##VIDEO ID:dS93zTOPxZ4## welcome to cloudcast where you get an inside look at St Cloud Florida's local government whether you live work or play here we're bringing you the information you need to better understand your city cloudcast is hosted by our Communications team including maramma bachelder Andrew Sullivan Deborah Carson and J B Miller thanks for listening in to cloudcast well hello everybody Welcome to today's podcast we're excited for our guest today it's abis mayel Abu and he's going to talk a little bit about our newly updated strategic plan so AB Ismael talk to us a little bit about what that is and what it does for our residents oh thank you for having me yes our new 5year strategic plan runs from fiscal year 24 to 2029 this is one of the first in the city of stcloud in terms of the amount of involvement from the community Our Community Partners our city staff and our obviously our councel and our directors um it's six-month process to put together it started with a community visioning session where the community had the opportunity to design Live sketch how they would like to see the community look in 30 years and from that we developed a a nice visual that now we're very proud of of things that they would like to preserve from the community as well as things that they would like to see come moving forward so abma we had a strategic plan prior correct um that one expired we finished everything in it is how does this update process work yes so we had a 5ye pre prior to this from 2018 to 2023 so because if expired we wanted to expand and and do one for uh something that happen if you can tell the thing about strategic planning has to be a a living and breathing document that you have to update one every five years but after Co we we realized that things weren't running as they were supposed to anymore that threw a wrench in the system so we had to adapt from it uh we took the opportunity in this past fiscal year to update it to actually see what the community is going through at terms of of uh growth and and what we have to look forward in the future based on the Outlook of stcloud and you mentioned visioning as part of the process when you get public input you're looking to the people really to set what the goals are for their Community things that are important to them correct correct we we we try to get as much feedback as possible because in reality you know we we we try to provide the services that they would like to see and a strategic plan is one of the mechanisms we use to actually uh put those plans in motion because the government might know that we know everything but uh in reality the communities who we're trying to serve and if they're asking for specific type of service we got to make sure that we listen to them and we put the plans in place for it we hear a lot about growth in the city of St Cloud obviously we've had a lot of growth in the last five years particularly how does this strategic plan address that for the future needs of our residents because of the feedback received we actually had the opportunity to revisit what are the things that are really important uh you mentioned growth one of the things that we noticed the most being mentioned was traffic so our strategic plan uh actually developed a key Focus area of it reliable transportation uh we also talked to the community about bringing local jobs expanding the economy so economic development is another part that we're focusing on uh so those components were captured in all the feedback that we received and and we made sure that we added them to to our new plan uh the people were heavily involved in it um it's created where can they go to see it so everything's on our website we try to be as transparent as possible making sure that not only the community knows but also our staff so there's different ways uh for the public uh our City website we have a dedicated strategic plan page under the city manager tab where you can find the actual document as well as uh we're building a portal for you to see our progress when it comes to statistics and uh where we are with each project that we promise that we're going to accomplish and then for staff we have a an internal SharePoint site where every staff member can see why they wake up in the morning and they come to work what is it that they're putting together uh what why do they put that uniform on and actually show up to work because they can see the projects that they'll be working on and they can see the future what they're working towards as well so that's an extra layer of motivation for staff and that's all available internally through our SharePoint Drive Ismael talk a little bit about the public involvement with this because it was a very robust level of involvement this time and I know that was an intentional thing so can you talk a little bit about how we brought the community into it and the different ways that we got their input and feedback yeah it was about a five Monon process just receiving feedback so like I mentioned earlier we had a visioning session that was the start the kickoff uh kind of giving us that 30-year Outlook where we would like to be we also have a series of community surveys uh with over 600 and something respondents to it um the surveys were shared not only with the community as a whole we also have Community Partners so the county the school district Valencia College etc those those uh individual uh entities that also have some type of effect in our city I have the opportunity to provide feedback we also share with the youth we wanted to hear what the youth had to say as well so we use the help of the school district