft plan — economic expansion and placemaking; outreach and communication; infrastructure and facilities; community well‑being; and a high‑performing organization — and discussing roughly 27 proposed key objectives that came from an earlier community/staff survey. Facilitators explained that the first round of implementation pushed the existing fiscal‑year budget through the PBB tool so staff and council could see how program budgets map to strategic priorities.

Much of the workshop focused on keeping objectives at a policy level (the “why” and the “what”) while reserving the “how” — the measurable steps, timelines and resources — for staff implementation and budget documents. Councilors repeatedly emphasized the need for objectives to be SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, time‑bound) and debated when numeric targets belong in objectives versus implementation metrics and departmental plans.

Several cross‑cutting themes emerged: strengthen routine, scalable resident engagement; ensure infrastructure investments are multimodal and aligned with community needs; treat staffing for core services as a continuing priority; and modernize technology and tools so departments can meet performance expectations. Facilitators described how PBB visualizations (a tree‑plot mapping program cost to alignment shading) would surface programs that are large in cost but weakly aligned and prompt reallocation conversations during budget preparation.

Facilitators and staff indicated council would receive finalized, word‑smith revised objective language within about a week and a draft PBB insights report shortly thereafter. The town manager said staff would incorporate the refinements into an updated document ahead of the next budget cycle, with the goal of rolling finalized objectives into the coming fiscal‑year planning process.

The retreat closed with housekeeping and calendar notes: the next council meeting is scheduled for Dec. 8, and staff flagged upcoming e‑sessions on annexation/development agreements and a draft zoo project.