A series of seven overarching priorities for the municipality have been identified following several months of workshops with council and staff, which has generated the City of Cranbrook Strategic Priorities (2015 – 2018) report which was approved by council at their regular meeting Monday night.

The exercise of creating a strategic priorities report began in early 2015 to better focus the city on the key issues affecting the community by using a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis. A SWOT Analysis is a simple framework for analyzing an organization’s strengths and weaknesses while identifying the opportunities and threats it faces.

“I am very happy with the planning and the work that has gone into this process,” says Mayor Lee Pratt. “This exercise has allowed council to better understand the issues the city faces and allowed us to put a series of strategic priorities in place along with the tasks staff needs to undertake and identifies the resources needed to meet those goals.”

Once the strategic planning exercise was completed, a set of seven overarching themes and priorities were revealed as follows:

– Responsible & Balanced Infrastructure Plan;

– Preparation of a Strategic Sustainable Financial Plan (reliable, sufficient, equitable);

– Foster a healthy local and area economy;

– Preserve and Protect Water Quality & Supply;

– Strengthen Our Human Resource Assets;

– Streamline and Simplify the City’s Regulatory Process and Doing Business with the City (Reduce Red Tape – RRT);

– Enhance community livability and quality of life.

Moving forward, council and staff will meet annually prior to the start of the budget process to review and update the strategic priorities document. Beginning in 2016, the updated Strategic Priorities document will be included in the 2015 Annual Report and in each subsequent edition.

Section 98 of the Community Charter indicates that the annual report include “a statement of municipal objectives, and the measures that will be used to determine progress respecting those objectives, for the current and next year.” Although the city already meets those requirements, the inclusion of the Strategic Priorities document in the annual report will provide the public a much clearer picture of the overall direction the city is going.

Copies of the City of Cranbrook Strategic Priorities (2015-2018) report are available at reception at City Hall or can be downloaded from the city’s website www.cranbrook.ca and click on the ‘Annual Reports’ link on the homepage.

City of Cranbrook

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