City council’s strategic direction now goes to administration to develop a plan as to how to respond and deliver on council’s suggestions.

The plan included six themes: economy, design, movement, identity, safety and dialogue.

Each of the themes received greater exploration in the report including suggestions from council as to what the City would look like once each of the themes is implemented.

Craig Curtis, City manager, said he wanted to stress how important he felt the document is for the City’s direction.

“The last strategic direction helped us break ground and this one is really helping us move from a small city growing up to a large city with different requirements and needs.”

Administration will take the document and recommend a timeline for each of the ideas to take place. The plan is for 2012 – 2014, during which time each of the themes will be addressed.

Curtis explained that over the next couple of months, administration will address each of the ideas before developing outlines for how they will proceed with the themes.

“Then during our budget reviews we will look and see which projects are built in. By October the policy and governance committee can expect to have some of these honed into a little bit more detail,” said Curtis.

Some of the ideas are fairly extensive, explained Curtis, so administration and council will have to work together to determine which projects can be taken on in which year over the three-year time-frame.

“The charters will be more like a road map towards this work. What we have here is the end statements that really frame the work that we do.”

Councillor Dianne Wyntjes said the development of the strategic direction was an interesting exercise in community development.

“When I was campaigning and on numerous occasions I got to ask the public what their tickles and their ticks were and get their feedback,” said Wyntjes.

The plan was developed really to show where council wants to see direction, she said. There was some concern about not approving some of the individual points, but approving the themes themselves.

“It may well be that council has an inclination to approve the plan but the individual indicators be refined through the process,” said Curtis.

kpalardy@reddeerexpress.com