Missouri City City Council OKs updated strategic plan

Missouri City City Council voted to approve and adopt an updated strategic plan at its June 7 meeting.

Developed by city leadership, the Missouri City Strategic Plan and Implementation Guide for 2014 through 2029 was created as “a living document” with broad vision and mission statements to guide the city’s development. The plan was created to make sure city resources are well spent to reach the community’s ultimate goals, according to city documents.

“The strategic plan is really a road map for our staff. This really tells the staff what the council and mayor feel are the priority items and where we should be placing our emphasis,” Council Member Floyd Emery said. “The staff can be sure that what they’re working on is something that came out as the results of a lot of intense meetings.”

During strategic planning retreats March 19-20 and May 12, professional facilitator Jason Gray of JD Gray and Associates led the council in evaluating their strategic focus areas, objectives and action items. Gray was at the June 7 City Council meeting to present the updated plan for approval.

There are five strategic focus areas identified in the plan, which are: to create a great place to live, maintain a financially sound city government, grow business investments, develop a high-performance city team and have high-quality development throughout build-out. As a group responsible for deciding on these areas, council members were generally in agreement, according to Council Member Anthony Maroulis.

“What I learned from this session was and what I appreciated from this session was how well-aligned all of us were. There were a lot of commonalities, which is always a good thing for our community,” Maroulis said.

Under each focus area are two to five strategic objectives, 19 total, such as “create a diverse and unified place to live” and “build and maintain high-quality housing.”

At the most specific level, the action elements under each objective are concrete directives in which the majority of minor updates over time should be expected, according to city documents.