G’town adopts citizen-led plan for city’s next 15 years
26 strategic goals cover full range of issues
The Germantown Board of Mayor and Aldermen approved a citizen-led plan Monday night that will guide decisions city leaders make through 2030 on issues from development to how health and wellness is promoted and measured by the residents themselves.
The plan, Germantown Forward 2030, was directed by a team of 30 residents who represented age, race, gender and the city’s neighborhoods and began meeting more than a year ago. With the help of dozens of other citizens and city staff on nine task forces, the team wrote a nearly 40-page plan that includes 26 strategic objectives and 109 one-sentence directives to achieve them.
For instance, as the city strives to improve government services and the efficiency in which they are delivered, the goal is that services that citizens rank as having low value should not consume more than 20 percent of city resources. The ranking will be based on community surveys; the responses will be tabulated and graphed.
Within two years, department heads in City Hall are to align their business plans to mesh with the new objectives. Manager and staff performance will be based on how well each meets the goals.
Alderman Mary Anne Gibson praised the steering committee members for the “art of being able to see what is invisible to others. You have set forth a plan we will be able to march to. I thank you for that.”
In economic development, for instance, an indication of success in two years will be that the tax base will be up 5 percent. Key to meeting that goal will be completion of small-area plans in five key parts of the city leaders have identified as having signif icant commercial promise. The city has finished the Central Business District plan and the Western Gateway and is close now to debating high-density uses for 303 acres at Forest Hill Heights. Germantown annexed the land at the southeast corner of Winchester and Forest Hill-Irene from Shelby County.
In education, the goal calls for the city’s municipal school district to rank first in Shelby County for academic achievement and among the top five districts in the state. Last summer, Germantown Municipal School District was one of 12 districts recognized by the state Department of Education for excellence.
But because test scores are the domain of the superintendent and the school board, the action plan says the city will support the district’s longrange capital improvements plans, sell bonds on its AAA credit rating to help the district, which does not have taxing authority, and provide police and fire services, including CPR training, at no cost. Beyond these points, within two years, Germantown will also have formal programs it will offer in schools or to teachers to promote student achievement.
The work includes several controversial issues, including planning for possible mixed-use development on the 38-acre municipal center in the heart of the city and ways to financially support maintenance of single-family homes in the older parts.