Dallas's Latest To-Do List

By Robert Wilonsky Mon., Oct. 18 2010 at 10:08 AM

Categories: City Hall

Tomorrow morning the city council schleps all the way to the Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre for its latest retreat, at which point they'll pore over the results of the latest Strategic Plan Update. In short, it's a look back at what the council wanted to get done in the last fiscal year and a look ahead at the FY2010-11 checklist. It covers all the familiar topics -- everything from Big Picture items ("Continue the streetcar implementation plan," "Reduce the number of chronic homeless," "Continue to develop Fair Park as a successful, year round venue by FY 09-10," "Take steps to establish a 'worldclass' Downtown venue with activities," "Implement Trinity Project," etc.) to smaller initiatives (as in, "Double the number of [Facebook] fans to 1,200"). Worth a look-see to which items get the check marks and which get the down-turned arrows.

The briefing doc links to a more streamlined version of the 2011 Strategic Plan, which includes intros from Mayor Tom Leppert and City Manager Mary Suhm. Writes Leppert, sure, we got plans. Tons of 'em. And there are ore on the way -- not only the Downtown Dallas 360, about which we'll have more later today, but also the Complete Streets Initiative, about which I'll have more in a moment. But this one's different, see:

Now, there are plenty of good plans sitting on the shelves of City Hall, corporate boardrooms, and university libraries that haven't seen the light of day since being written, either because they read like scholarly publications or because the plans were never tied to actions. So we have written this small work to tell a simple and clear story about where this organization --- your City of Dallas -- is headed and how we intend to get there. ... As you read through the pages of the Strategic Plan, understand that it is a snapshot in time -- our perspective of the future from where we stand in the present moment. View the Plan as a living document that we will need to update frequently as new information becomes available and as the City adapts to changing conditions.

To which Suhm adds in her longer what-for:

Simply stated, the City of Dallas' Strategic Plan is a blueprint to drive decision-making and produce actions that determine what kind of an organization the City is (and wants to be), what it is that the City does (and should be doing), and why the City does it.

One thing to note: There's another Citizen Survey coming this fiscal year.

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