Emporia city commissioners discussed what was accomplished in 2008 and what they envision for 2009 at the first of two goal-setting sessions Monday evening at the Water Treatment Plant.
In addition to a review of past accomplishments, the purpose of the preliminary goal-setting session was to give commissioners a starting point and a sounding board for ideas for the upcoming year.
According to City Manager Matt Zimmerman, the process is to come up with ideas that can be organized into high and low priorities so staff can start working on agendas based on accomplishing those goals.
“When I first came here, we had a new city commission,” Zimmerman said, “and one of the things we identified very early on was that we needed to do some goal-setting since we had so many new leaders in the community and within the city.”
This is the third year for the commission to hold a goal-setting session.
Among last year’s accomplishments: one priority was to find funding for capital improvement projects. The Lyon County sales tax will provide about $2.5 million per year for the capital improvement fund. One of last year’s goals was to work on economic development; the Lowe’s project, the Building Futures campaign, the Community Initiated Development program and the master plan for downtown all were seen as successes in that area, as well as preliminary plans for a historic downtown district. Another success was to make Emporia a more inclusive community. The Accessibility Advisory Committee was formed last summer to work with the city to provide an accessible environment for the elderly and the handicapped.
Commissioner Jeff Longbine said he was impressed with the number of goals the city accomplished last year.
“It’s a really good exercise for us to re-examine our 2008 goals and determine what we’ve accomplished,” Longbine said. “As you get tied up in the weekly operation, you don’t go back and look at those, but I was really proud of the fact that we accomplished so much throughout the year.”
The city commissioners agree that the goal-setting process is a useful one because it helps delineate each commissioner’s visions and ideas and start to form a plan for how to accomplish them.
Commissioner Kevin Nelson said that it’s good to keep the ideas flowing.
“Number one, it helps us get our thoughts together as commissioners,” Nelson said. “That way we can get one another’s views as well as exchange ideas, and then at the next meeting we’ll draw up some goals and prioritize our thoughts from tonight, and it will set us up for this next year and give us something to see if we can accomplish.”
Longbine said the process is important because it gives commissioners a chance to discuss ideas and set priorities, and because it provides a launching point into the following year.
“It’s important to do these sessions because it gives us an opportunity to discuss what the goals should be so we can formulate our budgets and our plans accordingly to match those goals to what we think the community needs this year, and from there on into next year,” Longbine said.
Two top priorities for the commission are the budget and how the economy will affect Emporians.
“Always the top priority is to have a good budget, to use taxpayer money properly,” Nelson said. “As far as a top priority, with the economy we want to keep people employed and continue infrastructure improvements. I think we’ll have a clearer idea in a couple of weeks when we look at this list again.”
“The budget is absolutely the number one priority,” Longbine said. “How we weather the recession and what kind of effect it has on city revenues are the most important.”
A large part of the discussion Monday night involved how well Emporia is positioned to come out of the recession, and where the city will be when the recession ends.
“Are we positioned properly?” Longbine asked. “I think economic development goals and programs and continuing to work on economic development issues will be extremely important through the next year to make sure that when the nation does come back from the recession, we’re properly positioned.”
The ideas discussed by the commission will be picked up again at its next goal-setting session on March 24.