City of Powell River councillors have received an update on the 2020 to 2022 strategic plan, which sets direction for the city.
At the December 3 city council meeting, councillor Maggie Hathaway said the strategic plan was adopted on December 19, 2019. She said the plan was subsequently summarized into a document to include general timelines and responsibility for the various actions identified. Actions included in the approved strategic plan were drawn from strategic planning sessions held in 2019, previous meetings, and the committee of the whole action list.
Councillor Cindy Elliott said she wanted people to realize the action list used to be prepared for committee of the whole meetings has been added to the strategic planning process.
“I wanted to voice my support for this new structure where we have tied our work plan and reporting to our strategic plan,” said Elliott. “It elevates our strategic plan to being the document that drives our reporting, which holds us accountable to the strategic plan better than the way we were doing it before. This is a really good way of going about it and I wanted to thank our chief administrative officer for going in this direction.”
Councillor Rob Southcott said over the years he has seen how powerful strategic planning can be. He said it provides a document to move things forward.
“This is the kind of thing we need to really flesh out our vision,” said Southcott. “I’m starting to refer to this document as one of our central documents when I’m in conversation with many people in town. I can say we have this plan, or the official community plan, or the integrated community sustainability plan. The strategic plan ties it all together.”
Mayor Dave Formosa said the community finance advisory committee at a recent meeting was kind of hitting on the city’s strategic plan.
“I did assure them they will see it because we do have it,” said Formosa. “I think they were surprised to hear we did have such. The reports and plans that we do, we use them.”
Formosa said overall, the city’s planning processes have put the municipality in good stead. He said years ago the city was able to attract $50 million in projects, and the reason why the city was so fortunate is because the city had “shovel-ready projects.”
“We had the plans done and when all of these grants came out, we had all of these shovel-ready projects, because that’s what the funders wanted; we ended up spending $50 million and we were so busy,” said Formosa. “A lot of good things happened, such as the in-fill when you go down to the ferry in Westview, plus the south harbour and north harbour, the new water system from Haslam Lake for the whole community from one source, the track that is so heavily used up above Brooks, among others.
“What a way to talk about growth.”
