Members of the San Marcos City Council and City Manager Bert Lumbreras spent Friday together, looking at the city’s goals and priorities and setting goals for the upcoming budget season.
The council’s annual “visioning workshop” was held at the Hilton Garden Inn in San Marcos and facilitated by Robena Jackson of Group Solutions RJW. Among the anticipated discussion topics for the meeting were quality of life, growth, economic development policies, transportation, community partners, outreach, beautification, flood mitigation and future infrastructure and facility needs.
“The workshops allow the council to review the strategic initiatives identified last year and to determine what updates need to be made for the current year,” Lumbreras explained. “It helps the council and city’s executive and leadership team have a cohesive vision for the future.”
The agenda for the workshop included setting group protocols, an update from Lumbreras on key priorities with strategic initiatives and the 20-year Comprehensive Plan goals, reaffirming and determining top priorities for 2019 and beyond, looking at potential budgetary effects on achieving the desired results, and determining the city’s next steps.
In an email interview before the meeting, Lumbreras said he expects a clear, cohesive vision of council priorities for 2019 to emerge from the workshop. He also said the visioning workshop will be particularly useful to the two brand new members of council, Mark Rockeymoore and Jocabed “Joca” Marquez.
“This will be especially beneficial to our new council members and will be a nice follow-up to the council orientation session they completed a few weeks ago,” Lumbreras said.
The agenda packet for the visioning workshop includes a quarterly report showing the progress that’s been made toward the city’s five strategic initiatives: workforce housing, public transit, stormwater management, community partnerships and city facilities. The report lays out the desired outcomes for each initiative, the strategies to achieve those outcomes, the tasks that are necessary to carrying out those strategies, and whether those tasks have been completed, are ongoing or are in progress.
Once the council’s goals are drafted, the council will adopt them in open session at a regular meeting.
Lumbreras said that a review of progress toward the goals set last year will be posted on the city manager’s page on the city website this week. Strategic Initiatives Quarterly Reports are posted on the city manager’s page, which can be found at the city's website.