sharing that information so we can receive that feedback and we also develop focus groups for specific areas Economic Development we're looking at Transportation we're looking at Natural Resources so we put together a group of folks throughout through throughout the research process where they uh we selected soet matter experts to be part of this focus group and they can provide us feedback as well on that specific area uh so that's just kind of an example of the amount of feedback that we receive uh once everything was done and completed encapsulated and put together into a draft then we went ahead with phase two which is showing what what was produced from all that feedback and the community had another opportunity to provide feedback on that as well yeah we like that we do not like that why do you choose this and we have that opportunity as an open house and have further discussions prior to any adoption by Council and it's easy to make a plan right and I I think sometimes in government or in any business we're guilty of making a great plan and then it sits on a shelf and collects dust for the next five years what kind of things are in place with the city's strategic plan to ensure that it actually informs what we're doing in day-to-day operations for the next 5 years and you mention it a plan is a plan unless you put action into it uh the Strategic plan what it does is gives staff it gives the community and it gives Council direction from there staff uh is able to put together business plans so how are we going to accomplish these things what that means is we tailor our operations we tailor the way we budget we tailor the way we motivate staff and we tailor the way uh we show up to work every day basically to make sure that we accomplish the things that were said as the preferred direction of the city of St Cloud for the next five years uh like I mentioned strategic plan uh business planning to be more specific we do that every year we make sure that we map every single type of project that we are putting together in that list to be mapped to the to an item in the Strategic plan so what do we want to accomplish why do you want to suggest this project why should we fund it so you have to make sure that it's it's matching with something in the Strategic plan what area of that strategic plan is proa accomplishing and if it doesn't me anything there it's not going on the budget and it's not going on your business plan so you're not going to work on it uh so what the Strategic plan does is keep us focused and us that direction so that we can actually do something you've mentioned a couple of them but I think the Strategic plan has some key Focus areas for us can you walk us through what those are correct I mentioned the four key Focus areas that this strategic plan has we have the economic development component we have effective Community safety we want to be a high performing government and we also want to have a reliable transportation Network so those are the key Focus areas and underneath underneath each Focus area we have strategic goals that go into a little bit more detail of what does it mean to be a high performing government uh so that's the way it is structured uh from there then the directors uh each department would use that information to build their business plans and their budget accordingly make sure that they're Meeting those goals well this sounds like it was a heavy lift so kudos to you for spearheading this process um any final thoughts you have on our strategic plan and how that's going to help us map out the future of the city over the next 5 years absolutely so like I mentioned earlier having a plan without action is not necessarily uh the best so one thing that we do is to make sure that this plan is uh addressing the needs of the cities that we also implemented some evaluation processes throughout uh we're doing quarterly so every three months evaluation of projects to make sure that we're still on task uh we're also using key performance indicator of data to make sure that uh the projects that we're instituting that we're moving forward are actually affecting our our numbers for the better and if they're not then we take those uh into account and we delete those projects from the business plan we also keeping ourselves accountable as a city like I mentioned we have a portal in our city website where we'll be sharing those numbers to make sure that the community is with full transparency can see what uh our projects and where the money is being affecting uh our processes the most so things like uh just to give you an example the job to housing ratio you'll be able to see that in in real time to make sure that we are actually doing something for economic development um looking at response time for a fire fire safety personnel and and how fast are we answering the phone calls to make sure that we are doing something to affect the numbers and make them better in our uh effective Community safety key Focus area so it's it's more than just a plan so we put in a full full range of operations and budgeting and and evaluation behind our strategic plan that's great well thanks for spending some time with us today to give us information about our strategic plan as you've mentioned more information and details are available on our City website which is www.s sacloud l.gov and you'll click on the city managers Tab and you'll see strategic plans so check us out on the website to learn more thanks again for joining us today on cloudcast thank you that's it for this edition of cloudcast don't forget to like follow rate and review and we'll see you next time on cloudcast