Marine City Commission set goals for 2025

City Manager Reaves is leading the way

By Barb Pert Templeton

Members of the Marine City Commission formally adopted a set of goals for 2025 after spending the last several bi-monthly meetings discussing what might be included in the document.

At the April 3 meeting officials didn’t take any more time going over the goals but approved the five main goals City Manager Michael Reaves proposed in a document in their meeting packets.

In a lengthy discussion at a March 20 commission meeting each of the goals were discussed in some detail prior to Reaves presenting the final five at the recent meeting.

· FIRST Category – Streets / roadways and underground infrastructure projects.

1. Goal – Continue management of on-going projects and other planned events to effectively and efficiently manage additional needs determined through observation, work site detection, and on-going construction.

A focus on infrastructure is more important to Reaves than the flashy things. “People want their toilets to flush, the water to flow, it to be clean, their streets clean and streets to be drivable and police and fire to respond, those are critical services,” Reaves said.

· SECOND Category – Capital Improvement Plans – Finance / Budgeting

1. Goal – Develop multiple capital improvement plans to conduct a city-wide analysis and focus on short term / long term planning. The CIP should include the following spectrums: a. Water distribution plant b. Waste Water Treatment plant (WWTP) c. Facilities CIP include short term maintenance planning / estimated long term replacement and cost analysis. (5 yr, 10yr, 15yr, etc.) d. Departmental CIP revolving around capital items such as vehicles, specialized equipment, systems analysis, etc.

Reaves said in addition to the big capital improvement plans things for departments in the city are important too. Like replacing police cars, salt and fire trucks, back hoes and large purchases for IT should all be planned out as the city has only just been buying them as they go along.

· THIRD Category – Personnel / service providers / finance – budgeting

1. Goal – Recruitment, development, training, retention, and compensation of city staff across all city departments. Develop and initiate policies and practices across the goals spectrum that best serve our city staff.

Reaves asked the commission if they all agreed that retention in terms of personnel is a major item to be addressed and they said yes. “I’ve told you numerous times that the lack of continuity has hurt you in terms of department heads and staff plus historical knowledge and projects being stalled or costing you additional money so that’s another goal that’s critical to maintain and retain talent and develop talent to it’s fullest extent,” Reaves said.

· FOURTH Category – City Ordinances – legal / charter

1. Goal – Construct a committee consisting of two Commissioners, two city residents, the city attorney, city manager, and the city clerk and relevant city staff to review the city ordinances and conduct a review. The committee will select five ordinances at a time and determine if the ordinance is still valid / needed, requires revision or updating, or if the ordinance is no longer effective and needs to be rescinded.

Commissioner Jacob Bryson said he wanted to see a complete cleanup of the city ordinances as many things on the books were no longer even applicable in the city. Mayor Pro Tem Lisa Hendrick agreed and City Attorney Robert Davis quipped “yeah the one that talks about where you can park a horse has to go.”

· FIFTH Category – Public Communication

1. Goal – Work to improve communication with the public in multiple ways. Consider hosting scoped town halls that would deal with educational issues for the public on a range of different issues. Investigate and make progress in increasing communication between City staff / City Commissioners and our citizens via the use of televised commission meetings, and other committees that serve the city.

Reaves and the commissioners discussed how they could keep the community informed and agreed that televising the commission meetings along with other board meetings in the city would be a start. Hendrick said people don’t always have time to come to the meetings but they would watch them at home and the city’s budget meetings would be of great interest to the public.

City Attorney Robert Davis suggested the city manager’s lengthy reports to the commission each week might be something that could be posted on the city’s website. He said he knows it answers a lot of questions for people and has been effective in another community that decided to publish the city manager’s report.

The commission was unanimous in its approval of the five goals. Mayor Jennifer Vandenbossche was absent from the April 3 meeting due to illness.