Yuba City sets goals, priorities for 2019/20

City outlined eight priority areas including public safety, homelessness

Yuba City officials recently set goals and priorities that will help guide the city’s decision-making process throughout the remainder of the fiscal year.

“We established eight goals and priorities that are basically designed to help us structure the way we do business,” said Mayor Shon Harris.

The eight priority areas established during the most recent council meeting include public safety, fiscal stability, organizational culture, being businessfriendly, enhancing partnerships, quality of life, infrastructure, and homelessness and vagrancy.

Council members held an all-day workshop in March, where they worked with directors from each city department and community members in attendance on the priorities and goals. The city reviews and defines its priorities and goals annually in preparation for its annual budget adoption.

“These not only help with the budget process, but also when projects come in front of us. We like to go back to these guiding principles, goals and objectives, benchmark against those to make sure we are doing what we have laid out and so that staff and the public have a clear idea on where we see the city is headed and the projects we need to be mindful of moving forward,” said Councilman Marc Boomgaarden.

By category:

– In terms of public safety, the city has a goal to ensure the highest level by prioritizing staffing, raising community awareness

about the work those agencies provide to the public, and increasing the city’s emergency preparedness.

– To maintain and enhance its fiscal stability, the city will work to ensure ongoing expenditures are supported by ongoing revenues; develop plans on how best to manage the impact of pension costs; enhance relationships with allied agencies; consider updating water and wastewater fees; and explore potential revenue sources.

– For organizational culture, the city’s goal is to foster a culture of customer service, transparency and accountability.

– The city also wants

to market itself as being more business-friendly. Officials hope to achieve this by reviewing the city’s development impact fees to find ways to make it more enticing for businesses; update its general plan and zoning code; develop a branding and marketing campaign; and devise a plan to present to potential developers on target areas for improvement and development.

– The city will work to enhance regional partnerships through workforce development and community engagement.

– Officials will work to maintain and enhance the quality of life for residents by supporting clean and safe neighborhoods; promote the expansion of parks, recreation and the

arts; and by improving public outreach.

– For infrastructure, the plan is to continue investing, expanding community involvement, ensuring current and future projects stay within the city’s means, and prioritizing maintenance of current road needs ahead of beautification projects.

– Lastly, city officials plan to work with regional agencies on addressing the homelessness and vagrancy issue and expanding the dedicated staff to do so.

“For me, I want to see continued focus on public safety and just maintaining the safety for our citizens, but another primary concern for me is seeing the city truly being open for business, not only for new businesses but in supporting

the current businesses that are operating in the city,” Boomgaarden said.

Harris said part of making the city more businessfriendly will require providing the right tools to city staff to allow them to think outside the box and come up with creative solutions to complex issues, and not just following the status quo.

Other projects Harris is focused on include working on a long-term infrastructure plan for the Highway 20/99 interchange, working on the Bogue-stewart Masterplan and addressing the homelessness issue collaboratively with other surrounding jurisdictions.