The Salem City Council has approved a five year strategic plan as well as a mission statement and core values for the city.
The goals include actively pursuing and support of downtown, commercial, and industrial development within the city, pursue and incentivize residential housing development within the city, plan, design, fund and complete city infrastructure improvements, support and promote quality-of-life initiatives and activities, improve city-owned facilities and services, and improve city-wide aesthetics. There are then specific projects under each category.
Mayor Nic Farley is pleased to see the strategic plan in place.
“I look at it as a road map for the city to remind us who we are and where we want to go over the next five years. I think it was great for us to get feedback for the community and their vision as well as Department Heads so they can look at that document and see a real clear view on where the council wants to go over the next 5 years. And we can start tying budgets to those action items we want to accomplish.”
City Manager Rex Barbee says the plan includes an update on progress by the city staff every two months.
“One of the objectives the council and members of the committee indicated they wanted was continual feedback. So we are trying to grab out Department Heads and keep them involved in those particular projects and giving the council an update every 2 months to say where we are at, what has and hasn’t been completed to keep them advised. We will also put it on the city’s website so that the key stakeholders in the projects can monitor that traffic as well.”
Barbee notes each of the goals has been assigned to a department head to oversee.
Economic Development Director Leah Dellicarpini led development of the plan and says the plan itself may need further development.
“Right now their major objectives if you look at housing, economic development, they almost need mini strategic plans around them. I think one of the big objectives was a strategic plan for economic development. So now it’s taking it, disecting it and going how do we execute up against this? What are some of those early milestones to see if we are on track?”
In addition to the goals, the strategic plan also developed a city vision statement which is ‘Your opportunity to thrive’. That was followed by development of a Mission Statement which is ‘To provide the foundation needed to support the opportunity to thrive. Mayor Farley says core values were then established.
“The core values of professionalism, act with integrity, accountability, transparency, positive leadership, proactive active communication, creativity and vision…I think a lot of those came directly from listening sessions and from our stakeholders. This is what we want to see in our community, this is what we want from our elected officials and city employees.”
The plan was facilitated by Arndt Municipal Support, Inc. which held two community listening sessions as well as a daylong sit-down session with community leaders to identify and rank in importance the needs of the city.
View the entire Salem Strategic Plan here:
