Department Directors and I (and my trusty assistant Lorene) met with City Council on Saturday morning, January 19, for our annual Council Planning Session. The purpose of the planning session was to have some conversation on some City foundational issues, such as our vision, mission, key objectives and core beliefs. We also planned to talk about the future of the new Budget Advisory Commission and to review the policy direction of the City’s new Comprehensive Land Use Guide Plan.
As we reviewed the City’s existing vision, mission, key objectives and core beliefs, I asked the Council to affirm the existing statements, or to suggest amending them. We had good a good discussion and affirmed the existing vision, mission and key objectives. As for our core beliefs, we added a new one that says we will “honor our natural and cultural heritage.” We have a reference to fostering respect for the past in our mission statement, but had no connection to that statement in our statement of core beliefs. We also amended another one that originally said that we believe in “the value of public service, both paid and voluntary.” The new version says we believe in “the value of public and community service, both paid and voluntary.” The addition of the word “community” is meant to emphasize the City Council’s appreciation and value of people who do community service in Eden Prairie in non-profits, youth athletic associations, churches, etc. The value of community service is very important to city government. If we did not have people in the community willing to serve their fellow citizens in these important roles and functions, city government would probably need to be bigger and broader than it is today.
We also had a good discussion about the City’s newest citizen advisory commission: the Budget Advisory Commission (BAC). The Council reached consensus on a couple of issues related to the BAC. I am drafting a statement to share with BAC members about the direction of their commission, but I need to review it with Council Members first before I share it with everyone reading this blog. No sneak peak on this one.
The final thing we accomplished on Saturday was to review some of the fundamental changes that we are going to see in our upcoming comprehensive guide plan. The guide plan is getting an update this year. That happens every ten years. The new guide plan contains new direction for the City in several key areas. We’ve been talking with the Council and the Planning Commission about these new directions for the past couple of years, but we wanted to make double and triple sure that the new guide plan reflects the Council’s wishes because we are getting awfully close to asking them to approve the final document. The Council affirmed for us that the guide plan is heading in the right direction. It gets its final review by the Planning Commission on January 28 and its first review by the Council at the February 12 Council meeting.
All in all, a pretty good planning session.
